DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular paragraphs or columns and lines in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the Applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the Applicant fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by this Examiner.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 17 October 2023 and 14 November 2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98 and MPEP § 609. Accordingly, the IDS is being considered by this Examiner.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-15 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Per claim 1, on lines 9, 11 and 14, it would be more appropriate to delete “-“.
Per claim 2, line 1, “modifying” should be replaced by “controlling” in accordance to the preliminary amendment of claim 1 on line 23.
Per claim 7, on lines 3 and 5, it would be more appropriate to delete “-“.
All dependent claims are objected to as inheriting the same deficiencies as the claims they depend from. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 12-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention are directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claims do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because:
Per claim 12, the claim is directed to a computer program product comprising instructions. As such the claim appears to consist entirely of software program(s). Computer programs not claimed as embodied in tangible media such as non-transitory recordable media or non-transitory computer storage media are descriptive material per se and are not statutory because they are not capable of causing functional change in the computer. They are neither computer components nor statutory processes, as they are not “acts” being performed. Such claimed computer programs do not define any structural and functional interrelationships between the computer program and other claimed elements of a computer which permit the computer program’s functionality to be realized.
Appropriate correction is required.
Per claim 13, the specification does not provide a definition for the claimed “computer-readable storage medium” (CRSM). A Broadest reasonable interpretation for the term “CRSM” would include both statutory embodiments and non-statutory embodiments such as signals. The words "storage" and/or "recording" are insufficient to convey only statutory embodiments to one of ordinary skill in the art absent an explicit and deliberate limiting definition or clear differentiation between storage media and transitory media in the disclosure. As such, the claim is drawn to a form of energy. Energy is not one of the four categories of invention and therefore this claim is not statutory. Energy is not a series of steps or acts and thus is not a process. Energy is not a physical article or object and as such is not a machine or manufacture. Energy is not a combination of substances and therefore not a composition of matter. The Examiner suggests amending the claim to read as a “non-transitory computer-readable storage medium”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 1-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Per claim 1, on lines 22-23, “the local values of the state parameter” is indefinite. Line 3 of the instant claim teaches “a local value of the state parameter” that is stored in the processing device, while line 9 teaches “local values of the state parameter” received from other communicating devices of the subset. It is unclear whether “the local values of the state parameter” on lines 22-23 refers to all or some of the local values taught on lines 3 and 9.
Per claim 2, line 3, “the local values of the state parameter” is indefinite for the same reason set forth above for claim 1.
Per claim 3, line 4, “the norm” lacks sufficient antecedent basis and it would be more appropriate to change it to “a norm”. On line 5, “the local values of the state parameter” is indefinite for the same reason set forth above for claim 1.
Per claim 4, line 4, “the local values of the state parameter” is indefinite for the same reason set forth above for claim 1.
Per claim 5, line 3, “the local values of the state parameter” is indefinite for the same reason set forth above for claim 1.
Per claim 7, lines 3-4, “the local values of the state parameter” is indefinite for the same reason set forth above for claim 1.
Per claim 12, on line 3, “said communication device” is indefinite as line 2 of the instant claim teaches “a communication device”, while claim 1 on lines 1-2 teaches “a communication device” and “a set of communication devices”. It is unclear which one of these communication devices is the “said communication device”.
Per claim 13, on line 3, “said communication device” is indefinite as line 2 of the instant claim teaches “a communication device”, while claim 1 on lines 1-2 teaches “a communication device” and “a set of communication devices”. It is unclear which one of these communication devices is the “said communication device”.
All dependent claims are rejected as inheriting the same deficiencies as the claims they depend from. Appropriate correction is required.
Potential Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-15 are potentially allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101 and 35 U.S.C. 112(b) set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of potential allowable subject matter:
Per independent claim 1, Tamjidi et al. [Unifying Consensus and Covariance Intersection for Efficient Distributed State Estimation Over Unreliable Networks, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol. 37, No.5, 12 April 2021] (hereinafter “Tamjidi”) teachs:
A method for controlling a state parameter by a communicating device, referred to as processing device, in a set of communicating devices. said processing device storing a local value of the state parameter and exchanging data with other communicating devices to enable all communicating devices to converge towards having a same value of the state parameter, referred to as consensus value, wherein a subset of communicating devices is associated to said processing device, said subset including the processing device and the
communicating devices from which said processing device receives data, said
method comprising iterating steps of (see Abstract: "This article presents and studies a recursive information consensus filter for decentralized dynamic state estimation under circumstances in which the communication network is unreliable.");
receiving local values of the state parameter from the other communicating
devices of the subset associated to the processing device (see page 1529, Algorithm 1, instruction 8: "RECEIVE [yIk, Y1k, ÕiIk, ÕIIk]", wherein " yIk, Y1k correspond to local values of the state parameter from the other k communicating devices);
updating its local value of the state parameter based on the received local
values of the state parameter, wherein at least some of said received local
values are corrupted by an observation noise (see page 1529, Algorithm 1, instruction 10, iteratively redefining the local value [yI+1j, YI+1j] of the state parameter based on the received data. See also introduction: "In a sensor network, nodes represent sensors that make noisy observations of the state of an underlying system of interest.");
transmitting its local value of the state parameter to other communicating
devices (see page 1529, Algorithm 1, instruction 7: "BROADCAST [yIj, Y1j, ÕiIj, ÕIIj]", wherein "yIj, Y1j” correspond to local values of the state parameter; see also
instruction 5 of the algorithm);
wherein the processing device iteratively estimates an aggregated state
parameter aggregating the local values of the state parameter of the
communicating devices of the subset. based on the received local values of the
state parameter (see page 1529, Algorithm 1, instruction 13: "Calculate the posteriors", wherein the posterior information vector and information matrix (Yj(t1) and yj(t1)) are
"aggregated state parameter". Said posterior information vector and information
matrix are based on parameters determined in the while loop of the algorithm
(instruction 6), i.e. based on the received data.); by using a Kalman filter which applies a process model, an error introduced by the process model being modeled as a process noise, said processing device updating its local value of the state parameter based on the estimated aggregated state parameter (see page 1531, equations 21-22: "Using the prior covariance given by ICI, the posterior is computed by the well-known Kalman update equations");
wherein the processing device iteratively determines a convergence level of the local values of the state parameter (see page 1529, Algorithm 1, instruction 6: "while NOT CONVERGED" ... and instruction 10: "Do one iteration of Cl on consensus variables for local prior information CIj, wherein Cl is "covariance intersection").
Tamjidi fails to teach or render obvious: 1) the Kalman filter uses a covariance matrix of a process noise modeling an error introduced by the process model; and 2) the processing device controls the covariance matrix of the process noise based on the determined convergence level. Tamjidi teaches the Kalman filter comprises update and prediction steps that use covariance matrix representation (see page 1528, left column, lines 6-7), and the reported covariance matrix PICIxi , is an upper bound of the actual error covariance matrix (see page 1529, (10)). However, Tamjidi fails to teach or render obvious the covariance matrix is of a process noise and controlled by the processing device based on the determined convergence level.
Another related prior art reference Liu et al. [Pub.No.: US 20220261626 A1] (hereinafter “Liu”) teaches a network based distributed training method wherein local gradient of local cost functions on computing machines are transmitted to a server for aggregation, the server collects the local gradients from the other distributed machines to update its own parameters (see paragraphs [0058] and [0063]). However, Liu fails to address the deficiencies in Tamjidi as set forth above.
Claims 2-15 are dependent on claim 1 and as such are potential allowable subject matter for at least the same reasons set forth above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHAWN X GU whose telephone number is (571)272-0703. The examiner can normally be reached on 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Tim Vo can be reached on 571-272-3642. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHAWN X GU/
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2138
1 February 2026