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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) submitted on 10/17/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDS statement has been considered by the Examiner.
Priority
The instant application claims priority to JP 2021-087316, which was filed on 05/25/2021. A certified copy of the Japanese patent application has been received.
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 1 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claims 1 and 10 claim are apparatus claims; however, no hardware is disclosed in these claims.
Claims 8 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because it is not indicated that the steps of method are performed by a computer. One way to overcome this rejection is to replace the An information prosing method with A computer implemented information processing method.
Claims 9 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101. Based upon consideration of all of the relevant factors with respect to the claim as a whole, claims 9 and 16 are held to claim an abstract idea. And are therefore rejected as ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.The rationales for this finding is explained below:
Claims 9 and 16 are not statutory as they are drawn to only the program (software per se) and not the program in combination with the disk and as such fails to fall into a statutory category of invention as no hardware is claimed. One way to overcome this rejection is to have the program stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium
Claims 2-7 and 11-14 are also rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 based on their dependencies from claims 1 and 10.
Allowable Subject Matter
The invention defined in claims 1, 8, 9, 10, 15 and 16 are not suggested by the prior art of record. Claims 1, 8, 9, 10, 15 and 16 would be allowed if the claims overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101 set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GHODRAT JAMSHIDI whose telephone number is (571)270-1956. The examiner can normally be reached 10:00-6:00.
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/GHODRAT JAMSHIDI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2493