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 .
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed 6/22/2026 overcomes the following objection(s) and/or rejection(s):
Objection to claims 1-28;
Rejection of claims 1, 3, 7, 21, 27, 28 under 35 U.S.C. 101 SME.
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.
Claim 28 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. See MPEP 2106 and 2106.03 for guidance. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter of a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. “A computer program” as recited is not patent eligible subject matter because it is “software/data per se”. A recommended remedy for claiming a computer program is to have it embodied within a “non-transitory” computer readable medium. See also USPTO Published 2019 Patent Eligibility Guidance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-5, 7, 21, and 27-28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Philippe et al (US 20130076898 A1) in view of Blendinger et al (US 20190050984 A1) for the same reasons as set forth in the last Office Action.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Philippe et al (US 20130076898 A1) in view of Blendinger et al (US 20190050984 A1) and Owsley et al (US 20170200206 A1) for the same reasons as set forth in the last Office Action.
Claims 8-9, 13-15, 17-18, and 20, 22-25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Philippe et al (US 20130076898 A1) in view of Blendinger et al (US 20190050984 A1) and Wolf et al (US 10729502 B1) for the same reasons as set forth in the last Office Action.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Philippe et al (US 20130076898 A1) in view of Blendinger et al (US 20190050984 A1) and Wolf et al (US 10729502 B1) and Soni et al (US 11720647 B2) for the same reasons as set forth in the last Office Action.
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Philippe et al (US 20130076898 A1) in view of Blendinger et al (US 20190050984 A1) and Wolf et al (US 10729502 B1) and Peine et al (NPL: A Deep Learning Approach for Managing Medical Consumable Materials in Intensive Care Units via Convolutional Neural Networks: Technical Proof-of-Concept Study) for the same reasons as set forth in the last Office Action.
Claim 26 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Philippe et al (US 20130076898 A1) in view of Blendinger et al (US 20190050984 A1) and Ingle (US 20190238791 A1) for the same reasons as set forth in the last Office Action.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 6/22/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s core arguments are directed to independent claims 1 and 21. Applicant asserts the following (Remarks, p. 4):
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Examiner respectfully disagrees. Independent claims 1 and 21 as recited, involves image evaluation for shape recognition of a medical consumable (e.g., medical device). This shape recognition is then fed to an image analyzing means as “classification information” about said medical consumable i.e., identifying said medical consumable. It should be noted that claims 1 and 21 do not “classify” a medical consumable. Consequently, the prior art rejection in the last Office Action reasonably addressed the shape evaluation and identification of a medical consumable (device) as claimed in cited paragraphs 32, 45-50. Moreover, the examiner did acknowledge that Philippe ‘898 does not teach the last step of the claim 1 which recites “generating audio information based on the classification information in order to initiate an acoustic output of the audio information via an audio device”. Broadly speaking, the phrase “based on” implies many interpretations, however, the examiner recognized that the inventive concept of the present application is to produce an audible announcement of the identified medical consumable in the image. As such, Blendinger ‘984 was appropriately applied as secondary teaching for the specific aspect of producing an audible output “based on” an identified medical object in the image. At the time of effective filing, it would have been obvious to incorporate the teaching of Blendinger ‘984 into Philippe ‘898 to derived at claim 1 (21).
Therefore, the rejections of claims 1 and 21 are maintained.
Dependent claims 2-9, 11-15, 17, 18, 20, and 28 stand and fall with claims 1 and 21 respectively.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 10, 16, and 19 as amended into independent claims are now allowable.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 20210015554 A1
US 20140032222 A1
US 20030025602 A1
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to VU LE whose telephone number is (571)272-7332. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00 - 17:00.
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Vu Le can be reached at 2-7332. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/VU LE/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2668
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