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 .
Status of Application
The following is a Final Office Action. In response to Examiner's communication on 01/28/2026, Applicant on 02/26/2026, amended Claim 1. Claims 1-6, 8-10 are now pending in this application and have been rejected below.
Response to Amendment
Applicants’ amendments are insufficient to overcome the 35 USC 101 rejections set forth in the previous action. The rejections are updated to address the amendments and maintained below.
Applicant’s amendments are sufficient to overcome the 35 USC 112 rejections set forth in the previous action. The rejections are updated to address the amendments and are maintained below.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 02/26/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments – 35 USC § 101
Applicant's arguments with respect to the 35 USC 101 rejections have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s asserts that amendments directly effectuate control of hardware, and in light of the benefits of the optimization problem as framed in the claims, are sufficient to integrate recited abstract ideas into a practical application and amount to significantly more. Examiner respectfully disagrees.
The question of whether abstract ideas are integrated into a practical application or amount to significantly more by virtue of improvement to technology is dependent on a concrete technology that is being improved, with a benefit that is intrinsic to the technology itself. For example, in Diamond v. Diehr, conventional rubber-molding processes were improved upon. Applicant’s claims may certainly represent an improvement to solving problems in optimization, but the benefit lies in administration and management of processes where the technology is only incidental to the abstract ideas. Further, “regulating the departure time of a corresponding flight” could be effectuated through instructing a pilot to modify their departure time, and is not necessarily inherently tied to improving the technology of a plane or plane dispatch systems itself.
The rejections under 35 USC 101 have been updated to address the amendments and maintained below.
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 1-6, 8-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
101 Analysis – Step 1
The claims are directed to a method. Therefore, the claim is directed to at least one of the four statutory categories.
101 Analysis – Step 2A
Regarding Prong 1 of the Step 2A analysis in the MPEP, the claims are to be analyzed to determine whether they recite subject matter that is directed to a judicial expectation, namely a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or one of the follow groups of abstract ideas: a) mathematical concepts, b) certain methods of organizing human activity, and/or c) mental processes.
Independent Claim 1 includes limitations that recite an abstract idea and will henceforth be used as a representative claim for the 101 rejection until otherwise noted. Claim 1 recites:
A multi-objective collaborative optimization approach for large- scale air traffic management, comprising: obtaining flight data, and generating a delay time vector and a first delay time for each flight; updating a departure time and an arrival time of each flight according to the first delay time of each flight, and obtaining flight conflict information by detecting flight conflicts at each time; grouping all the flights to obtain multiple flight groups according to a flight time overlap of any two flights, by using each flight according to the flight conflict information, and performing mutation based on the delay variable to complete a genetic evolution, and obtaining optimized subspecies after multiple evolutions, wherein obtaining the delay variable of each flight according to the flight conflict information comprises: based on the total number of conflicts at each time in the flight conflict information, a maximum slope value, a minimum slope value, and a slope value at each time are obtained according to the difference between the total number of conflicts at each adjacent time; in the process of genetic evolution, a corresponding flight of each gene on the chromosome is regarded as the flight to be mutated; the slope value of the flight to be mutated at the corresponding time is obtained according to the updated departure time of the flight to be mutated; if the slope value of the flight to be mutated is less than 0, the delay variable of the flight to be mutated is the inverse of a ratio of the slope value of the flight to be mutated to the minimum slope value; otherwise, the delay variable of the flight to be mutated is a ratio of the slope value of the flight to be mutated to the maximum slope value; taking a solution with largest fitness in each optimized subspecies as a second delay time of a corresponding flight, updating the first delay time of each flight to the second delay time, updating the departure time and arrival time of each flight again, performing flight conflict detection, grouping and genetic evolution, and updating the first delay time; obtaining the first delay time after multiple cycles;
The examiner submits that the foregoing bolded limitation(s) constitute an abstract idea because under its broadest reasonable interpretation, the claim covers a mental process and mathematical concept. “obtaining flight data…”, “updating a departure time and an arrival time of each flight…”, “grouping all the flights…”, “generating a subspecies…”, “the first delay time obtained after multiple cycles is used to regulate the departure time of the corresponding flight.”, recite mental processes because the elements recite observations or evaluations that can be practically performed in the mind or by a human using pen and paper. “regulating the departure time of a corresponding flight”, encompasses performing the mental act of judgment with data to output a modified flight schedule, similarly recites a mental process.
“generating a subspecies…”, “generating offspring…”, “obtaining a delay variable of each flight…”, “performing mutation based on the delay variable…”, “taking a solution with the largest fitness…”, all correspond to the usage of a genetic algorithm for multi-objective, optimization, and so therefore recite mathematical concepts, because in view of Applicant’s Specification, the elements recite mathematical calculations and relationships.
Accordingly, the claim recites at least one abstract idea.
101 Analysis – Step 2A, Prong II
Regarding Prong II of the Step 2A analysis in the MPEP, the claims are to be analyzed to determine whether the claim, as a whole, integrates the abstract into practical application. As noted in the MPEP, it must be determined whether any additional elements in the claim beyond the judicial exception integrate the exception into a practical application in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception. The courts have indicated that additional elements, such as merely using a computer to implement an abstract idea, adding insignificant extra solution activity, or generally linking use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use do not integrate a judicial exception into a “practical application.
In the present case, the additional limitations beyond the above-noted abstract idea are as follows (where the underlined portions are the “additional limitations” while the bolded portions continue to represent the “abstract idea”):
Claim 1 recites no additional elements.
Thus, taken alone, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. Further, looking at the additional limitation(s) as an ordered combination or as a whole, the limitation(s) add nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken individually. For instance, there is no indication that the additional elements, when considered as a whole, reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer or an improvement to another technology or technical field, apply or use the above-noted judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition, implement/use the above-noted judicial exception with a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim, effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is not more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception (MPEP § 2106.05). Accordingly, the additional limitation(s) does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing an abstract idea.
101 Analysis – Step 2B
Regarding Step 2B of the MPEP, representative independent claim 1 does not include additional elements (considered both individually and as an ordered combination) that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reasons to those discussed above with respect to determining that the claim does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements amount to generic computing components and thus do not serve to integrate recited abstract ideas into a practical application nor amount to significantly more.
Claims 2-6, 8-10 include limitations which merely further limit the abstract ideas of Claim 1, and are therefore ineligible.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THEODORE L XIE whose telephone number is (571)272-7102. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rutao Wu can be reached at 571-272-6045. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/THEODORE XIE/Examiner, Art Unit 3623
/CHARLES GUILIANO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3623
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