3DETAILED ACTION
This Action is a response to the reply filed 2 October 2025. Claims 1, 8-9 and 17-19 are amended; no claims are canceled or newly added. Claims 1-20 remain pending for examination.
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 statements (IDS) submitted on 10 July 2025 and 15 September 2025 are being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-2, 4, 7-9, 11 and 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cirone et al., U.S. 2022/0083454 A1 (“Cirone”) in view of Dunsmore et al., U.S. 2016/0098697 A1 (“Dunsmore”).
Regarding claim 1, Cirone teaches: A method of automatically instrumenting a web-based application (Cirone, e.g., ¶30, “disclosed systems can automatically instrument an enterprise application …” and ¶32, “enabling developers of web-based applications can obtain detailed instrumentation about one or more processes …”), the method comprising:
providing a web page application to a web browser on a client device, wherein the web page application comprises a tracer application (Cirone, e.g., FIG. 1, web browser 132 including web application 134 with tracer application 136 (compare to FIG. 1 of the current Specification));
instantiating, based on a start of the web page application, the tracer application, wherein the tracer application is configured to log tracing data for the web page application (Cirone, e.g., FIG. 2, element 206);
automatically logging a start of a first span, the logging associating the first span with the tracer application (Cirone, e.g., FIG. 2, element 210);
executing first operations associated with the first span (Cirone, e.g., FIG. 2, element 212);
automatically logging an end of the first span based upon a completion of the first operations (Cirone, e.g., FIG. 2, element 214);
automatically logging, based on an event initiated by an interaction with the web page application, a start of a second span, the second span starting after the first span, the logging associating the second span with the tracer application (Cirone, e.g., FIG. 8, elements 806-808, that is, the user interacts with the web page application, triggering an event, the event causing a request to be made to a server, which is then associated with a second span associated with the tracer application); …; and
automatically logging an end of the second span … (Cirone, e.g., ¶¶54-55, “tracer application 136 can create a first child span corresponding to a first operation and a second child span corresponding to a second operation … tracer application 136 automatically logs an end of the first child span based on completion of the first operation …”).
Cirone does not more particularly teach detecting that a period of inactivity of the web browser occurred and the second span was active before the inactivity, and based on the detecting, associating the second span with the inactivity. However, Dunsmore does teach: detecting, via the tracer application, that (i) a period of inactivity of the web browser occurred and (ii) the second span was active before the period of inactivity (Dunsmore, e.g., ¶88, “customer has received a phone call while viewing the shopping cart screen 424 of the application …” See also, e.g., ¶89, “user has accepted the phone call, opening a call screen 520 on the mobile device 230 and sending the application to the background …”);
based on the detecting, associating the second span with the period of inactivity (Dunsmore, e.g., ¶89, “the transaction module 270 has updated the entry for the checkout transaction in the transaction table 275. More specifically, the entry for the checkout transaction indicates, with a ‘BG’, that the application was sent to the background, putting the transaction into an inactive state …”); and
[automatically logging the end of the second span] that is associated with the period of inactivity based at least in part on completion of the second span (Dunsmore, e.g., ¶¶92-93, “user has completed their call … returned to the shopping cart screen … recorded corresponding breadcrumbs indicating the end of the call and the return of the shopping cart screen 424 to the foreground … updated the checkout transaction … reflect that the application has returned to the foreground, and to the active state … when a transaction completes successfully … mores from the active state 305 to the success state 315 … detected based on the occurrence of an ending event or based on system calls … updates transaction information … may provide … an ending time …”) for the purpose of recording the states of a plurality of activities including inactivity periods and performance values (Dunsmore, e.g., ¶¶87-93).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for distributed web tracing as taught by Cirone to provide for detecting that a period of inactivity of the web browser occurred and the second span was active before the inactivity, and based on the detecting, associating the second span with the inactivity because the disclosure of Dunsmore shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for web application activity tracing to provide for detecting that a period of inactivity of the web browser occurred and the second span was active before the inactivity, and based on the detecting, associating the second span with the inactivity for the purpose of recording the states of a plurality of activities including inactivity periods and performance values (Dunsmore, Id.).
Claim 9 is rejected for the reasons given in the rejection of claim 1 above. Examiner notes that with respect to claim 9, Cirone further teaches: A system comprising: a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable program instructions; and a processing device communicatively coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable medium for executing the computer-executable program instructions, wherein executing the computer-executable program instructions configures the processing device to perform operations (Cirone, e.g., ¶225, “exemplary computer system 1600, in which various aspects of the present invention may be implemented … includes a processing unit 1604 that communicates … via a bus subsystem 1602 … a storage subsystem 1618 … includes tangible computer-readable storage media …” See also, e.g., ¶228, “processing unit 1604 can execute a variety of programs in response to program code … resident in processing unit 1604 and/or in storage subsystem 1618 …”) comprising: [[[the method of claim 1]]].
Regarding claim 2, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, and Cirone further teaches: evaluating a performance of the web page application based on one or more of the first span or the second span (Cirone, e.g., ¶28, “Telemetry refers to gathering of reporting performance data about the runtime execution of software … measurements of … execution time, whether a process crashed, failure information … Telemetry data can be gathered on an application basis, or on a more granular level, such as runtime metrics on how long each process of the web page took to complete …”).
Regarding claim 4, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, and Cirone and Dunsmore further teach: determining an additional span that is either (i) a parent span of the second span or (ii) a child span of the second span (Cirone, e.g., ¶69, “Within span hierarchy 410 or a span timeline 430, relationships exist between parent and child spans … hierarchy of events such as user click 412, event handler 414, REST request 416, process response 418, server process request 420, and update UI …”); and
associating the additional span with the period of inactivity (Dunsmore, e.g., ¶88, “customer has received a phone call while viewing the shopping cart screen 424 of the application …” See also, e.g., ¶89, “the transaction module 270 has updated the entry for the checkout transaction in the transaction table 275. More specifically, the entry for the checkout transaction indicates, with a ‘BG’, that the application was sent to the background, putting the transaction into an inactive state …” Examiner’s note: the BG designation, associating the particular transaction with the period of inactivity, applies to the transaction, though the period of inactivity occurred during a specific portion (span) of the transaction. As such, the period of inactivity is associated with one or more parent and/or child spans in any transaction that includes more than one event or operation).
Claim 11 is rejected for the additional reasons given in the rejection of claim 4 above.
Regarding claim 7, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, and Dunsmore further teaches: wherein detecting that the period of inactivity of the web browser occurred comprises one or more of (i) determining that a user is inactive, (ii) analyzing a placement of the web browser on a screen, and (iii) determining that a user has switched to a different tab of the web browser (Dunsmore, e.g., ¶88, “customer has received a phone call while viewing the shopping cart screen 424 of the application …” See also, e.g., ¶89, “user has accepted the phone call, opening a call screen 520 on the mobile device 230 and sending the application to the background …”).
Regarding claim 8, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, and Cirone further teaches: wherein automatically logging the end of the first span comprises determining one or more of: (i) a number of processing cycles corresponding to the execution of the first operations or (ii) an execution time of the first operations (Cirone, e.g., ¶53, “automatically logging an end of the span … Data collected can include processing cycles used, time taken to execute the span …”).
Claims 14-15 are rejected for the additional reasons given in the rejections of claims 7-8 above.
Regarding claim 16, the rejection of claim 9 is incorporated, and Cirone further teaches: wherein executing the computer-executable program instructions configures the processing device to perform operations comprising: evaluating a performance of the web page application based on the first span (Cirone, e.g., ¶28, “Telemetry refers to gathering of reporting performance data about the runtime execution of software … measurements of … execution time, whether a process crashed, failure information … Telemetry data can be gathered on an application basis, or on a more granular level, such as runtime metrics on how long each process of the web page took to complete …”).
Claims 3 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cirone in view of Dunsmore, and in further view of Mastrangelo et al., U.S. 2012/0259969 A1 (“Mastrangelo”).
Regarding claim 3, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, but Cirone in view of Dunsmore does not more particularly teach detecting that the period of inactivity is greater than a threshold, and associating the span with the inactivity based thereon. However, Mastrangelo does teach: detecting that the period of inactivity is greater than a threshold, and wherein associating the second span with the period of inactivity is further based on the period of inactivity being greater than the threshold (Mastrangelo, e.g., ¶20, “Program 112 has associated usage sessions … session begins when program 112 begins running, and ends when program 112 stops running … usage sessions can begin and end at different times, such as ending after a threshold amount of time of inactivity of program 112 is detected (e.g., no user inputs for program 112 are received for a threshold amount of time) …” See also, e.g., ¶¶21-23, describing assigning of session identifiers by an instrumentation module for the purpose of tracking usage data for a Web page or other service) for the purpose of detecting usage and activity of a particular user for a particular instance of execution for an application (Mastrangelo, e.g., ¶¶17-23).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for distributed web tracing as taught by Cirone in view of Dunsmore to provide for detecting that the period of inactivity is greater than a threshold, and associating the span with the inactivity based thereon because the disclosure of Mastrangelo shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for program session data tracking and analysis to provide for detecting that the period of inactivity is greater than a threshold, and associating the span with the inactivity based thereon for the purpose of detecting usage and activity of a particular user for a particular instance of execution for an application (Mastrangelo, Id.).
Claim 10 is rejected for the additional reasons given in the rejection of claim 3 above.
Claims 5 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cirone in view of Dunsmore, and in further view of Sullivan et al., U.S. 2012/0179744 A1 (“Sullivan”).
Regarding claim 5, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, but Cirone in view of Dunsmore does not more particularly teach that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser. However, Sullivan does teach: wherein detecting that the period of inactivity of the web browser occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser at the tracer application (Sullivan, e.g., ¶56, “application server 110 can receive a notification from browser 106 that an application page in an active browser window has been … closed by a user, or if the user has navigated to a different web page within the window … application server 110 can associate an expiration time with the active window, and can add the window to an ‘expiration’ list of windows that are potentially inactive …” Examiner’s note: the application server is a server component of the web application configured to track web application events (i.e., generally consistent with a tracer application)) for the purpose of detecting inactivity of an application as distinct from pages of the web application (Sullivan, e.g., ¶¶53-68).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for distributed web tracing as taught by Cirone in view of Dunsmore to provide that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser because the disclosure of Sullivan shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for detecting user activity and inactivity of a web application to provide that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser for the purpose of detecting inactivity of an application as distinct from pages of the web application (Sullivan, Id.).
Claim 12 is rejected for the additional reasons given in the rejection of claim 5 above.
Claims 6 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cirone in view of Dunsmore, and in further view of Boss et al., U.S. 2016/0315842 A1 (“Boss”).
Regarding claim 6, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated, but Cirone in view of Dunsmore does not more particularly teach that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from a plugin of the web browser. However, Boss does teach: wherein detecting that the period of inactivity of the web browser occurred comprises receiving, from a plugin installed in the web browser, a signal indicating that the web browser is inactive (Boss, e.g., ¶55, “cognitive analyzer 116 [] generates the model in step 202, which includes a set of monitors linked to applications and the current state of the user’s activity for each application, as shown in Table 1.” TABLE 1 shows that a monitor of browser plugin is associated with a browser application for the purpose of detecting an active / inactive state) for the purpose of detecting user attention to an application in order to improve or reduce service quality to optimize resource usage (Boss, e.g., ¶¶47-61).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for distributed web tracing as taught by Cirone in view of Dunsmore to provide that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from a plugin of the web browser because the disclosure of Boss shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for determining user attention to an application to provide that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from a plugin of the web browser for the purpose of detecting user attention to an application in order to improve or reduce service quality to optimize resource usage (Boss, Id.).
Claim 13 is rejected for the additional reasons given in the rejection of claim 6 above.
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Flacher et al., U.S. 2022/0027827 A1 (“Flacher”) in view of Nakagawa, Katsuya, U.S. 2012/0125992 A1 (“Nakagawa”).
Regarding claim 17, Flacher teaches: A method of automatically instrumenting a web-based application across sessions of a web-browser, the method comprising: providing a web page application to a web browser on a client device (Flacher, e.g., ¶25, “user device 120 typically includes a web browser [] or any application … which allows a user to view, download, interact with, and engage with content provided by the web servers 140 …” See also, e.g., ¶27, “Users of the user devices 120 may access … an application installed on and executed by the servers 140 … include … a web application …”), wherein the web page application comprises a tracer application (Flacher, e.g., ¶48, “Usage data … may be collected via various means including … through a page-embedded element … a browser extension … page-embedded elements, included in the source code of a specific web page … configured to collect usage data for each visitor or user’s webpage visit … Usage data may be further collected, at S310, through tools included in a user’s web browser or application, as may be included in a user device …”) and wherein the web browser operates a plurality of sessions (Flacher, e.g., ¶47, “Usage data refers to in-site interaction data for one or more users or website visitors … whether the user completed a session …”);
receiving, from the tracer application on the client device, a plurality of sets of session data, wherein each set of session data corresponds to a respective session of the web page application executed by the web browser and comprises data corresponding to one or more spans, each span corresponding to a respective set of operations executed during the session (Flacher, e.g., ¶47, “usage data is collected … Usage data may include, as examples and without limitation, the sequence of buttons which a user clicked while browsing the website, the user’s total time on the website, whether the user completed a session … may further refer to data … describing the user or visitor’s web experience …” See also, e.g., ¶48, “Usage data may be collected … for each visitor or user’s webpage visit … collect a user’s usage data for each visit to a given website …” Examiner’s note: usage data comprises a span (i.e., in that it corresponds to a respective set of operations (user clicks) executed during a session, and a plurality of sets of session data is collected (i.e., for multiple visits by a user to a webpage, for visits by multiple users to a webpage));
determining, from the plurality of sets of session data, a subset of session data corresponding to sessions having one or more first spans identified by a respective tracer application as associated with a period of inactivity of the web-browser; filtering the plurality of sets of session data by removing, from the plurality of sets of session data, the subset of session data corresponding to sessions having one or more first spans identified by the respective tracer application as associated with the period of inactivity […]; extracting, from the filtered plurality of data sets, data representing one or more second spans (Flacher, e.g., ¶49, “Usage metrics may be identified by application of one or more data filtering analyses … a usage metric may describe a user’s total time engaging with a website. In the same example, the ‘total time engaged’ usage metric may be identified based on analysis of the total time for which the user was connected for the website during a given visit, adjusted for inactivity by application of various filters including, without limitation, filters configured to include only those sessions having session lengths above or below various predefined thresholds, sessions having inactivity lengths above or below certain thresholds …” See also, e.g., ¶51, “Aggregate site metrics may be computed based on given subsets of the available usage metric data including, without limitation, computation for given time periods …” Examiner’s note: as noted above, each session comprises at least one span; the analysis identifies usage metrics by filtering out sessions, for example, having inactivity lengths above or below certain thresholds (i.e., above zero inactivity), leaving the remaining sessions (each including a span) as those from which session data may be extracted pertaining to one or more criteria, such as a time period); and
evaluating a performance of the web page application based on the data representing the one or more second spans (Flacher, e.g., ¶¶50-51, “identified usage metrics are added to a repository … aggregate site metrics are computed … combined usage metrics determined by analysis of the metrics identified hereinabove …”).
Flacher does not more particularly teach that the period of inactivity of the web-browser is determined based at least in part of an inactivity of a web-browser plugin. However, Nakagawa does teach: [determining session data associated with a period of inactivity] determined based at least in part on an activity of a web-browser plugin (Nakagawa, e.g., ¶124, “at a time t1, when the browser becomes inactive while the browser is launched, the plugin unlocks (releases) the middleware by Mutex mechanism and becomes inactive …”) for the purpose of determining whether a plugin associated with a browser application has become inactive in order to perform further processing (Nakagawa, e.g., ¶122-127).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for web application activity tracing and user experience evaluation as taught by Flacher to provide that the period of inactivity of the web-browser is determined based at least in part of an inactivity of a web-browser plugin because the disclosure of Nakagawa shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for providing alternative plugin / middleware functionality to provide that the period of inactivity of the web-browser is determined based at least in part of an inactivity of a web-browser plugin for the purpose of determining whether a plugin associated with a browser application has become inactive in order to perform further processing (Nakagawa, Id.).
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Flacher in view of Nakagawa, and in further view of Sullivan.
Regarding claim 18, the rejection of claim 17 is incorporated, but Flacher in view of Nakagawa does not more particularly teach that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser. However, Sullivan does teach: wherein each respective tracer application associates the period of inactivity of the web browser with one or more of the first spans by receiving signal from the web browser at the tracer application (Sullivan, e.g., ¶56, “application server 110 can receive a notification from browser 106 that an application page in an active browser window has been … closed by a user, or if the user has navigated to a different web page within the window … application server 110 can associate an expiration time with the active window, and can add the window to an ‘expiration’ list of windows that are potentially inactive …” Examiner’s note: the application server is a server component of the web application configured to track web application events (i.e., generally consistent with a tracer application)) for the purpose of detecting inactivity of an application as distinct from pages of the web application (Sullivan, e.g., ¶¶53-68).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for web application activity tracing and user experience evaluation as taught by Flacher in view of Nakagawa to provide that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser because the disclosure of Sullivan shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for detecting user activity and inactivity of a web application to provide that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from the web browser for the purpose of detecting inactivity of an application as distinct from pages of the web application (Sullivan, Id.).
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Flacher in view of Nakagawa, and in further view of Boss.
Regarding claim 19, the rejection of claim 17 is incorporated, but Flacher in view of Nakagawa does not more particularly teach that detecting that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from a plugin of the web browser. However, Boss does teach: wherein each respective tracer application associates the period of inactivity of the webOc browser with one or more of the first spans by receiving, from a plugin installed in the web browser, a signal indicating that the web browser is inactive (Boss, e.g., ¶55, “cognitive analyzer 116 [] generates the model in step 202, which includes a set of monitors linked to applications and the current state of the user’s activity for each application, as shown in Table 1.” TABLE 1 shows that a monitor of browser plugin is associated with a browser application for the purpose of detecting an active / inactive state) for the purpose of detecting user attention to an application in order to improve or reduce service quality to optimize resource usage (Boss, e.g., ¶¶47-61).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for web application activity tracing and user experience evaluation as taught by Flacher in view of Nakagawa to provide that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from a plugin of the web browser because the disclosure of Boss shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for determining user attention to an application to provide that the period of activity occurred comprises receiving signal from a plugin of the web browser for the purpose of detecting user attention to an application in order to improve or reduce service quality to optimize resource usage (Boss, Id.).
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Flacher in view of Nakagawa, and in further view of Padala et al., U.S. 2022/0276953 A1 (“Padala”).
Regarding claim 20, the rejection of claim 17 is incorporated, but Flacher in view of Nakagawa does not more particularly teach providing the web page application for execution based on the performance evaluation. However, Padala does teach: based on the evaluation of performance, providing the web page application to the web browser on the client device and causing the web page application to execute on the client device (Padala, e.g., ¶54, “system deploys the application code to a production environment based on determining that the consolidated test results meet a threshold performance level …”) for the purpose of determining whether a particular performance threshold has been met prior to deployment (Padala, e.g., ¶¶51-55).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method for web application activity tracing and user experience evaluation as taught by Flacher in view of Nakagawa to provide for providing the web page application for execution based on the performance evaluation because the disclosure of Padala shows that it was known to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art to improve a system and method for application testing and data analysis to provide for providing the web page application for execution based on the performance evaluation for the purpose of determining whether a particular performance threshold has been met prior to deployment (Padala, Id.).
Response to Arguments
In the Remarks, Applicant Argues: With respect to claim 17, Flacher does not teach or suggest “determining … a subset of session data corresponding to sessions having first spans … associated with a period of inactivity … based at least in part on an inactivity web-browser plugin” and “filtering … by removing … the subset of session data corresponding to sessions … associated with the period of inactivity …” (Resp. at 8-9).
Examiner’s Response: In view of the amendments, Examiner newly cites to Nakagawa, and maintains the rejections under the new grounds set forth in full above.
Applicant Further Argues: Dunsmore does not teach or suggest automatically logging an end of the second span that is associated with the period of inactivity based at least in part on completion of the second span and automatically logging … a start of a second span, the second span starting after the first span as recited in amended claim 1 (Resp. at 10-11).
Examiner’s Response: In view of the amendments, Examiner cites to additional sections of Cirone and Dunsmore, and maintains the rejections under the new grounds set forth in full above.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
Examiner has identified particular references contained in the prior art of record within the body of this action for the convenience of Applicant. Although the citations made are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the enumerated claims, the teaching of the cited art as a whole is not limited to the cited passages. Other passages and figures may apply. Applicant, in preparing the response, should consider fully the entire reference as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art and/or disclosed by Examiner.
Examiner respectfully requests that, in response to this Office Action, support be shown for language added to any original claims on amendment and any new claims. That is, indicate support for newly added claim language by specifically pointing to page(s) and line number(s) in the specification and/or drawing figure(s). This will assist Examiner in prosecuting the application.
When responding to this Office Action, Applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty which he or she thinks the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made. He or she must also show how the amendments avoid such references or objections. See 37 C.F.R. 1.111(c).
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communication from Examiner should be directed to Andrew M. Lyons, whose telephone number is (571) 270-3529, and whose fax number is (571) 270-4529. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM ET. If attempts to reach Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, Examiner’s supervisor, Wei Mui, can be reached at (571) 272-3708. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Center system. For more information about the Patent Center system, see https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center. If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call (800) 786-9199 (in USA or Canada) or (571) 272-1000.
/Andrew M. Lyons/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2191