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 received 07/24/26 has been entered in full.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the pending claims have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection is based on the amended subject matter which required further search and consideration.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claims 1-7,9, and 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinya et al. JP2012135240 (hereinafter “Shinya”, included in the IDS, English translation relied upon) in view of Cong et al. US 2002/0154798 (hereinafter “Cong”)
Regarding claim 1, Shinya discloses an analyzing apparatus for a sampling container to sample microorganisms (see paragraph 0014 and figure 1, a bacterial colony identification device)
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, comprising: circuitry configured to acquire a plurality of first images captured with first visible light in time-series during a culturing step, the plurality of first images acquired by capturing an interior of the sampling container having undergone a process of sampling microorganisms in a monitored environment (see paragraph 0015 where a petri dish is cultured with bacterial colonies for several hours to several days, and paragraph 0017 with an imaging section to obtain images of the bacterial colonies exposed with different illuminations)
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; first specifying circuitry configured to detect occurrence of a colony of the microorganisms or an existence of the colony having occurred already in the time-series from time-series variations of the plurality of the first images, and to specify a shape of the colony with its occurrence or existence being detected (see above paragraph 0017 where feature amounts for each colony are calculated and paragraph 0021 which specifies determining the shape of a bacterial colony)
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; a second specifying circuitry configured to specify the shape of the colony of the microorganisms from a second image acquired by capturing the interior of the sampling container with second visible light microorganisms, based on the shape specified by the first specifying circuitry and the shape specified by the second specifying circuitry (see paragraph 0056 and figure 17 which discloses a GUI with classification results and spectral measurements candidate colonies which are based on the shapes of the colonies, see paragraph 0043)
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Shinya does not explicitly disclose that the second specifying circuitry specifies has a wavelength different from that of the first visible light.
Cong discloses an image analysis method to extract shape information from images of cells (see paragraph 0002).
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Specifically Cong discloses that one image can be obtained using a wavelength while a second image is obtained with a different wavelength than the first image to determine the cell shape associated with the cell shape marker rather than the reference component marker (see paragraph 0040).
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Shinya and Cong are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of imaging cells to determine shape.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Shinya and Cong to use a different wavelength for capturing the second image. The motivation would be to allow for a cell shape indicative manner to be taken into account for determining the shape of the cells.
Regarding claim 2, Shinya discloses wherein the first specifying circuitry detects the occurrence of the colony of the microorganisms or the existence of the colony that already occurred, based on at least one of borderlines of shadow areas existing respectively in the plurality of first images, and a centroid of an area surrounded by the borderlines (see paragraph 0040 where the edges of the colonies [shadow areas] and the radius and center [centroid] of the colonies are determined.
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Regarding claim 3, Shinya discloses wherein the first specifying circuitry excludes the shadow area existing in the previous image as the shadow area other than the colonies of the microorganisms when the shadow area existing in the previous image does not exist in the later image of the previous and later images in the time-series (paragraph 0036 discloses aggregates of multiple colonies may not consist of a single bacterium and must be removed thus discloses minimizing the error so as to provide true colonies and reduce areas that are not consistent with them).
Regarding claim 4, as discussed Shinya discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Shinya further discloses distinguishing between the shadow area of the colony of the microorganisms and the shadow area other than the colony of the microorganisms (see above paragraph 0040).
Shinya does not explicitly disclose prompting an intermediary of an operator when the distinguishing circuitry is difficult to distinguish, however does disclose that humans can determine whether an object is isolated by comprehensively evaluating clues such as minute changes in bright, distortion of contours and the thee shape of directly reflected light (see paragraph 0045).
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to prompt the user to distinguish difficult cases. The motivation is that humans are adept at evaluating and diagnosing problems when machines have difficulties, thus by using the differential skills of a human problems with the automatic system could be resolved.
Regarding claim 5, Shinya discloses illuminating the sampling container with beams emitted from a plurality of directions (see paragraph 0016, low angle and higher elevation angle illumination).
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Regarding claim 6, Shinya discloses that the sampling container is a petri dish, but does not explicitly disclose an air blowing circuitry to apply an air blow onto a surface of the sampling container. However it is well known to blow air onto a sampling container for the purpose of proper distribution of the sample to which the Examiner declares official notice. The motivation would be to distribute culture onto the container using an air supply.
Regarding claim 7, Shinya discloses accepting confirmation from a user about whether the microorganisms exist, the confirmation being made from the displayed status of the colonies (see paragraph 0018, if a user wants to modify the classification result they can do so via the GUI).
Regarding claim 9, Shinya discloses a circuitry configured to display states of the colonies in the time series (see paragraph 0053, the GUI is designed to be able to display images under a plurality of optical conditions).
Claims 14 and 15 are similarly analyzed to claim 1.
Claims 10-13 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shinya in view of Cong and further in view of Barbour et al. US 2021/0183472 (hereinafter “Barbour”, cited in the previous office action).
Regarding claim 10, as discussed above Shinya discloses the limitations of claim 1.
Shinya does not explicitly disclose a circuitry configured to perform machine learning using teacher data containing information representing a state of the colony of the microorganisms, and a label defined as a categorized result of the microorganisms, based on a DNA base sequence obtained by analyzing the microorganisms; and a circuitry configured to categorize the microorganisms on the basis of information representing the state of a newly acquired colony of the microorganisms, based on a learned model created through the machine learning.
Barbour discloses that neural networks can be used to classify [label] bacteria DNA (see paragraph 0133).
Barbour and Shinya are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of identifying bacteria.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Barbour and Shinya to perform machine learning on the obtained colony information in order to classify the microorganisms. The motivation would be to take advantage of the power of machine learning to quickly classify the captured colonies.
Claim 11 is similarly analyzed to claim 10, note that by classifying the microorganism is equivalent to determine a state of the monitored environment of claim 11.
Claim 12 is similarly analyzed to claim 10.
Claim 13 is similarly analyzed to claim 11.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 8 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN B STREGE whose telephone number is (571)272-7457. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5 (PST).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Chan Park can be reached at (571)272-7409. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOHN B STREGE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2669
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