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 .
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 16-20 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 the claims are directed to a computer program product. A computer program is not directed to one of the statutory categories (See MPEP 2106.03, subsection I).
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Per step 1 of the Subject Matter Eligibility Test (See MPEP 2106), claim 1 is directed to a method, which is a process and falls within a statutory category (See MPEP 2106.03).
Per step 2A, prong 1, claim 1 recites receiving a proposed flight plan for an aircraft; collecting environment data representing a set of environmental conditions at a source airport indicated in the proposed flight plan; collecting environment data representing a set of environmental conditions at a destination airport indicated in the proposed flight plan; receiving operation data related to the aircraft indicated in the proposed flight plan; dynamically simulating aircraft engine degradation of the aircraft based on the collected environment data and the received operation data using a trained machine learning (ML) model. The claim limitations require collecting observing environmental conditions and operation data and making a judgment about the aircraft engine degradation, which falls into the mental processes grouping (See MPEP 2106.04(a)(2), subsection III).
The additional elements are outputting the simulated aircraft engine degradation.
Per step 2A, prong 2, The abstract idea is not integrated into a practical application because outputting the result of the abstract idea is insignificant extra solution activity (See MPEP 2106.05(g)).
Per step 2B, claim 1 does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reason. Further, the courts have recognized that outputting the result of an abstract idea in various ways is well-understood, routine and conventional (See MPEP 2106.05(d), subsection II).
Claims 2-8 recite further details of the abstract idea. Claims 2-8 do not recite any further additional elements. Therefore, claims 2-8 are rejected for the same reason.
Per step 1 of the Subject Matter Eligibility Test (See MPEP 2106), claim 9 is directed to a system, which is a product and falls within a statutory category (See MPEP 2106.03).
Claim 9 recites an abstract idea and additional elements similar to those found in claim 1. Claim 9 recites further additional elements that include one or more computer processors and a memory.
The recitation of the computer processors and a memory amount to instructions to implement the abstract idea on a generic computer (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). When considered in combination with the outputting step, nothing further is provided. Therefore, claim 9 is not integrated into a practical application, and claim 9 does not recite additional elements that are significantly more than the abstract idea.
Claims 10-15 depend from claim 9 and recite further details of the abstract idea. Claims 10-15 do not recite any additional elements. Since there are no recited additional elements, claims 10-15 are not integrated into a practical application and does not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Per step 1 of the Subject Matter Eligibility Test (See MPEP 2106), claim 16 is directed to a computer program product which does not fall into a statutory category as discussed above. However, even if the claim were directed to a statutory category, the body of the claim recites limitations that are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claim 16 recites limitations for an abstract idea and additional elements similar to those recited in claim 1. Therefore, claim 16 is rejected for the same reason.
Claims 17-20 depend from claim 16 and recite further details of the abstract idea. Claims 17-20 do not recite any additional elements. Since there are no recited additional elements, claims 17-20 are not integrated into a practical application and does not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 4, 5, 7-10, 12, 13, 15-17 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over UK Patent Application Publication GB 2577065 to Durant et al. (Durant) in view of US Patent Application Publication 2020/0369410 to Rice (Rice).
Claims 1, 9 and 16
With regard to receiving a proposed flight plan for an aircraft; Durant teaches receiving at least one aircraft flight plan data (page 41, lines 10-11).
With regard to collecting environment data representing a set of environmental conditions; Durant teaches determining a contaminant exposure measure (page 50, lines 14-18).
With regard to receiving operation data related to the aircraft indicated in the proposed flight plan; Durant teaches including multiple input variables that correspond to operation data (page 36, lines 7-12).
With regard to dynamically simulating aircraft engine degradation of the aircraft based on the collected environment data and the received operation data using a trained machine learning (ML) model; a predictive engine health model to predict an engine health parameter (page 50, lines 18-21).
With regard to outputting the simulated aircraft engine degradation; Durant teaches outputting at least one predicted aircraft health parameter (page 33, lines 11-12).
With regard to one or more computer processors; and a memory containing a program as recited in claim 9, Durant teaches a processor and memory (Fig. 1, processor 104; memory 106; page 43, lines 14-22).
Durant does not teach that the environment data is collected at a source airport indicated in the proposed flight plan and at a destination airport indicated in the proposed flight plan. Rice teaches including environmental conditions at a plurality of airports (pars. 32, 40, pars. 49-57). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the aircraft maintenance, as taught by Durant, to include environmental data from airports, as taught by Rice, because a more accurate measure of when the aircraft engine is exposed to atmospheric contaminants would have been available (Durant, page 3, line 19 – page 4, line 2).
Claims 2, 10 and 17
Durant teaches that the environment data comprises air quality index (AQI) (Fig. 8, step 808; page 50, lines 14-18).
Claims 4, 12 and 19
Durant teaches predicting maintenance needs of the aircraft based on the simulated aircraft engine degradation (page 46, lines 12-14).
Claims 5 and 13
Durant teaches that the predicting maintenance needs comprises estimating a predicted time when the simulated aircraft engine degradation will necessitate maintenance, and the method further comprising sending an alert when the predicted time satisfies one or more defined criteria (page 30, lines 16-17).
Claims 7 and 15
Durant teaches that the ML model is trained using historical training data, comprising: receiving input training data, wherein the input training data comprises historical environment data and corresponding operation data; correlating the input training data with output training data, wherein the output training data comprises known aircraft engine degradations; and training the ML model based on the correlation (Fig. 8A, page 50, lines 3-14).
Claim 8
Durant teaches that dynamically simulating aircraft engine degradation of the aircraft further comprises generating dynamic utilization prediction for the aircraft within a range of time based on the proposed flight plan, historical operation data of the aircraft, and historical environment data of the source and destination airports using the trained ML model (Fig. 8B, page 50, lines 14-21).
Claim(s) 3, 11 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Durant in view of Rice as applied to claims 1, 9 and 16 above, and further in view of US Patent Application Publication 2016/0240017 to Lacaille et al. (Lacaille).
Claims 3, 11 and 18
Durant and Rice teach all the limitations of claim 1 upon which claim 3 depends, claim 9 upon which claim 11 depends and claim 16 upon which claim 18 depends. Durant and Rice do not teach that operation data comprises at least one of engine exhaust gas temperature, and thrust rating. Lacaille teaches collecting exhaust gas temperature (pages 62, 63, 73). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the aircraft maintenance combination, as taught by Durant and Rice, to include exhaust gas temperature, as taught by Lacaille, because then maintenance operations would have been more accurately tracked (Lacaille, pars. 4-6).
Claim(s) 6, 14 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Durant in view of Rice as applied to claims 1, 9 and 16 above, and further in view of US Patent Application Publication 2017/0323274 to Johnson et al. (Johnson).
Claims 6, 14 and 20
Durant and Rice teach all the limitations of claim 1 upon which claim 6 depends, claim 9 upon which claim 14 depends and claim 16 upon which claim 20 depends. Durant and Rice do not teach estimating an operational cost of the aircraft flying between the source airport and the destination airport, based at least in part on historical environment data or the simulated aircraft engine degradation. Johnson teaches simulating operating cost (pars. 94, 95). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the aircraft maintenance combination, as taught by Durant and Rice, to include simulating operating cost, as taught by Johnson, because then operating costs would have been optimized (Johnson, par. 3).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MANUEL L BARBEE whose telephone number is (571)272-2212. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 9-5:30..
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/MANUEL L BARBEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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