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 .
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 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.
Examiner Notes
(1) In the case of amending the Claimed invention, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and also to verify and ascertain the metes and bounds of the claimed invention. This will assist in expediting compact prosecution. MPEP 714.02 recites: “Applicant should also specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure. See MPEP § 2163.06. An amendment which does not comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.121 (b), (c), (d), and (h) may be held not fully responsive. See MPEP § 714.” Amendments not pointing to specific support in the disclosure may be deemed as not complying with provisions of 37 C.F.R. 1.131 (b), (c), (d), and (h) and therefore held not fully responsive. Generic statements such as "Applicants believe no new matter has been introduced" may be deemed insufficient.
(2) Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in their entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
Remarks
Receipt of Applicant’s Amendment file on 10/10/2025 is acknowledged.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s amendments to the claims have overcome each and every 112 and 101 rejections previously set forth in the Non-Final Office Action mailed 06/11/2025.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection (See new references of Rollins and Kawahara).
Specification
Applicant is reminded of the proper language and format for an abstract of the disclosure.
The abstract should be in narrative form and generally limited to a single paragraph on a separate sheet within the range of 50 to 150 words in length. The abstract should describe the disclosure sufficiently to assist readers in deciding whether there is a need for consulting the full patent text for details.
The language should be clear and concise and should not repeat information given in the title. It should avoid using phrases which can be implied, such as, “The disclosure concerns,” “The disclosure defined by this invention,” “The disclosure describes,” etc. In addition, the form and legal phraseology often used in patent claims, such as “means” and “said,” should be avoided.
In Abstract, line 1, “According to one embodiment” should be removed.
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 of this title, 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, 9-14, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouter et al. (“Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Modelling Submodels in the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell”; 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)) in view of Rollins et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2012/0072422 A1) and Kawahara (U.S. Pub. No. 2011/0012905 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Bouter teaches an information processing method comprising:
based on a metamodel which is located in a first layer of an Asset Administration Shell AAS to create data to realize a digital twin and in which a composition relationship and a reference relationship among plural types of information models located in a second layer of the asset administration shell are defined, creating a guide tree indicating a relationship between the information models, wherein a data item of data related to devices is defined in the information model (Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to aAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept), and the guide tree indicates that an upper-layer first information model in which a relationship is indicated in the guide tree is able to use a data item defined in a lower-layer second information model (Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to aAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS).
Bouter does not explicitly disclose: displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including first, second, and third areas, the first area for selecting an output format of the asset administration models, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models, and the third area for selecting whether to divide or not a file when outputting the asset administration models.
Rollins teaches: displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including first, […], and third areas, the first area for selecting an output format of the asset administration models (Fig. 15 and 17, a dialog screen serving as a user interface is shown with selected tab ‘format bibliography’; for this dialog a user can select, in this example, the format document and the desired output style, e.g., annotated, etc.; additional options are for the in-text citations to be underline and hover text to display the full citation as it appears in the bibliography), […], and the third area for selecting whether to divide or not a file when outputting the asset administration models (Fig. 15 and 17, a dialog screen serving as a user interface is shown with selected tab ‘format bibliography’; for this dialog a user can select, in this example, the format document and the desired output style, e.g., annotated, etc.; additional options are for the in-text citations to be underline and hover text to display the full citation as it appears in the bibliography; also see paragraph [0016], an additional function may be included to provide users an easily readable, live report or list of references included in the document; the list view preferably includes all references in the documents, and a ‘smart group’ may be provided to show only those references found in the open library; also see paragraph [0121], the “Edit library reference” option function similarly to the main part of button; edit library reference may be made available only for citations for which the library is not Traveling Library).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including first, second, and third areas, the first area for selecting an output format of the asset administration models, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models, and the third area for selecting whether to divide or not a file when outputting the asset administration models into Asset Administration Shell modelling of Bouter.
Motivation to do so would be to include displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including first, second, and third areas, the first area for selecting an output format of the asset administration models, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models, and the third area for selecting whether to divide or not a file when outputting the asset administration models for automatically processing literary citation are needed to ensure or facilitate accuracy of processed citations for providing option for data outputting.
Bouter as modified by Rollins do not explicitly disclose: displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including second, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models.
Kawahara teaches: displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including second, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models (paragraph [0054], the information processing system according to the present embodiment accepts an input of the parameter range from a user, and displays information indicating the parameter range; also see paragraph [0058]-[0059], as shown in FIG 1, when the user designates the parameter range, a reference circle indicate the entire parameter range is displayed at a prescribed position on monitor; also see Fig. 17, paragraph [0131]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including second, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models into Asset Administration Shell modelling of Bouter.
Motivation to do so would be to include displaying an output screen for a user to execute settings related to an output of the asset administration models, the output screen including second, the second area for selecting an output range of the asset administration models, which allow user’s input of numerical range with simple operation (Kawahara, paragraph [0009], line 5-6).
Regarding claim 2, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 1, further teach creating a definition table for setting attributes of the information model and data items defined in the information model, based on the metamodel and the guide tree (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to aAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS).
Regarding claim 3, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 2, further teach wherein the definition table includes a first definition table for setting attributes of the first information model, the second information model and data items defined in the first information model, and a second definition table for setting attributes of the second information model and data items defined in the second information model (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS).
Regarding claim 4, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 3, further teach wherein the first information model includes AAS in Asset Administration Shell, the second information model includes a submodel in the Asset Administration Shell (Bouter, Fig. 7(a) illustrates the relationship model in administration Shell including submodel such as entity1 and entity2), the method further comprises creating a submodel graph including a node indicating each of the submodels and a link indicating a relationship between the submodels, based on data items defined in each of the submodels set in the second definition table, and data items common to two submodels whose relationship is indicated by the link or link with the number of data items is added to the submodel graph (Bouter, Fig. 11-12).
Regarding claim 5, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 4, further teach recommending, based on the data item set in the first definition table, a submodel for which the data item is defined as a submodel to be set in the first definition table (Bouter, Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS; also see Fig. 11a, page 16, left column).
Regarding claim 6, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 5, further teach wherein the recommending includes further recommending a submodel whose relationship with the recommended submodel is indicated by the link included in the submodel graph (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS).
Regarding claim 7, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 4, further teach recommending a second submodel whose relationship with a fist submodel set in the first definition table is indicated by the link included in the submodel graph, as a submodel to be further set in the first definition table (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS).
Regarding claim 9, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 8, further teach wherein the recommended submodel is set in the first definition table (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS).
Regarding claim 10, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 3, further teach creating a third definition table for setting data of a data item defined in the information model set in the definition table (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS; also see Fig. 11, page 16).
Regarding claim 11, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 10, further teach wherein the third definition table is created for each of the information models, and data set in one of the third definition tables created for the respective information models is reused for the other third definition table (Bouter, page 17, left column, identifying the overlap between submodels identified by the methodology and already established Industry 4.0; the nameplate and identification submodels concern general machine information, so these can be reused for our application; also see page 13, left paragraph, the results of this phase is a design for a set of Submodels based on conceptual model; the submodels identified during this phase may already have been implemented; it is recommended to reuse existing standards and submodels to benefit from the previous efforts and to maximize interoperability…).
Regarding claim 12, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 3, further teach creating a model tree indicating a relationship between the first and second information models, based on the attribute of the first information model and the second information model set in the first definition table, wherein the model tree conforms to a constraint of a relationship indicated by the guide tree (Bouter, page 13, additional non-function constraints on the model; the results of this phase is a design for a set of Submodels based on conceptual model; the submodels identified during this phase may already have been implemented; it is recommended to reuse existing standards and submodels to benefit from the previous efforts and to maximize interoperability…).
Regarding claim 13, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 10, further teach creating an instance data tree indicating a relationship between the first and second information models, and the data, based on the attribute of the first information model and the second information model set in the first definition table, and data set in the third definition table, wherein the instance data tree conforms to a constraint of a relationship indicated by the guide tree (Bouter, page 13, additional non-function constraints on the model; the results of this phase is a design for a set of Submodels based on conceptual model; the submodels identified during this phase may already have been implemented; it is recommended to reuse existing standards and submodels to benefit from the previous efforts and to maximize interoperability; multiple submodels exposing small subsets of the data; the AAS also follows the dependency inversion principle, which states that abstractions instead of concretions should be used, by distinguishing between Submodel templates and instances).
Regarding claim 14, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 13, further teach creating the first information model, based on setting contents for the first definition table; and creating the second information model, based on setting contents for the second definition table (Bouter, Fig. 1-2, page 11, left column and page 12 left column, the AAS function as a digital communication shell that exposes the asset data to other industry; the AAS equivalents to attributes are called SubModelElements; a property contains a literal value of a specified data type; a ReferenceElement contains a reference to a referable; a Document contains an actual file or a link; and a SubmodelElementCollection contains a set of SubmodelElements; also see page 13, additional non-function constraints on the model; the results of this phase is a design for a set of Submodels based on conceptual model; the submodels identified during this phase may already have been implemented; it is recommended to reuse existing standards and submodels to benefit from the previous efforts and to maximize interoperability; also see Fig. 6, page 14, left column, the UML metamodel formalizes various relationships between objects; submodel elements: the conceptual model relations then have to be mapped to AAS submodelElements; relationships connect a model concept to another model concept; considering a submodel containing data concerning a sale order; when a customer places an order, the sale department request a work order to fulfill the demand; the submodel therefore relates a customer AAS and a work order AAS to each other, while additionally adding sales information such as price and deadlines; figure 6 shows that we can implement the sales order Submodel on either AAS; also see Fig. 11, page 16).
Regarding claim 19, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 4, further teach wherein the creating includes further creating an AAS graph including a node indicating each of the AAS and a link indicating a relationship between the AAS (Bouter, Fig 11 illustrates link indicating a relationship between AAS).
Regarding claim 20, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 4, further teach wherein the second information model includes Asset in Asset Administration Shell, and the creating includes further creating an Asset graph including a node indicating each of the Asset and a link indicating a relationship between the Asset (Bouter, Fig. 11 Fig 11 illustrates link indicating a relationship “Asset Work order” and “Customer”).
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouter et al. (“Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Modelling Submodels in the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell”; 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)) in view of Rollins et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2012/0072422 A1) and Kawahara (U.S. Pub. No. 2011/0012905 A1), and further in view of Calinescu et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2022/0067545 A1).
Regarding claim 8, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 5, but do not explicitly disclose: wherein the recommended submodel is assigned with a priority determined based on the submodel graph.
Calinescu et al. teaches: wherein the recommended submodel is assigned with a priority determined based on the submodel graph (Fig. 3, paragraph [0044], each version of the model has different priority value based on the type of information categories that the model receives as input; also see paragraph [0045], the model section module identifies the information categories that are available to the content item include information categories for every category that version of the model takes as input; filtering the versions of the model based on the determination and selects the version of the model with the highest priority value; also see paragraph [0004], [0006], [0043]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include wherein the recommended submodel is assigned with a priority determined based on the submodel graph into Asset Administration Shell modelling of Bouter.
Motivation to do so would be to include wherein the recommended submodel is assigned with a priority determined based on the submodel graph to overcome issue with labels are not consistent across content publishers, even if two or more content publishers are offering the same content items; as such, users may end up getting confused by the labels and they may end up missing out on content items that would have been interesting to them but for the improper label being applied; moreover, labels applied by content publishers may be broad and they can sometimes conflate substantially different content items into the same category (Calinescu, paragraph [0002]).
Claims 15-16 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouter et al. (“Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Modelling Submodels in the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell”; 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)) in view of Rollins et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2012/0072422 A1) and Kawahara (U.S. Pub. No. 2011/0012905 A1), further in view of Ye et al. (“An Asset Administration Shell Method for data Exchange Between Manufacturing Software Applications”; October 22, 2021).
Regarding claim 15, Bouter as modified by Rollins and Kawahara teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 14, but do not explicitly disclose: outputting the created first and second information models in a specified format.
Ye teaches: outputting the created first and second information models in a specified format (page 144173, Fig. 3 illustrates the AAS export for MES and ERP; also see page 144174,Various MES and ERP data can be modeled into different AAS submodels; an implementation can be mapped to existing modeling methods based on XML or JSON).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include outputting the created first and second information models in a specified format into Asset Administration Shell modelling of Bouter.
Motivation to do so would be to include outputting the created first and second information models in a specified format such that the operation data can be seamlessly transferred from the field to the enterprise level during runtime (Ye, page 144172, left column, line 29-30).
Regarding claim 16, Bouter as modified by Rollins, Kawahara and Ye teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 15, further teach wherein the outputting includes further outputting data of data items defined in the created first and second information models Ye, page 144173, Fig. 3 illustrates the AAS export for MES and ERP; also see page 144174,Various MES and ERP data can be modeled into different AAS submodels; an implementation can be mapped to existing modeling methods based on XML or JSON; also see page 144175, left column, assigned excel to the ERP and used on online data management tool for the MES; the MES first exports the manufacturing order to CSV file, which is converted into an AAS model via the AAS interface).
Regarding claim 18, Bouter as modified by Rollins, Kawahara and Ye teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 15, further teach wherein the outputting includes outputting the first and second information models in different files (Ye, page 144173, Fig. 3 illustrates the AAS export for MES and ERP; also see page 144174,Various MES and ERP data can be modeled into different AAS submodels; an implementation can be mapped to existing modeling methods based on XML or JSON; also see page 144175, left column, assigned excel to the ERP and used on online data management tool for the MES; the MES first exports the manufacturing order to CSV file, which is converted into an AAS model via the AAS interface).
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouter et al. (“Towards a Comprehensive Methodology for Modelling Submodels in the Industry 4.0 Asset Administration Shell”; 2021 IEEE 23rd Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)) in view of Rollins et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2012/0072422 A1), Kawahara (U.S. Pub. No. 2011/0012905 A1), Ye et al. (“An Asset Administration Shell Method for data Exchange Between Manufacturing Software Applications”; October 22, 2021), further in view of ELLIS et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2022/0284994 A1)
Regarding claim 17, Bouter as modified by Rollins, Kawahara and Ye teach all claimed limitations as set forth in rejection of claim 16, do not explicitly disclose: wherein one of a first output range indicating outputting the first and second information models, and a second output range of outputting the first and second information models and the data of the data items defined in the first and second information models is specified by a user.
ELLIS teaches: wherein one of a first output range indicating outputting the first and second information models, and a second output range of outputting the first and second information models and the data of the data items defined in the first and second information models is specified by a user (paragraph [0071], the study management system provides database queries, and where appropriate, additional internal analytics, measurement data from all relevant data collected; the query may be limited to a required data/time range; in some case, the query could also be limited to subset of participants; the data is output in the file format required by the researcher and then transmitted to the researcher; also see paragraph [0119], underlying the unified data ingestion pipeline is a common measurement model; this model consists of a wrapper with timestamps, completion metadata, and information that links the measurement to the raw data files; also see paragraph [0184]-[0185], to support extensive list of measurement, device integrations, and other assignments, a uniform ‘Task Definition’ model is used to defined data collection activities that may be performed at a user device; the task definition model comprise a data structure for representing an assignment task including an ‘option’ field where various configuration value are stored; also see paragraph [0263], assignments are described as being a part of visits; some assignments may need to be completed by the user before a visit may occur.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include wherein one of a first output range indicating outputting the first and second information models, and a second output range of outputting the first and second information models and the data of the data items defined in the first and second information models is specified by a user into Asset Administration Shell modelling of Bouter.
Motivation to do so would be to include wherein one of a first output range indicating outputting the first and second information models, and a second output range of outputting the first and second information models and the data of the data items defined in the first and second information models is specified by a user to address issue with systems are often inflexible and unable to adapt to changing requirements (ELLIS, paragraph [0003], line 19-20).
ConclusionApplicant'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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KEN HOANG whose telephone number is (571)272-8401. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30am-5:00pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Charles Rones can be reached at (571)272-4085. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KEN HOANG/Examiner, Art Unit 2168
/CHARLES RONES/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2168
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