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 § 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.
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, 4-6, 9-10, 12-14,17-18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Giera et al. (U.S. 2019/0234976) (hereinafter "GIERA") in view of Chu et al. (U.S. 2024/0286129) (hereinafter "CHU").
Regarding claim 1, GIERA discloses a method for monitoring neuron growth within a lattice and stopping the spread of an infection, the method comprising: monitoring neuron growth within a lattice and stopping a spread of an infection, the method comprising: monitoring and capturing images by an infection visual recognition module of the lattice during the neuron growth; identifying a presence of the infection in the neurons within the lattice, wherein the identifying comprises: performing, via a deep neural network, visual recognition on the captured images to identify the presence of the infection ([0010], [0011], 0014]).
While Giera is silent Chu discloses in response to the identifying, applying a laser to an infected area of the lattice with sufficient energy for stopping the infection ([0017]); and flushing the lattice to remove chemical byproducts and dead cells resulting from the infected area following the applying the laser ([0152], [0166]. Fig. 9).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify GIERA's system to incorporate CHU's rinsing and flushing techniques. Accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate CHU's flushing technique into GIERA's system to clean the microfluidic channels following an abnormal event or corrective action, thereby ensuring the removal of unwanted byproducts and maintaining system hygiene
Regarding claim 2, Giera discloses the method of claim 1, wherein a camera mounted on a microscope monitors the neuron growth ([0012], [0013])
Regarding claim 4. Giera discloses the method of claim 1, wherein an infection spread history is tracked by the infection visual recognition module using the captured images ([0014], [0015], Figure 2).
Regarding claim 5, for the same reason motivation to combine, Giera and Chu disclose the infection visual recognition module includes the infection spread history to determine where to apply the laser such that neighboring wells to a plurality of identified infection wells are targeted even if there are no visual signs of infection (Giera Figure 9 and Chu [0100]).
Regarding claim 6, Giera discloses wherein the deep neural network is a convolutional neural network, and wherein the deep neural network performs the visual recognition ([0010]).
Regarding claims 9-10, 12-14, 17-18 and 20, these claims correspond to computer program and computer system claims rejected above and are similarly analyzed.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 7-8, 11, 15-16, 19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claims but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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Hedrick; Marc H.et al. (US 7514075) disclose Systems And Methods For Separating And Concentrating Adipose Derived Stem Cells From Tissue.
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Gulati; Sandeep et al. (US 9554738) disclose Spectroscopic Tomography Systems And Methods For Noninvasive Detection And Measurement Of Analytes Using Collision Computing.
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/JAYANTI K PATEL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2485 September 14, 2026
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