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 § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1, please clarify whether “a desired time point” (line 5) and “a specific time point” (line 7) are related time points, or separate.
Claim 1, please clarify whether the mandatory instruction has any effect on the other method steps or is only present to base the updating steps on.
Claim 1, lines 9-11 and 14-16, please considering amending the language “updating the acoustic feature value sequence … as the mandatory instruction has (not) been received” to either - - updating the acoustic feature value sequence … if the mandatory instruction has (not) been received - - or - - updating the acoustic feature value sequence … when the mandatory instruction has (not) been received - - .
Claim 1, line 10, please clarify whether “using a generated acoustic feature value that has been generated” is related to the previously recited acoustic feature value that was generated, or is a different acoustic feature value, either generated by the claimed method or by another method.
Claim 1, lines 10-11 and 15-16, the recitation that the mandatory instruction has (not) been received for the specific time point” is indefinite, given the mandatory instruction is previously recited as accepted at a desired time point. Please clarify.
Claim 3, please clarify, if the trained model estimates the acoustic feature value based on the unknown control value (claim 2), how then can the estimated acoustic feature value include a value in accordance with the unknown control value.
Claim 14 is rejected for the same reasons discussed above in claim 1.
The remaining claims, not specifically addressed, depend from, and therefore include, the rejected limitations outlined above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 are believed to be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Once a better understanding of the present invention is received, a further search and consideration of the prior art will be conducted.
At the present time, the closest prior art of record are:
The US patent application publications to Saino et al. (US 2023/0098145), Tachibana et al. (US 2020/0135171), Danjyo et al. (US 2019/0392798) and Daido et al. (US 2021/0256960).
The Japanese publications to Daido (JP 2021-051251 A) and Tokuda et al. (JP 2017-107228 A).
The Chinese publication to Liu et al. (CN 112466313 A).
Conclusion
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/CHRISTINA M SCHREIBER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2837 08/21/2026
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