DETAILED ACTION
This Office action for U.S. Patent Application No. 18/516,506 is responsive to the Request for Continued Examination filed 15 April 2026, in reply to the Final Rejection of 22 January 2026 and the Advisory Action of 1 April 2026.
Claims 1–8 are pending.
In the Final Rejection, claims 1–6 and 8 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) as anticipated by U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2019/0068862 A1 (“Guterman”). Claim 7 was rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over Guterman.
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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 C.F.R. § 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 C.F.R. § 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 C.F.R. § 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 15 April 2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. Applicant has amended claim 1 to recite that the drive control circuit controls “a first time that is a time taken to read out the image data”, that is, the length of read out time. Guterman does not teach this limitation. However, as will be discussed more fully below, the specification as originally filed does not appear to support this limitation.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claims 1–8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claims contain subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. Claim 1 as amended recites “a drive control circuit configured to control a first time that is a time taken to read out the image data by the reading circuit”. This was amended from, and consequently assumed to differ from, the previous claim version, which read “a drive control circuit configured to control a first time when the image data is read by the reading circuit”. The fact that Applicant thought this change in claim scope from a clear reading was needed shows this should not be interpreted as a meaningless and obfuscating rephrasing, in which the “time taken to read out time image data” is merely still the read out time starts, but is a substantial change. As such, the “time taken to read out the image data” is interpreted as meaning “the length of a time taken to read out the image data”. However, the specification does not have support for this amendment. Instead, the specification recites an intermittent reading process in which reading is delayed by a predetermined time (¶¶ 0037–38, 0042). Note that in each of figures 4–6, the widths of different reading periods R are not variable but only changed in start relative to radiation emission periods X. Applicant is cautioned that should the claims be amended to conform with the specification, the claims may be liable to prior art rejection over references that teach changing exposure times and consequently following readout times, or a series of short readouts during a single image exposure. An amendment to the claims conforming to the specification that claims a waiting period for a reading period independently of an acquisition period is likely allowable over the prior art, pending mandatory derivation and similarity searches.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 2023/0234509 A1
US 2021/0021752 A1
US 2020/0344398 A1
US 2019/0373159 A1
US 2020/0314369 A1
US 2021/0029290 A1
US 10,136,084 B1
US 2017/0257578 A1
US 2012/0120286 A1
US 7312823 B1
US 5303052 A
US 4460836 A
CN 110266964 A
EP 3177004 A2
JP 2017-011625 A
JP 2017-011693 A
The following prior art was found using an Artificial Intelligence assisted search using an internal AI tool that uses the classification of the application under the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, as well as from the specification, including the claims and abstract, of the application as contextual information. The documents are ranked from most to least relevant. Where possible, English-language equivalents are given, and redundant results within the same patent families are eliminated. See “New Artificial Intelligence Functionality in PE2E Search”, 1504 OG 359 (15 November 2022), “Automated Search Pilot Program”, 90 F.R. 48,161 (8 October 2025).
US 2012/0001079 A1
JP 2015-080518 A
US 2018/0031715 A1
US 2014/0061494 A1
US 2021/0251593 A1
US 2007/0210257 A1
US 2018/0128755 A1
US 2012/0140892 A1
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to David N Werner whose telephone number is (571)272-9662. The examiner can normally be reached M--F 7:30--4:00 Central.
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/David N Werner/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
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