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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 1/4/2024 and 8/29/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 18 is objected to because of the following informalities:
The terms “the optical sensing element” and “the human-machine interaction device” each lack antecedence. In the interest of expediting prosecution, the Examiner shall assume that the article “the” should read “a” in both cases.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 3 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor, or a joint inventor, regards as the invention.
Both claims 3 and 5 are each indefinite at least because it is not clear what is different and what is being compared. One of ordinary skill in the art cannot ascertain the meets and bounds of the claims.
Examiner’s Note #1: claim 6, which depends from claim 3, is not included in the rejection because the claim resolves all of the issues.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 7, 15, 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Cao (US 2017/0090062 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Cao discloses an inspection system (Figs.1 and 2), including:
a) a radiation source 210;
b) a detector 300 configured to detect a signal when radiation emitted by the radiation source 210 acts on an inspected object; and
c) a processor 500 in communication connection with the radiation source 210 and configured to select a periodic radiation combination corresponding to a type of the object according to the type of the object (pars.0004-0006), and cause the radiation source 210 to emit radiation to the object in the selected periodic radiation combination during the time that the object is scanned (Figs.3-6); where
d) the periodic radiation combination is a chronological arrangement of a plurality of radiation pulses output by the radiation source 210 in each scanning period, and the plurality of radiation pulses have at least two different radiation energies (Figs.3(e), 4(d), 5(e) and 6(d)).
With respect to claim 7, Cao further discloses that the processor 500 is configured to cause the radiation source 210 to scan an entirety of the object in the selected periodic radiation combination (Figs.3(e), 4(d) and 6(d)).
With respect to claim 15, Cao further discloses an optical sensing element (110, 121, 122, 150 and/or 160) in communication connection with the processor 500 and configured to sense an object feature of the object and send the object feature of the object to the processor 500 such that the processor 500 determines the type of the object according to the object feature (see at least pars.0029-0031, 0035 and 0036).
With respect to claim 17, Cao further discloses an inspection method, including:
e) obtaining a type of an inspected object (pars.0035-0036);
f) selecting a periodic radiation combination corresponding to the type in response to the type, where the periodic radiation combination is a chronological arrangement of a plurality of radiation pulses output by the radiation source 210 in each scanning period, and the plurality of radiation pulses have at least two different radiation energies (Figs.3(e), 4(d), 5(e) and 6(d));
g) causing the radiation source 210 to emit radiation to the object in the selected periodic radiation combination during the time that the object is scanned; and
h) causing the detector to detect a signal when the radiation acts on the object.
With respect to claim 18, Cao further discloses that step (e) above includes determining the type of the object according to an object feature in response to the object feature sensed by an optical sensing element (110, 121, 122, 150 and/or 160; pars.0029-0031).
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 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.
Claims 2, 3 and 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao, as applied to claim 1 above.
With respect to claim 2, Cao generally teaches the notoriously well-known practice of selecting energies suitable for the inspected object, including the required penetration for the type of vehicle, dual-energy separation, and the presence of humans in the vehicle (see at least Figs.5(e) and 6(d)). Cao particularly teaches a range of energies from 1 - 9 MeV based on the type of vehicle, materials being scanned, and the limitations of safe human exposure.
The skilled artisan readily appreciates that an overlapping range including energies less than 1 MeV may be selected based on the materials to be detected and regulations for safe human dosage levels.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention for Cao to have the first radiation energy lower than 1 MeV, while the second radiation energy is higher than 1 MeV in order to tailor the energies to the vehicle, materials being inspected, and particularly to improved human safety, as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art.
With respect to claim 3, Cao further discloses that the plurality of radiation pulses corresponding to each type of the object have numbers of radiation pulses having the first radiation energy are different (see at least Figs.5(e) and/or comparison of Figs.3(e), 4(d), 5(e) and 6(d)).
With respect to claim 6, Cao further discloses that the object is a vehicle, the type of the object is one of a passenger car type (Figs.4 and 6) and a truck type (Figs.3 and 5), and the number of radiation pulses having the first radiation energy in the periodic radiation combination corresponding to the passenger car type (Fig.6(d)) is greater than the number of radiation pulses having the first radiation energy in the periodic radiation combination corresponding to the truck type (Fig.5(e)).
Claims 4, 5 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao, as applied to claim 1 above, in view of Wang (US 2007/0286337 A1).
With respect to claim 4, Cao discloses a third radiation energy that is greater than the second radiation energy (Fig.5(e), par.0058).
However, parent claim 1 requires that the plurality of radiation pulses are output by the radiation source in each scanning period, where the scanning period 1T is clearly defined in par.0058 of Applicant’s specification. Cao teaches that only the first and second energies, and then only the second and third radiation energies, occur in a scanning period.
Wang teaches the practice of providing a third radiation energy higher than the second radiation energy, where the first, second and third radiation energy pulses are output by the radiation source in each scanning period 203, Fig.4(A). As appreciated by one of ordinary skill in the art, a third energy enables additional material discrimination for a more comprehensive scan of the object with a small increase in scanning time compared to having separate scans for separate materials of interest that may be concealed within the object.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention for Cao to have a third radiation energy that is greater than the second radiation energy included in the plurality of radiation pulses output by the radiation source in each scanning period, as taught by Wang, in order to increase the scanning efficacy by having additional material discrimination capabilities, as recognized in the art.
With respect to claim 5, Cao further discloses that the plurality of radiation pulses corresponding to each type of the object have numbers of radiation pulses having the first radiation energy are different (see at least Figs.5(e) and/or comparison of Figs.3(e), 4(d), 5(e) and 6(d)).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-14 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: while microwave-based x-ray sources with 4-port circulators and independently controllable acceleration tubes are generally known (see at least US patent documents to Sun et al., see attached PTO-892), the prior art neither teaches nor reasonably suggests the additional limitation of having a microwave accelerator arrangement as required by the combination as claimed in claim 8. The two acceleration tubes of Sun are attached to the same output port, which is excluded by the claim; and the motivation to combine with Cao is to provide additional sources for scanning more than one vehicle simultaneously, rather than to scan the same object at alternating energies within each period with each accelerator tube as required by claim 8 in combination with parent claim 1. In short, the structure is not obvious, and the prior art combination would not achieve the combination of features as claimed.
Claims 9-14 are objected to by virtue of their dependence upon claim 8, thus incorporating the combination of allowable features.
Examiner’s Note #2: claim 8 is essentially verbatim claim 1 of commonly-owned US 12,464,632 B2. If claim 1 were to be amended to include the subject matter of claim 8, the resulting claim may raise an obviousness-type double patenting rejection over the issued patent in view of Cao, since it would be obvious to apply a novel dual-energy MeV x-ray source to vehicle scanning as is generally demonstrated by Cao and other prior art references made of record.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: the remaining prior art made of record (see attached PTO-892) describes various aspects of the relevant subject matter, including multi-target and/or multi-energy microwave accelerators, multi-energy vehicle scanning as a function of vehicle properties, and/or are US family members of previously-cited prior art.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THOMAS R ARTMAN whose telephone number is (571)272-2485. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 10am-6:30pm.
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THOMAS R. ARTMAN
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2884
/THOMAS R ARTMAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2884