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 .
Notice to Applicants
This communication is in response to the Application filed on 1/2/2024.
Claims 1-11 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 1/8/2024 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 8 is objected to because of the following informalities: claim 8 line 9 recites “…from collected bring imaging data”. This ought to be “…from collected brain imaging data”. Appropriate correction is required.
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities: paragraph [0033] line 2 recites “…from collected bring imaging data”. This ought to be “…from collected brain imaging data”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim is drawn to a “computer readable storage medium” comprising stored data. The broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim in light of the specification concludes that the claim as a whole covers a transitory signal, which does not fall within the definition of a process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter (In re Nuijten). Therefore, claim 11 does not fall within a statutory category. The Examiner recommends amending claim 11 to include "non-transitory computer-readable medium" to overcome the 35 U.S.C 101 rejection.
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 and 10-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US2010/0099975 to Faro et al (hereafter, “Faro”).
With regard to claim 1 Faro discloses testing method on decision uncertainty (paragraphs [0031, 0050, 0063, 0073]), comprising: acquiring brain imaging data of a subject in a period from its receiving a target problem to its making a judgment on the target problem (paragraphs [0047, 0084, 0090]); extracting brain activity signals from a region of interest (ROI) in the brain imaging data, the ROT including at least one of the anterior cingulate cortex, the lateral frontopolar cortex, and the ventral striatum (paragraphs [0037, 0040, 0042, 0043, 0054, 0075]); and obtaining, based on the brain activity signals, a first test result reflecting a degree of certainty of the subject on correctness of the judgment (paragraphs [0069-0070, 0074-0078]).
With regard to claims 10-11, claims 10-11 are rejected same as claim 1 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 1 are equally applicable to claims 10-11 Faro discloses a device with a memory and a processor at paragraphs [0008, 0040-0042, 0049, 0067, 0100, 0102] for example, and all of the other limitations similar to claim 1 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US2010/0099975 to Faro et al (hereafter, “Faro”) in view of CN111783887A to Zhang et al. (hereafter, “Zhang”).
With regard to claim 2, Faro teaches the method of claim 1. However, Faro does not expressly teach inputting the brain activity signals into a pre-constructed test model to obtain a first test result reflecting a degree of certainty of the subject on correctness of the judgment, wherein the test model reflects a mapping relationship between the brain activity signals of the ROI and the first test result.
Zhang teaches inputting the brain activity signals into a pre-constructed test model to obtain a first test result reflecting a degree of certainty of the subject on correctness of the judgment, wherein the test model reflects a mapping relationship between the brain activity signals of the ROI and the first test result (page 11 first full paragraph where “optimizes the classification models, and the method for realizing lie detection identification is a new attempt and has good classification effect”; page 12 top paragraph where training in the step (5) is described and “Dp and the feature data of the middle training sample is sent into a least square support vector machine for training”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Faro’s reference to have test model of Zhang’s reference. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to perform lie and truth identification on function magnetic resonance imaging feature data of the brain by means of a model, as suggested by Zhang.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Zhang with Faro to obtain the invention as specified in claim 2.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-9 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: The cited arts of record fails to teach, disclose or suggest the limitation/feature of “constructing a test experiment based on a preset test problem and an experimental paradigm to test the subject; acquiring a first trial set and a second trial set from the test experiment, the first trial set being a set of experimental trials with complete certainty of the subject on correctness of its judgment, the second trial set being a set of experimental trials with complete uncertainty of the subject on a result of its judgment; constructing a first training sample set with certainty on judgment correctness based on brain activity signals extracted from the first trial set; constructing a second training sample set with uncertainty on judgment correctness based on brain activity signals extracted from the second trial set; and training model parameters of a basic model corresponding to the test model based on the first training sample set and the second training sample set, to obtain the test model”, recited in claim 3 and “wherein, before acquiring brain imaging data of a subject in a period from its receiving a target problem to its making a judgment on the target problem, the method further comprises: outputting a target problem, and continuously collecting brain imaging data of the subject through a brain imaging collection device; said acquiring brain imaging data of a subject in a. period from its receiving a target problem to its making a judgment on the target problem comprises: in the case that a first judgment result made by the subject in its judgment regarding the target problem is received, acquiring, from collected bring imaging data, brain imaging data in a period from outputting the target problem to receiving the first judgment result”, in claim 8; and “wherein, after obtaining a first test result reflecting a degree of certainty of the subject on correctness of the judgment, the method further comprises: acquiring self-confidence level information input by the subject regarding the judgment, the self-confidence level information reflecting a degree of certainty as reported by the subject on correctness of the judgment; comparing a degree of certainty reflected by the first test result with a degree of certainty reflected by the self-confidence level information, to obtain a comparison result; and obtaining a second test result based on the comparison result; wherein in the case that the degree of certainty reflected by the first test result is inconsistent with the degree of certainty reflected by the self-confidence level information, the second test result indicates that the subject is lying with an untruthful expression of intent”, in claim 9.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHEFALI D. GORADIA whose telephone number is (571)272-8958. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8AM-6PM, Friday 8AM-12PM.
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SHEFALI D. GORADIA
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2676
/SHEFALI D GORADIA/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2676