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 .
Status of Claims
Claim 4 is previously or currently cancelled. Claims 1-3 and 5-18 are pending, of which all pending claims are rejected.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Applicant’s amendments of claims 1, 3 and 15 overcomes the 35 USC § 112 rejection. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on December 12, 2025 with respect to amended claims 1-3 and 5-18 have been considered. Applicant’s arguments regarding 35 USC § 102 rejection for claims 1-3, 14-18 and 35 USC § 103 rejection for claims 5-13 are persuasive, therefore, the rejections have been withdrawn. However, a new ground of rejection under 35 USC § 101 has been made for claims 1-3 and 4-18.
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.
Claims 1-3 and 4-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a mental process without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) a structure for a pattern information acquisition that includes an acquisition module, a search module and a mapping module. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application for the following reasons:
The revised patent eligibility guidelines requires a two-prong analysis under step 2A. In prong one, it is determined that the claimed limitations are directed to a mental process that "can be performed in the human mind, or by a human using a pen and paper". For example, in claims 1 and 15, “an acquisition module sorts according to reliability weight information of polar codes to obtain weight-based sequence, a search module to search the weight-based sequence…, and a mapping module to map the search result sequence to obtain pattern information….” - are all steps of a mental process.
In prong two, it is determined whether any additional elements rely on, or use the judicial exception in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception. The additional elements to the abstract method are as follows: a sequence to be processed, a preset reliability threshold range, and the pattern information indicates position information of data. These are again mathematical steps of mental process to implement an abstract idea on a computer merely uses the computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea (see MPEP 2106.05f). Therefore, these additional elements are not indicative of integration into a practical application.
Further, claims 1 and 15 are directed to sorting, searching, mapping and sequence processing according to a polar code but as recited in the claim does not do any encoding and decoding to transform an abstract idea into a practical application. Under 35 U.S.C. § 101, a practical application is the transformation of an abstract idea—such as a mathematical formula, algorithm, or method of organizing human activity—into a concrete, useful, and technically improved process or product. When an abstract idea is missing this practical application, it is deemed a "judicial exception" and is ineligible for a patent.
Dependent claims 2-3, 5-14 and 16-18 are further directed to a mental process for the following reasons:
Claim 2 is directed to screening the weight-based sequence and marking position information (See [0039]).
Claim 3 is directed to searching the sequence in time division multiplexing mode (See [0049]).
Claim 5, 9, 10 are directed to searching sequence according to priorities (See [0054]).
Claims 6 and 7 are directed to determining position information (See [0046-47]).
Claim 8 is directed to obtain a communication information sequence and CRC sequence (See [038, 0054]).
Claims 11 is directed to obtaining pattern information (See [0059]).
Claims 12 is directed to determining decoding start position (See [0072]).
Claims 13 is directed to acquiring a data length (See [0036]).
Claims 14 is directed to preset data position information (See [0045]).
In step 2B, an evaluation is made as to whether the claim as a whole amounts to significantly more than the exception itself. The analysis is the same as laid out in step 2A above, and therefore, the conclusion is the same: claims 1-3 and 4-18 are ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Citation of Pertinent Prior Art
It is noted that any citations to specific, pages, columns, lines, or figures in the prior art references and any interpretation of the reference should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP 2123.
Conclusion
The following prior arts made of record, listed on form PTO-892, and not relied upon, if any, are considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Qiao et al. (US 2021/0211231A1) teaches, a channel encoding method and apparatus. The method includes: obtaining A to-be-encoded information bits; mapping the A to-be-encoded information bits and L CRC bits to a first bit sequence based on an interleaving sequence, where the L CRC bits are obtained based on the A to-be-encoded information bits and a CRC polynomial, the interleaving sequence is obtained from a prestored interleaving sequence table or is obtained based on a maximum-length interleaving sequence, A+L is less than or equal to Kmax, and Kmax is a length of the maximum-length interleaving sequence; and encoding the first bit sequence. In this way, not only an encoding delay can be reduced, but also decoding has an early stop capability, so that decoding can end in advance, thereby reducing a decoding delay..
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ENAMUL MD KABIR whose telephone number is (571)270-7256. The examiner can normally be reached on 10:00-6:30 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Albert Decady can be reached on 571-272-3819. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ENAMUL M KABIR/
Examiner, Art Unit 2112
/ALBERT DECADY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2112
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