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 § 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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shin et al. (US 2022/0050175 A1) in view of Hyde et al. (US 2020/0121215 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Shin et al. (‘175) teach a contactless movement tracking device (“contactless sleep monitoring and analysis” see [0041]), comprising: a housing (“neck assembly 304” see [0123]); a touchscreen electronic display housed by the housing (“touchscreen” see [0124]); a radar sensor housed by the housing, the radar sensor aimed such that when the housing is placed bedside, movement of an expectant mother within a bed is detected (“radar assembly 310” see [0125]); and a processing system housed by the housing, comprising one or more processors, that receives data from the radar sensor and the touchscreen electronic display, and outputs data to the touchscreen electronic display for presentation (“main circuit board 303” see [0123]), wherein the processing system is configured to: receive user input, via the touchscreen electronic display, requesting that contactless movement monitoring be performed (“user providing input via a touchscreen” see [0105]); in response to the user input, perform a state analysis on the expectant mother to determine that the expectant mother is present and static in the bed (“sleep state detection engine” see [0066]); while the state analysis indicates that the expectant mother is present and static in the bed, perform movement tracking using radar data received from the radar sensor (“determining the monitored user's sleep state or, more generally, whether the user is moving or still within bed” see [0100]); and cause a tracking report to be presented by the touchscreen electronic display based on the performed movement tracking (“present information for viewing by one or more users” see [0059]). Shin et al. fail to explicitly teach fetal movement tracking. However, Hyde et al. (‘215) from the same field of endeavor do teach a radar system configured for fetal movement tracking (“fetal parameter based on the radar return signals” see [0037]). It would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to combine the device of Shin et al. with the features of Hyde et al. for the benefit of prenatal and fetal health monitoring.
Regarding claim 2, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the fetal tracking report is indicative of fetal movement occurring during a multi-hour period of time during a previous night while the expectant mother was asleep (see Shin et al. [0254]-[0258]).
Regarding claim 3, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the performed fetal movement tracking using the radar data received from the radar sensor is at least in part performed using a trained machine learning model (see Hyde et al. [0050]-[0052]).
Regarding claim 4, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the performed fetal movement tracking using the radar data received from the radar sensor is performed by monitoring for movement a distance from a detected vital sign of the expectant mother (see Hyde et al. [0039]).
Regarding claim 5, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the processing system is further configured to: sort instances of detected fetal movement by time, wherein the fetal tracking report indicates a plurality of indications of movements per unit of time (see Shin et al. [0254]-[0258]).
Regarding claim 6, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, further comprising: a network interface that communicates with a remote server via the Internet, wherein data from the fetal tracking report is stored by the remote server in association with a user account linked to the expectant mother (see Shin et al. [0059]).
Regarding claim 7, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the state analysis comprises determining that the expectant mother is asleep based on the expectant mother having been present and static for at least a defined period of time (see Shin et al. [0053]).
Regarding claim 8, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the processing system is further configured to: perform a comparison of the monitored fetal movement from a previous night with fetal movement data from an earlier time period, wherein the fetal tracking report indicates a result of the performed comparison (see Shin et al. [0254]-[0258]).
Regarding claim 9, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the processing system is further configured to: calculate a trend over multiple days using the monitored fetal movement, the trend indicating whether fetal movement is generally increasing, decreasing, or staying constant over a time period comprising a plurality of nights, wherein the fetal tracking report indicates the calculated trend (see Shin et al. [0254]-[0258]).
Regarding claim 10, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, wherein the radar sensor emits frequency-modulated continuous wave radar (see Shin et al. [0247]).
Regarding claim 11, Shin et al. (‘175) in view of Hyde et al. (‘215) teach the contactless fetal movement tracking device of claim 1, further comprising a beam steering module configured to electronically aim toward the expectant mother (see Shin et al. [0247]).
Regarding claims 12-20, the claims are rejected mutatis mutandis in view of the rejection of claims 1-11 above.
Conclusion
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/MARK D REMALY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3797