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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to patent application as filed on 3/25/2024 which claims foreign priority to Taiwanese Patent App. No: 112149260 filed 12/18/2023.
This action is made Non-Final.
Claims 1 – 20 are pending in the case. Claims 1 and 11 are independent claims.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/23/2024 and 10/9/2024, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 3/25/2024 have been accepted by the Examiner.
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, 11 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claims 1 and 11 recite at least “identify or utilize causal relationships between a plurality of variables; and extract at least one first causal feature of one of the plurality of variables”. These limitations are construed as abstract ideas for being performable in the human mind and/or on paper. A human can certainly observe and identify causal relationships between a plurality of variables followed by extracting a causal feature of one of the plurality of variables.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional limitations of “a causal device” is merely a generic computing device on which the instructions to implement the abstract idea are applied. Additional limitations directed toward mere instructions to apply the exception to generic computing components, alone or in combination, do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application (See MPEP§2106.05(f)).
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements identified above, being directed toward mere instructions to apply the exception to generic computing components, alone or in combination, are well-understood routine and conventional, do not provide an inventive concept, and thus, do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Therefore, independent claims 1 and 11 are directed toward ineligible subject matter.
Dependent claims 3 and 13 recite additional limitations that are also construed as mere instructions to apply the judicial exception to generic computing and are, therefore, also directed toward ineligible subject matter.
The analysis of dependent claims 3 and 13 has resulted in the determination that these claims recite eligible subject matter.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 3, 11 and 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Nisimov (USPUB 20230325628 A1 filed May 30, 2023 which claims priority to U.S. Provisional App. No: 63/375,825 filed Sep. 15, 2022).
Claim 1:
Nisimov discloses A causal device, comprising: a causal module, configured to identify or utilize causal relationships between a plurality of variables; and a causal feature learning module, coupled to the causal module, configured to extract at least one first causal feature of one of the plurality of variables (0124: Example 16 provides an apparatus, including a computer processor for executing computer program instructions; and a non-transitory computer-readable memory storing computer program instructions executable by the computer processor to perform operations including inputting a variable set including a plurality of variables into a pretrained neural network including one or more attention layers, each of the plurality of variables representing a respective user action, the pretrained neural network generating an output, extracting one or more matrices from the one or more attention layers, generating a causal graph based on the one or more matrices, the causal graph including a plurality of elements, each of which represents a respective one of the plurality of variables, where one or more connections between the plurality of elements in the causal graph represent one or more causal relationships between the plurality of variables, identifying a first variable in the variable set based on the causal graph, the first variable representing a first user action that is determined to be a cause of a second user action represented by a second variable in the variable set, and generating an explanation for the output of the pretrained neural network).
Claim 3:
Nisimov discloses one of a plurality of input variables of the plurality of variables corresponds to a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) sinogram, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) sequence, patient demographics, an imaging protocol, or a scanner characteristic (0019-20).
Claim 11:
Nisimov discloses A causal method, for a causal device, comprising: identifying or utilizing causal relationships between a plurality of variables; and extracting at least one first causal feature of one of the plurality of variables (0124: Example 16 provides an apparatus, including a computer processor for executing computer program instructions; and a non-transitory computer-readable memory storing computer program instructions executable by the computer processor to perform operations including inputting a variable set including a plurality of variables into a pretrained neural network including one or more attention layers, each of the plurality of variables representing a respective user action, the pretrained neural network generating an output, extracting one or more matrices from the one or more attention layers, generating a causal graph based on the one or more matrices, the causal graph including a plurality of elements, each of which represents a respective one of the plurality of variables, where one or more connections between the plurality of elements in the causal graph represent one or more causal relationships between the plurality of variables, identifying a first variable in the variable set based on the causal graph, the first variable representing a first user action that is determined to be a cause of a second user action represented by a second variable in the variable set, and generating an explanation for the output of the pretrained neural network).
Claim 13:
Nisimov discloses one of a plurality of input variables of the plurality of variables corresponds to a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) sinogram, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) sequence, patient demographics, an imaging protocol, or a scanner characteristic (0019-20).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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) 9 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nisimov in view of Yu (USPUB 20230080424 A1).
Claims 9 and 19:
Nisimov discloses every feature of claims 1 and 11.
Nisimov, by itself, does not seem to completely teach each of the plurality of variables is a first state variable, and one of the plurality of first state variables comprises an imaging test, medical condition, medical history, patient diagnosis, a treatment plan, or an overall health outcome.
The Examiner maintains that these features were previously well-known as taught by Yu.
Yu teaches each of the plurality of variables is a first state variable, and one of the plurality of first state variables comprises an imaging test, medical condition, medical history, patient diagnosis, a treatment plan, or an overall health outcome (0025-26).
Nisimov and Yu are analogous art because they are from the same problem-solving area, identification of causal relationships between variables.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Nisimov and Yu before him or her, to combine the teachings of Nisimov and Yu. The rationale for doing so would have been to obtain the benefit of automatically returning to where a user wishes to return to, saving the user time.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Nisimov and Yu to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claim(s).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 4-10, 12, 14-20 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.
Note
The Examiner cites particular columns, line numbers and/or paragraph numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the Applicant(s). Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the Applicant fully consider the references in their entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner. See MPEP 2123.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure and is listed in the attached PTOL-892 form.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MOHAMMED-IBRAHIM ZUBERI whose telephone number is (571)270-7761. The examiner can normally be reached on M-Th 8-6 Fri: 7-12/OFF.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Steph Hong can be reached on (571) 272-4124. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MOHAMMED H ZUBERI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2178
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