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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 04/23/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
Amendment received on 04/23/2026 is acknowledged and entered. Claims 3 and 18 have been cancelled. New claims 21 and 22 have been added. Claims 1-2, 4-17 and 19-22 are currently pending in the application.
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 1-4, 7, 10-12, 15-17 and 21-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vleugels (US 2022/0058999 A1) in view of Masko et al. (US 2022/0062634 A1).
Claims 1, 10 and 16. Vleugels discloses a computer-implemented method, comprising:
detecting, by a user device at a first time, a distance between a display of the user device and a user associated with the user device; [0104]; [0221]; [0225]
determining, by the user device, contextual information corresponding to a state of the user device at the first time; [0050]
determining, by the user device, an eye health event associated with the first time based at least in part on the distance and the contextual information; [0051]; [0066]; [0067]; [0074]; [0085]; [0096]
performing, by the user device, an action relating to the eye health event and responsive to the eye health event and other eye health events that occurred during other times following the first time; [0051]; [0070]; [0079]; [0108]; [0109], and
Vleugels does not specifically teach: …the action including activating one or more haptic devices included in the user device, which is disclosed in Masko et al. (Masko). [0086]; [0122]; [0125]; [0214]; [0218]
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vleugels to include the recited limitations, as disclosed in Masko, for the benefit of facilitating the restoration of normal retinal cellular metabolism, and retaining visual acuity, as specifically stated in Masko. [0017]
Alternatively, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vleugels to include the recited limitations, as disclosed in Masko, since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable. The rationale to support a conclusion that the claim would have been obvious is that all the claimed elements were known in the prior art and one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as claimed by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination yielded nothing more than predictable results to one of ordinary skill in the art. KSR, 550 U.S. at, 82 USPQ2d at 1395; Sakraida v. AG Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273, 282, 189 USPQ 449, 453 (1976); Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57, 62-63, 163 USPQ 673, 675 (1969); Great Atlantic & P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 152, 87 USPQ 303, 306 (1950).
Vleugels, as modified by Masko, further teaches:
responsive to determining the eye health event, generating, by the user device, an entry in a health datastore, the entry including information about the eye health event and the contextual information. Vleugels, [0045]; [0070]
Claim 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: assigning, by the user device, a point to the eye health event; determining, by the user device, that a point total of eye health events comprising the point has reached a predetermined threshold; and in response to determining that points total has reached the predetermined threshold, performing the action. Vleugels, [0077]; [0181]; [0206]
Claim 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein assigning the point is based in part on at least one of the eye health event or the contextual information. Vleugels, [0225]
Claim 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: augmenting, by the user device, a health record associated with the user to include the entry, the health record stored on the user device. Vleugels, [0044]; [0049]; [0067]; [0083]
Claim 7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein performing the action is based at least in part on the entry in the health datastore. Same rational as applied to claim 1.
Claim 11. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the eye health event comprises a myopic event related to a viewing distance. Vleugels, [0055]
Claim 12. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the contextual information comprises at least one of screen data, user interface data, a time, a duration, ambient light, a color of a portion of the display, a brightness of the display, an orientation of the user device, an orientation of the user, or application data associated with one or more applications running on the user device. Same rationale as applied to claim 10.
Claim 15. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the health datastore is stored on the user device and includes health information collected by at least one of the user’s device or an accessory device. Same rationale as applied to claim 10.
Claim 17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 16, the operations further comprising: providing, by the electronic device, access to the eye health event in the health datastore to a computing device. Same rationale as applied to claim 16.
Claim 18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 17, wherein access to data related to the eye health event is provided via at least one of a publish/subscribe policy or an application programming interface. Same rationale as applied to claim 16.
Claim 21. The computing device of claim 10, wherein the action is a corrective action to mitigate the myopic event. Vleugels; [0066]; [0067]; [0074]; [0096]
Claim 22. The method of claim 1, wherein the contextual information includes at least one of a screen brightness, a font size, or color information. Vleugels; [0068]; [0069]; [0074]; [0096]; [0097]
Claims 5-6, 9, 13-14 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vleugels in view of Masko and further in view of KHADERI SYED KHIZER RAHIM (KR 2019/0027354 A).
Claims 5 and 6. Vleugels does not specifically teach generating a recommendation relating to eye health of the user based at least in part on the entry in the health datastore, which is disclosed in KHADERI SYED KHIZER RAHIM (RAHIM)(Example 22. “The implementation of SDEP can use machine learning and deep learning techniques to develop real-time predicted recommendations…”).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vleugels to include the recited limitations, as disclosed in RAHIM, because it would advantageously allow to generate a sight profile for a user and users group, and to modify media e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed reality, based on the sight profile and a target application, as specifically stated in RAHIM (Background).
Alternatively, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vleugels to include the recited limitations, as disclosed in RAHIM, since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable. The rationale to support a conclusion that the claim would have been obvious is that all the claimed elements were known in the prior art and one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as claimed by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination yielded nothing more than predictable results to one of ordinary skill in the art. KSR, 550 U.S. at, 82 USPQ2d at 1395; Sakraida v. AG Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273, 282, 189 USPQ 449, 453 (1976); Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57, 62-63, 163 USPQ 673, 675 (1969); Great Atlantic & P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 152, 87 USPQ 303, 306 (1950).
Claims 9 and 20. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the action relating to the eye health event includes at least one of displaying a notification on the user device, occluding a portion of the display of the user device, turning off the display of the user device, or transmitting a notification to a computing device. RAHIM; (Participation as a binary state, 2. Distraction; Detection / Discrimination (D)). Same rationale as applied to claim 5.
Claim 13. The computing device of claim 10, further comprising: generating, by the computing device, one or more ergonomic recommendations based at least in part on an orientation of computing device and an orientation of the user. Rahim; (Common Problems, Hardware factor) Same rationale as applied to claim 5.
Claim 14. The computing device of claim 10, wherein detecting the distance occurs at regular intervals. Rahim; (Vision Performance Index, Fatigue / endurance Fatique / Endurance, E) Same rationale as applied to claim 5.
Claims 8 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vleugels in view of Masko and further in view of Chen et al. (CN 115881258 A).
Claims 8 and 19. Vleugels does not specifically teach wherein detecting the distance further comprises: gathering, by the user device, image data including a face of the user; identifying, by the user device, the face of the user; and labelling, by the user device, the entry in the health datastore such that the eye health event is identified with the user, which is disclosed in Chen et al. (Chen). (Background)
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vleugels to include the recited limitations, as disclosed in Chen, because it would advantageously allow to reduce time of treatment of a patient, including effectively make up the problem of medical staff shortage, and, thus, greatly improve the hospital internal operation efficiency, as specifically stated in Chen. (Background)
Alternatively, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vleugels to include the recited limitations, as disclosed in Chen, since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable. The rationale to support a conclusion that the claim would have been obvious is that all the claimed elements were known in the prior art and one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as claimed by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination yielded nothing more than predictable results to one of ordinary skill in the art. KSR, 550 U.S. at, 82 USPQ2d at 1395; Sakraida v. AG Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273, 282, 189 USPQ 449, 453 (1976); Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57, 62-63, 163 USPQ 673, 675 (1969); Great Atlantic & P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 152, 87 USPQ 303, 306 (1950).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/3/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that based on the Specification, the claimed inventions is directed to prevention of myopia due to device usage, while Maslkois directed towards a system for "applying stimulation therapy to a patient" to treat "age-related macular degeneration", which is different then what is disclosed in the specification. Tus, Masko is in a Different Field of Endeavor.
The Examiner points out that Vleugels discloses said myopia limitation. [0066]; [0067]; [0074]; [0096]. Maslkois was applied to disclose “the action including activating one or more haptic devices included in the user device”. It appears that Applicant's arguments are directed against the references individually; but one cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
Examiner further notes that claim 1 is not limited to said prevention of myopia; claim 1 recites: “determining, by the user device, an eye health event …”; “performing, by the user device, an action relating to the eye health event…”. Thus, Masko’s disclosure of treating a “age related macular degeneration” reads on “eye health event” limitation. The Examiner notes that the features upon which applicant relies are not recited in the rejected claim(s). Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993).
Remaining Applicant argument continue to compare the cited prior art to limitations not recited in the claims. Accordingly, Examiner’s response above is applicable to the remaining arguments.
Citations of pertinent art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Samee et al. - US 2016/0270656 A1 – discloses method of diagnosing and treating myopia.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Igor Borissov whose telephone number is 571-272-6801. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor Kambiz Abdi can be reached on 571-272-6702. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/IGOR N BORISSOV/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3685 09/03/2026
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