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 § 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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea of a mathematical relationship without significantly more. The claims recite the abstract idea of determining activated row, selecting rows of a matrix, calculating a complex value based on an element in a SDM word, modifying the real and imaginary part of the columns of the matrix, performing accumulation and angle calculations, calculating a distance, and comparing distances. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional elements such as processors and memory are generic computer parts and merely link the abstract idea to computers. The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements of obtaining data, obtaining addresses and storing data are insignificant extra solution activity.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, because the specification, while being enabling for,
each element k may be represented as a complex number φ(k) having a real part, calculated by the cosine of [(2*π*k) divided by r], and an imaginary part, calculated by the imaginary unit i multiplied by the sine of [(2*π*k) divided by r], which may also be shown as:
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Spec. 13.
does not reasonably provide enablement for calculating any “complex value based on an element of the SDM word…” Claims 1, 8 and 15. The specification does not enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to use the invention commensurate in scope with these claims. The specification has a very specific real and imaginary part, and the specification does not enable the broad scope of real and imaginary parts in the claim.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 5 and 12 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. Applicant claims an equivalent set of values. It is unclear what makes the set equivalent – e.g. order, identical values at corresponding vector positions, same unorder collection of values, approximately equal values, equivalent sum or product, values that encode equivalent information while being numerically different etc.
Claims 4, 11 and 18 recite the limitation "the word". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. The limitation is “the SDM word” in other claims.
Claim 7, 14 and 20 recite “to determine the set of activated address rows to determine the set of activated address rows”. This is a typo.
Note on Prior Art
Integer Sparse Distributed Memory by Snaider et al teaches parts of claim 1. A computing device, comprising:
one or more processors;
one or more non-transitory computer readable media storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing device to: (Snaider p. 3 “the algorithm is easily parallelizable to be executed in multithreading or SIMD (e.g. using GPUs) architectures.”)
obtain a sparse distributed memory (SDM) word to be written to a contents matrix; (Snaider p. 2 “The words and addresses used by Integer SDM are large vectors of integers… To read or write a word w, first the access sphere of the address is determined.”)
obtain an address corresponding to the SDM word; (Snaider p. 2 “The words and addresses used by Integer SDM are large vectors of integers… To read or write a word w, first the access sphere of the address is determined.”)
determine a set of activated address (Snaider p. 2 “To read or write a word w, first the access sphere of the address is determined.” The sphere is the activated addresses. Snaider p. 3 “The access sphere encloses pm hard locations. This value p is also the probability of activation of one hard location, i.e. the probability of one hard location participates in one particular reading or writing operation.”)
select a set of activated contents matrix (Snaider p. 3 “To read from the memory, first the hard locations in the access sphere are determined. Then the counters of each value of each dimension of all hard locations in the access sphere are summed up”)
calculate a (Snaider p. 3 “To read from the memory, first the hard locations in the access sphere are determined. Then the counters of each value of each dimension of all hard locations in the access sphere are summed up”)
Snaider doesn’t teach rows.
However, Sparse Distributed Memory and Related Models by Kanerva et al makes it clear that each hard location is a row. (Kanerva sec. 3.2.1 “Figure 3.3 represents such a memory, and a horizontal row through the figure represents one memory location.”)
Snaider, Kanerva and the claims are all directed to SDM. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing, to use a row for the hard locations in Snaider because Snaider meant hard locations to include rows.
Snaider doesn’t teach the complex representation of the activated content matrix.
However, US20040243657A1 to Goren et al teaches for each row of the set of activated contents matrix rows:
modify a real component value of a first column of the contents matrix column pair based on a real part of the complex value; and (Goren para 160 “complex vectors are represented in SPE 102 by a single vector in which the real and imaginary parts are stored in alternate elements (e.g., the real parts of complex elements 1, 2, 3, . . . are stored in positions 1, 3, 5, . . . and the imaginary parts are stored in positions 2, 4, 6 . . . ).” The alternating elements means one column is real, and one column is imaginary. Goren para 159 teaches modifying the real and imaginary parts of complex vectors, “by multiplying each of the vectors by a real matrix including the real parts of the matrix values and an imaginary matrix including the imaginary parts of the matrix values. The resultant complex vector is then calculated from the partial results as is known in the art.”)
modify an imaginary component value of a second column of the contents matrix column pair based on an imaginary part of the complex value. (Goren para 160 “complex vectors are represented in SPE 102 by a single vector in which the real and imaginary parts are stored in alternate elements (e.g., the real parts of complex elements 1, 2, 3, . . . are stored in positions 1, 3, 5, . . . and the imaginary parts are stored in positions 2, 4, 6 . . . ).” The alternating elements means one column is real, and one column is imaginary. Goren para 159 teaches modifying the real and imaginary parts of complex vectors, “by multiplying each of the vectors by a real matrix including the real parts of the matrix values and an imaginary matrix including the imaginary parts of the matrix values. The resultant complex vector is then calculated from the partial results as is known in the art.”)
However, Snaider and Goren are not analogous in the art of SDM, and there is not motivation to combine the references. Therefore it would not have been obvious to combine the references.
Conclusion
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/AUSTIN HICKS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2142
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