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 .
Response to Amendment
The preliminary amendment filed on 30 April 2024 has been accepted and entered.
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.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. This claim is drawn to a computer program per se.
A computer program per se is abstract instructions. Therefore, a computer program is not a physical thing (product) nor a process as they are not “acts” being performed. As such, these claims are not directed to one of the statutory categories of invention (See MPEP 2106.01), but are directed to nonstatutory functional descriptive material.
It is noted that computer programs embodied on a computer readable medium or other structure, which would permit the functionality of the program to be realized, would be directed to a product and be within a statutory category of invention, so long as the computer readable medium is not disclosed as non-statutory subject matter per se (signals or carrier waves).
The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer readable medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations) typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent. See MPEP 2111.01. When the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers a signal per se, the claim must be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter. See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1356-57 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (transitory embodiments are not directed to statutory subject matter). A claim drawn to such a computer readable medium that covers both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 by adding the limitation “non-transitory” to the claim. Cf. Animals – Patentability, 1077 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 24 (April 21, 1987) (suggesting that applicants add the limitation “non-human” to a claim covering a multi-cellular organism to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-14 and 16-20 are allowed.
Claim 15 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Xu (US 2018/0317873 A1, cited by Applicant) discloses determination of a positioning image based on raw data (par. [0077]) obtained from a PET scanner (par. [0046]), including acquiring data for a plurality of image slices (par. [0054]).
With respect to clams 1, 14, and 15, Xu does not appear to disclose or reasonably suggest representing the acquired set of PET-raw data in the form of at least one projection view and assessing the position of the subject to be scanned relative to the detector directly based on the at least one projection view, as claimed.
Claims 2-13 and 16-20 are allowable for reasons of dependency.
Conclusion
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/MARK R GAWORECKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2884 4 December 2025