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
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) 1-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Håkansson et al (U.S. Patent No 20230145451) in view of Matsunaga (U.S. Patent No 20220062702 ), Giudici (U.S. Patent No 9305141), and Erkkila (U.S. Patent No 9433823).
Because the references used to reject the amended claims 1 and 15 and their associated dependent claims are identical to the references used to reject the original claims 1 and 15 and their associated dependent claims in the previous office action, and the rationale to combine is also identical, for the sake of brevity the claim mapping and reasoning set forth in the previous office action will not be repeated here. This is appropriate considering that the amendments to the claim have not substantially changed its scope. Instead, the amendments will be addressed directly.
Claim 1 has been amended to include the additional limitation “for each training round provided with a set training program wherein the set training program comprises, for each training round, a physical exercise provided within a set sequence of physical exercises, different from each other, to be performed in sequence provided for each user within the set training program.” Process steps d1, e1, f1, and g1 have been similarly amended to specify that the “next physical exercise” provided by the system to the user is “for/performed in the next training round.” The claim mapping for the amendments to claim 1 provided below apply to the substantially similar limitations in the amended claim 15.
Erkkila teaches “a set training program […] compris[ing], for each training round, a physical exercise provided within a set sequence of physical exercises, different from each other, to be performed in sequence provided for each user within the set training program.” Erkkila’s system monitors the performance of a user while performing physical exercise tasks and retrieves a subsequent task from a category associated with a higher training requirement upon determining that the user’s “progress status” “has increased sufficiently as a result [of] completing the task” (see summary). The progression of the user through a series of categories of increasing training requirements represents a “sequence of physical exercises, different from each other, to be performed in sequence”, wherein the progression from the lowest-tier category to the highest-tier category is considered analogous to the “set training program.” If each training requirement category is considered a “training round”, then Erkkila also teaches the process steps d1, e1, f1, and g1 (see claim mapping in previous office action).
Claims 2-14 are rejected under the same reasoning as applied in the previous office action.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed July 7, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
First, regarding Applicant’s arguments re “Distinguishing the Claimed Invention from the Prior Art—The ‘Circuit Training’ Concept”, Examiner agrees that neither Håkansson, Matsunaga, or Giudici disclose or suggest a “a synchronized, round-based training program where users perform different exercises in a round and then rotate in sequence.”
However, Examiner respectfully submits that the characterization of Håkansson’s system as “strictly an image-based pose reconstruction tool” does not constitute the full extent of the system’s capabilities (and by extension, those of Matsunaga’s). A system capable of distinguishing between improper and proper form of a user when performing a particular physical exercise would similarly be capable of distinguishing between when a user is performing a particular physical exercise and when the user is not performing that particular physical exercise, such as when the user is resting, due to the difference in poses. Thus, the technology could be used to count the number of repetitions of a physical exercise, which could be used to track a user’s progress through a training program. Similarly, because Håkansson’s system generates a “time series of 3D representations of an individual”, this information could be used to track the amount of time spent by a user performing a particular physical exercise, which could also be used to track a user’s progress through a training program.
Similarly, Examiner respectfully submits that the characterization of Giudici as a “basic machine authentication system” does not constitute the full extent of the system’s scope. Giudici teaches a system which associates each user of a plurality of users with a unique user ID and further teaches associating each user with an individualized training program, “assigned and customized” for each user. References to these individualized training programs are made repeatedly throughout Giudici’s specification, which makes it clear that these training programs are contemplated by Giudici as an integral component of their system. This an important aspect of Giudici’s invention regarding the grounds of rejection because the “training program” and “training rounds” of the claimed invention are considered analogous to Giudici’s “individualized training programs” insofar as both Giudici’s system and the system of the claimed invention are capable of assigning a training program to a user and tracking their individual progress through said training program, although the two systems accomplish this through different means.
Examiner submits that, together, the references of Håkansson, Matsunaga, and Giudici teach the technological foundation for the “synchronized, round-based training program where users perform different exercises in a round and then rotate in sequence” of the claimed invention, insofar as Håkansson’s system is capable of tracking the type, number of repetitions, and proper form of a physical exercise performed by a user, Matsunaga expands Håkansson’s system to track the motion of a plurality of users across an entire gym environment simultaneously, and Giudici adds the association of each user with a custom user ID, which enables each user to be assigned an individualized training program to each user and to identify each user for the purpose of tracking the user’s progress through their individualized training program, which is also taught by Giudici.
Regarding Applicant’s argument that Erkkila teaches “a macro-progression framework operating over extended time periods”, which Applicant distinguishes from the “micro-level rotation” of their invention, Examiner notes that Erkkila’s algorithm of monitoring a user to determine when the user has achieved a training target and retrieving a subsequent task for the user to complete upon determining the user has achieved the training target is fundamentally the same as Applicant’s algorithm, the primary difference being the time period over which the user progresses through the “training program.” Considering that Erkkila already contemplates tracking the time duration or repetition of a physical exercise as training target parameters, it would not require extraordinary creativity for one of ordinary skill in the art to realize that Erkkila’s algorithm could be adopted virtually wholesale to assign and track a sequence of physical exercise tasks for completion over a single training session or a single day as opposed to multiple days. Of course, Erkkila’s system alone does not possess the ability to evaluate whether a user has achieved a target value for the training in real time, but the system of Håkansson, Matsunaga, and Giudici does, which leaves only the question of whether there is a motivation to combine the four references. Examiner contends that there is, as discussed in the prior office action. The arguments against the motivation to combine will be discussed below.
Leaving aside the arguments regarding whether Erkkila’s algorithm reads on the Applicant’s algorithm or how obvious the inventive leap from the Erkkila’s algorithm to Applicant’s algorithm may be, this distinction is ultimately moot because it is not recited in the claims. Applicant has argued that their invention is distinguished from the prior art based on the difference in the time scales of the “training program” of the Applicant’s invention versus the “training programs” of the prior art (what Applicant has referred to as “The ‘Circuit Training’ Concept”). However, no reference to the time scale of Applicant’s “training program” is recited in the claims. It appears that the Applicant has intended to communicate this distinction by amending the claims to include references to “training rounds.” However, the phrase “training round” itself does not inherently imply a particular time scale. For example, the different “tiers” of Erkkila’s system could each be considered as an individual “training round” of the overall “training program” which trains a user to progress from the lowest tier to the highest tier. Despite this, no reference to the time scale over which these “training rounds” occur has been recited in the claims either.
Regarding Applicant’s arguments re “Absence of Motivation to Combine,” Examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant’s assertion that “there is no reasonable technical motivation to combine” the teachings of Håkansson, Matsunaga, Giudici, and Erkkila. Firstly, Examiner respectfully disagrees with the characterizations of Håkansson as a “singular pose-evaluation tool” and of Giudici as “a machine login interface.” Regarding Giudici, Giudici is much more than a mere “machine login interface”, being an entire system designed for tracking the progress of each user of a plurality of users through a customized training program individually assigned to each user: the “machine login interface” is merely a means for tracking the progress of the individual users. Indeed, without individualized training programs, there would be no conceivable reason for why individual users would need to be tracked in the first place outside of surveillance for surveillance’s sake. Regarding Håkansson, Håkansson is specifically directed to the monitoring, by a system of cameras, of a user’s performance of a physical exercise in the context of a gym environment. Giudici and Håkansson are both directed to the monitoring of users performing physical exercise in the context of a gym environment, so they belong to the same field of art. This is also true of Matsunaga and Erkkila.
Regarding the motivation to combine, tracking user progress based entirely on images acquired from cameras provides an economic advantage over Giudici’s teaching of tracking user progress through exercise machines: a gym which wanted to offer automatic tracking of user progress through individualized training programs according to Giudici’s teachings alone would need to replace every single one of their exercise machines with exercise machines specially designed with user identification means and internet connectivity, whereas a gym implementing the system of Giudici in view of Håkansson and Matsunaga would need to purchase only a few cameras and a processing means, at much less expense. Matsunaga, of course, teaches expanding the capability of Håkansson’s system to track multiple users while using the same amount of cameras, which again provides an economical advantage and thus a motivation to combine. Erkkila’s teachings expand upon the individualized training programs of Giudici. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the two because although Giudici repeatedly mentions the use of individualized training programs, they do not discuss how an individualized training program would specifically be implemented, or what one might look like: to complete the teachings of Giudici, one of ordinary skill in the art would thus be motivated to seek out additional resources such as Erkkila to fill this conceptual gap.
Finally, regarding Applicant’s arguments re “Traversal of Examiner’s Specific Mappings,” Examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant’s assertion that Erkkila’s teachings are “fundamentally different from the amended claims, where the ‘next physical exercise’ is identified for the next training round within a single, synchronized training session” for the simple reason that no mention of a “single, synchronized training session” is even recited in the amended claims. There is similarly no mention of the next exercise being “determined dynamically in real time.”
Examiner agrees with Applicant’s assertion that “evaluation multiple users’ safety simultaneously is not the same as—and does not teach or suggest—guiding them through a synchronized rotating circuit training program […].” However, Examiner respectfully points out that Matsunaga was not used to teach guiding users through a training program in the previous grounds of rejection. Matsunaga was mapped to “multiple users” for the simple reason that Matsunaga’s system is designed for the monitoring multiple users, and of course because it belongs to the same field of art as the other three references and the invention of the instant application. Matsunaga provides the technological foundation of a system capable of tracking the motion of a plurality of users simultaneously, which is a necessary prerequisite for a system such as that of the claimed invention, which tracks the progress of multiple users through a physical fitness training program based on image data.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNETH HAROLD JOHANSSON whose telephone number is (571)272-5755. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday from 8:30 to 6:30.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Peter Vasat can be reached at (571)270-7625. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/K.H.J./
Examiner, Art Unit 3715
/WILLIAM H MCCULLOCH JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715
Prosecution Insights