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 .
IDS
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on June 5, 2024, and November 15, 2024, are being considered by the Examiner.
Drawing
The drawing filed on June 5, 2024, is accepted by the Examiner.
Specification
The specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Claim rejection – 35 U.S.C. §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 therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
In reference to clams 1-18: the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., Abstract idea) without significantly more.
The requirement for subject matter eligibility test for products and processes requires first, the claimed invention must be to one of the four statutory categories. 35 U.S.C. §101 defines the four categories of invention that Congress deemed to be the appropriate subject matter of a patent: processes, machines, manufactures and compositions of matter. The latter three categories define "things" or "products" while the first category defines "actions" (i.e., inventions that consist of a series of steps or acts to be performed).
Second, the claimed invention also must qualify as patent-eligible subject matter, i.e., the claim must not be directed to a judicial exception unless the claim includes additional limitations amounting to significantly more than the exception. The judicial exceptions (also called "judicially recognized exceptions" or simply "exceptions") are subject matter that the courts have found to be outside of, or exceptions to, the four statutory categories of invention, and are limited to abstract ideas, laws of nature and natural phenomena (including products of nature).
In the first step, it is to be determined whether the patent claim under examination is directed to an abstract idea. If so, in the second step of analysis, it is to be determined whether the patent adds to the idea “something more” or "significantly more” that embodies an “inventive concept.”
In the instant case, claim 1 is representative and it is reproduced here with the limitations that are part of the abstract idea in bold:
A method of determining whether repair or replacement of thyratron of a radiotherapy device should be scheduled, wherein the radiotherapy device is configured to provide therapeutic radiation to a patient, and wherein the radiotherapy device comprises:
a linear accelerator;
a thyratron; and
at least one sensor configured to provide a signal indicative of a start-up time associated with the thyratron; and the method comprising:
receiving the start-up time; and based on the start-up time, determining whether repair or replacement of the thyratron should be scheduled.
Step 2A:
Prong I: The claim recites the steps of “receiving the start-up time; and based on the start-up time, determining whether repair or replacement of the thyratron should be scheduled.” These limitations could be carried out as a purely mental process (at least in some relatively simple situations). Therefore, the recited method falls in the abstract idea grouping of mental processes at Prong 1 of the §101 analysis.
Prong II:
This abstract idea is not integrated into a practical application at Prong 2 of the §101 analysis because the claim does not recite sufficient additional elements to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The claim recites the method comprising the additional element "a radiotherapy deice, a linear accelerator, a thyratron, and at least one sensor”. However, these are generic components which are not considered to be extra-solution activity.
In fact, these components noted above are merely a generic component that are invoked as a tool to perform the abstract idea, which does not cause the claim to integrate the abstract idea into a particular practical application or provide significantly more than the recited abstract idea (see MPEP 2106.05(b)).
This limitation merely establishes a field-of-use and broadly recites the “radiotherapy device, thyratron, sensor and linear accelerator” are part of the object on which the system operates (that is, the object that simply help provide radiation to a patent, rather than being a particular machine that would be connected to a system that would be diagnosed and a significantly more than the abstract idea would be carried out, such as the actual maintenance process as integrated with the therapeutic radiation system (see MPEP 2106.05(b)).
The claim does not recite applying the abstract idea with, or by use of, any machine, nor does the claim affect a real-world transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing. The claim amounts to observing a state of a variable, specifically start-up time associated with thyratron. The claim does not recite any real-world actions that are taken because of knowing the start-up time, in fact “determining whether repair or replacement of the thyratron should be scheduled” is a human thought process. The claim establishes the identification of start-up time as the general field-of-use but does not recite a particular practical application being carried out within that field-of-use. Therefore, the claimed invention does not appear to be limited to the use of the mental process or math in a particular practical application, but instead the claim appears to monopolize the mental process, in any practical application where it might conceivably be used.
Step 2B:
Finally, at Step 2B, the claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the abstract idea for the same reasons as discussed above about Prong 2. Claim 1 is rejected as ineligible under 35 USC §101.
Claims 17 and 18 are analogous to claim 1, except that they are directed to a “non-transitory computer-readable medium” and “a system [with] a remote controller, radiotherapy device, sensor and thyratron” respectively. These additional elements are merely generic processing components that are invoked as a tool to perform the abstract idea, which does not cause the claim as a whole to integrate the abstract idea into a particular practical application or provide significantly more than the recited abstract idea, namely “based on the start-up time, determining whether repair or replacement of the thyratron should be scheduled.”
Dependent claims 2-6: the instant claims are directed to interpretation of the “start-up” time is considered a mental process.
Dependent claims 7-10: the instant claims are directed to describing the structure of the thyratron and related functions and is considered an insignificant extra-solution activity being recited (see MPEP 2106.05(g)).
Dependent claims 11-14: the instant claims are directed to the characterization of “start-up” time and considered insignificant extra-solution activity.
Dependent claims 15-16: the instant claims are directed to outputting or displaying a determination of whether repair or replacement of the thyratron should be scheduled or notification of some kind and are considered or add insignificant extra-solution activity.
Art of Interest
In reference to claims 1-18: Naylor et al. (U.S. PAP 2021/0077043, hereon Naylor) discloses a method and apparatus for operating a radiation treatment delivery system. The method includes generating, by a processing device, a set of instruction for a volumetric imager based on a set of directionalities for a radiation beam of a linear accelerator (LINAC) to avoid a collision between the volumetric imager and the LINAC, wherein the set of instructions comprises physical locations of the volumetric imager and timing values corresponding to the physical location (see Naylor, Abstract).
The instant application differs from Naylor in that “the method [includes] receiving the start-up time; and based on the start-up time, determining whether repair or replacement of the thyratron should be scheduled.”
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Voronenko et al. (U.S. PAP 2023/0356003) discloses systems and methods for guiding the delivery of therapeutic radiation using incomplete or partial images acquired during a treatment session. A partial image does not have enough information to determine the location of a target region due to, for example, poor or low contrast and/or low SNR. The radiation fluence calculation methods described herein do not require knowledge or calculation of the target location and yet may help to provide real-time image guided radiation therapy using arbitrarily low SNR images.
Guertin et al. (U.S. Patent No. 10,881,878) discloses a system includes a first radiation source configured to provide therapeutic radiation in a treatment area and an automated patient transport configured to transport a patient from a preparation area to the treatment area, to position a treatment volume in the patient relative to the therapeutic radiation from the first radiation source, and to support the patient in receiving the therapeutic radiation. The automated patient transport comprises a first detector configured to detect a first patient positioning indicator located in and/or on the patient indicative of a position of the treatment volume.
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/ELIAS DESTA/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857
