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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 filed June 18, 2024 are pending and are hereby examined.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
3. 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.
4. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
5. Step 1 Statutory Category: Claims 1-20 are directed to a system, all of which are statutory. Claims 1-20 are statutory classes of invention.
6. Step 2A – Prong 1: Judicial Exception Recited: Nevertheless, independent claims 1 and 13 recite an abstract idea of testing and measuring.
The independent claims 1 and 13 recite the following limitations which fall under commercial or legal interactions:
… to receive signals from one or more… to convert the signals from the one or more… to digital waveforms;
…;
… configured to execute code that causes… to:
perform one or more measurements of the digital waveforms;
send the one or more measurements of the digital waveforms to the… as an input;
… to translate the one or more measurements to measurements made by a reference instrument to produce one or more translated measurements, the reference instrument being more accurate than the first test and measurement instrument; and
determine whether the… meets a performance requirement based upon the one or more translated measurements.
7. According to the MPEP, "Commercial interactions" or "legal interactions" include agreements in the form of contracts, legal obligations, advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors, and business relations. Clearly, testing and measuring falls under sales activities, therefore commercial or legal interactions. If the claim limitations, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitations as a commercial or legal interaction, then it falls within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
8. Step 2A – Prong 2: Practical Application: This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claim as a whole merely recites testing and measuring with generally recited computer elements such as a first test and measurement instrument, devices under test (DUT), one or more digitizers, machine learning network, and one or more processors, which in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts to more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component, and are merely invoked as tools for testing and measuring. Accordingly, these elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Simply implementing the abstract idea on a generic computing environment is not a practical application of the abstract idea, and does not take the claim out of the Commercial or Legal Interactions subgrouping of Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity grouping. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
9. Step 2B – Inventive Concept: The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, when considered individually and as an ordered combination, they do not add significantly more (also known as “inventive concept”) to the exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of a first test and measurement instrument, devices under test (DUT), one or more digitizers, machine learning network, and one or more processors, to perform these steps amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Accordingly, these additional elements, do not change the outcome of the analysis, when considered individually and as an ordered combination as there is no inventive concept sufficient to transform the claimed subject matter into a patent-eligible application. The claims are not patent eligible.
10. Regarding dependent claims 2-6 and 14-18, although these claims recite a generally recited machine learning system, digitizer, one or more processors, and tensor builder, these claims merely narrow the abstract idea of testing and measuring, and these claims neither integrate into a practical application nor contain additional elements which amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
11. Regarding dependent claims 7 and 19, although these claims recite a generally recited DUT and one or more processors, these claims merely narrow the abstract idea of testing and measuring, and these claims neither integrate into a practical application nor contain additional elements which amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
12. Regarding dependent claim 8, although this claim recites a generally recited DUT, machine learning network, and one or more processors, this claim merely narrows the abstract idea of testing and measuring, and this claim neither integrates into a practical application nor contains additional elements which amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
13. Regarding dependent claims 9-10 and 12 and 20, although these claims recite a generally recited machine learning network and one or more processors, these claims merely narrow the abstract idea of testing and measuring, and these claims neither integrate into a practical application nor contain additional elements which amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
14. Regarding dependent claim 11, although this claim recites a generally recited one or more processors, this claim merely narrows the abstract idea of testing and measuring, and this claim neither integrates into a practical application nor contains additional elements which amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
15. Therefore, the limitations of the claims, when viewed individually and in ordered combination, are directed to ineligible subject matter.
Examiner Notes
16. The Examiner suggests incorporating the hardware elements of an optical transceiver, analog-to-digital converter (ADC), databases, neural network, and tensor builder (and defining them), together with dependent claims 7-9 and 11 (dependent on 10) all together. The Examiner suggests incorporating how the models/neural network are trained and re-trained uniquely.
17. Finally, the Examiner suggests incorporating more hardware from the Specification and any unique arrangements of hardware, unique hardware, or unique ways the hardware is communicating. The aforementioned claim suggestions, in combination together, is suggested to help advance prosecution forward, although further search, examination, and consideration is required.
18. Claims 1-20 are novel and unobvious over the prior art, however there remains a pending 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection. After further search and consideration, the most pertinent U.S. prior art was found to be Amiralizadeh Asl et al (US 2020/0174514) and Zhang et al (US 2022/0182139). Amiralizadeh Asl et al (US 2020/0174514) is directed to optical signal skew compensation. Zhang et al (US 2022/0182139) is directed to obtaining transmitter test parameter.
19. However, both the most pertinent U.S. prior art and the most pertinent NPL prior art do not disclose the limitations of:
use the machine learning network to translate the one or more measurements to measurements made by a reference instrument to produce one or more translated measurements, the reference instrument being more accurate than the first test and measurement instrument;
determine whether the DUT meets a performance requirement based upon the one or more translated measurements.
20. No prior art cited here or in any previous Office Action neither fully anticipates nor supports a conclusion of obviousness with respect to the subject matter present in the independent claims, either alone or in combination. The limitations lacking in the prior art, in combination with the other limitations clearly claimed in the application, are novel and unobvious.
Conclusion
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/FAWAAD HAIDER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627
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