DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I (claims 1-10) in the reply filed on 05/20/2026 is acknowledged. Claims 11-13 are withdrawn from consideration.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 08/07/2025 was filed and considered by the examiner.
Specification
The lengthy 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.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to under 37 CFR 1.83(a). The drawings must show every feature of the invention specified in the claims. Therefore, the “[a] grating array”, “first diffractive region”, “plurality of thermos-optical phase modulators”, “second diffractive region” must be shown or the feature(s) canceled from the claim(s). No new matter should be entered.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Applicant’s submitted prior art, Meng et al., WO 2020/191217 A1, in view of Applicant’s submitted prior art Li et al., Optical information transfer through random unknown diffusers using electronic encoding and diffractive decoding.
Regarding claim 1, Meng et al. disclose a large-scale distributed photoelectric intelligent computing system (Optoelectronic computing system) comprising:
. a diffractive compression encoder ([0099]), wherein the diffractive compression encoder is configured to collect two-dimensional light field information through a grating array ([00124]), convert the two-dimensional light field information into one-dimensional information through waveguide transmission and transmit the one-dimensional information to a first diffractive region (fig. 35B, [00719]), and perform computing by using a diffractive coding weight to output a one-dimensional vector through an output end of the first diffractive region ([00114])
. a reconfigurable interference feature embedder ([00101]), wherein the reconfigurable interference feature embedder consists of an interferometer array composed of a plurality of thermo-optical phase modulators ([00158]), and the interferometer array is configured to perform a multiplication operation on the one-dimensional vector to output a computed result in a one-dimensional vector form ([0017]).
Although Meng et al. do not explicitly disclose a diffractive decoder, Li et al. do disclose a diffractive decoder (e.g., diffractive decoding) configured for diffractive decoding the computed result in the one-dimensional vector form through a second diffractive region, to compute and output final light field information through a diffractive decoding weight (figs 1-2). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to employ a diffractive decoder over the Meng et al. Optoelectronic computing system, as shown by Li et al., transfer optical information through random scattering media (page 2, right column, first paragraph).
Re claim 2, further comprising an information importing and collecting interface array, wherein the information importing and collecting interface array is disposed in the diffractive compression encoder, the reconfigurable interference feature embedder, and the diffractive decoder, respectively, and the information importing and collecting interface array is configured to read multiple of the one- dimensional information, ,he one-dimensional vector, the computed result in the one- dimensional vector form, and the final light field information (Meng et al., fig 11, [00595]).
Re claim 3, wherein the diffractive compression encoder and the reconfigurable interference feature embedder form a reconfigurable compression and compute coder, computed results of data of the reconfigurable compression and compute coder form a two-dimensional dataset and the two-dimensional dataset is compressed by inputting into a new diffractive compression encoder (Meng et al., [0099]).
Re claim 4, wherein the first diffractive region and the second diffractive region are each made up of air trenches of different lengths, respectively, corresponding basic parameters of the first diffractive region and the second diffractive region are written into the first diffractive region and the second diffractive region (Meng e al., [00519]). It is noted that the limitation of “by means of etched air trenches and a double exposure process, respectively, and the diffractive coding weight and the diffractive decoding weight are obtained by training a preset training dataset, respectively” recites a one-step process which does not further limit the structure of the device claims. Therefore, this limitation has not been given patentable weight.
Re claim 5, wherein the diffractive compression encoder, the reconfigurable interference feature embedder, and the diffractive decoder are obtained by on-chip integration using a silicon photonics process (Meng et al., [00557]).
Re claim 6, wherein a fluctuating light field having spatially distributed amplitude and phases is constructed using a spatial light modulation device, to make the fluctuating light field focus at the grating array and serve as input data of the diffractive compression encoder (Meng et al., [00438]).
Re claim 7, the modification to Li et al. do not disclose that the two-dimensional light field information is a 64-channel signal, and each of the one-dimensional vector, the computed result in the one-dimensional vector form, and the final light field information is an 8-channel signal. It would have been an obvious matter of design choice to employ the claimed 64 channel signal and the final light field information is an 8-channel signal, since it appears that the invention would involve to a design choice with no unexpected technical effect and would be within the level of ordinary skill in the art.
Re claim 8, wherein two unitary matrix multipliers and a diagonal matrix multiplier are deployed on the interferometer array for decomposing an arbitrary matrix into a product of a first unitary matrix, a diagonal matrix, and a second unitary matrix through singular value decomposition, to realize a multiplication operation of the arbitrary matrix (Meng et al., [00458]).
Re claim 9, wherein elements of the first unitary matrix or the second unitary matrix are obtained by machine learning gradient descent training and mapped to phase change parameters of a phase shifter of the interferometer array (Meng et al., [00525]).
Re claim 10, wherein supply voltage of the phase shifter is dynamically adjusted in real time to realize multiplication of different matrices (Meng et al., fig. 32A, [00441]).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Liesener, US 9201313, disclose an optical computing system including a diffractive compression encoder including a grating array 105 (fig. 1).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DUNG T NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-2297. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 - 5:00.
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, Jennifer Carruth can be reached at 571-272-9791. 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.
/DUNG T NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2871
Prosecution Insights