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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 objected to because of the following informalities:
The claim contains a table (“table 2”). It is recommended that “table 2” be included in the drawings. Appropriate correction is required. Claims 2-6 are objected based on their dependency of claim 1.
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.
Claims 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Analyzing claim 1 the claim recites a performance evaluating method of a chalcogenide glass material using acousto-optics. The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the claimed series of steps:
(determining an evaluation index system, grading and scoring the index parameters in the evaluation index system; using an analytic hierarchy process (i.e., AHP) to obtain weights of the index parameters, calculating a grading evaluation result, drawing a radar chart according to grading score results, evaluating of the performance of the acousto-optic chalcogenide glass material);
appears to be a process that can be implemented through manual analysis measurements and/or mathematical calculations and / or arranging while applying the abstract idea and does not provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Furthermore, providing an index and / or score chart does not appear to add a meaningful limitation to the abstract idea because it would be routine in any material(s) performance evaluation system or the like to implement a methodology with respect to evaluating, grading, crafting a chart, and indexing a scoring system regarding calculating performance parameters of a material.
These judicial exception(s) are not integrated into a practical application because the claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because:
Regarding claims 2-6 respectively, considering the additional method steps individually or in ordered combination, the recitations directed to:
(i.e using a set of formulas, further evaluating, providing / sorting indexes, weight checking, developing criterion and deriving a total scores, etc)
in these claims at a high level of generality is requiring no more than a generic analyzing of a material / substance via acoustic-optics would be considered well-known, routine and conventional activities of material / substance performance evaluation systems. These recitations do not constitute applying the judicial with, or by use of, a particular machine as discussed in the Alice Supreme Court Decision. Unlike Diamond V. Diehr, the claims here do not recite doing anything meaningful with the result of the calculations that would permit an improvement to the technology to be realized. As such, the additional limitations fail to qualify as "significantly more" than the judicial exception.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDRE J ALLEN whose telephone number is (571)272-2174. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri. 9am-5PM.
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/ANDRE J ALLEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2855
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