DETAILED ACTION
The following is a first office action upon examination of application number 18/834230. Claims 1-8 are pending in the application and have been examined on the merits discussed below.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 18/834230 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-8 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.
(Step 1) Claims 1-8 are directed to a method; thus these claims are directed to a process, which is one of the statutory categories of invention.
(Step 2A) The claims recite an abstract idea instructing how to grade a construction based on a cold island value, which is described by claim limitations reciting:
Step 1, acquiring relevant data for natural ecological elements within a research range, and determining a rigid protection range;
Step 2, summarizing a rigid protection range chart library, and superposing, … all rigid protection range charts to obtain a basic suitable construction range chart;
Step 3, acquiring, …vegetation patches and water body patches located outside the rigid protection range;
Step 4, performing, … the cold island value evaluation on the vegetation patches and the water body patches located outside the rigid protection range to obtain a cold island value grading chart;
Step 5, further grading, according to the cold island value grading chart, the basic suitable construction range chart obtained in Step 2 to obtain a suitable construction range grading chart including a first-level suitable construction range, a second-level suitable construction range and a third-level suitable construction range; and
Step 6, applying the suitable construction range grading chart in a planning and designing, wherein a construction land with a floor area ratio greater than 0.8 is preferentially allocated within the first-level suitable construction range, when a total amount of the construction land in the first-level suitable construction range is insufficient, then the construction land with the floor area ratio greater than 0.8 is selected to be allocated within the second-level suitable construction range, and when a total amount of the construction land in the second-level suitable construction range is still insufficient, then the construction land with the floor area ratio greater than 0.8 is selected to be allocated within the third-level suitable construction range
The identified limitations in the claims describing grading a construction based on a cold island value (i.e., the abstract idea) fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas, which covers fundamental economic practices. Dependent claim 3 and 6 recites limitations that further narrow the abstract idea; therefore, these claims are also found to recite an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because additional elements such as the GIS; ENVI platform; and AutoCAD platform in claim 1, do not add a meaningful limitation to the abstract idea since these elements are only broadly applied to the abstract ideas at a high level of generality; thus, none of recited hardware offers a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, in this case, implementation via a computer/processor.
Additional elements in claims 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8 related to AutoCAD, GIS, Landsat8, and vector file do not yield an improvement to the computer or technology; further, these additional elements are recited at a high level of generality and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. Accordingly, these additional element do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
(Step 2B) The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the hardware additional elements amount 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. Additional elements in claims 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8 related to AutoCAD, GIS, Landsat8, and vector file do not yield an improvement to the computer or technology; further, these additional elements are recited at a high level of generality and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. In addition, when taken as an ordered combination, the ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present as when the elements are taken individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2008/0281673 (Davis) – discloses a system that uses GIS data to analyze and display a development site.
US 2010/0138353 (Srivastava) – discloses a system that evaluates the sustainability of a land development plan.
US 2010/0070320 (Halsey) - discloses the evaluation of a site with respect to indicators related to physical and biological features.
US 2023/0394761 (Beck) – discloses a system that generates an opportunity map using environmental data.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALAN TORRICO-LOPEZ whose telephone number is (571)272-3247. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10AM-5PM.
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/ALAN TORRICO-LOPEZ/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3625
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