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
Claims 1-15 objected to because of the following informalities: the claims recite an acronym (“PPG”) without providing the full expanded definition at the first usage. Appropriate correction is required.
Applicant is advised that should claim 5 be found allowable, claim 15 will be objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being a substantial duplicate thereof. When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 15 recites “the computer program of claim 12,” however claim 12 is directed to a method, not a computer program.
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 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because “a computer program comprising computer program means” is software per se and is therefore not one of the four statutory categories of invention. See MPEP 2106.03.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-13 are allowed.
Claim 14 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Claim 14 is not subject to any prior art rejections, but is not allowable because of the rejection under 35 U.S.C. §101.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art, alone or in combination, fails to teach every limitation of the independent claims. Specifically, while Wang et al. (US 2024/0148289) substantially discloses the limitations of claims 1 and 10, Wang does not disclose or render obvious “classifying tissue types and segmenting the hyperspectral images into one or more regions corresponding to different tissue types using the different PPG delays to different regions of the images.” While Bourquin et al. (US 2022/0354418) discloses segmenting tissue based on a PPG delay map, there is no motivation to combine these references in the absence of impermissible hindsight reasoning.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CAROLYN A PEHLKE whose telephone number is (571)270-3484. The examiner can normally be reached 9:00am - 5:00pm (Central Time), Monday - Friday.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Chris Koharski can be reached at (571) 272-7230. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CAROLYN A PEHLKE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3799