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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/03/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 2 and 6 are objected to because of the following informalities:
“read data from the sensor via the interface,” in line 9 of claim 2 should read as “read data from the sensor via the interface.”
“wherein the read command” in lines 1-2 of claim 6 should read as “wherein a read command”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 1-6, 8-12, and 14-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim (US 2019/0034374) in view of Muro (US 2006/0282498).
Regarding claim 1, Kim teaches a method of reading data from a sensor (Fig. 6, Processor 602 reads sensor data from sensors 608-616, see Figures 8 and 9 for read request frame), wherein the sensor is selected from one or more sensors that are communicatively connected via an interface (Fig. 6, Sensors 608-616 are connected to processor 602 (i.e. I3C master) via I3C bus and are selected via I3C operation frames; Paragraph 0060, I3C master may be connected to an accelerometer and gyroscope (A & G) sensor 608, a magnetic sensor 610, an ambient light sensor (ALS) 612, a pressure sensor 614, and a capacitive sensor 616… Paragraph 0057, I3C frame… identifies a register to access within the slave to perform an operation), wherein the method comprises: processing a set of instructions (Figs. 8 and 9, Frames 800 and 900, respectively, are an instruction set with start instruction ‘S’, write instruction ‘W’, read instruction ‘R’), wherein the set of instructions comprises a command and a corresponding value for each command (Fig. 8, I3C private read transfer 800 includes a read command ‘R’ and a corresponding value ‘Read Data’; Paragraph 0066, I3C frame 800 may be an I3C private read transfer… and indicates a slave device that an I3C master will communicate with), wherein each command is represented by a data sequence having a first predetermined data length (Fig. 9 shows read command ‘R’ which is a predetermined 1 bit and ‘Slave Address’ which is a predetermined 7 bits is a sequence of data bits), wherein the corresponding value for each command is provided as a data sequence having a second predetermined data length (Fig. 9 shows corresponding command value is ‘Read Data’ which is a predetermined 8 bits; Paragraph 0070, reading one byte of data from a sensor via the normal mode I3C frame 900).
Kim does not teach the method of reading data from the sensor comprises: processing a set of instructions, wherein the set of instructions comprises a plurality of commands.
Muro teaches the method of reading data from the sensor (Fig. 2, Servers read data from sensors; Paragraph 0057, pieces of observed information collected from the sensor node 207 are sent to the server 203) comprises: processing a set of instructions (Fig. 3, Sensor node 107 receives a partial script 111 that comprises a plurality of parent commands (i.e. root of the partial script 111) and child commands 117 (i.e. originating from the parent command root); Paragraph 0077, a partial script 106 in which the asynchronous command is a root as a partial script 111 to the communication destination node 107), wherein the set of instructions comprises a plurality of commands (Fig. 11, Script of Figure 3 includes a plurality of sequential commands 1201-1205; Paragraph 0149, FIG. 11, an execution sequence of scripts constituted of only synchronous and sequential commands… Paragraph 0150, The script starts execution from a command of a root (parent)… Paragraph 0151, The command executes all child commands).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim’s method to incorporate the teachings of Muro and send script instruction sets containing a plurality of commands to the sensors.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling capable of performing multiple operations with reduced overhead, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014).
Regarding claim 2, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method wherein the set of instructions comprises at least the following commands: address a reference to the sensor for writing data via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises an address of the sensor (Fig. 5, Slave address in frame 500 for writing data ‘Write Data’); write data to the sensor via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises the data to be written to the sensor via the interface (Fig. 6, Data is written to sensors 608-616 via I3C interface 606); address a reference to the sensor for reading data via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises an address of the sensor (Fig. 8, Slave Address in read frame 800 is a reference to read from); and read data from the sensor via the interface (Fig. 6, Data is read from sensors 608-616 via I3C interface 606).
Regarding claim 3, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the set of instructions comprises a command portion comprising the command and a command value portion comprising the corresponding values for the command (Fig. 9, Frame 900 shows command ‘Slave Address’ and ‘R’ and command value ‘Read Data’), wherein a data length of the command portion is equal to a data length of the corresponding command value portion (Fig. 9, ‘Slave Address’ and ‘R’ is 8 bits (i.e. 1 byte) and ‘Read Data’ is 8 bits (i.e. 1 byte)).
Muro teaches the method comprising wherein the set of instructions comprises the plurality of commands (Fig. 11, Script of Figure 3 includes a plurality of sequential commands 1201-1205; Paragraph 0149, FIG. 11, an execution sequence of scripts constituted of only synchronous and sequential commands… Paragraph 0150, The script starts execution from a command of a root (parent)… Paragraph 0151, [rule 2] The command executes all child commands).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim’s method to incorporate the teachings of Muro and send scripts containing a plurality of commands to the sensors.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014).
Regarding claim 4, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 3. Kim teaches wherein the set of instructions comprises a plurality of bytes, wherein each command in the set of instructions is represented by exactly one byte of data (Fig. 9, Frame 900 has ‘Slave Address’ and ‘R’ which are 8 bits total (i.e. 1 byte)), wherein the corresponding value of each command comprises exactly one byte of data (Fig. 9, Frame 900 has ‘Read Data’ which is 8 bits (i.e. 1 byte)).
Regarding claim 5, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1.
Muro teaches the method comprising wherein the plurality of commands are provided in a defined order and wherein the method comprises executing the commands in the defined order (Fig. 11, Script of Figure 3 includes a plurality of sequential commands 1201-1205 which must be executed in the defined order; Paragraph 0149, FIG. 11, an execution sequence of scripts constituted of only synchronous and sequential commands… Paragraph 0150, The script starts execution from a command of a root (parent)… Paragraph 0151, [rule 2] The command executes all child commands).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim’s method to incorporate the teachings of Muro and send scripts containing a plurality of commands to the sensors.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014).
Regarding claim 6, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the read command comprises a corresponding value that is either: a) zero; or b) a length of the data to be read via the interface (Fig. 9, ‘Read Data’ is an 8 bit length of data to be read via I3C).
Regarding claim 8, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the one or more sensors are connected in parallel to the interface (Fig. 6, Sensor devices 608-616 are parallel to each other on the I3C bus 606).
Regarding claim 9, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 8. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the interface is a 2-line bus interface, wherein data is read and written serially to and from the one or more sensors via the interface (Fig. 2, Serial bus 230 is synonymous with interface in Figure 6, 606 and is a 2-line bus for read/write operations; Paragraph 0050, serial bus 230 is operated in accordance with I2C, I3C, or other protocols… Paragraph 0051, a 2-wire serial bus 230 transmits data on a first wire 218 and a clock signal on a second wire 21).
Regarding claim 10, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the interface is an Inter-Integrated Circuit, I2C, interface (Fig. 2, Bus 230 is synonymous with the interface in Figure 6 and can be I2C; Paragraph 0050, serial bus 230 is operated in accordance with I2C, I3C, or other protocols).
Regarding claim 11, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches wherein the method further comprises executing a control sequence (Fig. 8, I3C read transfer 800 is a control sequence), wherein the control sequence comprises: an address of the sensor on the interface (Fig. 8, Slave address in frame 800); and a memory location (Fig. 8, Register address in frame 800; Paragraph 0066, I3C frame 800 further includes a register address field 804 that is 8 bits long and identifies a register within the slave device that the I3C master intends to access).
Muro teaches the method comprising: a memory location of the set of instructions (Fig. 4, Memory 502 is a memory location with the script of commands 509; Paragraph 0088, program read on the memory 502 includes a script manager 404 which is a script execution engine of this invention, a command library 509 which is a set of processing main bodies of commands constituting the script).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim’s method to incorporate the teachings of Muro and send scripts containing a plurality of commands to the sensors.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014).
Regarding claim 12, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 11.
Muro teaches the method comprising: a memory location of the set of instructions (Fig. 4, Memory 502 is a memory location with the script of commands 509; Paragraph 0088, program read on the memory 502 includes a script manager 404 which is a script execution engine of this invention, a command library 509 which is a set of processing main bodies of commands constituting the script).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim’s method to incorporate the teachings of Muro and send scripts containing a plurality of commands to the sensors.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014).
Regarding claim 14, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1.
Muro teaches the method further comprising transmitting data over a data connection to a remote server (Fig. 1, Data connection between sensor node 201 and server 203), wherein the data transmitted over the data connection comprises the data read from the sensor via the interface (Fig. 1, Data is transferred from sensors to servers; Paragraph 0056, many sensor nodes 201, 206 and 207 distributed in environment, integrating/distributing the observed information via a router node 202 connected through radio or wire communication, and collecting the observed information at a center server 203).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim/Muro’s method to further incorporate the teachings of Muro and include a remote server for data to be transferred to.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014), while also allowing users to access sensor data from external locations thereby improving the versatility of the system.
Regarding claim 15, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the instructions further comprise one or more of the following commands: address a reference to the sensor for writing data via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises an address of the sensor; write data to the sensor via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises the data to be written to the sensor via the interface (Fig. 5, Slave address in frame 500 for writing data ‘Write Data’ and Fig. 6, Data is written to sensors 608-616 via I3C interface 606); address a reference to the sensor for reading data via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises an address of the sensor; read data from the sensor via the interface and store the read data for transmitting to a remote server via a data connection; read data from the sensor via the interface and do not store the read data; store a data value for transmitting to a remote server via a data connection, wherein the corresponding value comprises the data to be stored and transmitted to the remote server; wait for a period of time before proceeding with the next command in the set of instructions, wherein the period of time comprises a number of intervals of predetermined duration, wherein the corresponding value of the command comprises the number of intervals to wait; loop over a first subset of commands of the set of commands, wherein the corresponding value comprises a number of times to execute the first subset of commands, wherein the subset of commands begins immediately after the loop command; define an end of the loop, wherein the subset of commands ends immediately before the end of loop command; perform a comparison and execute a second subset of commands of the set of commands or break out of a current loop if a predetermined condition is met, wherein the corresponding value defines the predetermined condition, wherein the predetermined condition is selected from: a first number is equal to a second number, a first number is not equal to a second number, a first number is greater than a second number, and a first number is less than a second number, wherein the first number and the second number are defined in a subsequent command; read data from the sensor via the interface and use the data as the first number in the comparison, wherein the corresponding value defines the second number in the comparison; read data from an indicated memory buffer and use the data as the first number in the comparison, wherein the corresponding value defines the second number in the comparison; modify the first number in the comparison by performing a predetermined operation on the first number and a third number, wherein the predetermined operation is selected from: bitwise AND the first number with the third number, bitwise OR the first number with the third number, bitwise XOR the first number with the third number, wherein the third number is defined in a subsequent command; read data from the sensor via the interface and use the data as the third number to modify the first number in the comparison; read data from the sensor via the interface and ignore the read data; define a start of the second subset of commands, wherein the second subset of commands begins immediately after the define command; define an end of the second subset of commands, wherein the second subset of commands ends immediately before the define command; force the script to terminate, without executing subsequent commands; read data from the sensor via the interface and store the read data in a memory buffer, wherein the corresponding value is an address of the memory buffer; write data from a memory buffer to the sensor via the interface, wherein the corresponding value comprises an address of the memory buffer; and clear a memory buffer, wherein the corresponding value comprises an address of the memory buffer to clear (Claim only requires one of the above limitations, see above ‘One OR more’ limitation).
Regarding claim 16, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches a device comprising a processor configured to perform the method of claim 1 (Fig. 6, Device with processor 602 performs method using I3C master 604).
Regarding claim 17, Kim in view of Muro teaches the device of claim 16. Kim teaches the device further comprising one or more sensors connected to the processor via the interface (Fig. 6, Sensors 608 to 616 connected via I3C bus 606).
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim (US 2019/0034374) in view of Muro (US 2006/0282498) and further in view of Ishizaki (US 2019/0220532).
Regarding claim 7, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein a length of the data to be read via the interface is defined by the number of consecutive read commands (Fig. 9, ‘Read Data’ defines length of read).
Muro teaches the method comprising wherein the set of instructions further comprises one or more further consecutive commands to read data from the sensor via the interface (Fig. 11, Consecutive commands include reading of sensors; Paragraph 0155, First, execution of a root command 1201 is tried. As the command 1201 has child commands 1202 and 1203, execution of the command 1202 is tried. As the command 1202 has child commands 1204 and 1205, execution of the command 1204 is tried… Paragraph 0057, pieces of observed information are collected from these sensor nodes).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim’s method to incorporate the teachings of Muro and send scripts containing a plurality of commands to the sensors.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to enable dynamic changing of operation flow and distributed event handling, thus adapting to dynamically changing situations in an efficient manner that reduces power consumption and limits load concentration (See Muro: Paragraphs 0013 and 0014).
Neither Kim nor Muro teaches the method comprising wherein the corresponding data comprises null data.
Ishizaki teaches the method comprising wherein the corresponding data comprises null data (Fig. 3, Table 302b shows NULL temperature data collected from a sensor; Paragraph 0038, a temperature sensor may be located in an environment and may be configured to measure the ambient temperature of the environment every hour… Paragraph 0045, “null,” “null field,” “null record,” or “null results” indicates that value(s) are absent/missing/unknown/do not exist… Because data is sampled in table B at every hour and not every half hour such as in table A, there are two NULL fields/records for the second and fourth record of the “temperature” column in table 302B).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim/Muro’s method to incorporate the teachings of Ishizaki and include NULL data types when collecting sensor data.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to perform efficient data organization in a database (See Ishizaki: Paragraphs 0002 and 0014) which can be used to advantageously used for various data analyzes such as mean, median, variance, standard deviation, etc. (See Ishizaki: Paragraph 0047).
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim (US 2019/0034374) in view of Muro (US 2006/0282498) and further in view of Larson (US 2004/0252642).
Regarding claim 13, Kim in view of Muro teaches the method of claim 1. Kim teaches the method comprising wherein the interface is one interface from a plurality of interfaces (Fig. 6, I3C bus 606 fans out towards multiple slaves 608-616 all connected via separate interfaces).
Neither Kim nor Muro teaches the method comprising wherein the interface is one interface selected from a plurality of interfaces, wherein the control sequence further comprises an identifier of the selected interface.
Larson teaches the method comprising wherein the interface is one interface selected from a plurality of interfaces (Fig. 2, I2C router 250 selects one port 253a from plurality of ports 253a-n), wherein the control sequence further comprises an identifier of the selected interface (Fig. 5, Each port 550 and 560 has a port address; Paragraph 0057, Mask 531 provides port addresses for which port 550 can send data. If the port tries to send data to an address not allowed in mask 531, the data will not enter router 570).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim/Muro’s method to further incorporate the teachings of Larson and include an I2C router that selects an I2C port via a port address.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to provide greater flexibility in the number of devices that can be used on the bus (See Larson: Paragraph 0042) by preventing bus access conflicts (See Larson: Paragraphs 0005, 0009, and 0043).
Claims 18 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim (US 2019/0034374) in view of Muro (US 2006/0282498) and further in view of Brown (US 2021/0301985).
Regarding claim 18, Kim in view of Muro teaches the device of claim 16. Neither Kim nor Muro teaches the device further comprising an antenna for transmitting data via a cellular network to a remote server.
Brown teaches the device further comprising an antenna (Fig. 2, Sensor with antenna 220; Paragraph 0064, FIG. 2 shows the internal (i.e., partially or fully inside a housing) components of an example IoT device 200) for transmitting data via a cellular network to a remote server (Fig. 1, Sensor 112 communicates with remote server 160; Paragraph 0061, IoT devices 110-116 may communicate with and directly use the resources of one or more physical, remote server computing devices 160… Paragraph 0062, a communication network can include… a cellular network (e.g., a 3G network, a 4G network, a 5G network).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim/Muro’s method to further incorporate the teachings of Brown and include a remote server for data to be transferred to via a cellular network using an antenna.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to allow users to access sensor data from external locations thereby improving the versatility of the system and allowing the implementation of an IoT network.
Regarding claim 19, Kim in view of Muro teaches the device of claim 16. Neither Kim nor Muro teaches the device further comprising a battery.
Brown teaches the device further comprising a battery (Fig. 2, IoT device 200 with battery power supply 218; Paragraph 0068, power supply 218 or another energy storage device such as a battery).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim/Muro’s method to further incorporate the teachings of Brown and include a battery source.
One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the modifications in order to allow the implementation of an IoT network that can be controlled remotely, thus providing remote monitoring of an area.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US PGPUB 2023/0205723 to Takahashi discloses an image sensor that receives I2C/I3C read commands using a predetermined packet structure (See Figure 42).
US Patent 11,412,183 to Tanimoto discloses a plurality of sensor devices coupled to a processor system that is further coupled to a remote server.
US PGPUB 2021/0266894 to Andresky discloses a plurality of sensors coupled to a gateway that communicates with a remote server.
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/H.Z.W./Examiner, Art Unit 2184
/HENRY TSAI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2184