Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Specification Objection
The specification is objected to because lines 15 and 18 of [0008] (in the brief description of fig. 3) refer to "FIG. 2" instead of "FIG. 2C".
Drawings Objection
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, a reception unit that receives a first optical signal and a second optical signal (claim 1 line 8) 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.
It is noted that replacing "a first optical signal and" with "the first optical signal as" in line 8 of claim 1 would suffice to overcome this objection.
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.
Claims 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 1 is indefinite because it is unclear whether "a first optical signal" in line 8 is referring back to the first optical signal from line 2, or whether it is intended to introduce another first optical signal. It appears that "a first optical signal and" should be replaced with "the first optical signal as" in line 8.
Claims 2-3 are indefinite by dependence from claim 1
Claim 3 is further indefinite because there is insufficient antecedent basis for "the second intensity" as recited in line 2. No second intensity was mentioned in parent claim 1.
It is observed that claim 1 as filed in English differs from machine translated versions of claim 1 from both the Japanese priority application (JP2022-062535) and the corresponding PCT application (PCT/JP2023/006251), in that claim 1 of those applications specifies that the receiving means (corresponding to the presently recited reception unit) "receives the first optical signal via a path as a second optical signal", not that it receives both a first optical signal and a second optical signal.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 1 (as best understood) is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US 2017/0141844 A1.
Claim 1: '844 discloses a signal processing system, comprising (see mainly figs. 8 and 11):
a transmission unit (elements to the left of the larger dotted box in fig. 8 and part of the "transmitter side" in [0090]) that modulates laser light to transmit, as a first optical signal ("80-Gb/s OTFDM-QPSK signal" in [0090]), the laser light at a first intensity to detect the laser light as an optical signal associated with another symbol point on an IQ plane when N values of transmission information (where N is an integer value of 2 or more) correspond to M symbol points (where M is an integer value greater than N; M = 4 in the example of fig. 11) in accordance with a predetermined protocol (QPSK) and an optical signal associated with a predetermined symbol point among the M symbol points is received;
a reception unit (the larger dotted box in fig. 8) that receives [[a]] the first optical signal [[and]] as a second optical signal via a path (e.g. a path between the boxes labeled "x 4" and "AOM");
an acquisition unit (an input port of the 90-degree hybrid coupler) that acquires, as a third optical signal, a laser (from "CW") modulated (by "MZM") in accordance with the predetermined protocol for demodulation ([0092]); and
a demodulation unit (at least the 90-degree hybrid coupler and the balanced photodetector) that demodulates transmission information using a scheme of causing the second optical signal and the third optical signal to interfere with each other to perform the demodulation ([0093]-[0095], fig. 11).
Conclusion
The additional references listed on the attached 892 form are considered generally relevant to the subject matter of this application. Some of them disclose other examples of demodulators.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication should be directed to Mike Stahl at 571-272-2360. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful the examiner’s supervisor Uyen-Chau Le can be reached at 571-272-2397. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Michael Stahl/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2874
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