DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is drafted in response to amendments/remarks dated 06/23/2026. Claims 1-20 are pending. Claims 1-20 are rejected as cited below. This action is made FINAL.
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 .
Response to Specification Objections
Examiner withdraws the title objection in view of Applicant’s arguments.
Response to Claim Objections
Examiner withdraws the objection of claims 2-5 in view of the acceptable language in the art standard.
Response to Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The previous 35 USC 112(b) rejection of claim 20 is withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendments.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks (pages 11-12), filed 06/23/2026, with respect to rejections based on 35 USC 102 and 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 35 USC 102 rejection of claims 1-5, 7-14, and 16-18 has been withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendments. Additionally, the 35 USC 103 rejection of claims 6, 15, and 19-20 has been withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendments. However, the amendments have created new issues. Kindly review the Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112 section below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. Claim 1 describes the generation of one or more text responses based on evaluation of the combination of a tokenized representation of sensor data and a tokenized representation of a text prompt. Examiner finds that the disclosure is devoid of any information which describes this feature of a text output/response. Applicant specification ¶ [0051], among others, states “… combine (e.g., concatenate, interleave) the resulting tokens with the tokens of the text prompt to generate a sequence of tokens representing a tokenized multi-modal prompt, and issue the sequence of tokens as a prompt for the LLM(s) 180 via the inference server 170.” As is understood in the art, a sequence of tokens does not equate to a text response/output. A token is merely a piece of data which has no intrinsic or usable value and maps back to the original data element. Secondly, the final limitation of claim 1 describes controlling the ego-machine based on a text response/output. The disclosure is devoid of any such information regarding controlling operations of an ego-machine based on a text response/output. Therefore, Examiner finds claim 1 fails to comply with the written description requirement as it now introduces new matter into the disclosure.
Claims 2-9 are rejected by virtue of their dependency on claim 1 and not fixing the deficiencies stated above.
Claims 10 and 18 recite a method and system, respectively, which perform operations similar to those of claim 1, thus are rejected on the same basis.
Claims 11-17 are rejected by virtue of their dependency on claim 10 and not fixing the deficiencies stated above.
Claims 19-20 are rejected by virtue of their dependency on claim 18 and not fixing the deficiencies stated above.
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.
Claims 1-9 are 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.
Regarding claim 1:
Lines 7-8 recite “… generate one or more text responses based at least on the tokenized representation …” (emphasis added by Examiner). It is unclear which tokenized representation the generation of the text response is based on. “The tokenized representation” (lines 7-8) may refer to “a tokenized representation of sensor data” (lines 2-3), or “a tokenized representation of the text prompt” (line 6). The scope of the claim is unclear, and thus indefinite. For the purpose of examination, Examiner will interpret “the tokenized representation” (lines 7-8) as referring to “a tokenized representation of sensor data” (lines 2-3).
Claims 2-9 are rejected by virtue of their dependency on claim 1 and not fixing the deficiencies stated above.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jonathan E Reinert whose telephone number is (571)272-1260. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Thurs 7AM - 5PM EST.
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/J.E.R./Examiner, Art Unit 3668
/JAMES J LEE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3668
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