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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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(s) 1 and 15, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Kim (US PGPUB 2021/0327066 A1).
As per claim 1, Kim discloses a method for predicting a musculoskeletal disorder based on motion recognition, which is performed by a musculoskeletal disorder prediction apparatus (Kim, Figs. 1-7, and paragraphs 6-7), the method comprising:
acquiring a user image including a motion of a musculoskeletal body part (Kim, paragraphs 7, 23, 36, and 63, discloses generate a motion protocol model suitable for musculoskeletal disease analysis, estimate the posture of a person performing the motion protocol in an image, and analyze the relationship between the estimated posture of the person and the motion protocol model);
identifying a body part motion corresponding to at least one of pre-registered musculoskeletal test motions in the user image by using a motion recognition model implemented in advance (Kim, paragraphs 39, 46, 50, 54, and 63, discloses The body pose estimator 400 estimates a body pose of the user by using the image of the user to be recognized. In addition, the disease classification and prediction unit 500 classifies and predicts a musculoskeletal disease by matching the body pose estimated by the body pose estimator 400 and the motion protocol recognition model generated by the motion protocol recognition model unit 300 with each other);
determining a range of motion ROM of a musculoskeletal system which performs the body part motion based on the identified body part motion (Kim, paragraphs 11, 44, 46, 50, and 54, discloses ROM determination); and
predicting a disorder risk of the musculoskeletal system based on the determined range of motion ROM by using a musculoskeletal disorder prediction model implemented in advance (Kim, Fig. 1:500, and Fig. 6:520, and paragraphs 39, 56, 64 and 66, discloses The disease classification and prediction unit 500 according to one embodiment classifies and predicts musculoskeletal disease by matching the body pose estimated by the body pose estimator 400 and the motion protocol recognition model generated by the motion protocol recognition model unit 300 with each other).
As per claim 15, Kim discloses an apparatus for predicting a musculoskeletal disorder based on motion recognition (Kim, Figs. 1-8), the apparatus comprising:
one or more processors (Kim, Fig. 8:810);
a network interface receiving a user image including a musculoskeletal body part motion (Kim, paragraph 63);
a memory loading computer programs executed by the processors (Kim, Fig. 8:830, and paragraph 77); and
a storage storing the computer programs (Kim, Fig. 8:860, and paragraph 78),
For rest of claim limitations please see the analysis of claim 1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claim(s) 2, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim (US PGPUB 2021/0327066 A1) and further in view of Simmons (US PGPUB 2025/0387044 A1).
As per claim 2, Kim further discloses the method according to claim 1, wherein the identifying of the body part motion includes extracting a feature point of a body part including the musculoskeletal system by using the motion recognition model (Kim, Fig. 1:300),
Kim does not explicitly disclose tracking a movement trajectory of the extracted feature point for a predetermined time, and determining, when the tracked movement trajectory of the feature point is within a predetermined similarity range to a first test motion included in the musculoskeletal test motion, the body part motion as the first test motion.
Simmons discloses tracking a movement trajectory of the extracted feature point for a predetermined time (Simmons, paragraph 44), and determining, when the tracked movement trajectory of the feature point is within a predetermined similarity range to a first test motion included in the musculoskeletal test motion, the body part motion as the first test motion (Simmons, paragraphs 26-27, 39, 67, 70, 163, 178 and 223, and also please see Fig. 12:1200, and Fig. 13:1300).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Kim teachings by monitoring a movement of patient, as taught by Simmons.
The motivation would be to provide an improved system for monitoring a person (paragraph 21), as taught by Simmons.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-14, are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SYED Z HAIDER whose telephone number is (571)270-5169. The examiner can normally be reached MONDAY-FRIDAY 9-5:30 EST.
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/SYED HAIDER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2633
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