DETAILED ACTION
This communication is a final rejection in response to claim amendments and arguments filed 07/22/2026. Before this action, the claims stood rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 and 103.
Response to arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 07/22/2026 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101 and 103 have been withdrawn.
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 7-9, 12-16, and 21-30 are objected to because of the following informalities. Claims 1 and 12 recite “the continuous blood glucose and meal event monitor” when the claims only support “a continuous blood glucose monitor.” The Examiner interprets the limitation as “the continuous blood glucose monitor”. Other claims depending from claims 1 and 12 share this defect.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 12-16 and 26-30 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention. Specifically, claim 12 recites a computing device configured to perform “initial variable or the assigned variable that has the higher probability as the initial variable.” This limitation lacks a verb, so the operation that the computer performs cannot be determined. Claims 28-30 recite “the probability predication statistical model” but this term lacks antecedent basis. The other rejected claims depend from one of these claims.
Subject Matter Free from Prior Art
Claims 1, 7-9, 12-16, and 21-30 are allowable over the prior art. The Examiner’s reasons are described below.
The closest prior art is Dalal (US20200245913A1), Budiman (US20170185748A1), Zheng (Zheng M, Ni B, Kleinberg S. Automated meal detection from continuous glucose monitor data through simulation and explanation. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2019 Dec 1;26(12):1592-1599.), Fox (Fox I, Ang L, Jaiswal M, Pop-Busui R, Wiens J. Deep Multi-Output Forecasting: Learning to Accurately Predict Blood Glucose Trajectories. KDD. 2018 Aug;2018:1387-1395.), and Crawford (US20220202319A1).
Dalal discloses an ML platform that stores CGM data with a user’s food log data, trains a neural network on the data to predict food consumption (e.g., [0023] and [0120]). Budiman discloses estimating “meal start and peak events based on analysis of information associated with monitored analyte concentration level” in [0023] and “the meal start event and peak meal response event estimation in accordance with the present disclosure provides meal times that can be used to confirm tagged meals and to identify missing tags when analyzing the data to determine a glycemic model from the data” in [0084]. Zheng teaches detecting meals by simulating the glucose effects a candidate meal would produce and accepting the candidate whose simulation is closest to the observed glucose (Meal detection on page 1595). Fox discloses recurrent networks where the outputs encode a probability distribution using conditional factorization forming a joint probability (Problem Setup and Background on page 3). Crawford teaches a glucose monitor with a display logging meal and activity events with a glucose graph (Abstract).
No reference teaches or suggests evaluating the initial variable and the assigned variable with a probability function to determine which has the higher probability, using that variable as the initial variable, and iterating this process until a highest probability variable is determined in the context of the other limitations of claims 1 and 12.
Subject Matter Eligibility
Claims 1, 7-9, 12-16, and 21-30 recite patent eligible subject matter. The Examiner’s reasons are described below.
The claimed invention recites an abstract idea in Step 2A Prong One because it recites various mathematical concepts and mental processes such as evaluating meal events and time periods with probability functions and selecting meal assignments with the higher probabilities. However in Step 2A Prong Two, the claimed invention as a whole integrates the idea into a practical application by the specific procedure used to determine meal event values from the time series data from the CGM. This process entails initializing an initial variable with the known meal events, generating an assigned variable that changes one further event value from false to true, evaluating both with a probability function, carrying the higher probability variable forward as the initial variable, and repeating this until a highest probability variable has been determined.
This goes beyond a generic computer implementation of the abstract ideas and represents an improvement in CGM and meal event monitoring by making the determination computationally feasible, in at most T^2 assignment evaluations rather than the conventional 2^T that an exhaustive search over the meal event values would require. See Specification [0004] and [0057]. Taken together, the claimed invention uses a particular, non-abstract kind of data gathering in combination with an innovative assignment procedure to identify unlogged meal events in a way that cannot be performed practicably in the human mind that appears to improve upon the technological field of continuous glucose monitoring.
Conclusion
Applicant’s amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office Action (See MPEP 706.07(a)). Accordingly, 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 extension fee 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.
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/JOSHUA B BLANCHETTE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3624
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