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 .
Application Status
This is the first non-final action on the merits. Claims 1-7 as originally filed on February 21, 2025 are currently pending and considered below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e. an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claims 1-7 recite a method of displaying medical information based on a resource allocated to a medical information display, which is within the statutory category of a process.
Step 2A - Prong One:
Regarding Prong One of Step 2A, the claim limitations are to be analyzed to determine whether, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, they "recite" a judicial exception or in other words whether a judicial exception is "set forth" or "described" in the claims. An "abstract idea" judicial exception is subject matter that falls within at least one of the following groupings: a) mathematical concepts, b) certain methods of organizing human activity, and/or c) mental processes. Representative independent claim 1 includes limitations that recite at least one abstract idea.
Specifically, independent claim 1 recites: A method of displaying medical information based on a resource allocated to a medical information display, the method comprising:
producing a data amount that is processable by the resource;
specifying medical information to be processed by the resource according to a viewing mode requested by a user; and
when a data amount of the specified medical information is larger than the produced data amount, excluding some information from the medical information and displaying the remaining medical information.
The underlined limitations are directed to methods of organizing human activity. The claim recites steps of specifying medical information to be processed according to a viewing mode and excluding some information from the medical information when a data amount of the specified medical information is larger than the produced data amount. These steps, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, are categorized as methods of organizing human activity, specifically associated with managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (e.g. managing what medical information is displayed to a user). Because the claim fails to specify a component responsible for which data to exclude, the claim merely recites a set of rules or instructions that a person would follow. If the claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers managing personal behavior or interactions between people but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas. See MPEP § 2106.04(a). The Examiner further notes that “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” includes a person's interaction with a computer (see October 2019 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility at Pg. 5). Any limitation not identified above as part of methods of organizing human activity, are deemed “additional elements” and will be discussed further in detail below. Accordingly, claim 1 recites at least one abstract idea.
Similarly, dependent claims 2-7 recite at least one abstract idea. Claim 2 and 3 describes the editing mode and read-only mode of the viewing mode. Claim 4 describes the generation of medical information. Claim 5 describes the medical information. Claims 6 and 7 describe segmenting the medical information. Claims 3, 5 and 6 partially narrow the abstract idea as described above, and also introduce additional element(s) which will be discussed in Step 2A Prong 2 and Step 2B. These limitations only serve to further limit the abstract idea and hence, are directed toward fundamentally the same abstract ideas as independent claims 1, even when considered individually and as an ordered combination.
Step 2A - Prong Two:
Regarding Prong Two of Step 2A, it must be determined whether the claim as a whole integrates the abstract idea into a practical application. It must be determined whether any additional elements in the claim beyond the abstract idea integrate the exception into a practical application in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception. The courts have indicated that additional elements merely using a computer to implement an abstract idea, adding insignificant extra solution activity, or generally linking use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use do not integrate a judicial exception into a "practical application."
In the present case, claims 1-7 as a whole do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The additional elements or combination of additional elements, beyond the above-noted at least one abstract idea will be described as follows (where the bolded portions are the “additional limitations” while the underlined portions continue to represent the “abstract idea(s)”).
Specifically, independent claim 1 recites: A method of displaying medical information based on a resource allocated to a medical information display, the method comprising:
producing a data amount that is processable by the resource;
specifying medical information to be processed by the resource according to a viewing mode requested by a user; and
when a data amount of the specified medical information is larger than the produced data amount, excluding some information from the medical information and displaying the remaining medical information.
The claim recites the additional elements of a resource and medical information display that implement the identified abstract idea. The resource and medical information display are not described by the applicant and are recited at a high-level of generality such that they amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component (i.e., merely invoking the computer structure as a tool used to execute the limitations, MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Claims 1 and 5 further recite the additional elements of displaying medical information, displaying the remaining information, displaying an image and producing a data amount that is processable. Under practical application, displaying medical information, displaying the remaining information, displaying an image and producing a data amount that is processable are forms of extra-solution activity. MPEP 2106.5(g) indicates the term "extra-solution activity" can be understood as activities incidental to the primary process or product that are merely a nominal or tangential addition to the claim. Therefore, even in combination, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
The dependent claims 3 and 6 recite additional element(s) beyond those already recited in the independent claims that implement the identified abstract idea. Claim 3 recites a network status and processor. Claim 6 recites a network status. However, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because, as stated above, they represent mere instructions to apply the abstract idea on a computer (i.e., merely invoking the computer structure as a tool used to execute the limitations).
Accordingly, the claims as a whole do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application as they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
Step 2B
Regarding Step 2B, representative independent claim 1 does not include additional elements (considered both individually and as an ordered combination) that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reasons to those discussed above with respect to determining that the claim does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
When viewed as a whole, claims 1-7 do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the claims recite processes that are abstract and simply implements the process on a computer(s) is not enough to qualify as "significantly more."
As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of using a resource and medical information display to perform the noted steps amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept (“significantly more”).
Also, as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of displaying medical information, displaying the remaining information, displaying an image and producing a data amount that is processable were considered extra-solution activity. MPEP indicates that displaying results of a rudimentary analysis (TLI Communications, 823 F.3d at 612-13,118 USPQ2d at 1747-48) (MPEP 2106.05(a)) and/or mere data gathering (MPEP 2106.05(g)) have been held by the courts to be insignificant extra-solution activity. This has been re-evaluated under the “significantly more” analysis and determined to be well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field. Well-understood, routine, conventional activity cannot provide an inventive concept (“significantly more”). As such, the claims also do not recite significantly more than the abstract idea and are not patent eligible.
The dependent claims 3 and 6 recite additional element(s) beyond those already recited in the independent claims that implement the identified abstract idea. Claim 3 recites a network status and processor. Claim 6 recites a network status. However, these functions are not deemed significantly more than the abstract idea because, as stated above, they represent mere instructions to apply the abstract idea on a computer (i.e., merely invoking the computer structure as a tool used to execute the limitations).
Therefore, claims 1-7 are rejected under 35 USC §101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
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 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dala (US 2013/0054467 A1) in further view of Shaw (US 2012/0159318 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Dala teaches: A method of displaying medical information based on a resource allocated to a medical information display (e.g. see [0049], [0160]), the method comprising:
producing a data amount that is processable by the resource; (the “server 131 may be configured to query the mobile handheld device 150” to detect its “display characteristic parameters”, which include “processor speed, the display processor speed…, the memory availability, the cellular network being used…”, e.g. see [0115]; calculating the processable data limit by determining a “frame rate as the lowest of the display resolution/refresh rate and “the actual data transfer rate available through the network to the mobile handheld device 150 at that point in time”, e.g. see [0179])
specifying medical information to be processed […]; and (performing image processing on the “medical data”, e.g. see [0159]-[0160] ; “a user may implement an image display request by indicating a portion of a displayed image”, e.g. see [0162])
when a data amount of the specified medical information is larger than the produced data amount, excluding some information from the medical information and displaying the remaining medical information. (to avoid “overwhelming the processor of the mobile handheld device”, the server may “reformat the selected image to match the pixel density” (discarding excess pixels), e.g. see [0163]; when the data amount exceeds the available frame rate, the “server sub-samples the optimized image frames to select those to be delivered…selecting a fraction of the frames for transmission, such as every other frame, every third frame, three out of every five frames, etc.”, e.g. see [0180] (When the requested medical image payload exceeds the calculated limits of the network of device processor, data is excluded by dropping frames or sub-sampling pixels. Only the remaining information is displayed.))
Dala does not teach:
information to be processed by the resource according to a viewing mode requested by a user
However, Shaw in the analogous art of optimizing a user interface for viewing data on a display (e.g. see [0004]) teaches:
information to be processed by the resource according to a viewing mode requested by a user (“a user may enter full screen view by a selection of a user interface entry point, such as a selectable full screen view option provided in a view menu or via a selection of an in-window view switcher control 102”, e.g. see [0020]; the system alters the information it processes and renders on the screen based on which mode the user requested: “An editing mode user interface toolbar 220 may include selectable functionality controls for general formatting commands 310 such as text type, font size…”, e.g. see [0025]; “a document 210 being viewed in reading mode may not be able to be edited”, e.g. see [0027]; “Embodiments of the present invention provide for a full page reading environment that provides a display of one or more simulated page movement visual effects via an animation function…such as a page flip page effect” (When the reading mode is selected, the system ceases processing edits and instead processes complex, simulated visual animations.), e.g. see [0030])
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 the teachings of Dala to include information to be processed by the resource according to a viewing mode requested by a user as taught by Shaw, for the purposes of avoiding “extraneous information that crowds the display area” and to have “more screen display area for viewing” when reading a file (Shaw [0002]).
Regarding claim 4, Dala and Shaw teach the method of claim 1 as described above.
Dala further teaches:
wherein the displaying includes when the medical information is generated as a storyboard listed in time series, determining a time range of a storyboard filtered based on a difference between the data amount of the medical information and the produced data amount (the “server sub-samples the optimized image frames to select those to be delivered…selecting a fraction of the frames for transmission, such as every other frame, every third frame, three out of every five frames, etc.” (“a storyboard listed in time series” is functionally equivalent to a sequential medical video file), e.g. see [0180]).
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dala and Shaw in further view of Tahan (US 2015/0070357 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Dala and Shaw teach the method of claim 1 as described above.
Dala does not teach:
wherein the viewing mode is divided into an editing mode in which the medical information is editable by the user and a read-only mode in which editing access by the user is blocked […].
However, Shah in the analogous art teaches:
wherein the viewing mode is divided into an editing mode in which the medical information is editable by the user and a read-only mode in which editing access by the user is blocked […] (“An editing mode user interface toolbar 220 may include selectable functionality controls for general formatting commands 310 such as text type, font size…”, e.g. see [0025]; “a document 210 being viewed in reading mode may not be able to be edited”, e.g. see [0027])
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 the teachings of Dala to include information to be processed by the resource according to a viewing mode requested by a user as taught by Shaw, for the purposes of avoiding “extraneous information that crowds the display area” and to have “more screen display area for viewing” when reading a file (Shaw [0002]).
Dala and Shaw do not teach:
the data amount of the specified medical information increases as a range of processes that are processed according to the viewing mode increases
However, Tahan in the analogous art of medical information processing and viewing (e.g. see [0003], [0005]) teaches:
the data amount of the specified medical information increases as a range of processes that are processed according to the viewing mode increases (a system where “images of the size of Pathology whole slide scans (billions of pixels)…the full image size can be tens of gigabytes, e.g. see [0111]; during basic inspection, the user views a passive base image, e.g. see [0129]; “The OpusZoom® Magnifier has the capability to show areas of interest in high resolution within a movable virtual lens, overlaid on a base image.” (the user engages with the interactive tool, the “movable virtual lens”), e.g. see [0144]; “To service the user request…the high-resolution image viewing logic retrieves the high-resolution image (step 1430). In one embodiment, it can send a request to the server over a network for a high-resolution image…The server processes the request and sends the requested high-resolution image to the client device.” (Therefore, as the range of processes increases (activating the virtual lens), the data amount of the specified medical information increases.), e.g. see [0172])
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 the teachings of Dala and Shaw to include the data amount of the specified medical information increases as a range of processes that are processed according to the viewing mode increases as taught by Tahan, for the purposes of “saving network bandwidth as well as processing and memory resources on both the client device and the server” (Tahan [0118]).
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dala, Shaw and Tahan in further view of Yoshidome (US 2011/0016306 A1).
Regarding claim 3, Dala, Shaw and Tahan teach the method of claim 2 as described above.
Dala does not teach:
wherein the displaying includes when the viewing mode is an editing mode, comparing a data amount produced based on a network status of the resource and performance of a processor in the produced data amount with a data amount of medical information;
However, Tahan in the analogous art teaches:
wherein the displaying includes when the viewing mode is an editing mode, comparing a data amount produced based on a network status of the resource and performance of a processor in the produced data amount with a data amount of medical information; (“In retrieving and displaying the base image, the Recursive Magnifier can take into account characteristics or resources available on the client device, including display size, window size, memory size, processing power, network speed, network quality, transmission quotas, transmission costs, etc., as well as capabilities of the server and network, and characteristics of the image.”, e.g. see [0157])
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 the teachings of Dala and Shaw to include the displaying includes when the viewing mode is an editing mode, comparing a data amount produced based on a network status of the resource and performance of a processor in the produced data amount with a data amount of medical information as taught by Tahan, for the purposes of avoiding “significant loads on the network” and “negatively impact[ing] an application's response time and user experience” (Tahan [0004]).
Dala, Shaw and Tahan do not teach:
when the viewing mode is a read-only mode, comparing a data amount produced based on a network status of the resource in the produced data amount with the data amount of the medical information
However, Yoshidome in the analogous art of medical information display (e.g. see [0003], [0005]) teaches:
when the viewing mode is a read-only mode, comparing a data amount produced based on a network status of the resource in the produced data amount with the data amount of the medical information (“The communication selecting means 13 monitors the communication load situation of the network NW and the quantity of data that each image layer uses and, if information using a large quantity of data is to be transmitted, the communication selecting means 13 selects a communication means 14 of a protocol that puts a light load on the network.”, e.g. see [0037])
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 the teachings of Dala, Shaw and Tahan to include when the viewing mode is a read-only mode, comparing a data amount produced based on a network status of the resource in the produced data amount with the data amount of the medical information as taught by Yoshidome, for the purposes of preventing the “network bands” from being “occupied to a large extent as a result of displaying and updating large volume images” (Yoshidome [0005]).
Claims 5-7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dala and Shaw in further view of Yoshidome.
Regarding claim 5, Dala and Shaw teach the method of claim 1 as described above.
Dala further teaches:
wherein the displaying includes when the medical information is an image including annotation information or a measurement value, (“Once the physician accesses the transmitted medical data, he may review them and enter his comments or opinions, perform measurements, enter annotations at various sections of the data sent…Appropriate data entry modules, such as forms, text boxes, measurement tools, and annotation tools may be available as features of the data review application”, e.g. see [0102]; “For example, information suitable for qualitative analysis may include X-ray and ultrasound images…To assist the physician, the mobile handheld device 150 may include software tools enabling the user to interact with the mobile handheld device 150 to perform quantitative measurements…distance, time, area, and volume measurement tools”, e.g. see [0211])
displaying an image […] ( “For example, a message may be separated into a demographics layer and data layer as described above, plus a message routing layer, a physician action layer, and a record-link layer…a physician action layer may include treatment, laboratory or consultation orders, prescriptions, notes or diagnosis.”; “the patient medical file 2500 is separated into three layers…a data layer 2502 including clinical, image or diagnostic data” (separating medical files into distinct layer including isolating notes/annotations from the clinical data), e.g. see [0253]-[0254]; “The diagnostically significant pattern may simply be the portion of the data that contains information that may be of interest to a physician…the system may automatically recognize portions of an ECG trace that contain relevant data, and reject portions…that have no relevant data. As another example, the server may be programmed to recognize portions of an X-ray image containing bone and tissue, and ignore portions that contain no image data.”, e.g. see [0194]; “Since the display size and processing power of cell phones may be limited…various components of the system may be configured to only transmit the most relevant sections of patient data to the physician's cell phone”, e.g. see [0157]; “the server is configured with software to perform processing on the medical data to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted”, e.g. see [0159])
Dala and Shaw do not teach:
displaying an image excluding the annotation information or the measurement value as a highest priority
However, Yoshidome in the analogous art teaches:
displaying an image excluding the annotation information or the measurement value as a highest priority (“the examination images A3 including still images and moving images are placed thereon while the patient information A2 and the annotation information Al are placed at upper layers”, e.g. see [0027]; “Annotation ROI (Al) and still image information (A3) may, for example, be transmitted by means of a different communication protocol such as TCP (transmission control protocol).”, e.g. see [0020]; prioritizing the transmission and display of the medical image by assigning it to a high-speed “UDP (user datagram protocol)” that immediately overwrites the display buffer, while intentionally delaying the “TCP” (annotation layer) by holding it for a late memory buffer if the system is updating, e.g. see [0045]-[0046])
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 the teachings of Dala and Shaw to include displaying an image excluding the annotation information or the measurement value as a highest priority as taught by Yoshidome, for the purposes of “minimiz[ing] the load of the transmission band for transmitting a large volume moving image information” (Yoshidome [0020]).
Regarding claim 6, Dala and Shaw teach the method of claim 1 as described above.
Dala further teaches:
wherein the specifying of the medical information includes segmenting the medical information based on a data amount of the medical information and a network status of the resource; and (“A partial upload of data may be appropriate in circumstances where a wireless data connection is slow and/or unreliable. In such circumstances, the upload to the mobile handheld device 150 may be conducted in bursts, with one image downloaded at a time.”, e.g. see [0207])
Dala and Shaw do not teach:
transmitting the segmented medical information to the resource based on a priority of the segmented medical information
However, Yoshidome in the analogous art teaches:
transmitting the segmented medical information to the resource based on a priority of the segmented medical information (“The image layers managing means 12 divides the display screen (see FIG. 3) according to the network traffic…into 1 through n ( a plurality of) image layers,”, e.g. see [0034]; “The communication selecting means 13 monitors the communication load situation of the network NW and the quantity of data that each image layer uses”, e.g. see [0037]; prioritizing the transmission and display of the medical image by assigning it to a high-speed “UDP (user datagram protocol)” that immediately overwrites the display buffer, while low priority text segments are sent via “TCP”, which is intentionally delayed/held if the network is busy by holding it for a late memory buffer if the system is updating, e.g. see [0045]-[0046])
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 the teachings of Dala and Shaw to include transmitting the segmented medical information to the resource based on a priority of the segmented medical information as taught by Yoshidome, for the purposes of “minimiz[ing] the load of the transmission band for transmitting a large volume moving image information” (Yoshidome [0020]).
Regarding claim 7, Dala, Shaw and Yoshidome teach the method of claim 6 as described above.
Dala further teaches:
wherein the segmenting of the medical information includes: when a display of related medical information associated with target medical information is requested by a user, (a physician requesting related secondary data to accompany the primary target data; “the server, working in concert with the console, accesses and indexes historic data files or secondary data pertaining to a particular patient. On demand from the physician, such historic data may also be delivered to the handheld device to allow the physician to do a chronological comparison of data.”, e.g. see [0232])
classifying the related medical information into a plurality of groups; and identifying a priority between the classified groups (“In a further embodiment, data from a critical lab results database, medical images, physiological variable plotting (such as EKG and respiration), recent prescriptions, and a summary of the patient's previous medical history may be assembled into a message by the console, with each of these components forming a separate data layer of the message.”, e.g. see [0257]; “the patient medical file 2500 is separated into three layers, a demographic layer 2501…a data layer 2502…and a prescription layer 2503”; the server identifies priority by decrypting only the physiological/image layers for immediate processing while sending the other layers on without processing based on the routing rules, e.g. see [0254], [0257])
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Reference Wimpenney (GB 2410390 A) discloses transmitting image data processed in accordance with image processing parameters received from the receiving device. Reference Kojo (US 2009/0217166 A1) discloses a video editing apparatus, terminal device and a GUI program transmission method. Reference Morard (US 2023/0245317 A1) discloses low latency interactive segmentation of medical images within a web-based deployment architecture. Reference Nixon (WO 9836335 A2) discloses process control system using a layered-hierarchy control strategy distributed into multiple control devices.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Aaisha Abdullah whose telephone number is (571)272-5668. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Peter Choi can be reached on (469) 295-9171. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/A.A./
/PETER H CHOI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3681
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