DETAILED ACTION
Acknowledgement is made of the preliminary amendment submitted on 02/28/2025. In virtue of this amendments:
Claims 1-13 are currently amended; and thus,
Claims 1-14 are pending;
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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy of EP22192560.5 filed on 08/29/2022 has NOT been received/retrieved by the office; an attempt on 08/14/2026 to retrieve the document was unsuccessful.
Acknowledgment is made of this application’s status as a 371 of PCT/EP2023/072771 filed on 08/18/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 02/28/2025 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-13 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Regarding claim 1, the claim uses the term “if” which is improper, as it implies there is uncertainty of whether the event will happen, which renders the claim indefinite. The term should be replaced with “when” which refers to the time of a future situation or condition that is certain to happen.
Regarding claims 2-12, the preamble of the claim should read -The system as claimed in claim….-
Regarding claim 13, the claim uses the term “if” which is improper, as it implies there is uncertainty of whether the event will happen, which renders the claim indefinite. The term should be replaced with “when” which refers to the time of a future situation or condition that is certain to happen.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the metes and bounds of the computer-readable medium does not positively limit the invention to non-transitory media, then the computer-readable medium in thus interpreted to include a transitory type medium; as such the claim is drawn to a form of energy. Energy is not one of the four categories of invention and therefore the claim is not statutory. Energy is not a series of steps or acts and thus is not a process. Energy is not a physical article or object and as such is not a machine or manufacture. Energy is not combination of substance and therefore not a composition matter.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-13 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance, this statement is not intended to necessarily state all the reasons for allowance or all the details why the claims are allowed and has not been written to specifically or impliedly state that all the reasons for allowance are set forth (MPEP 1302.14).
Regarding claims 1 and 13, none of the prior art of record alone or in combination thereof discloses or renders obvious all of the claimed limitation recited in the claims, for example:
Prior Art of Record US2020/0221562A1 discloses a lighting system wherein a mobile device is detected (¶57: the lighting fixture scans for proximal presence of one or more mobile device) and determine if a user profile is associated with the detected mobile device (¶58: the lighting fixture determine if there is a settings profile associated with the detected mobile device) and implement the lighting control based on the settings profile. (¶58: the settings profile may store settings preference information such as light preferences for the lighting fixture)
Prior Art of Record US2017/0034559A1 discloses a system wherein a mobile device is detected (¶52: a mobile device is detected within a vicinity of a media device) and determine if a user profile is associated with the detected mobile device (¶53: a different set of media options corresponding to the mobile device are determined) and implement the control based on the settings profile. (¶54: the media device is configured with the different set of media option)
Neither prior art discloses:
detecting whether one or more users are in an environment;
if multiple users are detected to be in said environment,
determining which user of said multiple users is nearest to said system based on shortrange wireless signals received from mobile devices of said multiple users
retrieving a user profile associated with said user nearest to said system, said user profile specifying user preferences
US2017/0034559A1 discloses a conflict resolution resolver (¶46) when two or more mobile device are detected within vicinity; however, the system uses a mobile ID having different priorities to determine which profile to load. (¶46-47); which differs from the claimed invention of using proximity and selecting the closest.
Regarding claims 2-12, the claims are allowed based upon dependency of allowed independent claim 1 and may not be allowable when presented independently without all the claimed limitation of the base claim.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RAYMOND R CHAI whose telephone number is (571)270-0576. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:30AM-5:00PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alexander Taningco can be reached at 571-242-8048. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Raymond R Chai/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2845
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