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 .
This is a Non-Final Office Action Correspondence in response to U.S. Application No. 19/254,261 filed on 06/30/2025.
Claims 1-20 are pending. Claims 1 and 14 are independent claims.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 06/30/2025 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
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) 1-3, 8-9, 13-16, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mysore et al. (NPL, “Automatically Extracting Action Graphs from Materials Science Synthesis Procedures”, hereinafter “Mysore”) in view of Li et al. (NPL, “Temporal Graph Modeling for Skeleton-based Action Recognition”, hereinafter “Li”).
Regarding claim 1, Mysore teaches a processor-implemented method, the method comprising:
extracting a feature from action data (Mysore Figure 1 and page 4, i.e., extraction pipeline including features for action graph), the action data being in chronological order and included in a synthesis process (Mysore page 2, first paragraph);
obtaining a vector set corresponding to the action data, based on embedding data of the feature extracted from the action data (Mysore page 4, third paragraph);
generating graph structure data corresponding to the vector set (Mysore page 5 Figure 2 and first paragraph),
obtaining encoding data corresponding to the graph structure data (Mysore page 5, last paragraph, i.e., entity extraction).
Mysore fails to explicitly teach the generating graph structure data corresponding to the vector set is based on time information of the action data. However, Li teaches generating graph structure data corresponding to the vector set is based on time information of the action data (Li Abstract, i.e., a temporal relation graph).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mysore by incorporating the teachings of Li. The motivation would be to provide an enhanced temporal relation graph to capture complex temporal dynamic for skeleton-based action recognition (Li Abstract).
As to claim 2, Mysore as modified by Li also teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the generating the graph structure data comprises:
determining a node corresponding to respective segments of action data (Mysore page 1, last paragraph); and
determining an edge between determined nodes (Mysore page 1 last paragraph), based on the time information of the action data (Li page 2, second paragraph).
As to claim 3, Mysore as modified by Li also teaches the method of claim 2, wherein the determined node comprises a first node corresponding to first action data (Mysore page 2, first paragraph), and wherein a first node feature of the first node comprises a vector corresponding to the first action data (Mysore page 4 second paragraph).
As to claim 8, Mysore as modified by Li also teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising:
obtaining property data, the property data being a result from a prediction from the synthesis process, based on the encoding data corresponding to the graph structure data (Mysore page 4, second paragraph).
As to claim 9, Mysore as modified by Li also teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising:
generating an extracted feature extracted from the action data, based on the encoding data corresponding to the graph structure data for nodes corresponding to respective segments of the action data (Mysore page 4, second paragraph).
Claim 13 corresponds to claim 1 and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 14, Mysore and Li also teaches an electronic device, comprising:
processors configured to execute instructions; and
a memory storing the instructions, wherein execution of the instructions configures the processors to perform that same method as recited in claim 1.
Claim 14 is similarly rejected.
Claim 15 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 2 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 16 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 3 and is similarly rejected.
Claim 20 recites the limitations substantially similar to those of claim 8 and is similarly rejected.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-7, 10-12, and 17-19 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.
The features of the claim limitations included in claims 4-7, 9-12, and 17-19 in combination with the other limitations recited in the context of their respective base claim(s) is allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See Form PTO-892.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDER KHONG whose telephone number is (571)270-7127. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8am-5pm EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Charles Rones can be reached on (571)272-4085. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ALEXANDER KHONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2168
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