2020 BRN Discussion, page-19116

Hi Tech,
I haven't been paying attention to the progress of our patent applications, so I had a look at US20170236027 in the USPTO.
The examiner has combined US20170024877 with a journal article by Qaio (Frontiers | A reconfigurable on-line learning spiking neuromorphic processor comprising 256 neurons and 128K synapses | Neuroscience (frontiersin.org) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2015.00141/full ).

As Peter said, we have come upo against an inexperienced examiner who has cited some general description from US20170024877 (the first prior art (PA) document) and then added the features from our claims as if they were disclosed in the prior art document.

Then, to make up the deficiencies in the first prior art document, the examiner has cited Qaio.

However, Qaio is a hybrid analog/digital implementation.

The main novelty of the work proposed, compared to previous analogous approaches (Indiveri et al., 2006; Giulioni et al., 2008; Ramakrishnan et al., 2012; Yu et al., 2012) consists in the integration of analog bi-stable learning synapse circuits with asynchronous digital logic cells and in the embedding of these mixed-signal blocks in a large multi-neuron architecture. The combination of analog and digital circuits, with both analog and digital memory elements, within the same block provides the device with an important set of programmable features, including the ability to configure arbitrary network connectivity schemes. At the analog circuit design level, we present improvements in the neuron and spike-based learning synapses over previously proposed ones (Indiveri et al., 2011; Chicca et al., 2014), which extend their range of behaviors and significantly reduce device mismatch effects.

No doubt our patent attorneys will seek better particulars re the first PA doc against an itemized listing of the specific individual features of our claims, and will be able to distinguish our invention from the combination of the first PA doc and Qaio.

We may or may not need to amend our claims by specifying a digital implementation, or by adding STDP.