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 .
DETAILED ACTION
The Action is responsive to the Request for Continued Examination filed on 5/11/2026 incorporating the Amendments and Remarks filed on 4/13/2026. Claims 1-20 are pending claims. Claims 1, 13, and 17 are written in independent form.
Claim Objections
Claim 17 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 17 appears to recite a typographical error by being amended to recite twice the limitation of “the digital properties being attributes of the at least one affected asset that do not change when the at least one affected asset is migrated from one format to another”. It is noted that similar independent claims 1 and 13 removed the first recitation while adding the second recitation in a different location in the claims and a similar recitation to that of claims 1 and 13 is understood as the intent for Claim 17.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claim(s) 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Non-Patent Literature O'Sullivan, J. et al., "Towards Automated Digital Preservation through Preservation Action Registries." Archiving Conference. Vol. 17, Society for Imaging Science and Technology, 2020 (Year: 2020). and further in view of Anand et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2006/0053181, hereinafter referred to as Anand) and Matsuhara et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2004/0190045, hereinafter referred to as Matsuhara).
Regarding Claim 1:
O’Sullivan teaches a computer-implemented method of automatically preserving digital documents stored in a digital preservation system, comprising, at least one or more computer devices of the digital preservation system:
Receiving, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, an indication of a change to at least one selected from a group consisting of configuration data and tools of the digital preservation system;
O’Sullivan teaches “an automated periodic check for pertinent changes to the Preservica registry, i.e. changes to Preservation Actions, Business Rules or RuleSets that form part of the chain of Preservation Policy configured within the system” (Page 9 Column 2).
Automatically determining, by processing the indication by the one or more computing devise of the digital preservation system, at least one affected asset which is stored by the digital preservation system and is affected by the change,
O’Sullivan teaches “to determine how the change should be retroactively applied to existing content, we created a new PAR-like entity to describe a set of Recommended Processes, with some assessment of priority to allow the system to make an automated decision about what processes to trigger.” and “a ‘Re-Migrate’ process that instructed the system to create new access representations for all affected records” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching determining which existing content the change should be retroactively applied to and at least one affected record asset.
Wherein the at least one affected asset comprises a first representation and a second representation;
O’Sullivan teaches application of policy where an original Kodak PhotoCD preservation representation being normalized to TIFF as a second representation, and also “[creating] an access representation, which is in JPEG format” (Page 8 Column 2) thereby teaching the assets in at least first and second representations.
Automatically performing, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system using a tool of the digital preservation system, at least one action on the at least one affected asset,
O’Sullivan teaches “an automated and dynamically applied Preservation Policy” (Page 10 Column 2) and “to determine how the change should be retroactively applied to existing content, we created a new PAR-like entity to describe a set of Recommended Processes, with some assessment of priority to allow the system to make an automated decision about what processes to trigger” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching automatically applying/performing the triggered process/action of the preservation policy on the affected content/assets.It is noted that “a tool” is not defined in the specification and therefore “a tool of the digital preservation system” is being given its broadest reasonable interpretation and is understood as any part of the digital preservation system that can perform steps. It is also noted that the specification states “The digital preservation system may comprise one or more tools for performing one or more operations on data stored within the digital preservation system” (Para. [0008]) which supports the broadest reasonable interpretation.
O’Sullivan further teaches “One use case is for an expert “Trusted Institution” to describe some institutional knowledge or policy using the PAR data model, and to publish it using a PAR API. Once this has happened, an “Inexperienced User” without any specific format expertise, using a system that can read and implement PAR data, can select that policy and apply it, knowing that it has approval from the Trusted Institution, and can expect their system to apply the policy to all new content.” (Page 6 Column 2), “Different decisions may also be made if the content in question is on fast, cheap to access storage or if it is within a valuable public facing collection than if it is on off-line or expensive to access storage or in a closed or embargoed collection.” (Page 7 Column 1), and “This work has also revealed questions about the Digital Preservation system itself, and how its finite compute, memory and storage resources should be allocated to performing different tasks.” (Page 10 Column 2 – Page 11 Column 1). Therefore, O’Sullivan is teaching using computers in the system for performing different tasks.
Wherein the at least one action is performed on only one of the first representation and the second representation and
O’Sullivan teaches application of policy where an original Kodak PhotoCD preservation representation being normalized to TIFF as a second representation, and also “[creating] an access representation, which is in JPEG format” (Page 8 Column 2) thereby teaching the assets in at least first and second representations and only performing an action to create an access representation in JPEG format from TIFF.O’Sullivan further teaches applying another change of policy example of “a change in advice where JPEG was deprecated and PNG became the only acceptable access format” (Page 9 Column 2).
Wherein performing the determined at least one action includes determining and storing the digital properties of the at least one affected asset in metadata of the at least one affected asset,
O’Sullivan teaches “an automated and dynamically applied Preservation Policy” (Page 10 Column 2) and “to determine how the change should be retroactively applied to existing content, we created a new PAR-like entity to describe a set of Recommended Processes, with some assessment of priority to allow the system to make an automated decision about what processes to trigger” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching automatically applying/performing the triggered process/action of the preservation policy on the affected content/assets.
O’Sullivan further teaches the actions including determining and storing the digital properties by teaching “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching processing the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content to determine and store properties of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content as new PNG content, and at least first and second properties of the affected asset as being the format of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content and the new format as being PNG. O’Sullivan further teaches storing additional properties of each generation of content such as metadata describing the format group, compression type, colour space, x sampling frequency, image width, sampling frequency unit, byte order, image height, etc. (Figure 5 on Page 9).
It is noted that the term “digital properties” is given its broadest reasonable interpretation because a property is merely any descriptive information about or associated with the digital object it is describing.
the digital properties being attributes of the at least one affected asset that do not change when the at least one affected asset is migrated from one format to another;
O’Sullivan teaches determining and storing the properties by teaching “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching processing the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content to determine and store properties of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content as new PNG content. O’Sullivan teaches at least first and second properties of the affected asset as being the format of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content and the new format as being PNG. O’Sullivan further teaches storing additional properties of each generation of content such as metadata describing the format group, compression type, colour space, x sampling frequency, image width, sampling frequency unit, byte order, image height, etc. (Figure 5 on Page 9). By teaching properties of the tiff format group including a compression type of “uncompressed” and a colour space of “RGB”, and another representation in Figure 5 as a .jpg, which is also an uncompressed format type with colour space of “RGB”, O’Sullivan is teaching at least some of the determined properties of the affected asset as not changing, or being preserved, via performance of the one or more preservation actions. O’Sullivan also teaches an additional property that does not change as being the file name “fmt-211 (Kodak PhotoCD)[1]” being consistent between the .pcd, .tiff, and .jpg copies.
Preserving, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, the at least one affected asset by performing the one or more preservation actions on the at least one affected asset causing the at least one affected asset to change format;
O’Sullivan teaches “the original preservation representation has a single logical piece of content, the image itself” and “following the policy that we configured, this is normalized to TIFF, creating a second generation of the content…[and] to create an access representation, which is in JPEG format” (Page 8 Column 2). O’Sullivan further teaches business rules where “the allowable purposes are for creation of new preservation copies of the original content, or for new access copies of the original content” (Page 7 Column 1). Therefore O’Sullivan teaches preserving the affected asset(s), based on the determined one or more preservation actions from the business rules, using at least the format properties to normalize and create new copies in different formats that preserve the original content.
O’Sullivan explicitly teaches all of the elements of the claimed invention as recited above except:
Validating, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, the one or more preservation actions performed on the at least one affected asset,
validating by comparing, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, (i) the digital properties of the at least one affected asset determined before the one or more preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected asset stored in the metadata of the at least one affected asset with (ii) the digital properties of the at least one affected asset extracted after the one or more preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected asset causing the at least one affected asset to change format.
However, in the related field of endeavor of monitoring and managing archive operations, Annand teaches:
Validating, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, the one or more preservation actions performed on the at least one affected asset.
Anand teaches validating whether the archive was successful based on properties of the archival action including a comparison of the number of records being transmitted to the number of records successfully received at the storage location (Para. [0256]).
Anand also teaches “validation parameters of the protected objects at the production location obtained in block 3503 and the validation parameters of the objects at the storage location obtained in block 3505 are compared to confirm that the objects located at the storage location match the protected objects located at the production location” (Para. [0215]).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Anand and O’Sullivan at the time that the claimed invention was effectively filed, to have combined the confirmation of a successful archive operation, as taught by Anand, with the systems and methods for digital preservation, as taught by O’Sullivan.
One would have been motivated to make such combination because Anand teaches determining if a task of an archive job was successful, and remediating the unsuccessful job with an archive makeup job (Abstract) and it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art that having a failsafe for when an action is not successful would improve the robustness and reliability of the archival system.
Anand and O’Sullivan explicitly teach all of the elements of the claimed invention as recited above except:
validating by comparing, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, (i) the digital properties of the at least one affected asset determined before the one or more preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected asset stored in the metadata of the at least one affected asset with (ii) the digital properties of the at least one affected asset extracted after the one or more preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected asset causing the at least one affected asset to change format.
However, in the related field of endeavor of image processing, Matsuhara teaches:
validating by comparing, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, (i) the digital properties of the at least one affected asset determined before the one or more preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected asset stored in the metadata of the at least one affected asset with (ii) the digital properties of the at least one affected asset extracted after the one or more preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected asset causing the at least one affected asset to change format.
Matsuhara teaches “A file converter 265 converts the format of a file in the memory 261 to, for example, compact PDF format. It is possible to convert it to a format such as tag image file format (TIFF) or Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format. It may also be converted to one of a plurality of formats.” (Para. [0034]) where “the second processing (or file conversion in this example) is performed simultaneously. Preferably, the host computer 6 receives the image data subjected to the second processing, and the screen for selection shown in FIG. 7 to check the received image data and the original image data. The files before and after the processing are shown at the left and right side in the screen, and the user who issued the print job observes and compares the image data before and after the processing to confirm the result of the second processing (file conversion, color conversion, OCR and encoding, or the like) performed during the printing by the image processing apparatus (MFP).” (Para. [0044]).
O’Sullivan further teaches properties extracted after performing preservation actions by teaching “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1), thereby teaching processing the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content to determine and store properties of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content as new PNG content, where storing additional properties of each generation of content before and after preservation actions are performed on the at least one affected as, such as metadata describing the format group, compression type, colour space, x sampling frequency, image width, sampling frequency unit, byte order, image height, etc. (Figure 5 on Page 9).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan at the time that the claimed invention was effectively filed, to have combined the comparison of image data before and after the processing to confirm he result of the file conversion, as taught by Matsuhara, with the confirmation of a successful archive operation, as taught by Anand, with the systems and methods for digital preservation, as taught by O’Sullivan.
One would have been motivated to make such combination because Matsuhara teaches “an advantage of the present invention is that a plurality of processings can be used more easily in an image processing apparatus” (Para. [0013]) including the example of “a user of the host computer 6 instructs file conversion as the second processing at the same time as printing, and sends print data from the host computer 6 with the instruction” (Para. [0038]) and it would be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art that performing other image processing operations in addition to file conversion/migration, would expand the capabilities of the file conversion/migration system taught by the combination of Anand and O’Sullivan.
Regarding Claim 2:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the digital preservation system comprises one or more tools for performing one or more operations on data stored within the digital preservation system,
O’Sullivan teaches “a means for invoking a tool on some input content and mapping the output to something useful” (Page 7 Column 1) and “a decision to use a new tool to perform a migration might not require previously run migrations to be re-performed, but a decision to use a different long-term preservation format might” (Page 6 Column 2). Therefore, O’Sullivan teaches one or more tools for performing operations on data stored in the digital preservation system.
It is noted that the limitation recites intended use language of “…one or more tools for performing…” and is thus not being given patentable weight. Therefore, the limitation is understood as reciting “wherein the digital preservation system comprises one or more tools”. However, for the purpose of compact prosecution, tools that perform operations on stored data have been taken into consideration and addressed above.
The one or more operations including at least one selected from a group consisting of:
Identification of a format of a file;
Determination of digital properties of a file;
Validation of conformance by a file to a particular file format;
Migration of a file from one file format to another;
O’Sullivan teaches “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching a migration of the affected Kodak PhotoCD content from the original JPEG format to a PNG access representation.
Validation that a migration from one file format to another has performed successfully; and
Rendering of content.
Regarding Claim 3:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the indication of a change comprises an indication of a change to one or more of the tools.
O’Sullivan teaches “an automated periodic check for pertinent changes to the Preservica registry, i.e. changes to Preservation Actions, Business Rules or RuleSets that form part of the chain of Preservation Policy configured within the system” (Page 9 Column 2).
Regarding Claim 4:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the digital properties comprise at least one of:
A number of pages,
A number of images,
O’Sullivan teaches storing properties of each generation of content such as metadata describing the number of generations (Figure 7 on Page 9). By teaching tracking each numbered generation of content, O’Sullivan teaches a property as being the number of images associated both with the overall representation and underlying content as well as the number of images within each generation of the underlying content.
An image size,
O’Sullivan teaches storing properties of each generation of content such as metadata describing the format group, compression type, colour space, x sampling frequency, image width, sampling frequency unit, byte order, image height, etc. (Figure 5 on Page 9). By teaching the image width and height as properties, O’Sullivan teaches an image size as a property of the content.
Anand also teaches using validation parameters of objects including “file size” (Para. [0214]).
A period of time of audio, and
A period of time of a video stream.
Regarding Claim 5:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the first representation comprises an editable representation of the at least one affected asset and the second representation comprises a representation of the at least one affected asset that is intended for presentation.
O’ Sullivan teaches “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching an editable representation and another representation intended for presentation. It is noted that both PNG and JPEG formats are both editable as well presentable.
Regarding Claim 6:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the at least one action comprises migration of the at least one affected asset by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system;
O’Sullivan teaches “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching a migration of the affected Kodak PhotoCD content from the original JPEG format to a PNG access representation.
Wherein migration comprises modifying, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, the at least one affected asset by adding a new representation of data of the at least one affected asset, the new representation forming a new generation of the at least one affected asset.
O’Sullivan teaches “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching a migration of the affected Kodak PhotoCD content from the original JPEG format to a PNG access representation/generation.
Regarding Claim 7:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the configuration data of the digital preservation system comprises a file format database and the indication of a change comprises a change to the file format database.
O’Sullivan teaches a file format database and an indication of a change comprising a change to the file format database by teaching storing mappings “between specific File Formats, the preservation Action that can be run, and the allowable purposes (expressed as a Preservation Action Type)” (Page 7 Column 1)
Regarding Claim 8:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the digital preservation system comprises a plurality of predetermined preservation actions and the indication of a change comprises an indication of a change to one or more of the plurality of predetermined preservation actions.
O’Sullivan teaches “Preservica constrains users to perform actions that are defensible as ‘reasonable approaches’…[and] allows multiple Business Rules to be available to run against content of a particular format” (Page 7 Column 1) thereby teaching predetermined preservation actions in the form of Business Rules. O’Sullivan further teaches “we configured an automated periodic check for pertinent changes to the Preservica registry, i.e. changes to Preservation Actions, Business Rules or RuleSets that form part of the chain of a Preservation Policy configured within the system” (Page 9 Column 2) thereby teaching detecting an indication of a change to a predetermined preservation action in the Preservica registry.
Regarding Claim 9:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the digital preservation system comprises one or more user policies and the indication of a change comprises an indication of a change to one or more of the one or more user policies.
O’Sullivan teaches “we configured an automated periodic check for pertinent changes to the Preservica registry, i.e. changes to Preservation Actions, Business Rules or RuleSets that form part of the chain of a Preservation Policy configured within the system” (Page 9 Column 2) and a user interface “to allow an Inexperienced User to ‘subscribe’ to these RuleSets as part of their overall Preservation Policy” (Page 8 Column 1). Therefore, O’Sullivan teaches detecting an indication of a change to a user policy in the Preservica registry.
Regarding Claim 10:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Wherein the at least one affected asset is a multi-part asset and
O’Sullivan teaches an Asset fmt-211 (Kodak PhotoCD) with multiple parts (Page 9 Figures 5 and 7 & Page 10 Figure 10)
Determining, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, a first part of the multi-part asset that is affected by the change and wherein the at least one action is performed only on the first part of the multi-part asset.
O’Sullivan teaches determining “how the change should be retroactively applied to existing content” and “instructed the system to create new access representations for all affected records” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching determining the affected part of the asset and applying the retroactive change to the affected part.
Regarding Claim 11:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Determining, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, a second part of the multi-part asset that is affected by the change and performing at least one different action on the second part of the multi-part asset.
O’Sullivan teaches “the ingest of a single PhotoCD image has triggered a Normalization to TIFF and the creation of a JPEG access representation” where “the event history for the PhotoCD shows the ingest, and separate background processes to create the normalized TIFF and access JPEG copies” (Page 9 Column 1 Figure 5). Therefore, O’Sullivan teaches executing multiple separate background processes operating on the same asset where an asset can have multiple parts.
Regarding Claim 12:
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
Validating, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, whether the at least one affected asset complies with a format specification for an indicated format of the at least one affected asset.
O’Sullivan teaches “application of policy” where “following the policy that we configured…our policy also configured the system to create an access representation, which is in JPEG format” (Page 8 Column 2) thereby teaching a format specified in the policy.
Anand teaches validating whether an action is successful by teaching “In an actual embodiment of the present invention, all jobs have the following properties: action on success/failure, and execute in parallel or only serially” (Para. [0312]).
Therefore, Anand teaches validating the application of policy requiring the JPEG format taught by O’Sullivan.
Regarding Claim 13:
Some of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 1.
Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach:
One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-readable instructions configured to cause one or more computing devices of a digital preservation system to perform operations.
O’Sullivan teaches a “Digital Preservation system…and how its finite compute, memory and storage resources should be allocated to performing different tasks” (Page 10 Column 2).
Regarding Claim 14:
All of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 10.
Regarding Claim 15:
All of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 11.
Regarding Claim 16:
All of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 12.
Regarding Claim 17:
Some of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 1.
A Matsuhara, Anand, and O’Sullivan further teach a computing system comprising:
One or more processors; and
O’Sullivan teaches a “Digital Preservation system…and how its finite compute, memory and storage resources should be allocated to performing different tasks” (Page 10 Column 2).
One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-readable instructions configured to cause one or more processors of the digital preservation system to perform operations, and
O’Sullivan teaches a “Digital Preservation system…and how its finite compute, memory and storage resources should be allocated to performing different tasks” (Page 10 Column 2).
Automatically determine at least one affected asset which is stored by the digital preservation system and is affected by the change by inspecting the binary content of the at least one affected asset,
O’Sullivan teaches “to determine how the change should be retroactively applied to existing content, we created a new PAR-like entity to describe a set of Recommended Processes, with some assessment of priority to allow the system to make an automated decision about what processes to trigger.” and “a ‘Re-Migrate’ process that instructed the system to create new access representations for all affected records” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching determining which existing content the change should be retroactively applied to and at least one affected record asset.O’Sullivan further teaches “One use case is for an expert “Trusted Institution” to describe some institutional knowledge or policy using the PAR data model, and to publish it using a PAR API. Once this has happened, an “Inexperienced User” without any specific format expertise, using a system that can read and implement PAR data, can select that policy and apply it, knowing that it has approval from the Trusted Institution, and can expect their system to apply the policy to all new content.” (Page 6 Column 2), “Different decisions may also be made if the content in question is on fast, cheap to access storage or if it is within a valuable public facing collection than if it is on off-line or expensive to access storage or in a closed or embargoed collection.” (Page 7 Column 1), and “This work has also revealed questions about the Digital Preservation system itself, and how its finite compute, memory and storage resources should be allocated to performing different tasks. We have not addressed how best to schedule these automated changes, or how to ensure they are executed with a suitable level of priority.” (Page 10 Column 2 – Page 11 Column 1). Therefore, O’Sullivan is teaching using a generic computer system which are understood to operate in binary at the lowest level as the foundational machine language of a computer.It is further noted that Anand also teaches storing data “in any format including, but not limited to, binary, Extensible Markup Language (XML), or a database table” (Para. [0191]) and therefore any inspection of digital information stored on a computer in binary format is also an inspection of binary content.
Automatically determine, by the one or more computing devices of the digital preservation system, at least one action to be performed by a tool of the digital preservation system on the at least one affected asset,
O’Sullivan teaches “the period check for changes was configured to also read these Recommended Processes and apply them automatically to previously ingested content. This triggered a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching determining an action to be performed on the affected record assets.
the at least one action comprising determining and storing digital properties of the at least one affected asset,
O’Sullivan teaches “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching processing the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content to determine and store properties of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content as new PNG content. O’Sullivan teaches at least first and second properties of the affected asset as being the format of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content and the new format as being PNG. O’Sullivan further teaches storing additional properties of each generation of content such as metadata describing the format group, compression type, colour space, x sampling frequency, image width, sampling frequency unit, byte order, image height, etc. (Figure 5 on Page 9).
It is noted that the term “digital properties” is given its broadest reasonable interpretation because a property is merely any descriptive information about or associated with the digital object it is describing.
the digital properties being attributes of the at least one affected asset that do not change when the at least one affected asset is migrated from one format to another;
O’Sullivan teaches determining and storing the properties by teaching “[triggering] a second migration process against the Kodak PhotoCD content” where “the outcome was the creation of a new PNG access representation, alongside the ‘original’ JPEG” (Page 10 Column 1) thereby teaching processing the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content to determine and store properties of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content as new PNG content. O’Sullivan teaches at least first and second properties of the affected asset as being the format of the affected Kodak PhotoCD original JPEG content and the new format as being PNG. O’Sullivan further teaches storing additional properties of each generation of content such as metadata describing the format group, compression type, colour space, x sampling frequency, image width, sampling frequency unit, byte order, image height, etc. (Figure 5 on Page 9). By teaching properties of the tiff format group including a compression type of “uncompressed” and a colour space of “RGB”, and another representation in Figure 5 as a .jpg, which is also an uncompressed format type with colour space of “RGB”, O’Sullivan is teaching at least some of the determined properties of the affected asset as not changing, or being preserved, via performance of the one or more preservation actions. O’Sullivan also teaches an additional property that does not change as being the file name “fmt-211 (Kodak PhotoCD)[1]” being consistent between the .pcd, .tiff, and .jpg copies.
Regarding Claim 18:
All of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 10.
Regarding Claim 19:
All of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 11.
Regarding Claim 20:
All of the limitations herein are similar to some or all of the limitations of Claim 12.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s Amendments, filed on 4/13/2026 are acknowledged and accepted.
Response to Arguments
In light of the Amendments and Remarks filed on 4/23/2026 and further in view of the Application’s specification, the 101 rejection of claims 1-20 for being directed to an abstract idea without significantly more has been withdrawn. In particular, Applicant convincingly argues on Pages 13-14 of the Remarks that the claim feature “preserving…the at least one affected asset by performing the one or more preservation actions on the at least one affected asset causing the at least one affected asset to change format” does not recite a mathematical concept because “The MPEP specifically provides that ‘a limitation that is merely based on or involves a mathematical concept described in the specification may not be sufficient to fall into this grouping, provided the mathematical concept itself is not recited in the claim.’ A helpful application of this concept in relation to the present claims is provided in Example 39 of the subject matter eligibility examples. The claim limitation at issue in Example 39 is ‘applying one or more transformations to each digital facial image including mirroring, rotating, smoothing, or contrast reduction to create a modified set of digital facial images.’ The background notes that an ‘expanded training set is developed by applying mathematical transformation functions on an acquired set of facial images.’ Still, the analysis notes that ‘the claim does not recite any mathematical relationship, formulas, or calculations.’ Specifically, the analysis notes that ‘[w]hile some of the limitations may be based on mathematical concepts, the mathematical concepts are not recited in the claims.’ For example, the mathematical transformation functions may include a Laplace transform, a Fourier transform, a logarithm of the image, etc. These mathematical transform functions are not recited in the claims.” (Page 13) and “no specific mathematical operation is recited in the claim” but instead the claims “are similar to "applying one or more transformations" as recited in Example 39 that may be based on mathematical concepts but are not mathematical concepts themselves.” (Page 14).
On pages 16-17 of the Remarks filed on 4/13/2026, Applicant argues, with respect to the 103 rejection and citing Anand Paragraphs [0002], [0032], [0066], and [0213]-[0215], that “based on the disclosure of Anand and O'Sullivan, one of ordinary skill in the art would not be motivated to modify the data preservation system of O'Sullivan to perform validation using the validation parameters as disclosed in Anand because there would not be a reasonable expectation of success.”Applicant’s argument is not convincing because O’Sullivan is being modified using the concept taught by Anand of determining/validating that the job was successful and remediating the unsuccessful job with an archive makeup job (Abstract). The motivation to combine recited does not mention or require the use of any particular validation parameters as Applicant is arguing.
On page 17 of the Remarks filed on 4/13/2026, Applicant argues, with respect to the 103 rejection, that “In contrast [to Matsuhara], the claims are directed to comparing the digital properties that are stored in the metadata and the digital properties that are extracted after a preservation action. Matsuhara does not disclose that the digital properties from the metadata are displayed along with the visual content of the image. Therefore, Matsuhara does not cure the deficiencies of the combination of O'Sullivan and Matsuhara noted above.”Applicant’s argument is not convincing because the previous rejection relied upon O’Sullivan to teach determining/extracting the digital properties of the asset after the preservation action, and therefore it is Matsuhara in combination with O’Sullivan that teaches the argued amended limitation.
On pages 17-18 of the Remarks filed on 4/13/2026, Applicant argues, with respect to the 103 rejection, that “the Office also fails to provide a prima facie case of obviousness because the Office's combination is not based on articulated reasoning with rational underpinning to support obviousness” because “The motivation provided by the Examiner would not lead one of ordinary skill in the art to the combination alleged by the Examiner. The Office contends that one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the disclosure of Matsuhara with the combination of O'Sullivan and Anand because Matsuhara teaches an advantage of the present invention is that a plurality of processings can be used more easily in an image processing apparatus. OA at page 27. However, this advantage is not provided by the feature that is being combined with the disclosure of O'Sullivan and Anand. Specifically, the relevant feature of Matsuhara that the Examiner is using in the rejection is the side by side display of images as shown in FIG. 7 and a user comparing the side by side images. In contrast, the advantage noted above by the Examiner is provided by the simultaneous processing button 51 (shown in FIG. 5) and corresponding simultaneous processing of both printing (first processing) and conversion (second processing). The side by side comparison is only provided after the simultaneous processing is completed, thereby bearing no relationship to the advantage provided by the Examiner.”Applicant’s argument is not convincing because upon further review, it is still understood that one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the disclosures of Matsuhara, O’Sullivan, and Anand given the provided reasoning in the rejection above.
On page 18 of the Remarks filed on 4/13/2026, Applicant argues, with respect to the 103 rejection, that “the advantage alleged by the Examiner is neither needed nor relevant to the combination of O'Sullivan and Anand” because similar to In re Omeprazole Patent Litigation, “in the present case, the Examiners' asserted rationale to combine the references is that a plurality of processings can be used more easily in an image processing apparatus. However, there is simply no need for plurality of processings to take place in the combination of O'Sullivan and Anand. O'Sullivan and Anand are directed to data preservation systems and data protection systems respectively. O'Sullivan is directed to performing a migration from one format to another format and Anand is directed to storing a copy of a physical object produced at a production location. Neither of them have the need to perform multiple operations simultaneously.”Applicant’s argument is moot because the advantage being argued was not relied upon in the motivation to combine O’Sullivan and Anand.
On page 19 of the Remarks filed on 4/13/2026, Applicant argues, with respect to the 103 rejection of Claim 11, that “The Examiner contends that O'Sullivan discloses this feature at page 9 and FIG. 5. However, in the cited portions, two different actions are being performed on the same asset (i.e., a single PhotoCD image). In contrast, the claim requires (based on dependence from claim 10) two different actions performed on two different parts of a multi-part asset. Anand and Masuhara do not cure this deficiency of O'Sullivan. Therefore, claim 11 is allowable for at least the reasons set forth above.”Upon further review for consideration, O’Sullivan’s teaching at Page 9, Column 1, and Figure 5 were still found to teach the argued limitation. As is explained in the rejection above, O’Sullivan teaches executing multiple separate background processes operating on the same asset where an asset can have multiple parts.
On page 19 of the Remarks filed on 4/13/2026, Applicant argues, with respect to the 103 rejection of Claim 12, that “The Examiner contends that O'Sullivan discloses this feature at page 8 column 2. However, in the cited portion, O'Sullivan only teaches creating an access representation in JPEG format, not validation of "whether the affected asset complies with a format specification for an indicated format of the at least one affected asset." Anand and Masuhara do not cure this deficiency of O'Sullivan. Therefore, claim 12 is allowable for at least the reasons set forth above.”Applicant’s argument is convincing that O’Sullivan alone does not teach the argued limitation because O’Sullivan teaches the application of the policy but not the validation of applying the policy. However, upon further review of the previously cited prior art, since Anand teaches validating whether actions have been performed successfully, Anand in combination with O’Sullivan is found to teach the argued limitation, as is further addressed in the rejection above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Brockway et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 8,346,825) teaches a system and method are provided for verifying data copies and reverifying the copies over the life span of media according to a verification policy. Characteristics of media and use of media are tracked to provide metrics which may be used to dynamically reevaluate and reassign verification policies to optimize media usage. Copies that fail verification operations may be repaired by repeating a storage operation for recent copies or by substituting a close temporal copy of the failed copy.The reference further teaches initiating “a verification operation in accordance with the verification policy, by directing an archive check manager, job manager, copy manager or other component to commence a verification operation” (Col. 12 Line 63 – Col. 13 Line 15) and comparing a first set of metadata to a second set of metadata to determine whether the sets of metadata for the underlying data at two different locations are similar or equivalent (Col. 7 Lines 32 - 60).
Non-Patent Literature O’Sullivan, Jack and Tilbury, Jonathan (2021, March 1). “Using preservation action registries to automate digital preservation” In the Journal of Digital Media Management, Volume 9, Issue 3 <https://hstalks.com/article/6200/using-preservation-action-registries-to-automate-d/?business> teaches how the exchange of file format best practice across the whole digital preservation community, including between suppliers of competing systems, is leading to improved automation. The primary focus of this work is on enabling users without deep technical knowledge to avail themselves of these technologies, so they can focus on the organisation, curation and presentation of their collections. The paper also explores some of the unanswered questions regarding how this automation can be achieved and what part users who do have deep technical knowledge will play in this future.
Non-Patent Literature Bennett, John C. A framework of data types and formats, and issues affecting the long term Preservation of digital material. available at: www. ukoln. ac. uk/services/elib/papers/supporting/# blric: British Library Research and Innovation Centre, 1997 teaches the aim of the study is to develop a framework which can help manage the resolution of the issues associated with the long-term preservation of digital material. Although a great deal has been discussed and written about digital material preservation, there would appear to be no overall structure which brings together the findings of the numerous contributors to the debate, and allows them to be compared. This Report attempts to provide such a structure, whereby it should be possible to identify the essential elements of the preservation debate and to determine objectively the criticality of the other unresolved issues. This Report attempts to identify the most critical issues and employ them in order to determine their affect on preservation practice. Where possible, the management issues and recommended approaches are high-lighted where they occur. For the purposes of clarity, some of the issues are documented as two working papers attached to the report.
Metzer et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2008/0072290) teaches controlling access to a plurality of records and/or documentary materials to be persisted in an electronic archives system are provided. The plurality of records and/or documentary material and all preserved information may be stored and accessed on the basis of user and/or object attributes. The user attributes include group affiliation, ownership, and state (e.g., workflow step and time of day). The object attributes include group affiliation, business role, clearance or access level, and network address from which access is requested. Access to the plurality of records and/or documentary material can be obtained both from within a single security domain as well as across more than one security domain.The reference further teaches “At any time after the AIP has been placed into Managed Storage (also sometimes called Archival Storage), archivists may perform Preservation Processing, which includes transforming the records to authentically preserve them. Policies, business rules, Preservation and Service Plans, and management discretion will drive these tasks. Preservation processing supplements the Preservation Description Information metadata in the archives, and produces new (transformed) record versions.” (Para. [0108]).
Cunningham et al. (U.S. Patent No. 10,970,255) teaches synchronizing data between a customer data management system and a data warehouse system. A data warehouse server may constantly monitor a dynamic metadata flow from the customer data management system, compare it with the metadata in the data storage device, and dynamically update the metadata in the data storage device. The data warehouse server may track activities over time and accumulate a long running history, which may include multiple versions of accounts in the customer data management system, e.g., the account as of today, the account as of yesterday, and another version that was the account two weeks ago.The reference further teaches “a user is looking at an account object via the CRM 130, and may decide to add an extra attribute to it. For example, a color attribute. The data warehouse server 111 may automatically detect that change, dynamically change the schema of data in the data warehouse 110 to reflect that change, and merge the color data with data in the data storage device 112. When the user looks at that account object later, he/she may see the old version and new version.” (Column 3 Lines 42-49).
Gilderman et al. (U.S. Patent No. 10,509696) teaches migration of data from a source data store to a target data store may be monitored for errors. When an error is detected, one or more responsive actions may be identified to modify performance of the migration. In some embodiments, responsive actions may include further analyses to validate the migration. In some embodiments, the responsive actions may be corrective actions to correct the detected error. Once identified, the responsive actions may be performed to modify performance of the migration.The reference further teaches “responsive actions may make retroactive corrections (e.g., reformatting data already copied to the second database)” (Column 14 Lines 18-42 & Claim 9).
Bennett et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2014/0365277) teaches retroactive document retention service including a database comprising rules relating to maintenance of information stored in an archive and retroactively applying the document retention service to one or more data items by modifying a retention time fore ach of the one or more data items.
Slik et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2016/0267103) teaches a system can apply file placement rules to dynamically place files and directories within file system views backed by objects in an object storage system. After detection of an update to a first file system view that causes an update of an object in a storage grid, an object manager begins evaluation of file placement rules against metadata of the object. For each file placement rule that is triggered, the object manager determines identifies gateways that export the first file system view. The object manager then instructs the gateways to update their representations of the first file system view. The disclosed embodiments may be able to scale to managing hundreds of billions of files spanning thousands of file system views, especially in the presence of disconnected operation.The reference further teaches retroactively applying a rules change to create a new representation of a file system (Paras. [0097]-[0102]).
Non-Patent Literature Yu Zhang, "The studies and implementation for conversion of image file format", July 1, 2015, 2015 10th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE) Page(s): 190-193 (Year: 2015) teaches “In this paper, the image file formats and the method of conversion have been studied. Both BMP, GIF image file formats are analyzed . As it is only provided supporting for BMP formation by the VC itself, through the file structure analysis, GIF' s structure is defined in the program. By comparing the color difference between the two models of different file formats, researched two compression algorithm for BMP, GIF format, designed conversion step process, and implemented the image file format conversion from BMP to GIF. After testing, the satisfactory results are obtained in quality of converted image. Image file format conversion algorithm is not only one. Their efficiency and quality are not the same. With the rapid development of computer technology, the image compression algorithms are improved in continuous and the image file formats are constantly modified, such as the GIF 87a and 89a edition version. This study is a foundation for the study on other image file format conversion.” (Page 3 Column 2).
Suzuki et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2003/0093760) teaches “the validity verification process S102 is a step of verifying whether the output (structured document F2) by the XSLT conversion process follows a document type definition D2 after conversion and is performed using the document type definition D2 after conversion. The validity verification process S102 can be performed by the existing software (e.g., XML4C). If the result of the validity verification process S102 is acceptable, a new structured document F3 is generated. If it is not acceptable, document structure correction process S104 is performed for the structured document F2 based on the error content, and the validity verification process S102 is again performed for the corrected structured document F2.” (Para. [0013]) & Fig. 1).
Kalas et al. (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication 2015/0046407) teaches described are systems and methods for preserving digital assets, which assets comprise one or more files. The system and methods prepare a digital file for ingest into an asset management system, store a plurality of copies of the digital file based on a set of storage policies for the digital file, and perform a health check on each copy of the digital file. The system and method may include performing an asset repair on the copies of the digital file that failed the health check as well as the exporting of a digital file.The reference further teaches “file-level metadata may include detailed information specific to each file. File details may include, but are not limited to, file order, file ID, file name, MD5 checksum, file size, file path, ingest date/time, file status, etc.” (Para. [0035]). Kalas teaches “the method 500 receives the submitted ticket for technical validation. In step 520, the method 500 runs the media information and compares attributes” (Para. [0073]).
Gilderman et al. (U.S. Patent No. 10,509,696) teaches errors may be detected and mitigated during the migration of data. Migration of data from a source data store to a target data store may be monitored for errors. When an error is detected, one or more responsive actions may be identified to modify performance of the migration. In some embodiments, responsive actions may include further analyses to validate the migration. In some embodiments, the responsive actions may be corrective actions to correct the detected error. Once identified, the responsive actions may be performed to modify performance of the migration.The reference further teaches “data stored in a source data store may be stored in a data format (e.g., a file format, schema, etc.) that is different the data format used or supported by the target data store, in some embodiments. Data migration, therefore may convert the data from the format of the source data store to the format of the target data store, in one embodiment.” (Column 2 Lines 16-31).
Non-Patent Literature Bauer et al., "Automated Preservation: The Case of Digital Raw Photographs", October 2011, Digital Libraries: For Cultural Heritage, Knowledge Dissemination, and Future Creation - 13th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2011 (Year: 2011) teaches in digital preservation, a common approach for preservation actions is the migration to standardized formats. Full validation of the results of such conversion processes is required to ensure authenticity and trust. This process of quality assurance is a key obstacle to achieving scalability for large volumes of content. In this article, we address the quality assurance process for the preservation of born-digital photographs and validate conversions of raw image formats into standard formats such as Adobe Digital Negative. To achieve this, we rely on a systematic planning framework. We classify requirements that have to be evaluated according to their measurement needs. We extend an existing measurement framework using a combination of tools, image similarity algorithms, and purpose-built plugins. By combining metadata extraction, image rendering and comparison, and perceptual-level quality assurance, we evaluate the feasibility of automating the core part of quality assurance that is often the most costly part of preservation processes.
Juels et al. (U.S. Patent No. 8,346,742) teaches “ checking that the file is correctly formatted by the file system into the second format by verifying transformation from the first format to the second format for randomly-selected portions of the file in the second format.” (Claim 13).
Kodama (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2005/0210083) teaches storing an original file and at least one format converted file of the original file. The storage system includes a storage medium and a file conversion unit which, in response to a request to store an original file, converts the original file to at least one format converted file. The file conversion unit alternatively could be external of the storage system forming a storage system. The storage system stores the original file and the at least one format converted file on said storage medium and manages a relationship between the original file and the format converted file to permit retrieval of either of the original file and the format converted file.
Yoshioka (U.S. Pre-Grant Publication No. 2007/0192609) teaches an electronic image data verification program disclosed herein is capable of detecting presence or absence of a change, specifying a changed portion (the position of a change) if present, and making the presence or absence and the changed portion provable to third parties, by generating partial signature information separately from electronic image information to be registered, by dividing and maintaining the partial signature information, and by clearly separating functions/roles of the electronic image information (original information) and the partial signature information (verification information). The present invention comprises: a partial signature information generation section 40 that uses partial information of electronic image information, to generate partial signature information for specifying presence or absence of a change to the electronic image information and a changed portion if a change has been made; a registration section 70 that registers the electronic image information and the partial signature information generated from the electronic image information; a storage section 80; and a partial signature verification section 50 that uses the electronic image information and the partial signature information registered by the registration section, to verify presence or absence of the change to the electronic image information, or a changed portion if a change has been made to the electronic image information.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT F MAY whose telephone number is (571)272-3195. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:30am to 6pm.
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/ROBERT F MAY/Examiner, Art Unit 2154 6/23/2026
/SYED H HASAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2154
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