DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This action is final.
This action is in response to the amendments filed on 12/23/2025.
Claims 1-20 are pending and have been considered.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for Claims 3-7, 10-12, 17-20 are withdrawn.
Claims 1, 8, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harvill et al US 20130060654 A1, in view of Summitt et al WO 2011163410 A1, PCT/US2011/041515
Claims 2, 9, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harvill et al US 20130060654 A1, in view of Summitt et al WO 2011163410 A1, in further view of Sablatnig R., A Highly Adaptable Concept for Visual Inspection, Thesis, Vienna Univ of Tech. 1997 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Sablatnig/publication/2851080_A_Highly_Adaptable_Concept_For_Visual_Inspection/links/0c96051e7f58a475b1000000/A-Highly-Adaptable-Concept-For-Visual-Inspection.pdf
Claims 4, 11, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harvill et al US 20130060654 A1, in view of Summitt et al WO 2011163410 A1, In further view of Buyukdemircioglu et al, Semi-Automatic 3D City Model Generation from Large-Format Aerial Images, Int Journal of Geo-Information, Aug 2018
The rejection on claims 3, 5-7, 10, 12-14, 17 , 19, 20 is withdrawn.
Claims 3, 5-7, 10, 12-14, 17 , 19, 20 are objected as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but could be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Response to Amendments/Arguments
The Examiner thanks the Applicant for the Amendments and Arguments filed on 12/23/2025 which have been considered and which help clarifying the claimed invention and advance prosecution. Applicant’s arguments have been considered but have not been found persuasive. To start, Applicant contends that it should be clear from Claim 1 that the Applicant’s "manufactured test physical product" (which is compared to determine difference from the interactive digital design) is not the same as the Applicant’s "physical product received from the manufacturer”(that corresponds to the interactive digital design). In view of the specification (“[0468] Before high quality renderings of an asset can be generated and used on a website, a test is usually performed to determine whether a manufacturer can indeed manufacture a product corresponding to the asset correctly and precisely. For simplicity of the description, the manufacturer is also referred to herein as a maker of physical products.“ The “test” is performed to determine whether a manufacturer can produce a product corresponding to the design, without defining any structural distinction between a test physical product and a physical product. Under BRI terms are given their ordinary meaning in light of the specification, and differences in wording must reflect structural or functional distinctions, not merely labels or stages. The claim does not define any structural of functional distinction between the “test physical product” and “physical product”. Rather, both recitations refer broadly to a physical item being manufactured and received by the system. Under the BRI, these terms encompass the same class of subject matter, i.e. a physical product and differ only in context of what processing the system would apply to them. Under BRI “test physical product” = “physical product used in a testing context. Accordingly they do not impose distinct limitations.
Applicant also makes an argument re how the reference uses markup indicating the differences. The reference implies the markup is a consequence of the differences (beyond a threshold) between the digital and physical compared products by disclosing adjustments, calibration etc. Additional explanation is added to each claim, to clarify interpretation of each limitation, in addition to the claim interpretation which was provided at the beginning of the First Office Action.
Applicant also argues “motivation to combine is incorrect because, as amply described in the Applicants' specification, the objectives of the Applicants' approach are to reduce the differences between an interactive digital design and a physical product. The motivation alleged by the Office for allowing customers to view the products from multiple perspectives is irrelevant to the Applicants' approach. “ The argument has not been found persuasive. There may be many motivations to combine – any motivation that a POSITA would have to combine, motivation is not limited to the Applicant’s objectives mentioned in the specification.
Information Disclosure Statement (IDS)
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/08/2025, 01/02/2026, 01/28/2026, and 02/27/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97.
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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) are summarized as follows:
i. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
ii. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
iii. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
iv. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims that share substantially similar limitations (even though not verbatim) are grouped and analyzed together; the analysis is done on the claim with most comprehensive limitations.
The following convention is used to indicate claim dependency: Inside the brackets following the examined claim number one indicates the claim from which the examined claim depends: for example, 2 (1) indicates claim 2 depends on claim 1.
Claim Interpretation
In Broadest reasonable Interpretation, the limitations of independent claims 1, 8, 15 are interpreted as performing a visual inspection on a manufactured test article (sample, prototype) to identify and mark above threshold/tolerance differences compared to target design, communicate markings for the manufacturing of a corrected product; its photographs transformed into a digital representation and graphics for display. The first part (inspecting prototype, indicating corrections needed) would be recognize by a POSITA as being common to many quality control systems where visual/metrological inspection/verification takes place on prototypes/samples, in one or multiple iterations before obtaining an asset meeting all specifications (within tolerances). The second part if also common in generating representations and computer graphical from images, which users can manipulate from various perspectives – examples are in various fields, ranging from custom prototypes, to organ/body scans which a doctor can view in different perspectives for diagnostic or creating prosthetic systems.
Claims 1, 8, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harvill et al US 20130060654 A1, hereinafter HAR in view of Summitt et al WO 2011163410 A1, PCT/US2011/041515 hereinafter SUM.
Regarding Claims 1, 8, 15 HAR discloses
a custom product computer system generator comprising: a memory unit; one or more processors; and a custom product computer storing one or more instructions, which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform: { [0014] FIG. 1A illustrates an example of an implementation of a product customization system 100. The system may include one or more consumer computing devices 102, (such as 102a, 102b, . . . , 102n) wherein each computing device has at least one processing unit, memory, some persistent memory, some other memory, a display device and input/output devices}
upon receiving a test physical product manufactured for an interactive digital design: determining whether one or more differences between the test physical product and the interactive digital design exceed one or more thresholds; { [0035] The system may then receive the Physical Reference Product (132) and use the photographic and computational methods described in the Intake Flow to map each Design area to the physical product.; [0036] The system then performs a reflection process 134 in which the system uses the mapping from the Intake Flow to validate the manufacturer's Product Description, set tolerances for physical position, orientation, color and application of the customized elements. The reflection process uses the manufacturing of Reference Product to adjust, calibrate, and accept (or reject) a candidate product.
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} In BRI and in view of the specification the system receives a physical product manufactured for test purposes specifically to be compared and determine if differences between test product and interactive design are to large. (Spec [219] “a test needs to be performed to determine a manufacturer can manufacture a physical product corresponding to the asset”. The reference discloses a similar fact– it receives a physical article (Physical Reference Product) which is physical and is photographed (to obtain digital representations for comparison) – to determine differences (by computational methods are used to map to various areas of the design and followed by a reflection process) and assessing (by reflection) if differences exceed thresholds (which is disclosed implicitly by what causes to action that follows, which is to do adjustments/calibration/rejection).
in response to determining that one or more differences between the test physical product and the interactive digital design exceed one or more thresholds: automatically generating markup definition data indicating the one or more differences between the test physical product and the interactive digital design that exceed the one or more thresholds; transmitting the markup definition data to a manufacturing entity to cause the manufacturing entity to manufacture a physical product that corresponds to the interactive digital design; { {[0036] The system then performs a reflection process 134 in which the system uses the mapping from the Intake Flow to validate the manufacturer's Product Description, set tolerances for physical position, orientation, color and application of the customized elements. The reflection process uses the manufacturing of Reference Product to adjust, calibrate, and accept (or reject) a candidate product; [0035] The system may then automatically transmits Design Area Markups (130) and assembly instructions to the Manufacturer for the manufacturing of custom product with markup, this product may be called Reference Product.}
Determining that one or more differences between the test physical product and the interactive digital design exceed one or more thresholds is interpreted as the reflection process to adjust, calibrate, reject – adjustments and calibration implying that are differences to compensate, and those are above threshold (otherwise may not need these corrections) A POSITA in metrology (where test products are compared to design) would have understood that such adjustment/calibration is performed when the differences exceed acceptable limits or tolerances (i.e. thresholds) as comparison of measured deviation to allowable bounds is fundamental in metrology and calibration process (see e.g.
TO ADJUST, OR NOT TO ADJUST https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adjust-kevin-radzik-asq-cct#:~:text=What%20is%20an%20adjustment%20threshold,%E2%80%9Cout%20of%20tolerance%E2%80%9D%20conditions. Which explains that adjustment decisions are made when deviations exceed a tolerance threshold) “What is an adjustment threshold? An adjustment threshold is the level, typically expressed as a “percentage of the tolerance,” at which an item being calibrated will be adjusted to “match” the nominal value. A calibration adjustment can be time consuming, so it would make sense to have some sort of rule as to when we will decide to adjust an instrument.
I’ve heard stories of various statistical models that have been used to set thresholds at different levels and they’ve all seemed quite valid, however, I’ve seen very little of the actual models that I’ve heard so much about. The military has historically used a 70% rule. That is to say that if the deviation from the nominal exceeds 70% of the tolerance, then the item should be adjusted. As we will see later the 70% rule actually represents a good balance of adjustments vs. “out of tolerance” conditions.” And other sections of the article; automatically generating markup definition data indicating the one or more differences between the test physical product and the interactive digital design that exceed the one or more thresholds is interpreted as the Design area markups which follows t which reflect the adjustments, calibration (implicitly the differences above threshold in some characteristics); transmitting the markup definition data to a manufacturing entity to cause the manufacturing entity to manufacture a physical product that corresponds to the interactive digital design is interpreted as transmission of Design Area Markups to cause the manufacturing of the Reference product.
upon receiving the physical product from the manufacturing entity: taking a plurality of photographs depicting the physical product; { The system may then receive the Physical Reference Product (132) and use the photographic and computational methods described in the Intake Flow to map each Design area to the physical product.} Claim terms are interpreted according to their plain meaning as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, unless he specification provides a special definition. Receiving a physical product is interpreted as Receive physical Reference Product. In BRI there is a physical product received from manufacturing and it is photographed.
automatically generating, based on, at least, the digital representation of the physical product, one or more graphical interactive representations of the interactive digital design and causing displaying the one or more graphical interactive representations on a display device. {The system may then use photographic and computational methods (136) described in the intake flow to digitally remove the markup (which is described in more detail in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/925,716 filed on Oct. 26, 2007 and entitled "Product Modeling System and Method" and 12/546,582 filed on Aug. 24, 2009 and entitled "Product Customization System and Method" and 12/511,910 filed on Jul. 29, 2009 entitled "Product Customization System and Method", the entirety of all of which are incorporated herein by reference) from photographic images and automatically generate interactive assets that render a representation of the customizable product. This set interactive assets may be called the Product Views, or view; see also block 109a User Interface, in Fig 1B. Persistent Design Data in Fig 1B} Fragment of 1B is shown below. Digital representation of the physical product interpreted as Persistent Design Data. In broadest reasonable interpretation Display device is interpreted as the User Interface which includes a display.
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This is in fact explicit In view of the 12/546582 (incorporated by reference) wherein [0077] “synthesizes an image of the manufactured product that is then displayed to the user/consumer.”}
HAR does not teach, however SUM teaches
generating, based on the plurality of photographs, a composite image file that captures one or more components of the physical product; porting the composite image file to authoring tools to automatically generate a digital representation of the physical product; [Claim 7, The method of claim 5 further comprising: taking a plurality of photographs of the portion of the patient from a camera; wherein the obtaining the digital representation of the portion of the patient is from the plurality of photographs.; [p. 47 bottom and p. 48] Because of these drawbacks, photo grammetry is the preferred method for obtaining the surface and marking data for the patient. The scan data is converted into a usable surface file that can be read by the CAD program. More specifically, the surface data from scan of the body or limb may be referenced in order to extrapolate the shape of the body or limb through a reconstruction process. The reconstruction process uses an algorithm that connects the adjacent points, known as a point cloud, with lines from the scanned body or limb data to construct a continuous surface from many small polygon shapes that form a polygon model. The data produced by the reconstruction process is a continuous three dimensional digital representation that closely matches the surface of the body or limb. An example of the software used to perform the scanner data reconstruction process is Geomagic Studio by GeoMagic and Pro Scan Tools which is a plug in module for Pro/Engineer by Parametric Technology Corporation. The reconstruction surface file for the body or limb is input into the CAD program for the cast or brace design.}
In addition, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to combine the teachings of HAR/SAB, using photographs to display the product on the website and teaching of SUM, combining multiple photos for processing in order to create a digital representation and graphics for viewing. One would have been motivated to do so, in order to obtain the advantage of allowing customers to view products in multiple perspectives/views for better understanding of product qualities. As far as the visual representation of the object, both HAR and SUM benefit from similar methods to transform photograms into digital models and graphics and implemented through well-known computer technologies in the same or similar context, thus combining their features as outlined above using such well-known computer technologies (i.e., conventional software/hardware configurations), would be reasonable, according to one of ordinary skill in the art. Since the elements disclosed by HAR and SUM would function in the same manner in combination as they do in their separate embodiments, the results of the combination would be predictable.
Accordingly, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious over HAR in view of SUM.
Claims 2, 9, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harvill et al US 20130060654 A1, hereinafter HAR in view of Summitt et al WO 2011163410 A1, hereinafter SUM , in further view of Sablatnig R., A Highly Adaptable Concept for Visual Inspection, Thesis, Vienna Univ of Tech. 1997 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Sablatnig/publication/2851080_A_Highly_Adaptable_Concept_For_Visual_Inspection/links/0c96051e7f58a475b1000000/A-Highly-Adaptable-Concept-For-Visual-Inspection.pdf , hereinafter SAB.
Regarding Claims 2(1), 9(8), 16(15) HAR/SUM disclose the limitations of the parent claim. HAR/SUM does not disclose, however SAB discloses
wherein determining whether one or more differences between the test physical product and the interactive digital design exceed one or more thresholds comprises determining whether a size of the test physical product and the interactive digital design is within a first threshold, whether a scale of the test physical product and the interactive digital design is within a second threshold, whether a color of the test physical product and the interactive digital design is within a third threshold, or whether a pattern of the test physical product and the interactive digital design is within a fourth threshold; and wherein one or more reasons for incompatibility between the test physical product and the interactive digital design include one or more of: incorrect scaling, incorrect stretching, incorrect fitting, or incorrect processing by the manufacturing entity.
{ see at least p. 7 at the bottom
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p.34 middle, Fig 3.2.
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The above disclose the types of mismatches and tolerances, which are in the two classes, geometric features and properties. In BRI and in view of the specification ‘incorrect’ is interpreted ‘not within tolerances’.
In addition, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to combine the teachings of HAR/SUM, which teaches comparing test product and digital model to determine significant differences and where the case do markups for adjustment/calibration and further teaches of SAB which teaches on-line inspection systems which detects if physical prototypes match within tolerances for various attributes. One would have been motivated to do so, in order to obtain the advantage of making the precise comparisons on attributes that matter the most to the quality that is relevant to the user – in this particular color geometrical patterns and color. Both are address visual quality inspection and processing implemented through well-known computer technologies in the same or similar context, thus combining their features as outlined above using such well-known computer technologies (i.e., conventional software/hardware configurations), would be reasonable, according to one of ordinary skill in the art. Since the elements disclosed by HAR/SUM and SAB would function in the same manner in combination as they do in their separate embodiments, the results of the combination would be predictable.
Accordingly, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious over HAR/SUM.
Claims 4, 11, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harvill et al US 20130060654 A1, hereinafter HAR in view of Summitt et al WO 2011163410 A1, hereinafter SUM In further view of Buyukdemircioglu et al, Semi-Automatic 3D City Model Generation from Large-Format Aerial Images, Int Journal of Geo-Information, Aug 2018 hereinafter BUY
Regarding claims 4(1), 11(8), 18(15) HAR/SUM disclose the limitations of independent claims 1, 8, 15. They do not disclose however BUY discloses :
automatically generating a digital representation of the physical product by porting the composite image file to authoring tools by: applying a plurality of advanced filters to the composite image file to automatically generate the digital representation of the physical product; wherein the composite image file digitally captures and represents the one or more components of the physical product depicted in the plurality of the photographs; and wherein an advanced filter, of the plurality of advanced filters, is a computer program code that comprises a set of executable commands which, when executed by a computer processor, cause the computer processor to traverse each photograph, of the plurality of photographs, to recognize the one or more components depicted in the plurality of photographs and capture layer data and path data for the one or more components.{see at least [Abstract] large-format aerial images… have been used to develop a workflow for semi-automatic 3D city model generation. The aim of this study is to propose a procedure for the production of 3D city models from existing aerial photogrammetric datasets without additional data acquisition efforts and/or costly manual editing.; [ p7 bottom] BuildingReconstruction, which is used for 3D city model generation in this study, requires building footprints and attributes as input in ESRI Shapefile (.shp) format. The basemaps produced in aerial photogrammetric projects are often stored in CAD formats as standard and every mapping project generally contains more than 200 layers.
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In broadest reasonable interpretation the claim is interpreted as using a set of photographic images to generate digital representation of the photographed physical objects, with segmentation of objects in image and generating a representation with information clustered in different layered based on semantic correlation.
In addition, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to combine the teachings of HAR/SUM, which teaches design for making accurate prototypes and BUY which reillustrates capturing data from photos and representing the information of correlated objects in layers. One would have been motivated to do so, in order to obtain the advantage of independently analyzing each component by correlated features/properties. Both processing are implemented through well-known computer technologies in the same or similar context, thus combining their features as outlined above using such well-known computer technologies (i.e., conventional software/hardware configurations), would be reasonable, according to one of ordinary skill in the art. Since the elements disclosed by HAR/SUM/HAR2 and BOS would function in the same manner in combination as they do in their separate embodiments, the results of the combination would be predictable.
Accordingly, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious over HAR/SUM in further view of BUY.
Prior art made of record
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 11205023 B2
US 10328686 B2
US 20220138361 A1
US 20200382551 A1
US 20100036753 A1
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/A.S./Examiner, Art Unit 2188
/RYAN F PITARO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2188
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