CONTIUED EXAMINATION UNDER 37 C.F.R. §1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 9/18/2025 has been entered.
DETAILED ACTION
The United States Patent & Trademark Office appreciates the response filed for the current application that is submitted on 9/18/2025. The United States Patent & Trademark Office reviewed the following documents submitted and has made the following comments below.
Amendment
Applicant submitted amendments on 9/18/2025. The Examiner acknowledges the amendment and has reviewed the claims accordingly.
Applicant Arguments:
In regards to Argument 1, Applicant/s state/s the prior art does not teach on the “estimation circuitry configured to generate an enhancement strength variable from a second color space version of the input image,” therefore, the rejection of 35 U.S.C. 103 should be removed (Remarks, page 8, paragraph 3)
In regards to Argument 2, Applicant/s state/s Pandey teaches stage of the third row does not utilize the final output, which is the result of the defog method used the weighted last square filter of the third row, therefore, the rejection of 35 U.S.C. 103 should be removed.
Examiner’s Responses:
In response to Argument 1 & 2, Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks, filed 9/18/2025, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Svensson et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2016/0155218, hereafter referred to as Svensson) in view of Pandey (NPL “A Fast and Effective vision enhancement method for single foggy image” Engineering Science and Techology, 2021, 1478-1489) in view of Keyu et al (CN 113191971 A, hereafter referred to as Keyu, Google Translation provided in rejection.).
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 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(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived 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:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-4, 8-11, 15-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Svensson et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2016/0155218, hereafter referred to as Svensson) in view of Pandey (NPL “A Fast and Effective vision enhancement method for single foggy image” Engineering Science and Techology, 2021, 1478-1489) in view of Keyu et al (CN 113191971 A, hereafter referred to as Keyu, Google Translation provided in rejection.)
Regarding Claim 1, Svensoon teaches an apparatus comprising: a defogging circuitry configured to generate a defog filter result from a first color space version of an input image (paragraph 24, paragraph 25, Swensson teaches a system for defog images and videos when capture them.); estimation circuitry configured to generate an enhancement strength variable from a second color space version of the input image (since the claim does not define what “strength variable” is, the examiner can interpret to be contrast; paragraph 28, Svensson teaches contract filter be added to the system; paragraph 46, paragraph 50, paragraph 51, Svensson teaches using the contrast on the image to enhance the image to remove fog.);
Swensson does not explicitly disclose the following enhancement engine circuitry configured to generate an enhanced version of the input image from a third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable, where the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image.
Pandey is in the same field of art of image processing and image restoration. Further, Pandey teaches enhancement engine circuitry configured to generate an enhanced version of the input image from a third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable (Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, Pandey teaches that a first image analyzed for fog, the pre-processed image is different, and then refined transmission map is applied, which can be interpreted to another image that is generated, then final third image the final defog output images; Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, POSITA it is understood that the different images in Figure 7 are different from each other and that they are used to enhance the image to remove fog.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Swensson by incorporating the different image format filters in the middle image processing that is taught by Pandey, to make the invention system that captures images and then performs filtering on the remove fog features in the image to generate an output defogged image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since time complexity of the proposed method is much less as compared to the various existing methods and at the same time, quality is also maintained. Also, proposed algorithm does not require a large data set and specific hardware; and to see the effectiveness of the proposed technique, both qualitative and quantitative analysis has been done on synthetic data set as well as on natural dataset.
Swensson in view of Pandey does not explicitly disclose the following where the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image.
Keyu is in the same field of art of image restoration as well defogging image. Further, Keyu teaches where the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image (the Examiner interprets that first color space, second color space, and third color space are not described, and the specification does not provide a clear definition, therefore, the Examiner interpreting that color space can be YUV, which each are individual color space, paragraph 41-paragraph 51, Keyu teaches taking YUV color are different color spaces).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Swensson in view of Pandey by incorporating the different image color channels into the post image processing that is taught by Keyu, to make the invention system that captures images and then performs filtering in the different color channels of the fog features to remove the fog in the image to generate an output defogged image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since the image is restored by recoloring, and an attention module is added to solve the problem of unclear contour boundaries (paragraph 4, Keyu) .
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
In regards to Claim 2, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the enhancement circuitry is configured to concurrently receive the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable as separate inputs (Section 2.1 Filtering based single image defogging algorithm, Pandey teaches filtering the image and the using the defog to determine the best change in the pixel value to enhance images.).
In regards to Claim 3, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the first color space version is a luminance-only color space vesion of the input image, the second color space version is a hue-saturation based color space version of the input image, and the third color space version is a full-color space version of the input image (paragraph 41-paragraph 51, Keyu teaches taking YUV color are different color spaces).
In regards to Claim 4, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the enhancement circuitry is further configured to generate the enhanced version of the input image from the third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result, the enhancement strength variable, and a color correction version of the input image (Section 2.1 Filtering based single image defogging algorithm, Pandey teaches a color distortion of the image based the gain value).
Regarding Claim 8, Svensoon teaches a method comprising: generating, by a defogging engine, a defog filter result from a first color space version of an input image (paragraph 24, paragraph 25, Swensson teaches a system for defog images and videos when capture them.); generating, by an estimation engine, an enhancement strength variable from a second color space version of the input image (since the claim does not define what “strength variable” is, the examiner can interpret to be contrast; paragraph 28, Svensson teaches contract filter be added to the system ), different from the first color space version of the input image (paragraph 46, paragraph 50, paragraph 51, Svensson teaches using the contrast on the image to enhance the image to remove fog.).
Swensson does not explicitly disclose generating, by an enhancement engine, an enhanced version of the input image from a third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable; wherein the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image.
Pandey is in the same field of art of image processing and image restoration. Further, Pandey teaches generating, by an enhancement engine, an enhanced version of the input image from a third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable (Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, Pandey teaches that a first image analyzed for fog, the pre-processed image is different, and then refined transmission map is applied, which can be interpreted to another image that is generated, then final third image the final defog output images; Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, POSITA it is understood that the different images in Figure 7 are different from each other and that they are used to enhance the image to remove fog.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Swensson by incorporating the different image format filters in the middle image processing that is taught by Pandey, to make the invention system that captures images and then performs filtering on the remove fog features in the image to generate an output defogged image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since time complexity of the proposed method is much less as compared to the various existing methods and at the same time, quality is also maintained. Also, proposed algorithm does not require a large data set and specific hardware; and to see the effectiveness of the proposed technique, both qualitative and quantitative analysis has been done on synthetic data set as well as on natural dataset.
Swensson in view of Pandey does not explicitly disclose wherein the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image.
Keyu is in the same field of art of image restoration as well defogging image. Further, Keyu teaches wherein the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image (the Examiner interprets that first color space, second color space, and third color space are not described, and the specification does not provide a clear definition, therefore, the Examiner interpreting that color space can be YUV, which each are individual color space, paragraph 41-paragraph 51, Keyu teaches taking YUV color are different color spaces).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Swensson in view of Pandey by incorporating the different image color channels into the post image processing that is taught by Keyu, to make the invention system that captures images and then performs filtering in the different color channels of the fog features to remove the fog in the image to generate an output defogged image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since the image is restored by recoloring, and an attention module is added to solve the problem of unclear contour boundaries (paragraph 4, Keyu) .
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
In regards to Claim 9, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the enhancement engine concurrently receives the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable as separate inputs (Section 2.1 Filtering based single image defogging algorithm, Pandey teaches filtering the image and the using the defog to determine the best change in the pixel value to enhance images.).
In regards to Claim 10, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses generating a color correction version of the input image (Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, POSITA it is understood that the different images in Figure 7 are different from each other and that they are used to enhance the image to remove fog.).
In regards to Claim 11, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses generating the enhanced version of the input image from the third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result, the enhancement strength variable, and the color correction version of the input image (Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, POSITA it is understood that the different images in Figure 7 are different from each other and that they are used to enhance the image to remove fog.).
Regarding Claim 15, Svensoon teaches a system comprising: a conversion unit circuitry configured to convert a first color space version of an input image to a second color space version of the input image (paragraph 46, Svensson teaches using a processor the processor is circuitry); and a defog module processing circuitry (paragraph 46, Svensson teaches a processor) configured to: generate a defog filter result from the first color space version of the input image (paragraph 24, paragraph 25, Swensson teaches a system for defog images and videos when capture them.); generate an enhancement strength variable from the second color space version of the input image (since the claim does not define what “strength variable” is, the examiner can interpret to be contrast; paragraph 28, Svensson teaches contract filter be added to the system ).
Swensson does not explicitly disclose generate an enhanced version of the input image from a third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable, wherein the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image.
Pandey is in the same field of art of image processing and image restoration. Further, Pandey teaches generate an enhanced version of the input image from a third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable (Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, Pandey teaches that a first image analyzed for fog, the pre-processed image is different, and then refined transmission map is applied, which can be interpreted to another image that is generated, then final third image the final defog output images; Figure 7, Section 4.2 Qualitative Analysis, POSITA it is understood that the different images in Figure 7 are different from each other and that they are used to enhance the image to remove fog.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Swensson by incorporating the different image format filters in the middle image processing that is taught by Pandey, to make the invention system that captures images and then performs filtering on the remove fog features in the image to generate an output defogged image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since time complexity of the proposed method is much less as compared to the various existing methods and at the same time, quality is also maintained. Also, proposed algorithm does not require a large data set and specific hardware; and to see the effectiveness of the proposed technique, both qualitative and quantitative analysis has been done on synthetic data set as well as on natural dataset.
Swensson in view of Pandey does not explicitly disclose wherein the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image.
Keyu is in the same field of art of image restoration as well defogging image. Further, Keyu teaches wherein the first color space version, second color space version, and third color space version are three different color space versions of the input image (the Examiner interprets that first color space, second color space, and third color space are not described, and the specification does not provide a clear definition, therefore, the Examiner interpreting that color space can be YUV, which each are individual color space, paragraph 41-paragraph 51, Keyu teaches taking YUV color are different color spaces).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Swensson in view of Pandey by incorporating the different image color channels into the post image processing that is taught by Keyu, to make the invention system that captures images and then performs filtering in the different color channels of the fog features to remove the fog in the image to generate an output defogged image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since the image is restored by recoloring, and an attention module is added to solve the problem of unclear contour boundaries (paragraph 4, Keyu) .
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
In regards to Claim 16, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the processing circuitry is configured to concurrently process the defog filter result and the enhancement strength variable as separate inputs (Section 2.1 Filtering based single image defogging algorithm, Pandey teaches filtering the image and the using the defog to determine the best change in the pixel value to enhance images.).
In regards to Claim 17, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to generate a color correction version of the input image (Section 2.1 Filtering based single image defogging algorithm, Pandey teaches a color distortion of the image based the gain value).
In regards to Claim 18, Swensson in view of Pandey in view of Keyu discloses wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to generate the enhanced version of the input image from the third color space version of the input image based on the defog filter result, the enhancement strength variable, and the a color correction version of the input image (Section 2.1 Filtering based single image defogging algorithm, Pandey teaches a color distortion of the image based the gain value).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-6, 12-14, 19, 20 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.
Pertinent Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to the applicant’s disclosure.
Irvine et al U.S. Patent Publication No. 2025/0301214.
Zhang et al U.S. Patent Publication No. 2022/0076168.
Conclusion
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/ONEAL R MISTRY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2674