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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 July 3, 2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
The specification amendment for “Bluetooth” overcomes the objection to the specification
The amendments and arguments overcome the §112a rejections.
The amendments and arguments overcome some of the §112b rejections, but others are revised. The examiner will grant an (additional) interview to discuss overcoming these rejections should applicant have any questions.
New §103 rejections are entered.
Applicant argues that a variety of claim terms can be understood with reference to the specification. While the examiner appreciates the explanation (and is now able to apply art), the claim terms need to be definite without importing meanings from the specification.
It is expected that amending the claims to recite “error diffusion” will overcome the rejections. Similarly, use of other terms with accepted meanings, such as “grayscale” is expected to overcome the rejections.
Specification
The amendment filed July 3, 2025 (and entered with the July 28, 2025 RCE) is accepted because Applicant has stated that it is a translation, and the signature is a certification that the translation is, in short, true. See MPEP 502.02(III) incorporating 37 C.F.R. 11.18(b), and note that the inventors’ oaths are in Japanese as well as English (and they live in Japan), the same language as the priority document.
Claim Objections
Claims 7 and 8 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 7 and 8 recite “learned in advance,” but this was removed from claim 1 to overcome a rejection.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-5, 7 and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1, 7 and 8 recite “area gradation,” but this is new terminology. MPEP 2173.05(a). Note that reciting “error diffusion” is expected to overcome the rejection.
Claims 1, 7 and 8 recite “binary image.” The specification (see specification amendment of July 3, 2025) states that this is “8bit/pixel,” but also “two colors: black and white.” The issue is that 8 bits is 2^8 colors (256 colors). (The examiner notes that the specification now states that this has a gradation with a plurality of levels, but it is not clear to the examiner what that means.) Reciting either “8 bits per pixel” or “black and white” is expected to overcome this rejection.
Claims 1, 7 and 8 recite “generating a binary image that maintains area gradation,” but it is not clear if this is intended to encompass any techniques other than error diffusion. Note that reciting “error diffusion” is expected to overcome the rejection.
Claims 1, 7 and 8 recite “generate a scaled image,” but it is not clear if this is met if the image is already the preset size (see Fig. 13 decision S605, “yes” branch).
Claim 2 recites “binarize … with reference to peripheral pixels,” but this is new terminology. MPEP 2173.05(a). Note that reciting “error diffusion” is expected to overcome the rejection.
Dependent claims are likewise rejected.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-5, 7 and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US20200410291A1 (“Kriegman”) in view of Wikipedia’s “Error Diffusion” article as of September 21, 2021 (retrieved from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1045663157&title=Error_diffusion) (“Wikipedia”)
1. (Currently Amended) An image forming apparatus comprising: circuitry configured to:
obtain an image having area gradation read by a scanner; (Kriegman, abstract, “The present disclosure relates to generating computer searchable text from digital images that depict documents.” See also, Kriegman, [0196] “I/O interface may include … an optical scanner”)
generate a scaled image that maintains the area gradation from the binary image; (Kriegman, [0118] “In some embodiments, digital image character recognition system 112 can resize the individual word boxes of single words into the appropriate input size for text prediction neural network 500.”)
input the scaled image that maintains the area gradation generated from the binary image to a neural network model; and (Kriegman, [0118] “… the appropriate input size for text prediction neural network 500.”)
cause the neural network model to infer a top-bottom identification of the scaled image input to the neural network model, and (Kriegman, abstract, “identify the orientation of the depicted documents”)
output the top-bottom identification inferred by the neural network model. (Kriegman, abstract, “identify the orientation of the depicted documents”)
Kriegman is not relied on for the below claim language.
However, Wikipedia teaches to generate a binary image that maintains the area gradation from the image read by the scanner; (Wikipedia, “Error diffusion is a type of halftoning in which the quantization residual is distributed to neighboring pixels that have not yet been processed. Its main use is to convert a multi-level image into a binary image”)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Wikipedia to the teachings of Kriegman such that Kriegman performs error diffusion for the purpose of improving Kriegman’s generation of computer searchable text. See, e.g., Wikipedia “Error diffusion has the tendency to enhance edges in an image. This can make text in images more readable than in other halftoning techniques.”
Based on the above, this is an example of “combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results.” MPEP 2143.
2. (Previously Presented) The image forming apparatus according to claim 1,wherein the circuitry is configured to binarize the image read by the scanner with reference to peripheral pixels in the image read by the scanner, to generate the binary image that maintains the area gradation. (Wikipedia, “Error diffusion is a type of halftoning in which the quantization residual is distributed to neighboring pixels that have not yet been processed. Its main use is to convert a multi-level image into a binary image”)
3. (Previously Presented) The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the circuitry is configured to scale the binary image after converting a bit depth of the binary image into a predetermined value, to generate the scaled image that maintains the area gradation. (Wikipedia, “Error diffusion is a type of halftoning in which the quantization residual is distributed to neighboring pixels that have not yet been processed. Its main use is to convert a multi-level image into a binary image.” Wikipedia’s “that have not yet been processed” teaches the claimed “after a converting a bit depth.” (Note also that binarization teaches the claimed predetermined value of bit depth.))
4. (Original) The image forming apparatus according to claim 1,wherein the neural network model has a plurality of filters in layers. (Kriegman, [0108] “Specifically, the orientation neural network 304 comprises a deep CNN that includes convolutional layers, pooling layers, fully connected layers, ReLu layers, and normalization layers, that feed to an output layer that produces a predicted orientation.”)
5. (Currently Amended) The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a grayscale image is used as an input for the neural network model to learn atop-bottom identification. (Kriegman, Fig. 6)
6. (Canceled)
Claims 7 and 8 are rejected as per claim 1. As to claim 8’s preamble, see Kriegman, claim 15 “A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions that … .”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID ORANGE whose telephone number is (571)270-1799. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri, 9-5.
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/DAVID ORANGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2663