DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Response to Amendment
This Office Action is in response to the Amendment filed on 12/15/2025.
Status of the Claims:
Claim(s) 1, 8 and 15 has/have been amended.
Claim(s) 2-6, 9-11 and 16-19 has/have been canceled.
Claim(s) 1, 7-8, 12-15 and 20 is/are pending in this Office Action.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments are deemed moot since they are directed to the newly added claim limitations, not previously presented and not against the previous rejected limitations. Newly added limitations are addressed below.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 7-8, 12-15 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over IDS provided reference US 2021/0117712 to Huang et al. (hereinafter Huang) in view of US 11,170,521 to Ben Himane et al. (hereinafter Ben Himane).
Regarding independent claim 1, Huang teaches a computer-implemented method comprising:
determining, using a gaze model, whether a time frame of a gaze of a user satisfies a time threshold (detects staring, hence gaze for a certain amount of time, hence threshold, see par. [0096]);
initiating the determination, by the gaze model with the use of machine learning based CV confirmation model and responsive to the time frame satisfying the time threshold, whether the gaze of the user is associated with a meaningful object (uses one or more machine learning models to measure interestingness of subject of gaze, see par. [0094] and detects staring, staring implies satisfying of a time threshold, see par. [0096]); and
capturing automatically, by the CV confirmation model and responsive to the determining that the gaze is associated with the meaningful object, a scene in an environment that includes the meaningful object (can capture proactively, hence automatically, see par. [0090]).
But Huang fails to clearly specify “foregoing initiating a determination, by the gaze model, of whether the gaze of the user is associated with a meaningful object responsive to the time frame being less than the time threshold”.
However, Ben Himane teaches a process for determining a position of an object in a computer-generated reality environment using an eye gaze, a user uses their eyes to interact with user interface objects displayed on an electronic device. Ben Himane’s head mounted device HMD 250 discloses “foregoing initiating a determination, by the gaze model, of whether the gaze of the user is associated with a meaningful object responsive to the time frame being less than the time threshold (device 250 may discard data points for when a user's gaze is held in a direction for less than a threshold amount of time (e.g., less than 10 or 20 ms), such as when a user's gaze is moving (e.g., shifting) from a first object to a second object, see column 20 lines 33-38 )”.
References are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor and/or are reasonably pertinent to the particular problem with which the applicant was concerned because they relate to eye gaze tracking systems.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the above method as taught by Huang, by incorporating the teachings as taught by Ben Himane.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do this modification in order to allows the device to determine data points in a situation in which the user's gaze is continuously shifting, but directed to a generally consistent region or location in a physical environment as suggested by Ben HImane (see column 20 lines 44-47).
Regarding claim 7, Huang in view of Ben Himane teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising performing auto-focusing and/or auto-zooming on the meaningful object that is a target in the gaze of the user (focus on specific regions, hence object or subject focusing, see Huang par. [0097]).
Regarding independent claim(s) 8 and 13-14, claim(s) has/have limitations similar to those treated in the above rejection(s), and are met by the references as discussed above. Claims 8 and 13 however also recites the following limitations “identify a person in the scene and verifying a content setting of the person in a social network”.
Huang teaches that his invention can be applied to a social network environment (see Huang pars. [0004-0005]) such as using a social network application 134 (see Huang Fig. 1) and assist the user to be more engaged with online social network, hence user is a subscriber of a social network (see Huang par. [0006]) and providing tools to interact with the online social network (see Huang pars. [0006, 0031]). People can be identified based on privacy settings verification, see Huang par. [0094]).
Regarding claim 12, Huang teaches the system of claim 8, wherein the one or more processors further cause the system to verify a privacy setting of the meaningful object in a user account (identify based on privacy settings verification, see Huang par. [0094]).
Regarding independent claim(s) 15 and 20, claim(s) is/are drawn to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium used in to execute the corresponding method in claim(s) 1 and system in claims 8 and 12 is/are rejected for the same reasons used above.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGEL L GARCES-RIVERA whose telephone number is (571)270-7268. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9AM-5PM ET.
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/ANGEL L GARCES-RIVERA/ Examiner, Art Unit 2637
/SINH TRAN/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2637