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 Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 6, 9 and 17 have been fully considered but are moot because the arguments do not directly apply to the new combination of references being used in the current 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 (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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 23 and 25 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 10455297 B1 to Mahyar et al. (hereinafter “Mahyar”) in view of US 20150139608 A1 to Theobalt et al. (“Theobalt”).
Consider claim 1, Mahyar discloses a video generation method, comprising:
selecting at least two target events from an event library according to attention associated with a theme, wherein the attention associated with the theme is a theme-relevant attention degree of a content related to the theme (Col. 2 Ln. 53 - Col. 3 Ln. 16: “Importance or relevance to a certain theme may be determined using one or more scores generated for the segment. For example, a video score may be generated for the segment or for portions of the segment indicative of various activities or events that occur in the video, objects that appear, and other video-based features of the video content”; Col. 3 Ln. 34-42: “The scores may be used to select segments and/or portions of segments for inclusion in a content summary”);
determining video sub-segments of the at least two target events respectively to obtain at least two video sub-segments (Col. 2 Ln. 53-62: “The identified segments may be analyzed to determine the most important portions of the segments (which may or may not be the entire segment)”); and
generating a target video according to the at least two video sub-segments (Col. 3 Ln. 34-42: “The scores may be used to select segments and/or portions of segments for inclusion in a content summary”)
Mahyar fails to disclose: planning a place path of the at least two target events in an electronic map according to occurrence places of the at least two target events and occurrence time of the at least two target events, wherein the at least two target events have a same theme and generating a target video according to the at least two video sub-segments and the place path.
In analogous art, Theobalt discloses a map-based viewing mode for viewing large, unstructured video collections (par. [0025]).
The combination of Mahyar and Theobalt discloses planning a place path of the at least two target events in an electronic map according to occurrence places of the at least two target events and occurrence time of the at least two target events (Theobalt: par. [0025]: When temporal context is relevant, temporal awareness of an event may be provided by offering correctly ordered transitions between temporally aligned videos. This yields a meaningful spatio-temporal viewing experience of large, unstructured video collections. A map-based viewing mode lets the virtual explorer choose start and end videos, and automatically find a path of videos and transitions that join them. GPS and orientation data is used to enhance the map-view when available . . . images can be given to the system to define a path, and the closest matches through the videoscape are shown.), wherein the at least two target events have a same theme (Mahyar: as discussed above) and generating a target video according to the at least two video sub-segments (Mahyar: as discussed above) and the place path (Theobalt: as discussed above).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the invention, to modify the teachings of Mahyar in view of the above teachings of Theobalt to provide a meaningful spatio-temporal viewing experience of large, unstructured video collections (Theobalt: par. [0025]).
Consider claim 5, modified Mahyar discloses the method of claim 1, wherein determining the video sub-segments of the at least two target events respectively comprises:
extracting event attribute information of each target event of the at least two target events; and generating a video sub-segment of each target event according to the event attribute information of the each target event (Mahyar: Col. 2 Ln. 53 - Col. 3 Ln. 3: “The identified segments may be analyzed to determine the most important portions of the segments (which may or may not be the entire segment). Importance or relevance to a certain theme may be determined using one or more scores generated for the segment. For example, a video score may be generated for the segment or for portions of the segment indicative of various activities or events that occur in the video, objects that appear, and other video-based features of the video content”).
Consider claim 9, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 1 and because Mahyar further discloses an electronic device, comprising: at least one processor; and a memory communicatively connected to the at least one processor; wherein the memory stores an instruction executable by the at least one processor, and the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, causes the at least one processor to perform the associated method (FIG. 8 and Col. 24 Ln. 56-67).
Consider claim 13, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 5.
Consider claim 17, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 1 and because Mahyar further discloses a memory device storing instructions executable by a processor for performing the associated method (FIG. 8 and Col. 24 Ln. 48-67).
Consider claim 21, modified Mahyar discloses the method of claim 1, wherein planning the place path of the at least two target events in the electronic map according to the occurrence places of the at least two target events and the occurrence time of the at least two target events comprises:
sorting the occurrence places of the at least two target events according to the occurrence time of the at least two target events to obtain a sorting result; and planning the place path of the at least two target events according to the sorting result and positions of the occurrence places in the electronic map (Theobalt: par. [0021]: “a graph capturing the semantic links within a database of casually captured videos [. . .] If necessary, the graph can maintain temporal consistency by only allowing edges to portals forward in time”; par. [0025]: “When temporal context is relevant, temporal awareness of an event may be provided by offering correctly ordered transitions between temporally aligned videos. This yields a meaningful spatio-temporal viewing experience of large, unstructured video collections [. . .] A map-based viewing mode lets the virtual explorer choose start and end videos, and automatically find a path of videos and transitions that join them. GPS and orientation data is used to enhance the map-view when available. The user can assign labels to landmarks in a video, which are automatically propagated to all videos. Furthermore, images can be given to the system to define a path, and the closest matches through the videoscape are shown”; the spatio-temporal relationship is further described in par. [0037], [0060]-[0064], par. [0037]: “Video candidates are grouped by timestamp and GPS data if available [. . .] This information may be used later on to optionally enforce temporal coherence among generated tours and to indicate spatio-temporal transition possibilities to the user”; par. [0060]-[0064] describes generating a “videoscape” with location related video segments: “I could try to augment my own videos with a videoscape of similar videos that people placed on a community video platform. I could thus add footage to my own vacation video and build a tour of London that covers even places that I could not film myself [. . .] When watching a movie, a user could match a scene against a portal in the videoscape, enabling him to go on a virtual 3D tour of a location that was shown in the movie. He would be able to look around the place by transitioning into other videos of the same scene that were taken from other viewpoints at other times”).
The motivation for combining the references is the same as regarding claim 1.
Consider claim 23, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 21.
Consider claims 25, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claims 21.
Claims 6-7 and 14-15 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mahyar in view of Theobalt, further in view of US 10410060 B2 to Balasubramanian et al. (“Balasubramanian”).
Consider claim 6, Modified Mahyar fails to explicitly disclose wherein the at least two target events are further selected according to at least one of event attention, and an event number.
In analogous art, Balasubramanian discloses wherein the at least two target events are further selected according to at least one of event attention, and an event number (Col. 1 Ln. 21-40: “According to a first aspect there is provided a method for generating synthesis videos, the method comprising: identifying one or more topics for generation of a synthesis video; identifying videos, wherein each identified video is determined to be relevant to one or more of the identified topics; extracting video segments from one or more of the identified videos, wherein each video segment is a proper subset of a video from which the video segment is extracted”; Col. 3 Ln. 7-23: “selecting the extracted video segments for combination is further based at least in part on the video score determined for each extracted video segment [. . .] the video score for each extracted video segment is determined based on at least one of: a popularity score of the retrieved video from which the video segment is extracted”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the invention, to modify the teachings of modified Mahyar further in view of the above teachings of Balasubramanian in order to output a compilation video more interesting to the user (Balasubramanian, Col. 5 Ln. 1-8).
Consider claim 7, Modified Mahyar discloses the method of claim 6, wherein selecting the at least two target events from the event library according to the attention associated with the theme and the at least one of the event attention, and the event number comprises:
selecting a to-be-processed event set from the event library according to the attention associated with the theme (Mahyar: as discussed regarding claim 1) and the at least one of the event attention, or the event number (Balasubramanian: as discussed regarding claim 6); and
selecting the at least two target events from the to-be-processed event set according to an event content length of to-be-processed events in the to-be-processed event set and a standard video duration (Mahyar: Col. 3 Ln. 43-56: “In some embodiments, a desired length of a content summary may be used to determine which segments or portions of segments are to be included in the content summary. For example, longer content summaries may include longer portions of segments or a greater number of segments than shorter content summaries. Content summary length may be determined, in one example, based at least in part on user preference and/or actual content summary consumption data”).
The motivation to combine the references is the same as regarding claim 6.
Consider claims 14-15, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claims 6-7, respectively.
Claims 8 and 16 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mahyar in view of Theobalt and Balasubramanian, further in view of US 20170092326 A1 to Bostick et al. (hereinafter “Bostick’326”) (cited in the IDS filed 12/20/2022).
Consider claim 8, modified Mahyar discloses the method of claim 6, wherein selecting the at least two target events from the event library according to the attention associated with the theme and the at least one of the event attention, and the event number comprises:
selecting a to-be-processed event set from the event library according to the attention associated with the theme (Mahyar: as discussed regarding claim 1) and the at least one of the event attention, or the event number (Balasubramanian: as discussed regarding claim 6).
Modified Mahyar fails to explicitly disclose: performing de-duplication processing on the to-be-processed event set according to description information of to-be-processed events in the to-be-processed event set; and selecting the at least two target events from the to-be-processed event set after the de-duplication processing.
In analogous art Bostick’326 discloses: performing de-duplication processing on the to-be-processed event set according to description information of to-be-processed events in the to-be-processed event set; and selecting the at least two target events from the to-be-processed event set after the de-duplication processing (par. [0021]: “Filtering (240) video content may additionally include removing video segments that depict duplicate sections of the path of interest. If two videos depict the same section of the path of interest, one of the segments may be removed based on the set of user preferences”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the invention, to modify the teachings of modified Mahyar further in view of the above teachings of Bostick’326 in order to avoid including repetitive content in the compilation.
Consider claim 16, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 8.
Claims 22, 24 and 26 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mahyar in view of Theobalt, further in view of US 20170091291 A1 to Bostick et al. (hereinafter “Bostick’291”) (cited in the IDS filed 12/20/2022).
Consider claim 22, modified Mahyar discloses the method of claim 21, wherein planning the place path of the at least two target events according to the sorting result and the positions of the occurrence places in the electronic map comprises:
planning candidate place paths of the at least two target events according to the sorting result and the positions of the occurrence places in the electronic map (Theobalt: par. [0021]: “if necessary, the graph can maintain temporal consistency by only allowing edges to portals forward in time”; par. [0025]: “When temporal context is relevant, temporal awareness of an event may be provided by offering correctly ordered transitions between temporally aligned videos. This yields a meaningful spatio-temporal viewing experience of large, unstructured video collections [. . .] A map-based viewing mode lets the virtual explorer choose start and end videos, and automatically find a path of videos and transitions that join them”; also par. [0037]: GPS information; and par. [0060]-[0064]: “videoscape” with location-related segments).
The motivation to combine the references has been discussed in claim 1 above.
Mahyar in view of Theobalt fails to explicitly disclose: selecting a target place path from the candidate place paths according to description information of the at least two target events.
In analogous art, Bostick’291 discloses selecting a target place path from the candidate place paths according to description information of the at least two target events (par. [0003]: “a method for generating an interactive plotted electronic map presentation which depicts historical progression of events of a news story includes a processor, in response to a selection of a news story, identifying a key perspective topic of the news story, a geographic location of an occurrence of an incident of the news story, and a time of the incident occurrence. The method includes searching for and retrieving from one or more news media sources historical news content stories as a function of each of the retrieved stories including the key perspective topic and association with the incident geographic location and occurrence time”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the invention, to modify the teachings of modified Mahyar further in view of the above teachings of Bostick’291 by considering information pertaining to a topic of each of the sub-videos to enable searching for and retrieving news content stories as a function of each of the retrieved stories including the key perspective topic (Bostick’291, par. [0003]).
Consider claim 24, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 22.
Consider claims 26, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claims 22.
Claims 27-29 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mahyar in view of Theobalt, further in view of US 20210390392 A1 to Lagos et al. (“Lagos”).
Consider claim 27, Modified Mahyar discloses the method of claim 1, but fails to explicitly disclose: after identifying that at least one occurrence place of the occurrence places of the at least two target events is incomplete, supplementing the at least one occurrence place according to a graph of points of interest; and planning the place path of the at least two target events in the electronic map according to the supplemented incomplete occurrence place and the occurrence time of the at least two target events.
In analogous art, Lagos discloses: after identifying that at least one occurrence place of the occurrence places of the at least two target events is incomplete, supplementing the at least one occurrence place according to a graph of points of interest; and planning the place path of the at least two target events in the electronic map according to the supplemented incomplete occurrence place and the occurrence time of the at least two target events (par. [0036]: an approach for addressing the problem of incomplete or incorrect information for POIs; par. [0099]: “The predicted semantic tags can be stored at 314 in a database such as the database 104 as additional attribute data of the POI. This additional attribute data can supplement and/or replace the observed semantic tags in the database for the POI”, and par. [0044]: “The predicted semantic tags can be used for one or more of category completion, correction, and/or hierarchy refinement/creation [. . .] Example methods can further provide automatic data curation for POI datasets by completing or correcting the category information of a POI (e.g., a restaurant, bar, etc.) and refine or create a hierarchy of such categories (e.g., Indian restaurant as a subset of restaurant).” Note, the hierarchy of POI categories is interpreted as equivalent to a graph of points of interest.
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the invention, to modify the teachings of modified Mahyar further in view of the supplemented POI information of Lagos when planning the place path because Lagos suggests that applications that employ Point-of-Interest (POI) data for use in performing computing services include search engines, digital maps, recommender systems etc., and that the success of these applications critically depends on the completeness of supporting databases (Lagos: par. [0003]-[0005]).
Consider claim 28, the electronic device is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claim 27.
Consider claims 29, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium is rejected along the same rationale as the method of claims 27.
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 STEPHEN R SMITH whose telephone number is (571)270-1318. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5.
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STEPHEN R. SMITH
Examiner
Art Unit 2484
/THAI Q TRAN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2484
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