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 .
The Applicant’s Remarks filed 10/30/2025 have been received and considered.
The 101 and 112(b) rejections cited in the non-final office action mailed 07/09/2025 are hereby withdrawn.
Claims 1, 10, and 16 have been amended
Claims 2, 4 – 9, 11, 13 – 15, 19, and 21 – 23 have been objected to.
Claims 1, 3, 10, 12, 16 – 18, and 20, all of the remaining claims pending in this application, have been rejected.
Response to Applicant’s Remarks
In view of the Applicant’s remarks filed 10/30/2025, regarding amendments to independent claims 1, 10, and 16, the previously applied prior art rejections are withdrawn. Applicant's remarks are rendered moot in view of the new grounds of rejection set forth below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 3, 10, 12, 16 – 18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by US Publication No. 2025/0085664 A1 to LEE et al. (hereinafter LEE).
Claim 1
Regarding Claim 1, an independent method claim, LEE teaches a hologram profile optimization method comprising: setting a first hologram profile as a variable ("Referring to FIG. 2, forward propagation refers to a process of obtaining a holographic image displayed on a reproduction plane 210 of a space through a space light modulator (SLM) with respect to a hologram, and back propagation refers to a process of obtaining a hologram on a complex plane 200 of the SLM with respect to the holographic image of the reproduction plane 210.", Paragraph [0024]), where the SLM requires the holographic profile to be variable; and
performing an optimization cycle a predetermined number of times, wherein the optimization cycle comprises: encoding the first hologram profile into a binary hologram profile by using an ApproxSign function (Figure 4, #400; "The apparatus may convert the predicted hologram 310 into a binary hologram 320.", Paragraph [0027]; "Referring to FIG. 4, each pixel of a binary hologram has a binary value of 0 or 1, such that a binary operator 400 indicating each pixel may be a non-differentiable function. The apparatus may calculate a differential value by replacing the binary operator 400 with a hyperbolic tangent function H tan h(x) 410 to enable differentiation of the binary operator 400 in a back-propagation process applying the SGD method.", Paragraph [0032]);
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calculating a field value of a holographic image on a display surface for the binary hologram profile, considering high-order diffraction term noise of the holographic image by using a tiling function (Figure 2, "Referring to FIG. 3, a holographic display (hereinafter, referred to as an ‘apparatus’) may calculate a hologram on a complex plane of an SLM (hereinafter, referred to as a ‘predicted hologram’) through back propagation with respect to target field data 300. Herein, the target field data 300 may refer to data having a random phase profile with respect to light intensity of each plane of the target images 110 and 130 shown in FIG. 1. A method of calculating the hologram on the complex plane 200 of FIG. 2 of the SLM through back propagation with respect to the target field data 300 of the reproduction plane 210 of FIG. 2 is already known, and thus will not be further described.", Paragraph [0026], Paragraphs [0005 - 0009]), where SLM's use tiling techniques to increase total resolution and display size;
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calculating an intensity of the holographic image on the display surface (Paragraph [0026]; "The apparatus may convert the predicted hologram 310 into a binary hologram 320. Each pixel of the predicted hologram may have complex values of light intensity and phase. For example, each pixel of a general hologram may have intensity and phase values of 8-bit data. The apparatus may compare a value of each pixel of the predicted hologram (i.e., an absolute value of a complex value of each pixel) with a predefined reference value to binarize an intensity value of each pixel into 0 or 1, thereby generating a binary hologram. That is, the apparatus may convert the intensity value into ‘1’ when the value of each pixel of the predicted hologram is greater than the reference value, and into ‘O’ when the value of each pixel of the predicted hologram is less than the reference value, thereby generating the binary hologram 320 having a binary value.", Paragraph [0027]);
calculating a loss function value based on a difference between the intensity of the holographic image and an intensity of a target image ("The apparatus may identify an error of a loss function between the predicted field data 340 and the target field data 300. For example, the apparatus may identify an error by using a loss function to accumulatively sum a mean square error (MSE) of each plane of the predicted field data 340 and the target field data 300. Various loss functions for error identification may be applied to the current embodiment.", Paragraph [0029]); and
updating the first hologram profile to a second hologram profile based on the loss function value ("When an error between the predicted field data 340 and the target field data 300 is greater than or equal to a predefined threshold, the apparatus may back-propagate the predicted field data 340 by using a stochastic gradient descent (SGD) method to reduce the error of the loss function, thus generating the new predicted hologram 310.", Paragraph [0030]); and
displaying a hologram based on the second hologram profile ("Referring to FIG. 5, a holographic display 500 may include a back-propagation unit 510, a binarization unit 520, a forward-propagation unit 530, and an error identification unit 540. The holographic display 500 may be implemented with a device forming an optical system, such as a space light modulator (SLM), etc., and a computing device including a component for hologram optimization of the current embodiment. For example, the component according to the current embodiment may be implemented with software and loaded on a memory, and then may be executed by a processor.", Paragraph [0034]).
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Claim 3
Regarding Claim 3, dependent on claim 1, LEE teaches the invention as claimed in claim 1.
LEE further teaches wherein the calculating of the field value of the holographic image on the display surface for the binary hologram profile comprises: converting the binary hologram profile into spatial frequency information by using a second-order Fourier transform (Rejected as applied to claim 1), where a SLM creates spatial frequencies from a holographic profile; and
tiling the spatial frequency information by using the tiling function (Rejected as applied to claim 1).
Claim 17
Regarding Claim 17, dependent on claim 16, LEE teaches the invention as claimed in claim 16.
LEE further teaches wherein the spatial optical modulator comprises a binary phase spatial optical modulator ("The binarization unit 520 may convert a predicted hologram into a binary hologram. The binarization unit 520 may compare a magnitude of a value on a complex plane corresponding to each pixel of the predicted hologram with a predefined reference value to convert a value of the pixel into a binary value of 0 or 1.", Paragraph [0036]; "The forward-propagation unit 530 may generate predicted field data in which the binary hologram is forward-propagated to a reproduction plane, by using an optical system simulation model.", Paragraph [0037]).
Claim 18
Regarding Claim 18, dependent on claim 16, LEE teaches the invention as claimed in claim 16.
LEE further teaches wherein the processor polymerizes a plurality of holographic images generated by performing a plurality of random phase modulations on the second hologram profile (Figure 1; "Herein, the target field data 300 may refer to data having a random phase profile with respect to light intensity of each plane of the target images 110 and 130 shown in FIG. 1.", Paragraph [0026]; "The method according to the current embodiment may implement a random wave front in a depth range in that the image may be reconstructed with independent planes with respect to a depth.", Paragraph [0041]).
Claim 10, an independent device claim, is rejected for the same reasons as applied to claim 1.
Claim 16, an independent device claim, is rejected for the same reasons as applied to claim 1.
Claims 12 and 20 are rejected for the same reasons as applied to the above rejected claims.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 4 – 9, 11, 13 – 15, 19, and 21 – 23 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.
The response of 10/30/2025 identifies the meaning of “ApproxSign” as “an approximate sign function”. Remarks at 15. In terms of Fig. 4 of the prior art reprinted above, the “sign” function is the squared-off step function.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_function, “In mathematics, the sign function or signum function (from signum, Latin for "sign") is a function that has the value −1, +1 or 0 according to whether the sign of a given real number is positive or negative, or the given number is itself zero. In mathematical notation the sign function is often represented as sgn x or sgn (x).”
To the extent that “ApproxSign” means something more or less like “sign”, Fig. 4 and the hyperbolic tangent function are more or less like “sign”. However, LEE does not show the particular calculation required by the claims that are objected to in this section.Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 Ronde Miller whose telephone number is (703) 756-5686 The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00-4:00.
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/RONDE LEE MILLER/Examiner, Art Unit 2663
/GREGORY A MORSE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2698