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 is in response to applicant's RCE amendment/response filed 01/28/2026 has been entered and made of record. Claim 1, 3, 16, 18, 23-24 and 26-27 have been amended.
No claims are canceled or newly added, claims 1-7 and 16-28 are pending. Applicant’s
amendments to the Claims have overcome each and every objection
previously set forth in the Non-Final Office Action mailed October 28th 2025.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1 and 16 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument (due to applicant’s arguments directed to newly amend limitation(s) which is addressed by new prior art presented in this Office Action).
The arguments regarding dependent claims for the virtue of their dependency are moot
because the independent claims are not allowable.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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) 1-4, 6-7, 16-21, 24-25 and 27-28, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Agaoglu et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0081527), hereinafter referenced as Agaoglu, in view of Chugunov (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0156449), hereinafter referenced as Chugunov, Anderson (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0013437), hereinafter referenced as Anderson, Molholm (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2021/0099632), hereinafter referenced as Molholm, and Sudheendra et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2013/0034312), hereinafter referenced as Sudheendra.
Regarding claim 1, Agaoglu teaches a computing system for generating an encoded document for peripheral privacy, the computing system comprising: (Agaoglu, paragraph 18 teaches a system for peripheral privacy which can be used for creating or viewing the document as shown in fig. 8); a processor and memory of a computing device, the processor executing a program using portions of the memory to: (Agaoglu, fig. 12 reference 1204 shows a memory, a processor 1212 and paragraph 87 teaches the memory can be used for computer programs that are executable by the processor); generate an encoded document based on the initial document by modifying letters in a text portion of the initial document, wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing initial letters in the text portion with different letters of an alphabet based on a topological criterion of differences in letter height and letter width below a predetermined threshold (Agaoglu, paragraph 38 teaches operations for encryption where letters are modified in text of a document and fig. 7 shows the letters being replaced with different letters of alphabet); determine a gaze location of a user using a camera (Agaoglu, paragraph 19 teaches "The user's gaze location can be determined using one or more cameras and/or other sensors that sense the direction in which the user's eyes are looking"); and output the encoded document (Agaoglu, fig. 7 teaches the document with changes being output).
However, Agaoglu fails to explicitly teach determine an initial document; generate an encoded document based on the initial document by modifying letters in a text portion of the initial document, wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing initial letters in the text portion with different letters of an alphabet based on a topological criterion of differences in letter height and letter width below a predetermined threshold;
However, Chugunov teaches determine an initial document (Chugunov, paragraph 26 teaches determining if a user is able to consult/edit a document and paragraph 32 teaches that at fig. 2, step 202, the document is sent to the PC after receiving a request from the user to receive a document); generate an encoded document based on the initial document by modifying letters in a text portion of the initial document (Chugunov, fig. 2, step 206 teaches performing encoding by changing letter spacing); the encoding is done on the original/initial document and essentially creates new/encoded document once updates are made to the original/initial. Chugunov is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of generating and outputting an encoded document. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Agaoglu’s invention with the encoding of document techniques of Chugunov to enable the necessary encryption to be automated in order to ensure security (Chugunov, paragraph 7).
However, the combination of Agaoglu and Chugunov fails to explicitly teach wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing initial letters in the text portion with different letters of an alphabet based on a topological criterion of differences in letter height and letter width below a predetermined threshold; display an alpha-blended document by alpha-blending the initial document and the encoded document using a mask comprising a plurality of alpha values determined based on the gaze location.
However, Anderson explicitly teaches wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing initial letters in the text portion with different letters of an alphabet based on a topological criterion of differences in letter height and letter width below a predetermined threshold (Anderson, paragraph 62 teaches “False content can be selected from a source of data similar to the original content, but containing no sensitive information (5201). For example, an SCD system can select false content from a supplied database of grammatically correct content in the same language, character set, style, and other relevant attributes. The selection algorithm can replace content with extracts from the database that have similar morphology such that the replacement process is innocuous when viewed with lesser visual acuity, as from the user's parafoveal or peripheral field of view.”, and paragraph 240 teaches “Searching for other patterns and basic shapes such as lines and rectangles and replacing them with adjacent colors in the image, effectively removing them, and then overlaying other shapes and patterns of a similar nature at random positions in the image”); the same language, character set, style, and other relevant attributes [which can include letter height and width] alongside similar morphology being used to replace letters shows this being based on topological criterion [topological criterion of differences in letter height and letter width is a morphological variation and the morphology here encompasses the topology], the techniques in paragraph 240 of using similar shape/topological similarity to replace can also be applied to the text of Agaoglu, and "in the same language, character set, style, and other relevant attributes" also explains how the replacement relates to differences in letter height and width being below threshold (because for content to appear similar, [as paragraph 93 of Anderson mentions “because the display morphology does not substantially reveal obvious areas of modification and the content masking techniques make false content appear to be substantially similar to true content”], text must have a small difference in threshold). Anderson is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of being able to view sensitive or private information on the mobile device in a public place using encryption and changes to text. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify combination of Agaoglu and Chugunov with the specific text manipulation techniques of Anderson to ensure this replacement process has minimal impact on the user's perception as it does not appear in the user's foveal field and if appropriately selected, these false contents may be indistinguishable from true content by the attacker, significantly reducing the attacker's ability to find and comprehend the original content (Anderson, paragraph 62). This ensures a more secure system but still seamless user experience for authorized user when viewing content.
However, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, and Anderson fails to explicitly teach display an alpha-blended document by alpha-blending the initial document and the encoded document using a mask comprising a plurality of alpha values determined based on the gaze location. Although, Agaoglu fig. 4 implies this and shows alpha blending since its blending channels of two images together and allows creation of transparent/semi-transparent regions by adjusting alpha value of each pixel dependent on gaze and distance from gaze by using weight from 0 to 1; this relates to applicant’s disclosure paragraph 32 where "alpha-blend is performed using the determined mask values"..."Where mask values between 0 and 1 are used". Also, Anderson, paragraph 93 teaches “content masking techniques make false content appear to be substantially similar to true content”.
However, Molholm explicitly teaches display an alpha-blended document by alpha-blending the initial document and the encoded document using a mask comprising a plurality of alpha values determined based on the gaze location (Molholm paragraph 26 teaches “sharing the same scene exposure are blended, for example using an additive alpha blend” and paragraph 27 teaches “mapped from its HDR linear encoding down to the dynamic range of the gaze-tracking display device”; this shows the alpha-blended document/image in fig. 4E of Molholm displayed after going through the steps of fig. 2-3 which include gaze tracking 240 and getting gaze information 302 and are mapped from encoding. Molholm is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of gaze-based exposure using alpha-blending. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, and Anderson with the gaze and alpha-blending thereof techniques of Molholm to provide an exposure-compensated, foveated high dynamic range (HDR) experience for the user (Molholm, Abstract). This ensures a better display and overall user experience.
However, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson and Molholm fails to explicitly teach display an alpha-blended document by alpha-blending the initial document and the encoded document using a mask comprising a plurality of alpha values determined based on the gaze location.
However, Sudheendra explicitly teaches display an alpha-blended document by alpha-blending the initial document and the encoded document using a mask comprising a plurality of alpha values determined based on the gaze location (Sudheendra, Abstract teaches “identifying an object in an overlap region of a plurality of images; generating a Gaussian curve for the object; determining an alpha mask for the overlap region using the Gaussian curve; and blending the plurality of images based on the alpha mask.”, paragraph 30 teaches “alpha mask, alpha channel, and alpha matrix are used synonymously and interchangeably, to describe a matrix or array that constitutes alpha values for an overlap region.”, and paragraph 42 teaches “Alpha Blending technique combines multiple source images by arranging pixels in an alpha mask array, where each of the arrays comprises 0's and/or 1's. An alpha value `0` indicates transparency and an alpha value `1` indicates opacity”); this shows to mask the initial and the encoded document of chugunov and use this matrix for alpha values for the overlap region (entire document), to arrive at the encrypted doc of Agaoglu (as another encryption technique [alpha-blending] instead of scrambling shown in Agaoglu fig. 4) and all of which is based on the gaze location from Molholm since Molholm teaches the alpha blend in correlation to gaze location. Sudheendra is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of using mask alongside matrix of alpha values. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson and Molholm with the mask and alpha-blend techniques of Sudheendra to avoid a seam and/or a ghosting effect (Sudheendra, paragraph 9). This would be due to the smoothened blending from using the specific alpha values and mask.
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein the initial letters are replaced with the different letters of the alphabet based at least upon a modulation scheme that separates alphabet letters into different categories based on the topological criterion, such that replaced letters are switched with letters of a same category (Anderson, paragraph 65 teaches “further refinement on this method is to weight the random selection of false words according to the frequency of those words appearing in natural language, or a source database, or some other standard reference for source content” and paragraph 62 teaches “False content can be selected from a source of data similar to the original content… system can select false content from a supplied database of grammatically correct content in the same language, character set, style, and other relevant attributes. The selection algorithm can replace content with extracts from the database that have similar morphology such that the replacement process is innocuous”); this shows the same letter topology/shape/morphology characteristics are used as replacement since false content is selected from source data similar to original content and the similarity can be same language, character set, style, and other relevant attributes and is done by extracting from database that have similar morphology, thus the source database has a modulation scheme characterizing according to such. The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 2.
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein the mask comprises a matrix containing the plurality of alpha values (Sudheendra, Abstract teaches “identifying an object in an overlap region of a plurality of images; generating a Gaussian curve for the object; determining an alpha mask for the overlap region using the Gaussian curve; and blending the plurality of images based on the alpha mask.”, paragraph 30 teaches “alpha mask, alpha channel, and alpha matrix are used synonymously and interchangeably, to describe a matrix or array that constitutes alpha values for an overlap region.”); this shows mask comprises matrix with alpha values . The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 3.
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing an initial word in the text portion with a new word having a same number of letters as the initial word (Agaoglu, fig. 7 teaches replacing initial words 700 in text portion with new words 702 having the same number of letters to the corresponding initial words).
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein generating the encoded document further comprises modifying a graphics portion of the initial document (Agaoglu, paragraph 44 teaches to scramble or visually encrypt fine details such as images or figures as well). This would be done on the initial document because that's what's being encrypted for privacy to generate an encoded document.
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein modifying the graphics portion of the initial document comprises replacing an initial image with a new image generated by a style transfer technique based on the initial image (Anderson, paragraph 240 teaches “Searching for other patterns and basic shapes such as lines and rectangles and replacing them with adjacent colors in the image, effectively removing them, and then overlaying other shapes and patterns of a similar nature at random positions in the image”); this shows removing some shapes in an image and overlaying other shapes at random position of the image, which can be considered style transfer and end result is new image generated. The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 7.
Regarding claim 27, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing initial letters in the text portion with the different letters of the alphabet to generate modified words that are in a real vocabulary (Agaoglu, fig. 7 teaches in some instances, such as last line of 700 and 702, a new modified word in a real vocabulary being generated after replacing initial letters, for example: "to" is replaced with "up".).
Regarding claim 28, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson and Molholm teaches wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing first and last letters of a plurality of words in the text portion (Agaoglu, fig. 7 and paragraph 39 teaches replacing all [inclusive of first and last letters] of a word in a text portion).
Regarding claim 16, the method claim 16 recites similar limitations as system claim 1, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 17, the method claim 17 recites similar limitations as system claim 2, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 18, the method claim 18 recites similar limitations as system claim 3, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 19, the method claim 19 recites similar limitations as system claim 4, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 20, the method claim 20 recites similar limitations as system claim 6, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 21, the method claim 21 recites similar limitations as system claim 7, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 24, the method claim 24 recites similar limitations as system claim 27, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 25, the method claim 25 recites similar limitations as system claim 28, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim(s) 5 and 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra as applied to claims 1 and 16 above, and further in view of Zhou (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0273447), hereinafter referenced as Zhou.
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra teaches wherein modifying letters in the text portion of the initial document comprises replacing key words in the text portion with new words, (Chugunov, fig. 3, step 310 teaches checking if a word is greater than 3 letters before modifying it). This means that a word being greater than 3 letters can be considered a key word, and the same modification of Agaoglu (replacement with new words) mentioned in claim 1 explanation above and fig. 7 of Agaoglu can occur here. The same motivations used in claim 1 apply here in claim 5.
However, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra fails to teach wherein key words in the text portion comprise words having occurrences above a predetermined threshold.
However, Zhou teaches wherein key words in the text portion comprise words having occurrences above a predetermined threshold (Zhou, paragraph 9 teaches that a candidate phrase not exceeding a corresponding threshold means that the candidate phrase is not the key phrase). Candidate phrases include candidate words, key phrases include key words and this means that if a corresponding threshold is exceeded (or certain number of occurrences exist), then the candidate phrase/word would be the key phrase/word. Zhou is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of using key words alongside thresholds in text. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra with the choosing keywords using occurrence threshold techniques of Zhou to ensure lowering the false acceptance rate and increasing the true acceptance rate (Zhou, paragraph 21). This means more accurately arriving at the key words and lowering the chance of error in doing so.
Regarding claim 22, the method claim 22 recites similar limitations as system claim 5, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim(s) 26 and 23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra as applied to claim 2 and 17 above, and further in view of Dejima (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0162603), hereinafter referenced as Dejima.
Regarding claim 26, the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra fails to teach wherein the topological criterion comprises a luminance threshold.
However, Dejima teaches wherein the topological criterion comprises a luminance threshold (Dejima, paragraph 107 teaches an average luminance with a threshold). Dejima is considered to be analogous art because it is reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor of having a consistent light exposure perceived to a user when viewing a screen. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Agaoglu, Chugunov, Anderson, Molholm and Sudheendra with the average luminance threshold techniques of Dejima so that reduction in computation time can be obtained by generating metamerism only in the luminance component of a color display frame (Agaoglu, praragraph 45). This means having an average luminance would further reduce computation time due to not having to compute/display a wider range of intensities. Furthermore, one of ordinary skill in the art would understand that an average luminance with a threshold for any application (including topological criterion used in replacing letters) would ensure a consistent display without flickering leading to a better user experience.
Regarding claim 23, the method claim 23 recites similar limitations as system claim 26, and thus is rejected under similar rationale.
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 NAUMAN U AHMAD whose telephone number is (703)756-5306. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm.
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/KEE M TUNG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2611
/N.U.A./Examiner, Art Unit 2611