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
Submission dated 09/23/2025 amends claims 1, 8 and 15. Claims 1-20 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the independent claim(s) 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.
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 1-20 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.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the dwelling structure" in lines 4-5. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For the prior art purposes, the limitation has been interpreted as “a dwelling structure.”
Claims 2-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for their dependencies to claim 1.
Claim 8 recites the limitation "the dwelling structure" in line 7. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For the prior art purposes, the limitation has been interpreted as “a dwelling structure.”
Claims 9-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for their dependencies to claim 8.
Claim 15 recites the limitation "the dwelling structure" in line 7. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For the prior art purposes, the limitation has been interpreted as “a dwelling structure.”
Claims 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for their dependencies to claim 15.
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) 1-3, 5-10, 12-13-17, and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over us patent application publication no. 2021/0264586 to Adler in view of us patent application publication no. 2021/0319059 to Vianello et al. (hereinafter Vianello).
For claims 1, 8 and 15, Adler teaches a method, comprising:
receiving image data from aerial surveillance, the image data being associated with positional metadata (see, e.g., pars. 76-79, 169-170, 181, 221, and 231-232 and FIGS. 2A, 6, 9C, and 10, which teach receiving aerial image of a portion of terrain associated with a location data; the examiner interprets the images to be associated with the location because they may be sorted/selected based on their locations);
identifying one or more characteristics, other than characteristics of the dwelling structure, of the image data, the one or more characteristics being associated with presence of one or more items of interest at a particular site, wherein the one or more items of interest are not a part of the dwelling structure (see, e.g., pars. 74, 133-136, 145, 147-148, 169-173, 220-227, and 231-234 and FIGS. 6, 9C and 10, which teach identifying Energy Infrastructure (EI) feature information indicating presence of one or more EI features within the portion of terrain);
determining, based on the one or more identified characteristics, that the particular site includes the one or more items of interest (see, e.g., pars. 147-148, 173-175, 213-214, 220-227, and 233-238 and FIGS. 6, 9A-C and 10, which teach determining that the portion of terrain includes one or more EI features based on the EI feature information );
determining a geographic position of the particular site based on the positional metadata associated with the image data (see, e.g., pars. 186-188, 194 and 198- 207 and FIGS. 7B and 8, which teach determining a geographical location within the portion of terrain based on the geographic coverage and the location/coordinate information of the images);
facilitating communication with an owner of the parcel of land (see, e.g., pars. 249 and 260-268 and FIG. 1, which teach providing an online platform that facilitates communication between a user and a related party, such as a rights-owner).
Adler as applied does not explicitly teach determining a parcel containing a geographic position. In the analogous art, Vianello teaches determining parcel data corresponding to location/geographic identifier (see, e.g., pars. 16, 53-54, 56, 60-63, and 112 and FIGS. 1 and 5 of Vianello).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Adler to determine a parcel of land as taught by Vianello because doing so would constitute applying a known technique of looking up public record database using a location/geographic identifier to yield predictable results of obtaining parcel information (see MPEP 2143(I)(D)).
For claims 2, 9 and 16, Adler in view of Vianello teaches identifying the one or more characteristics associated with presence of the one or more items of interest comprises:
providing at least a portion of the received image data to a trained machine learning model as input, and receiving, as output from the machine learning model, an indication of the presence of the one or more items of interest (see, e.g., pars. 171-173, 227 and 231-234 and FIGS. 6, 9C and 10 of Adler, which teach providing the working images to the EI feature recognition models and receiving confidence levels indicating presence of respective El features).
For claims 3, 10 and 17, Adler in view of Vianello teaches receiving, as output, an indication of a confidence level associated with the presence of the one or more items of interest (see, e.g., pars. 171-173, 227, and 231-234 and FIGS. 6, 9C and 10 of Adler, which teach receiving, from the EI feature recognition models, confidence levels indicating presence of respective El features).
For claims 5, 12 and 19, Adler in view of Vianello teaches that facilitating communication with the owner of the parcel of land comprises:
determining the owner of the parcel of land based on municipal records (see, e.g., pars. 93, 123, 159, 213, 235, and 249 of Adler, which teach determining supplemental/status attribute information such as land/surface/mineral ownership records by accessing public records information sources, such as a land ownership database, using the online platform);
retrieving contact information associated with the determined owner (see, e.g., pars. 93, 123, 159, 213, 235, and 260-268 of Adler, which teach obtaining contact details using the online platform); and
contacting the owner using the retrieved contact information (see, e.g., pars. 93, 123, 159, 213, 235, and 260-268 of Adler, which teach initiating communications with a rights-owner using the online platform).
For claims 6, 13 and 20, Adler as applied teaches:
determining an indication of a confidence level associated with the determination that the particular site includes the one or more items of interest (see, e.g., pars. 171-173, 227 and 231-234 and FIGS. 6, 9C and 10 of Adler, which teach receiving, from the EI feature recognition models, confidence levels indicating presence of respective El features); and
Adler does not explicitly teach that determining the parcel of land that contains the determined geographic position is performed in response to the confidence level exceeding a threshold confidence level. Vianello in the analogous art teaches identifying a location of interest contained in the parcel in response to the highest confidence score (see, e.g., pars. 89-92 and FIG. 1 of Vianello).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Adler to determine a parcel of land in response to the highest confidence score as taught by Vianello because doing so would yield a predicable result of ensuring that the determination is only made when there is a certain level of confidence (see, e.g., MPEP 2143(I)(D)).
For claims 7 and 14, Adler in view of Vianello teaches that identifying a plurality of characteristics of the particular site that, when correlated, indicates the presence of the one or more items of interest at the particular site (see, e.g., pars. 213-227 and 236-239 and FIGS. 9A-D and 10 of Adler, which teach identifying a plurality of EI features of a particular site, such as an oilfield site, that as a whole, indicates a presence of energy infrastructure site/activity).
Claim(s) 4, 11 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Adler in view of Vianello and further in view of us patent application publication no. 2018/0107874 to Li et al. (hereinafter Li).
For claims 4, 11 and 18, Adler as applied teaches that the positional metadata comprises geographical information associated an area of terrain depicted by the image data (see, e.g., pars. 194-195 and 198-208 of Adler, which teach that the images are associated with geographical locations/coverages). However, Adler in view of Vianello not explicitly teach determining a relative position of the particular site depicted by the image data, and estimating a geographic position of the particular site based on a relative position of the particular site in the image data.
In the analogous art, Li as applied teaches determining a relative position of the particular site depicted by the image data (see, e.g., pars. 20-21 and 26-27 and FIGS. 1 and 4-5 of Li, which teach associating survey data that includes above and below ground features with the image and classifying objects in the image in relation to the features in the survey data), and
estimating a geographic position of the particular site based on a relative position of the particular site in the image data (see, e.g., pars. 20-21 and 28 and FIGS. 1 and 6 of Li, which teach mapping GPS data to the image that has been associated with the survey data).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Adler in view of Vianello to determine a relative position for image processing and classification as taught by Li because doing so would prevent tedious examination of the images, e.g., aerial photographs (see, e.g., par. 27 of Li).
Additional Citations
The following table lists several references that are relevant to the subject matter claimed and disclosed in this Application. The references are not relied on by the Examiner, but are provided to assist the Applicant in responding to this Office action.
Citation
Relevance
Okazaki (US 2023/0281447)
Describes systems, methods, and computing system platforms that support matching aerial image features of one or more properties to corresponding property conditions (e.g., maintenance levels of property features, including structural features, manmade features included within a vicinity of a structure (e.g., on a property lot, within a property parcel, or a geographic region of the property), and/or natural features included within the vicinity of the structure) through machine learning analysis. In a preferred application, the property condition analysis may be used in estimating damage risk in light of one or more disaster conditions, such as severe storms. The analysis may further aid in estimating costs of repair or replacement of each property, in one example, should a disaster cause the estimated damage. In another example, the analysis may be used to confirm that a property has been repaired.
Terrazas et al. (2016/0283955)
This disclosure relates generally to computer vision, and in particular but not exclusively, relates to detecting objects in aerial imagery. In some embodiments, aerial images of a geographic area are captured by an autonomous vehicle. In some embodiments, the locations of structures within a subset of the aerial images are manually annotated, and geographical locations of the manual annotations are determined based on pose information of the camera. In some embodiments, a machine learning model is trained using the manually annotated aerial images. The machine learning model is used to automatically generate annotations of other images of the geographic area, and the geographical locations determined from the manual annotations are used to determine an accuracy probability of the automatic annotations. The automatic annotations determined to be accurate may be used to re-train the machine learning model to increase its precision and recall.
Table 1
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See Table 1 and form 892.
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 WOO RHIM whose telephone number is (571)272-6560. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri 9:30 am - 6:00 pm et.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Henok Shiferaw can be reached at 571-272-4637. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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WOO CHUL RHIM
Examiner
Art Unit 2776
/Henok Shiferaw/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2676