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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 5/7/26 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to 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 § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 30-32, 34-36 and 44 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because 35 U.S.C. 101 requires that a claimed invention must fall within one of the four eligible categories of invention (i.e. process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter) and must not be directed to subject matter encompassing a judicially recognized exception as interpreted by the courts. MPEP 2106. The four eligible categories of invention include: (1) process which is an act, or a series of acts or steps, (2) machine which is an concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices, (3) manufacture which is an article produced from raw or prepared materials by giving to these materials new forms, qualities, properties, or combinations, whether by hand labor or by machinery, and (4) composition of matter which is all compositions of two or more substances and all composite articles, whether they be the results of chemical union, or of mechanical mixture, or whether they be gases, fluids, powders or solids. MPEP 2106(I).
Claims 30-32, 34-36 and 44 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as not falling within one of the four statutory categories of invention because the broadest reasonable interpretation of the instant claims in light of the specification encompasses transitory signals. But, transitory signals are not within one of the four statutory categories (i.e. non-statutory subject matter). See MPEP 2106(I). However, claims directed toward a non-transitory computer readable medium may qualify as a manufacture and make the claim patent-eligible subject matter. MPEP 2106(I). Therefore, amending the claims to recite a “non-transitory computer-readable instruction” would resolve this issue.
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.
Claims 23-25, 27-32, 34-39 and 41-42 as best understood are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ranjan et al (US Pub. 2018/0181809) in view of Reinerman-Jones (US Pub. 2013/0260357) and Pupil localization using geodesic distance, by Fusek.
With respect to claim 23, Ranjan discloses At least one memory comprising instructions to cause at least one programmable circuit to at least, (see figure 5):
train a neural network based on a plurality of synthetic dataset to estimate gaze, the synthetic dataset including synthetic images, ones of the synthetic images including eyes generated synthetically, (see paragraph 0028, CNN may be trained using synthetic data);
generate a real image dataset including real images, the real images including images of eyes of human subjects, [generation of the real image dataset based on identification of blinks in one or more of the real images], (see paragraph 0030, the CNN is next trained under real data i.e. there is real data in order to use for the training of CNN);
refine the trained neural network based on at least a first portion of the real image dataset to generate a refined neural network, (see paragraph 0030, wherein …the CNN may then be trained using the synthetic data, and may next be trained “refine” with real data);
[validate the refined neural network based on at least a second portion of the real image dataset]; and
provide the validated neural network to estimate gaze associated with an input image from a camera, (see figure 8, numerical 802-capturing an image by camera, and 816-using CNN for the gaze of an eye), as claimed.
However, Ranjan fails to explicitly disclose generation of the real image dataset based on identification of blinks in one or more of the real images; and validate the refined neural network based on at least a second portion of the real image dataset, as claimed.
Reinerman-Jones teaches validate the refined neural network based on at least a second portion of the real image dataset, (see figure 4, Model tested “validated” with remaining 50 out of 100 people “a second portion of real image data”, also paragraph 0044, wherein …refined model is trained and then tested on the remaining data. This can be a cyclical process to optimize a model for a test group based on mathematic standards), as claimed
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skilled in the art at the effective date of invention to combine the two references as they are analogous because they are solving similar problem of model generation/neural network model. Teaching of Reinerman-Jones to refine and validate he model can be incorporated into Ranjan’s system as suggested (see Ranjan paragraph 0030, CNN is next trained on real data to increase the accuracy), for suggestion, and modifying the system yields more accurate or decreases the error rate of the model (see Reinerman-Jones paragraph 0044, This can be a cyclical process to optimize a model), for motivation.
Also, Fusek teaches generation of the real image dataset based on identification of blinks in one or more of the real images, (see page 436-437, wherein the images are divided into several categories, which also makes the dataset suitable for training…; and page 437 gives the category for eye state as open or close), as claimed.
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skilled in the art at the effective date of invention to combine the references as they are analogous because they are solving similar problem of model generation/neural network model by using training dataset. Teaching of Fusek to generate a dataset with various categories including the eye open or close i.e. blink of the eye can be incorporated into Ranjan’s system as suggested (see Ranjan paragraph 0030, CNN is next trained on real data to increase the accuracy), for suggestion, and modifying the system yields more accurate model by having or using a more accurate dataset for training (see Fusek Abstractl), for motivation.
With respect to claim 24, combination of Ranjan, Reinerman-Jones and Fusek further discloses wherein the neural network to be trained includes a convolutional neural network, (see Ranjan paragraph 0030, CNN may be trained), as claimed.
With respect to claim 25, combination of Ranjan, Reinerman-Jones and Fusek further discloses wherein one or more of the at least one programmable circuit includes a graphics processing unit (GPU), (see Ranjan paragraph 0037, PPU 200 is a graphics processing unit (GPU)), as claimed.
With respect to claim 27, combination of Ranjan, Reinerman-Jones and Fusek further discloses wherein the instructions are to cause one or more of the at least one programmable circuit to train the neural network to output an estimated gaze direction, (see Ranjan paragraph 0029, wherein …each rendered image in the rendered images included in the training dataset may include a representation of a subject's head having a particular head orientation and gaze direction), as claimed.
With respect to claim 28, combination of Ranjan, Reinerman-Jones and Fusek further discloses wherein the instructions are to cause one or more of the at least one programmable circuit to train the neural network based on the synthetic dataset to output an estimated gaze magnitude, (see Ranjan paragraph 0024, wherein …yet another example, the orientation of the eye may include an azimuth value (e.g., representing a yaw rotation, etc.) and an elevation value (e.g., representing a pitch rotation, etc.) of the eye. In still another example, the orientation of the eye may be in the form of a vector), as claimed.
With respect to claim 29, combination of Ranjan, Reinerman-Jones and Fusek further discloses wherein the instructions are to cause one or more of the at least one programmable circuit to execute the validated neural network to output an estimated gaze direction associated with the input image, (see Ranjan figure 8, 816 CNN for gaze of an eye), as claimed.
Claims 30-36 and 37-42 are rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejections of claims 23-29, because claims 30-36 and 37-42 are claiming subject matter of similar scope as claimed in claims 23-19.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 43 and 45 are 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.
Conclusion
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/VIKKRAM BALI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2663
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