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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 12/30/25 has been entered.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claims 1-20 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims recite a mental process that can be performed by a human being and/or recite a method of organizing human activity and/or claim the rules of a game.
In regard to Claims 1, 9, and 17, the following limitations can be performed as a mental process by a human being in terms of claiming collecting data, analyzing that data, and providing outputs based on that analysis which has been held by the CAFC to be an abstract idea in decisions such as, e.g., Electric Power Group, University of Florida Research Foundation, and Yousician v Ubisoft (non-precedential); and/or recite a method of organizing human activity in terms of claiming the teaching/training/evaluation of a human subject’s which has been identified by MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(II) as being a method of organizing human activity; and/or claiming the rules of a game which has been identified by the CAFC as being an abstract ides in decisions such as, e.g., Savvy Dog Systems v. Pennsylvania Coin (non-precedential; 2023-1073; 3/21/24), in terms of the Applicant claiming:
A method for human […] interaction based on a story scene […], the method comprising:
acquiring [an image] of a physical environment, the [image] comprising a background region and a foreground character region of the physical environment, the foreground character region including an actual human character associated with a [visual] human character of a reasoning task corresponding to the story scene;
segmenting the [image] into the background region and the foreground character region, including segmenting the foreground character region into a face region and a non-face region of the actual human character;
replacing the background region in the [image] with an augmented [visual] region of a [visual] environment of the story scene, the [visual] background region including a scene picture of the story scene, the scene picture of the story scene being a [visual] scene different from a representation of the physical environment in the background region of the [image];
replacing the foreground character region in the [image] with [a visual] character region of the [visual] environment of the story scene, including replacing the non-face region of the foreground character region based on a character material of the [visual] human character, wherein the [visual] character region includes a representation of the actual human character wearing an [visual] costume corresponding to the character material of the [visual] human character;
displaying a [visual image] of the [visual] environment based on the [image], the [visual image] comprising the [visual] background region and the [visual] character region of the [visual] environment;
changing a display content of the [augmented visual image] in response to an interaction operation performed by the actual human character; and
completing the reasoning task corresponding to the story scene based on the changed display content.
In regard to the dependent claims, they also claim an abstract idea to the extent that they merely claim further limitations that likewise could be performed as a mental process by a human being and/or recite a method of organizing human activity and/or the rules of a game.
Furthermore, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because to the extent that additional elements are claimed either alone or in combination such as, e.g., embodying Applicant’s abstract idea as computer code stored in a computer readable medium that is then executed on a computer processor, employing a video camera, employing augmented reality, segmenting a video stream, these are merely claimed to add insignificant extra-solution activity to the judicial exception (e.g., data gathering), to embody the abstract idea on a general purpose computer, and/or do no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use. In this regard, see MPEP 2106.04(d)(I) in regard to “courts have also identified limitations that did not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application…”
Furthermore, the claims do not include additional elements that taken individually, and also taken as an ordered combination, are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because to the extent that, e.g., embodying Applicant’s abstract idea as computer code stored in a computer readable medium that is then executed on a computer processor, employing a video camera, employing augmented reality, segmenting a video stream, these are well-understood, routine, and conventional elements and are claimed for the well-understood, routine, and conventional functions of collecting and processing data and/or providing an analysis/outputs based on that processing. To the extent that an apparatus is claimed as an additional element said apparatus fails to qualify as a “particular machine” to the extent that it is claimed generally, merely implements the steps of Applicant’s claimed method, and is claimed merely for purposes of extra-solution activity or field of use. See MPEP 2106.05(b). As evidence that these additional elements are well-understood, routine, and conventional, Applicant’s specification discloses the support for these elements in a manner that indicates that the additional elements are sufficiently well-known that the specification does not need to describe the particulars of such additional elements to satisfy 35 U.S.C. § 112(a). See, e.g., F3 in Applicant’s PGPUB and text regarding same; e.g., p64 in regard to employing a video camera to capture a video stream; e.g., p372 in regard to employing augmented reality; and, e.g., p286 in regard to segmenting a video stream.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 USC 101 to the extent that Claims 1, 9, and 16 are directed to a human organism performing certain actions (“completing a reasoning task…content”). See MPEP 2105.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments in regard to the rejections made under 35 USC 101 by applying the Mayo test are not persuasive because numerous of the limitations listed by the Applicant (“human-machine interaction”, “a terminal”, “real video stream”, “AR video stream”) are not identified in the rejection as being part of the alleged abstract idea. Applicant further argues that its claimed invention is analogous to the Office’s 101 Example 48. It is unclear, however, how to apply the Examples provided by the Office given that the Mayo test is a legal test and the Office as part of the executive branch cannot make law; the Examples themselves do not cite to legal authority; as well as because the Examples are not provided with specifications that would allow for the BRI of the limitations in question to be determined. What is more, Applicant’s claimed invention does not concern anything like a “speech separation method comprising…converting the mixed speech signal x into a spectrogram…using a deep neural network (DNN)…partitioning the embedding vectors…applying the binary masks…synthesizing speech waveforms”, etc. Instead, Applicant merely claims “segmenting the real video stream into the back ground region and the foreground region”. And Applicant neither claims nor discloses any detail in regard to how this “separating” is to take place. See, e.g., from Applicant’s PGPUB:
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In other words, Applicant’s specification basically discloses that the images are separated into background and foreground regions…by segmenting the images into background and foreground regions, and using “traditional static semantic segmentation”. In other words, unlike Example 48, no actual detail is either claimed nor disclosed by the Applicant in regard to how to perform this function. In fact, the segmentation function is disclosed as being well-known, routine and conventional (“traditional static semantic segmentation”) and, thereby, cannot render “significantly more” than Applicant’s abstract idea itself.
Applicant further argues in this regard:
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Applicant’s argument is unpersuasive. Saving “physical resources, such as customized clothing, props and paper scripts for script murder scenes” is not any “improvement to existing computer technology”. Applicant’s claimed “terminal” does not, e.g., run any faster, use less power, and/or be able to be manufactured more cheaply as a result of Applicant’s claimed invention possibly eliminating the need for “props and paper scripts”. Applicant basically claims taking a series of images related to a story, separating the images them into different parts, and then providing a new image that includes some of those parts combined with other images based on a human interaction with the storyline. This is not an improvement to computing technology but is an abstract idea, as identified in the 101 rejection made supra.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is listed in the attached PTO-Form 892 and is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to Mike Grant whose telephone number is 571-270-1545. The Examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., except on the first Friday of each bi-week.
If attempts to reach the Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner's Supervisory Primary Examiner, Peter Vasat can be reached at 571-270-7625. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL C GRANT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715