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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 05/22/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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, 28, 30 and 33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Paul M. Beymore et al (US 20160117844 A1) in view of in view of Chih-Kuang Chang et al (TW 200912799 A) Allan Blasé Joseph Rodrigues et al (US 20070003691 A1).
Regarding claim 23, Beymore et al discloses a computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer (¶ [21]), the method comprising executing, on at least one processor of at least one computer (¶ [20]), the steps of:
a) forming effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space (¶ [28]), each point being characterized by three device-independent color coordinates in the three-dimensional color space (¶ [28]), the device-independent color coordinates being:
i) chromaticity coordinates (¶ [27]), and
ii) a lightness-related value (¶ [27]);
b) computing a distance of the one or more points to one or more reference point in the three-dimensional color space (¶ [33]), wherein the one or more reference point are formed using the same color coordinates as the one or more points of effect pigment spots, and wherein each reference points is associated with a reference effect pigment (¶ [29] and ¶ [32-33]);
c) selecting, for each of the one or more points, the reference points with shortest distance (¶ [33] closest alignment); and
d) characterizing the effect pigment spots in the one or more points as belonging to the reference effect pigment associated with the respective selected reference points (¶ [21] and ¶ [34]).
Beymore et al fails to explicitly disclose forming the one or more points as point clouds.
Chang et al, in the same field of endeavor of performing data matching using the comparison between measured points and reference points (lines 16-25), teaches forming the one or more points as point clouds (lines 34-47).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was filed for the computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer as disclosed by Beymore et al comprising forming effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space to utilize the teachings of Chang et al which teaches forming the one or more points as point clouds to improve computer hardware performance and lower prices of computation.
Beymore et al fails to explicitly disclose the device-independent color coordinates being first and second linearly projected chromaticity coordinates.
Rodrigues et al teaches the device-independent color coordinates being first and second linearly projected chromaticity coordinates (¶ [38]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was filed for the computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer as disclosed by Beymore et al comprising forming effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space to utilize the teachings of Rodrigues et al which teaches the device-independent color coordinates being first and second linearly projected chromaticity coordinates to fully define a color point with complete color attributes where lightness and chromatic attributes are both represented thereby giving an accurate depiction of the color.
Regarding claim 28, Beymore et al discloses the method of claim 23 (see rejection of claim 23).
Beymore et al fails to explicitly disclose wherein forming one or more point clouds comprises forming one or more point cloud clusters and/or executing a point clustering method.
Rodrigues et al teaches forming one or more point cloud clusters and/or executing a point clustering method (¶ [51-52]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the inventio was effectively filed for the computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer as disclosed by Beymore et al comprising forming effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space to utilize the teachings of Rodrigues et al which teaches forming one or more point cloud clusters and/or executing a point clustering method to improve accuracy of color information acquisition by eliminating color variability within the same general color due to slight variations in the particular color formulation or application condition.
Regarding claim 30, Beymore et al discloses the method of claim 23 (see rejection of claim 23), wherein the images are acquired at a plurality of viewing and illumination angle combinations (¶ [23]).
Regarding claim 33, Beymore et al discloses the method of claim 23 (see rejection of claim 23), further comprising:
providing one or more digital cameras (¶ [21]);
providing one or more illumination sources (¶ [22]);
providing one or more electronic displays (Fig. 7 numeral 100);
providing a plurality of reference point clouds stored in non-volatile semiconductor memory (¶ [33]); and
acquiring color image data from the digital cameras (¶ [33]).
Claim 27 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Beymore et al in view of Chang et al and Rodrigues et al as applied to claim 23 above, and further in view of Arun Prakash et al (US 20040252308 A1).
Regarding claim 27, Beymore et al discloses the method of claim 23 (see rejection of claim 23).
Beymore et al fails to explicitly disclose applying a thresholding method to the images of the layer to form images comprising effect pigment spots.
Prakash et al, in the same field of endeavor of characterizing metallic flakes in an existing coating (Abstract), teaches applying a thresholding method to the images of the layer to form images comprising effect pigment spots (¶ [51]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the inventio was effectively filed for the computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer as disclosed by Beymore et al comprising forming effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space to utilize the teachings of Prakash et al which teaches applying a thresholding method to the images of the layer to form images comprising effect pigment spots to obtain all necessary features of unknown effect pigment information to properly identify the type of pigment acquired from the image.
Claim 32 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Beymore et al in view of Chang et al and Rodrigues et al as applied to claim 23 above, and further in view of Arun Prakash et al (US 201400242271 A1, hereinafter Prakash ‘271).
Regarding claim 32, Beymore et al discloses the method of claim 23 (see rejection of claim 23).
Beymore et al fails to explicitly disclose displaying the point clouds on a plot comprising three or more axes, wherein a first axis is for the first chromaticity coordinate u', a second axis is for the second chromaticity coordinate v', and a third axis is for the deviation from lightness mean (L* - <L*> ) of the effect pigment spots.
Prakash ‘271 et al teaches displaying the point clouds on a plot comprising three or more axes, wherein a first axis is for the first chromaticity coordinate u', a second axis is for the second chromaticity coordinate v', and a third axis is for the deviation from lightness mean (L* - <L*> ) of the effect pigment spots (¶ [74-75]; ¶ [88]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the inventio was effectively filed for the computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer as disclosed by Beymore et al comprising forming effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space to utilize the teachings of Prakash ‘271 et al which teaches displaying the point clouds on a plot comprising three or more axes, wherein a first axis is for the first chromaticity coordinate u', a second axis is for the second chromaticity coordinate v', and a third axis is for the deviation from lightness mean (L* - <L*> ) of the effect pigment spots to accurately compare color information data for producing the best match.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 24-26, 29, 31 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.
Claims 34-40 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The examiner found neither prior art in its entirety, nor based on the prior art found motivation to combine subsequent art which teaches a method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer comprising forming one or more point clouds of effect pigment spots in a three-dimensional color space, each point in the point clouds being characterized by three device-independent color coordinates in the three-dimensional color space, analyzing the one or more point clouds using a classifier, wherein the classifier has been trained on a plurality of reference point clouds of reference effect pigment spots to compute a distance of the one or more point clouds to each of said reference point clouds of reference effect pigment spots, based on a result of the step of analyzing, outputting output data comprising one or more of: i) a pigment identity of one or more effect pigments corresponding to the one or more of the point cloud clusters, ii) an effect pigment class related to the material or morphology of the pigment or pigment flakes, or iii) a pigment grade or coarseness of each of the effect pigments identified in the layer. In addition, the prior art fails to disclose a computer-implemented method for characterizing effect pigment spots in images of a layer comprising forming one or more point clouds of effect pigment spots in a three- dimensional color space, each point in the point clouds being characterized by three device-independent color coordinates in the three-dimensional color space, the device-independent color coordinates being a first and a second linearly projected chromaticity coordinates and a lightness-related value by i) computing the lightness of one or more effect pigment spots within one or more images; ii) computing a lightness mean of effect pigment spots; and iii) computing a deviation from the lightness mean of the effect pigment spots, wherein the lightness-related value of the points in the point cloud equals the deviation from the lightness mean encoding the one or more point clouds into a hierarchical tree data structure; ii) forming a point cloud envelope; iii) computing the cloud's centroid projected on a plane of a chromaticity diagram; and iv) computing a measure of the cloud's statistical dispersion.
Conclusion
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/JAMARES Q WASHINGTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681
October 15, 2025