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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-7, 10, 14-17, and 19 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed Oct 14, 2025, with respect to how the newly amended claim features differ from the prior art cited in the last office have been fully considered. These arguments are found to be persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in this office action.
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 of this title, 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 1-3, 11-13, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruiz et al. (NPL Doc, “DreamBooth: Fine Tuning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Subject-Driven Generation”) in view of Meeks et al. (Pub No. US 2024/0265204 A1).
As per claim 1, Ruiz teaches the claimed:
1. A system comprising:
at least one processor; at least one memory component storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor (The system of Ruiz would have to have some type of processor and memory present in order to function and run on a computer-based system), cause the at least one processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving, from a device, a portrait image of an entity (In figure 1 on the left side where one or more portrait images of a dog (entity) are received from a device. These are labelled as “Input images” in the figure);
generating an identity that represents the entity by using the portrait image and a machine learning model, the machine learning model comprising a stable diffusion model (In the abstract, “Given as input just a few images of a subject, we fine-tune a pretrained text-to-image model such that it learns to bind a unique identifier with that specific subject.“ Also, please see the 2nd page, upper middle of the 1st column which recites: “More formally, given a few images of a subject (∼3-5), our objective is to implant the subject into the output domain of the model such that it can be synthesized with a unique identifier. To that end, we propose a technique to represent a given subject with rare token identifiers and fine-tune a pre-trained, diffusion-based text-to-image framework”.
In this instance, the “few images of a subject” include “the portrait image”. A machine learning model comprises a stable diffusion model when they refer to “a pre-trained, diffusion-based text-to-image framework”. Ruiz also makes reference to using a stable diffusion model per se in the 3rd row in figure 4);
identifying a template for image generation (Ruiz in figure 1 on the right side where templates are identified. For example, one such template has a text description of a themed story scene as “in the Acropolis”, “in a doghouse”, “in a bucket”, or “getting a haircut”. These templates also have image conditioning, e.g. the caption of figure 1 recites: “The results exhibit natural interactions with the environment, as well as novel articulations and variation in lighting conditions”); and
using the machine learning model to generate a personalized image based on the identity and the template (This is also shown on the right side of figure 1 where the machine learning model (diffusion model) generates personalized dog images based on the identity and templates).
While Ruiz teaches of these claimed features, it is noted that Ruiz does not teach of “identifying a template for image generation based on a user account associated with the device”. In particular, Ruiz is silent about a “user account associated with the device”. Meeks teaches that it was known in the art to have a user account associated with the device for identifying a template for image generation. For example, please see Meeks in [0022] which refers to “This disclosure describes one or more embodiments of a custom content generation system that utilizes machine learning to intelligently generate new, custom content items having attributes of content from content collections associated with a user account. For instance, the custom content generation system can identify and utilize content items associated with a user account to fine tune parameters of a content generation model that is trained to generate new content items”. Meeks in figure 1 shows that the user account is associated with a “Client Device 110” as well. Also, please see Meeks in [0044] “… For example, the client device 110 can be operated by users to perform various functions (e.g., via the content management system application 112) such as, but not limited to, creating, receiving, viewing, modifying, and/or transmitting digital content, receiving and/or transmitting content creation requests, configuring user account or application settings of the content management system 104”. The claimed feature is taught when the user account of Meeks is used with the template identifying in Ruiz.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the user account associated with the device as taught by Meeks with the system of Ruiz. This helps when a client-server architecture is used. In this manner, a server may handle the generation of the personalized images itself by taking data from a plurality of different user accounts on different devices. In this manner, the user account is useful because it organizes each user’s respective data with that particular person. Thus, this helps organize the information together especially when there are multiple users each with different sets of data.
As per claim 2, Ruiz teaches the claimed:
2. The system of claim 1, wherein the personalized image comprises a personalized narrative image that illustrates the entity in a story scene (Ruiz in figure 1 on the right side where it shows the generation of several personalized narrative images with captions such as: “in the Acropolis”, “in a doghouse”, “in a bucket”, or “getting a haircut”. These personalized narrative images illustrate the dog entity in a story scene (e.g. going on vacation or getting a haircut)).
As per claim 3, Ruiz teaches the claimed:
3. The system of claim 1, wherein the condition comprises a visual resource that controls a generation of the personalized image, the visual resource comprising one of a sketch, a
pose map, a depth map, a normal map, and a canny edge (Ruiz makes reference to visual resource comprising a sketch in figure 8, 2nd row where art renditions are included as part of the generation of the personalized image
Also, please see Ruiz in figure 1 on the right side where it shows the generation of several personalized images. These personalized images include visual resources, e.g. the caption of figure 1 recites: “The results exhibit natural interactions with the environment, as well as novel articulations and variation in lighting conditions” and Ruiz in section 3.2, end of the 2nd paragraph “… In essence, we seek to leverage the model’s prior of the specific class and entangle it with the embedding of our subject’s unique identifier so we can leverage the visual prior to generate new poses and articulations of the subject in different contexts”. In this passage, the underlined portion corresponds to the claimed “a pose map” because it is used to map or define the new pose generated in the personalized image, e.g. new poses of the dog in the personalized image on the right side in figure 1).
As per claims 11-13, these claims are similar in scope to limitations recited in claims 1-3, respectively, and thus are rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 20, this claim is similar in scope to limitations recited in claim 1, and thus is rejected under the same rationale. The system of Ruiz would have to have some type of non-transitory computer-readable storage medium present in order to function and run on a computer as described by the reference.
Claims 8 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruiz in view of Meeks in further view of Stoop et al. (Pub No. US 2014/0041056 A1).
As per claim 8, Ruiz alone does not explicitly teach the claimed limitations.
However, Ruiz and Meeks in combination with Stoop teaches the claimed:
8. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise: causing display of the personalized image on a user interface of the device, the user interface comprising a user-selectable element that allows transmission of the personalized image to a further device associated with a further user account that is connected to the user account; detecting an indication of a user selection of the user-selectable element; and transmitting the personalized image as an ephemeral message to the further device (As mentioned above, Ruiz teaches of generating and displaying a personalized image. Ruiz is silent about the claimed: “the user interface comprising a user-selectable element that allows transmission of the personalized image to a further device associated with a further user account that is connected to the user account”. Stoop teaches of a user interface with selectable elements that allows a transmission of images in an ephemeral message to a further device associated with a further user account that is connected to the user account, e.g. please see Stoop in [0095] “When the user has finished designating images for sharing, the user may select the message compose icon 1006 within the gallery view 1002 or the thumbnail view 1009 and edit the message containing the images he has designated for sharing … Accordingly, the tagging display area 1023 shows that there are four people tagged: Friend A, Friend B, Friend C, and Friend D. In addition, the user may tag additional people in the message itself using the `Tag` button 1020. The user may add more images to the message by selecting an add button 1019. The user may select a `Post` button 1017 and cause the message 1016 and the four images 1018 to be uploaded for sharing on the social networking system” and Stoop in [0058] “Data stored in the connection store 138, the user account store 136, and the activity log 142 enables the social networking system 130 to generate the social graph that uses nodes to identify various objects and edges connecting nodes to identify relationships between different objects. For example, if a first user establishes a connection with a second user in the social networking system 130, user accounts of the first user and the second user from the user account store 136 may act as nodes in the social graph”
The claimed feature is taught when the user interface and transmitting of Stoop is applied to the personalized image generation system of Ruiz).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the user interface and image transmitting feature with other user accounts as taught by Stoop with the system of Ruiz as modified by Meeks in order to allow a user to share their personalized images with friends over a social network (Stoop in paragraph [0095]).
As per claim 18, this claim is similar in scope to limitations recited in claim 8, and thus is rejected under the same rationale.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruiz in view of Meeks in further view of Neider et al. (Pub No. US 2007/0257920 A1), Stoop, and Shi et al. (NPL Doc, “InstantBooth: Personalized Text-to-Image Generation without Test-Time Finetuning”).
As per claim 9, Ruiz alone does not explicitly teach the claimed limitations.
However, Ruiz and Meeks in combination with Neider teaches the claimed:
9. The system of claim 1, wherein the user account is a first user account, and wherein the operations further comprise:
determining the template corresponds to a plurality of entities (Neider in [0043] “However, unlike the prior art and educational materials, one or more characters are animated such that the nature, colors, sizes, shapes and other distinguishing features of the character's likeness, appearance or behavior may be selectively changed. This can be done by preparing the animation such that one or more characters are in template form 130 such that they can be changed or replaced. Such change or selection of character features can be from databases or libraries 150 and 160 of the desired features, including one or more features individually unique to the intended person who is to be portrayed as a character in the animation or related images.”);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to determine the template corresponds to a plurality of entities as taught by Neider with the system of Ruiz as modified by Meeks in order to allow the personalized images to include more than one entity. This gives the user more options as to the final appearance of the personalized image output.
Ruiz, Meeks, and Neider in combination with Stoop teaches the claimed:
identifying a plurality of user accounts that are connected to the first user account (Stoop in [0058] “Data stored in the connection store 138, the user account store 136, and the activity log 142 enables the social networking system 130 to generate the social graph that uses nodes to identify various objects and edges connecting nodes to identify relationships between different objects. For example, if a first user establishes a connection with a second user in the social networking system 130, user accounts of the first user and the second user from the user account store 136 may act as nodes in the social graph” and Stoop in [0095] “When the user has finished designating images for sharing, the user may select the message compose icon 1006 within the gallery view 1002 or the thumbnail view 1009 and edit the message containing the images he has designated for sharing … Accordingly, the tagging display area 1023 shows that there are four people tagged: Friend A, Friend B, Friend C, and Friend D.” In this instance, the user’s friends’ accounts correspond to the claimed “plurality of user accounts that are connect to the first user account”),
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to identify a plurality of user accounts as taught by Stoop with the system of Ruiz as modified by Meeks and Neider. The motivation of claim 8 is incorporated herein.
Ruiz, Meeks, Neider, and Stoop in combination with Shi teaches the claimed:
each of the plurality of user accounts being associated with an identity that is generated based on one or more portrait images of a corresponding entity (As mentioned above Stoop teaches of user accounts. Stoop is silent about each user account being “associated with an identity that is generated based on one or more portrait images of a corresponding entity” per se. Shi teaches that this was known in the art, e.g. please see Shi in figure 4 where each different user (entity) has an identity generated based on one or more portrait images).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention for a plurality of users is associate with an identity that is generated based on one or more portrait images of a corresponding entity as taught by Shi with the system of Ruiz as modified by Meeks and Neider in order to allow personalized images to be generated for more than 1 user.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
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/DANIEL F HAJNIK/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2616