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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) was submitted on 01/31/2024. The submission 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 § 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.
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because it claims “A program” which is pure software and does not fall within the four categories of patent eligible subject matter.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3 and 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Tsuchida (WO 2021106613A – Cited IDS – US 20230007430 A1 is used for rejection citing).
Regarding claim 1: Tsuchida teaches an information processing apparatus (Fig. 5: Signal processing device 11) comprising a control unit (Fig. 5: Combination of BRIR generation processing unit 21 and Convolution processing unit 22 realized by Fig. 13: CPU 501) that performs processing of:
performing prediction of a total amount of delay that changes according to a state of a reproduction system including a sensor unit that senses a position of an observation target and a reproduction unit that reproduces a reproduction signal generated on a basis of sensing data of the sensor unit, the total amount of delay possibly occurring between sensing by the sensor unit and reproduction by the reproduction unit (Fig. 3-5: Sensor unit 31 on user’s headphones sensing the changing position of the headphones when user’s head turning and BRIR generation processing unit 21 and Convolution processing unit 22 predicting/calculating total time delay Tc(i); also see para [0081], [0086], [0090]-[0107], and [0018]-[0127]); and
compensating for a delay of the total amount of delay that has been predicted and then generating the reproduction signal (Fig. 5: Left ear cumulative addition unit 37 and Right ear cumulative addition unit 38 generating HRIRs for the left and right ears of the user based on the delay time Tc(i) and Convolution signal processing unit 22 convoluting HRIRs with input signal to generate Left ear and Right ear output signal with Tc(i) compensation; also see para [0133], [0137], and [0146]-[0147]).
Regarding claim 2: Tsuchida teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the reproduction unit is mounted on a head of a user and outputs a sound (para [0081]), the sensor unit senses a position of the user (para [0090]), and the control unit calculates, on a basis of the sensing data, a head position of the user after the total amount of delay has elapsed, and generates the reproduction signal by performing sound image localization processing on an audio signal, the sound image localization processing corresponding to the head position that has been calculated (Fig. 5: BRIR generation processing unit 21 calculating time delay Tc(i); also see Fig. 6 for time lapsing; Fig. 5: BRIR generation processing unit 21 generating HRIRs including based on time delay Tc(i), and Convolution processing unit 22 .
Regarding claim 3: Tsuchida teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control unit acquires state information representing a current state of the reproduction system and setting information representing an amount of delay that is preset in each state of the reproduction system, reads the amount of delay in the current state of the reproduction system from the setting information, the current state being represented by the state information, and performs the prediction using the amount of delay that has been read (Fig. 5: BRIR generation processing unit 21 calculating time delay Tc(i) at the moment of time (i) which is corresponding to the current position or state of the information processing device 11).
Regarding claim 14: Tsuchida teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control unit predicts the total amount of delay using a value actually measured in advance (para [0099]-[0105] and [0182]: T(i) and T_delay are determined and stored in advance; and para [0119]: total delay time Tc(i) is predicted based on T(i) and T_delay).
Regarding claims 15 and 16: The apparatus discussed in claim 1 above also supports these corresponding method claim and non-transitory computer readable storage medium claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-13 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID L TON whose telephone number is (571)270-7839. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM (EST).
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/DAVID L TON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2695