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
The United States Patent & Trademark Office appreciates the application that is submitted by the inventor/assignee. The United States Patent & Trademark Office reviewed the following application and has made the following comments below.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 01/19/2024 is considered and attached.
Priority
This application claims provisional benefit of case 63350674 filed on 06/09/2022.
Claim Status
Claims 1-6 and 16-20 are rejected under 35 USC § 103:
Claims 1-6 and 18-20 are rejected over Moreira in view of Pohl in view of Imai.
Claims 16-17 are rejected over Moreira in view of Pohl in view of Imai, further in view of Girod.
Claims 7-15 are objected.
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.
Claim(s) 1-6 and 18-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moreira et al. (Moreira, Adriano, and Maribel Yasmina Santos. "Concave hull: A k-nearest neighbours approach for the computation of the region occupied by a set of points.", published 2007, hereinafter Moreira) in view of Pohl et al. (Pohl, Melanie, and Dirk Feldmann. "Generating Straight Outlines of 2D Point Sets and Holes using Dominant Directions or Orthogonal Projections." VISIGRAPP, published 2016, hereinafter Pohl) in view of Imai et al. (Polygonal Approximations of a Curve — Formulations and Algorithms, published 1998 – visualized in https://compgeo.github.io/iri-imai/dist/, hereinafter Imai).
CLAIM 1
In regards to Claim 1, Moreira teaches a method for contour generation (Moreira, Abstract: “an algorithm to compute the envelope of a set of points in a plane, which generates convex or non-convex hulls that represent the area occupied by the given points”) comprising: identifying a first contour edge (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1: “The first step of the process is to find the first vertex of the polygon (point A in Figure 5a) as the one with the lowest Y value. In the second step, the k points that are nearest to the current point are selected as candidates to be the next vertex of the polygon (points B, C and D in Figure 5a, for k=3)”; see FIG. 5, the edges AD, AB and AC are considered as candidates) associated with a region having a plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63, left col, last paragraph: “there are multiple solutions (polygons) for each set of points, and the “best” solution depends on the final application, …” Each candidate edge is associated with a polygon, or solution for that set of point), the first contour edge extending from a first region point of the plurality of region points to a second region point of the plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1; see FIG. 5, A-D are points in the considering set of points, edges AB, AC and AD are considered);
identifying a second contour edge (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1: “The first step of the process is to find the first vertex of the polygon (point A in Figure 5a) as the one with the lowest Y value. In the second step, the k points that are nearest to the current point are selected as candidates to be the next vertex of the polygon (points B, C and D in Figure 5a, for k=3)”; see FIG. 5, the edges AD, AB and AC are considered as candidates) associated with the region extending from the first region point to a third region point of the plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63, left col, last paragraph: “there are multiple solutions (polygons) for each set of points, and the “best” solution depends on the final application, …” Each candidate edge is associated with a polygon, or solution for that set of point);
Moreira does not explicitly disclose determining whether a contour associated with the region has fewer vertices using the second contour edge as compared to using the first contour edge, the contour comprising a concave hull; and generating the contour based on the determination.
Pohl is in the same field of art of generating contour for 2D points. Further, Pohl teaches determining whether a contour associated with the region has fewer vertices using the second contour edge as compared to using the first contour edge (Pohl, Abstract: “we present methods that create straight, non-convex outlines of finite 2D point sets and of possibly contained holes. The resulting polygons feature fewer vertices and angles than hulls and can thus faithfully represent objects of angular shapes”; Section 3.1 and 3.2, Pohl teaches two methods to generate a contour that only connected by angles of a few, distinct values, called angular outlines, the rest of points are inside the contour; See FIG. 1 (b) and (c) below, the contour generated by Pohl’s method has fewer vertices.),
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the contour comprising a concave hull (Pohl, section 3, second paragraph: “The first method relies on the concave hull and determination of dominant edge directions. Our second method modifies the Concave Hull Algorithm to directly compute an angular outline.” Both methods of Pohl are based on Moreira’s Concave algorithm, therefore, generated contour contains a concave hull); and generating the contour. (Pohl, section 5.1 Results. Pohl teaches generating final boundary outlines for multiple sets of points, see figures in 5.1, the final outlines are simpler and have fewer vertices)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Moreira by incorporating the method to straighten contour line that is taught by Pohl, to make an image segmentation system that is able to generate smooth outline; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since among its several aspects, the present invention recognizes there is a need to generate simple outlines with only few vertices (Pohl, section 1. Introduction: “For the task of building reconstruction, having nicely straight outlines with only few vertices is desirable, because it simplifies the process of 3D model generation and the results are more realistic”). In addition, Pohl’s method is based on Moreira’s Concave hull algorithm (Pohl, page 61, section 2.1: “we adopt the Concave Hull Algorithm in (Moreira and Santos, 2007)”).
The combination of Moreira and Pohl does not explicitly disclose generating the contour based on the determination.
Imai is in the same field of art of minimizing contour vertices. Further, Imai teaches generating the contour based on the determination. (Imai teaches choosing among candidate contour "shortcut" edges by minimizing the number of resulting segments/vertices in a graph-based approximation, then constructing the contour from the selected path (shortest path under a min-# objective). This algorithm is visualized in https://compgeo.github.io/iri-imai/dist/ which discloses “The Iri-Imai Algorithm for minimizing the number of line segments in an approximation, given error ε, works by first constructing a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), G, … On this reduced set of edges, find the maximum weight path between the start and end points. The path is the simplified version of the input chain.”)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skills in the art, in view of Moreira (identifying multiple candidate edges) and Pohl (teaching contours with fewer vertices overall), to apply lmai’s comparative selection between candidate edges based on which yields fewer vertices, and then generate the contour based on that determination, to make an image segmentation system that is able to generate smooth outline. Thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since among its several aspects, the present invention recognizes there is a need to generate simple outlines with only few vertices (Pohl, section 1. Introduction: “For the task of building reconstruction, having nicely straight outlines with only few vertices is desirable, because it simplifies the process of 3D model generation and the results are more realistic”). In addition, Pohl’s method is based off Moreira’s Concave hull algorithm (Pohl, page 61, section 2.1: “we adopt the Concave Hull Algorithm in (Moreira and Santos, 2007)”)
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
CLAIM 2
In regards to Claim 2, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 1. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches detecting whether the contour generated using the second contour edge captures the plurality of region points without capturing any region points outside the region (Moreira, see FIG. 2 and 3, see annotated FIG. 3 below. The final result contour does not capture
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points outside the region),
wherein the contour is further generated based on the detecting. (Moreira, page 62, right col, third paragraph: “For the first phase, an implementation of the Shared Nearest Neighbours (SNN) clustering algorithm was used (Ertoz, 2003). The SNN is a density-based clustering algorithm that has as its major characteristic the fact of being able to detect clusters of different densities”)
CLAIM 3
In regards to Claim 3, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 1. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the plurality of region points define a boundary of the region (Moreira, see FIG. 3 above; section 2: “The second phase of the process is, for each group of points found by SNN, to compute the corresponding polygon that defines the boundaries of the region.”), the method further comprising removing one or more of the plurality of region points from consideration when generating the contour. (Moreira, page 65, Algorithm 1, see function RemovePoint)
CLAIM 4
In regards to Claim 4, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 1. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches identifying the plurality of region points as defining a boundary of the region (Moreira, page 2, left col, third paragraph: “we developed a new algorithm to compute a polygon representing the area occupied by a set of points in the plane.”; see Fig. 2 and 3) (Pohl, section 5.1 Results. Pohl teaches generating final boundary outlines for multiple sets of points, see figures in 5.1, the final outlines are simpler and have fewer vertices); and performing partitioning using the plurality of points to generate multiple partitions, wherein the contour is generated based on the multiple partitions. (Moreira, section 3.1 k-Nearest Neighbours Approach. Moreira teaches processing the set of points by dividing it into multiple subsets/subregions, see FIG. 5, first region ADBC is considered, then second region CDBE is considered. The final contour is generated when all subregions are considered.)
CLAIM 5
In regards to Claim 5, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 4. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches removing (Moreira, page 65, Algorithm 1, see function RemovePoint) one or more constraints associated with the partitioning to generate the contour. (Moreira, section 3.1 k-Nearest Neighbours Approach, see FIG. 5, first region ADBC is considered, then A is removed and E is added, and second region CDBE is considered. The Examiners points/vertices of each subregion reads on “constraints associated with the partitioning”)
CLAIM 6
In regards to Claim 6, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 1. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches generating a first contour portion using a first section of the region (Moreira, see FIG. 5, the edge AC is generated when processing the region section ADBC. The Examiner note an edge reads on “contour portion”); and generating a second contour portion using a second section of the region (Moreira, see FIG. 5, the edge CE is generated when processing the region section CDBE), wherein generating the contour comprises combining the first contour portion and the second contour portion. (Moreira, see FIG. 5 and 6, the final contour comprises generated edges)
CLAIM 18
In regards to Claim 18, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 1. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches identifying a contour of at least one subregion having a plurality of subregion points, wherein the plurality of subregion points is within the region. (Pohl, section 4.2 Bordering Holes. Pohl teaches identifying outlines of holes within a region. See figures in page 68; see annotated Fig. 11 below.)
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CLAIM 19
In regards to Claim 19, Moreira teaches an apparatus for contour generation (Moreira, Abstract: “an algorithm to compute the envelope of a set of points in a plane, which generates convex or non-convex hulls that represent the area occupied by the given points”) comprising: a memory; and at least one processor coupled to the memory (Moreira, page 67, left col, second paragraph: “running the algorithm in an ordinary Pentium 4-M at 2,2 GHz with 768 Mbytes of RAM.”), the at least one processor being configured to: comprising: identifying a first contour edge (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1: “The first step of the process is to find the first vertex of the polygon (point A in Figure 5a) as the one with the lowest Y value. In the second step, the k points that are nearest to the current point are selected as candidates to be the next vertex of the polygon (points B, C and D in Figure 5a, for k=3)”; see FIG. 5, the edges AD, AB and AC are considered as candidates) associated with a region having a plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63, left col, last paragraph: “there are multiple solutions (polygons) for each set of points, and the “best” solution depends on the final application, …” Each candidate edge is associated with a polygon, or solution for that set of point), the first contour edge extending from a first region point of the plurality of region points to a second region point of the plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1; see FIG. 5, A-D are points in the considering set of points, edges AB, AC and AD are considered);
identifying a second contour edge (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1: “The first step of the process is to find the first vertex of the polygon (point A in Figure 5a) as the one with the lowest Y value. In the second step, the k points that are nearest to the current point are selected as candidates to be the next vertex of the polygon (points B, C and D in Figure 5a, for k=3)”; see FIG. 5, the edges AD, AB and AC are considered as candidates) associated with the region extending from the first region point to a third region point of the plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63, left col, last paragraph: “there are multiple solutions (polygons) for each set of points, and the “best” solution depends on the final application, …” Each candidate edge is associated with a polygon, or solution for that set of point);
Moreira does not explicitly disclose determining whether a contour associated with the region has fewer vertices using the second contour edge as compared to using the first contour edge, the contour comprising a concave hull; and generating the contour based on the determination.
Pohl is in the same field of art of generating contour for 2D points. Further, Pohl teaches determining whether a contour associated with the region has fewer vertices using the second contour edge as compared to using the first contour edge (Pohl, Abstract: “we present methods that create straight, non-convex outlines of finite 2D point sets and of possibly contained holes. The resulting polygons feature fewer vertices and angles than hulls and can thus faithfully represent objects of angular shapes”; Section 3.1 and 3.2, Pohl teaches two methods to generate a contour that only connected by angles of a few, distinct values, called angular outlines, the rest of points are inside the contour; See FIG. 1 (b) and (c) below, the contour
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generated by Pohl’s method has fewer vertices.),
the contour comprising a concave hull (Pohl, section 3, second paragraph: “The first method relies on the concave hull and determination of dominant edge directions. Our second method modifies the Concave Hull Algorithm to directly compute an angular outline.” Both methods of Pohl are based on Moreira’s Concave algorithm, therefore, generated contour contains a concave hull); and generating the contour based on the determination. (Pohl, section 5.1 Results. Pohl teaches generating final boundary outlines for multiple sets of points, see figures in 5.1, the final outlines are simpler and have fewer vertices)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Moreira by incorporating the method to straighten contour line that is taught by Pohl, to make an image segmentation system that is able to generate smooth outline; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since among its several aspects, the present invention recognizes there is a need to generate simple outlines with only few vertices (Pohl, section 1. Introduction: “For the task of building reconstruction, having nicely straight outlines with only few vertices is desirable, because it simplifies the process of 3D model generation and the results are more realistic”). In addition, Pohl’s method is based on Moreira’s Concave hull algorithm (Pohl, page 61, section 2.1: “we adopt the Concave Hull Algorithm in (Moreira and Santos, 2007)”).
The combination of Moreira and Pohl does not explicitly disclose generating the contour based on the determination.
Imai is in the same field of art of minimizing contour vertices. Further, Imai teaches generating the contour based on the determination. (Imai teach choosing among candidate contour "shortcut" edges by minimizing the number of resulting segments/vertices in a graph-based approximation, then constructing the contour from the selected path (shortest path under a min-# objective). This algorithm is visualized in https://compgeo.github.io/iri-imai/dist/ which discloses “The Iri-Imai Algorithm for minimizing the number of line segments in an approximation, given error ε, works by first constructing a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), G, … On this reduced set of edges, find the maximum weight path between the start and end points. The path is the simplified version of the input chain.”)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skills in the art, in view of Moreira (identifying multiple candidate edges) and Pohl (teaching contours with fewer vertices overall), to apply lmai’s comparative selection between candidate edges based on which yields fewer vertices, and then generate the contour based on that determination, as claimed.
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
CLAIM 20
In regards to Claim 20, Moreira teaches a non-transitory computer-readable medium having instruction, which when executed by at least one processor (Moreira, page 67, left col, second paragraph: “running the algorithm in an ordinary Pentium 4-M at 2,2 GHz with 768 Mbytes of RAM.”), cause the at least one processor to: identifying a first contour edge (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1: “The first step of the process is to find the first vertex of the polygon (point A in Figure 5a) as the one with the lowest Y value. In the second step, the k points that are nearest to the current point are selected as candidates to be the next vertex of the polygon (points B, C and D in Figure 5a, for k=3)”; see FIG. 5, the edges AD, AB and AC are considered as candidates) associated with a region having a plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63, left col, last paragraph: “there are multiple solutions (polygons) for each set of points, and the “best” solution depends on the final application, …” Each candidate edge is associated with a polygon, or solution for that set of point), the first contour edge extending from a first region point of the plurality of region points to a second region point of the plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1; see FIG. 5, A-D are points in the considering set of points, edges AB, AC and AD are considered);
identifying a second contour edge (Moreira, page 63-64, section 3.1: “The first step of the process is to find the first vertex of the polygon (point A in Figure 5a) as the one with the lowest Y value. In the second step, the k points that are nearest to the current point are selected as candidates to be the next vertex of the polygon (points B, C and D in Figure 5a, for k=3)”; see FIG. 5, the edges AD, AB and AC are considered as candidates) associated with the region extending from the first region point to a third region point of the plurality of region points (Moreira, page 63, left col, last paragraph: “there are multiple solutions (polygons) for each set of points, and the “best” solution depends on the final application, …” Each candidate edge is associated with a polygon, or solution for that set of point);
Moreira does not explicitly disclose determining whether a contour associated with the region has fewer vertices using the second contour edge as compared to using the first contour edge, the contour comprising a concave hull; and generating the contour based on the determination.
Pohl is in the same field of art of generating contour for 2D points. Further, Pohl teaches determining whether a contour associated with the region has fewer vertices using the second contour edge as compared to using the first contour edge (Pohl, Abstract: “we present methods that create straight, non-convex outlines of finite 2D point sets and of possibly contained holes. The resulting polygons feature fewer vertices and angles than hulls and can thus faithfully represent objects of angular shapes”; Section 3.1 and 3.2, Pohl teaches two methods to generate a contour that only connected by angles of a few, distinct values, called angular outlines, the rest of points are inside the contour; See FIG. 1 (b) and (c) below, the contour generated by Pohl’s method has fewer vertices.),
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the contour comprising a concave hull (Pohl, section 3, second paragraph: “The first method relies on the concave hull and determination of dominant edge directions. Our second method modifies the Concave Hull Algorithm to directly compute an angular outline.” Both methods of Pohl are based on Moreira’s Concave algorithm, therefore, generated contour contains a concave hull); and generating the contour based on the determination. (Pohl, section 5.1 Results. Pohl teaches generating final boundary outlines for multiple sets of points, see figures in 5.1, the final outlines are simpler and have fewer vertices)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Moreira by incorporating the method to straighten contour line that is taught by Pohl, to make an image segmentation system that is able to generate smooth outline; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since among its several aspects, the present invention recognizes there is a need to generate simple outlines with only few vertices (Pohl, section 1. Introduction: “For the task of building reconstruction, having nicely straight outlines with only few vertices is desirable, because it simplifies the process of 3D model generation and the results are more realistic”). In addition, Pohl’s method is based on Moreira’s Concave hull algorithm (Pohl, page 61, section 2.1: “we adopt the Concave Hull Algorithm in (Moreira and Santos, 2007)”).
The combination of Moreira and Pohl does not explicitly disclose generating the contour based on the determination.
Imai is in the same field of art of minimizing contour vertices. Further, Imai teaches generating the contour based on the determination. (Imai teach choosing among candidate contour "shortcut" edges by minimizing the number of resulting segments/vertices in a graph-based approximation, then constructing the contour from the selected path (shortest path under a min-# objective). This algorithm is visualized in https://compgeo.github.io/iri-imai/dist/ which discloses “The Iri-Imai Algorithm for minimizing the number of line segments in an approximation, given error ε, works by first constructing a DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), G, … On this reduced set of edges, find the maximum weight path between the start and end points. The path is the simplified version of the input chain.”)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skills in the art, in view of Moreira (identifying multiple candidate edges) and Pohl (teaching contours with fewer vertices overall), to apply lmai’s comparative selection between candidate edges based on which yields fewer vertices, and then generate the contour based on that determination, as claimed.
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 16 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moreira in view of Pohl, in view of Imai, and further in view of Girod et al. (Bernd Girod, Gordon Wetzstein “Morphological Image Processing” Stanford University, published 2016, hereinafter Girod).
CLAIM 16
In regards to Claim 16, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai teaches the method of Claim 1.
The combination of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai does not explicitly disclose identifying the plurality of region points of the region based on a thresholding process performed on an image.
Girod is in the same field of art of image processing. Further, Girod teaches identifying the plurality of region points of the region based on a thresholding process performed on an image. (Girod, page 2, Binary image processing: “Thresholding/segmentation”; see figures in page 31. Girod teaches image segmentation using thresholding techniques, which generate binary images contains only two colors black and white, one for identified regions and one for background. The Examiner notes pixels of identified regions reads on “region points”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Moreira, Pohl, and Imai by incorporating the thresholding technique that is taught by Girod, to make an image processing system that is able to perform image segmentation and generate points data from color/grayscale image; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since the combination would made the system to be able to take color/grayscale image as input data (Girod, page 2, Binary image processing: “Thresholding/segmentation”; see figures in page 31).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
CLAIM 17
In regards to Claim 17, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, Imai and Girod teaches the method of Claim 16. In addition, the combination of Moreira, Pohl, Imai and Girod teaches applying one or more image filters (Girod, page 26, Morphological filters for gray-level images. Girod teaches Morphological filters/operators, which includes dilation, erosion, opening and closing) on results of the thresholding process to identify the plurality of region points. (Girod, page 26, last sentence: “Flat morphological operators and thresholding are commutative”, see annotated page 31 below, Giro teaches morphological operators/filters can be performed before and after thresholding)
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Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-15 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.
Pertinent Arts
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Duckham et al. (Duckham, Matt, et al. "Efficient generation of simple polygons for characterizing the shape of a set of points in the plane." Pattern recognition 41, published 2008)
Park et al. (Park, Jin-Seo, and Se-Jong Oh. "A New Concave Hull Algorithm and Concaveness Measure for n-dimensional Datasets." Journal of Information Science & Engineering 28.3, published 2012)
Davis (Martin Davis, https://lin-ear-th-inking.blogspot.com/search?q=concave+hull, published 05/30/2022)
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NHUT HUY (JEREMY) PHAM whose telephone number is (703)756-5797. The examiner can normally be reached Mo - Fr. 8:30am - 6pm ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, O'Neal Mistry can be reached on (313)446-4912. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NHUT HUY PHAM/Examiner, Art Unit 2674
/Ross Varndell/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2674