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 .
Response to Amendment
The amendment received 03/02/26 has been entered in full.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 5-8, filed 03/02/26, with respect to the rejection of the claims have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new grounds of rejection is made as mapped below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-4, and 21-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Nie US 11,908,160.
Regarding claim 1, Nie discloses a method of object detection (see col. 1 lines 15-17)
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, comprising: receiving an input image (see figure 7, step S710 and col. 10 lines 60-67))
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; extracting a plurality of feature maps from the input image based on a feature pyramid network (FPN) having a plurality of pyramid levels, each feature map of the plurality of feature maps being associated with a respective pyramid level of the plurality of pyramid levels (see steps S720-S730 where reference feature maps are generated and a FPN having a plurality of sizes and scales is used, col. 11 lines 3-23)
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; selecting a region of one feature map of the plurality of feature maps for object detection (see S740 and col.11 lines 41-50, the proposed ROI may be obtained by implementing a region proposal network based on FPN 500)
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; and performing an object detection operation on each feature map of the plurality of feature maps based on a respective network head, wherein the object detection operation performed on the one feature map is confined to the selected region (see step S760 extracting set of features from each final feature map to which one of the ROIs is assigned by using ROI pooling, thus confined to the region of the ROI, see col. 13 lines 14-30).
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Regarding claim 2, Nie discloses wherein the FPN comprises a bottom-up pathway that produces the plurality of feature maps, based on the input image, in order of increasing semantic value (see figure 5)
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Regarding claim 3, Nie discloses wherein the FPN comprises a bottom-up pathway that produces a plurality of intermediate feature maps, based on the input image, in order of increasing semantic value and a top-down pathway that produces the plurality of feature maps, based on the plurality of intermediate feature maps, in order of increasing spatial resolution (see figure 5 and paragraph bridging cols 9-10)
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Regarding claim 4, Nie discloses wherein the one feature map is associated with the lowest pyramid level of the plurality of pyramid levels (see figure 5, the first feature map is associated with the lowest pyramid level although not exclusively).
Claims 21-24 are similarly rejected to claims 1-4.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-8, and 25-28 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN B STREGE whose telephone number is (571)272-7457. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5 (PST).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Chan Park can be reached at (571)272-7409. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOHN B STREGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2669
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