DETAILED ACTION
Notice of AIA Status
1. 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 Arguments
2. Applicant’s remarks received on 02/26/2026 with respect to the amended independent claims have been acknowledged and are moot in view of a new ground of rejection necessitated by the corresponding amendment. Currently claims 1-9 are rejected.
Response to Amendment
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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.
41066.. 1066.Claims 1 and 2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Singhal et al (US Pub: 2019/0156124) and in further view of Zhang et al (Live Video Analytics at Scale with Approximation and Delay-Tolerance, 03/27/2017).
Regarding claim 1 (currently amended), Singhal et al teaches: A method of processing video images, comprising: receiving a query from a user interface [p0026]; (a) obtaining a video stream [p0028, p0032]; (c) applying the set of processing pipelines to the video stream to obtain a data set of analytics data, wherein pipeline analytics data for a processing pipeline of the set of processing pipelines comprises data about images of the video images [p0062, claim 1]; (d) storing the pipeline analytics data of each processing pipeline into a queryable data structure [p0124]; and (e) returning portions of the video stream, or portion of the analytics data, to the user interface [p0027-p0031, p0046, p0047].
Singhal et al does not select pipelines appropriate to a query. In the same field of endeavor, Zhang et al teaches: receiving a query from a user interface; in response to the query; (a) obtaining a video stream related to the query; (b) selecting a set of processing pipelines appropriate to the query from a plurality of processing pipelines [page 378: p01, page 379: p02, 2.2, fig. 1]. Therefore, given Zhang et al’s prescription on user submitting queries which are composed of transforms and represented as pipeline so that different tasks use different transform chains, it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of the two to select pipelines appropriate to a query for improved processing time and efficiency.
Regarding claim 2 (currently amended), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein. Zhang et al further teaches: The method of claim 1, wherein a processing pipeline of the set of processing pipelines outputs object analytics data representing objects named in the query and identified in the video images [page 381: p02].
51066.. 1066.Claims 8 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Singhal et al (US Pub: 2019/0156124) and Zhang et al (Live Video Analytics at Scale with Approximation and Delay-Tolerance, 03/27/2017); and in further view of Cuban et al (US 2019/0035104).
Regarding claim 8 (New), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 2 has been incorporated herein. Singhal et al in view of Zhang et al does not specify an object indicative of a time or location. In the same field of endeavor, Cuban et al teaches: The method of claim 2, wherein the object analytics data comprises data about an object indicative of a time of day or a location [claim 6]. Therefore, it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of all to include an object indicative of time or location for cross video correlation per design choice.
Regarding claim 9 (New), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 2 has been incorporated herein. Singhal et al in view of Zhang et al does not specify an object located in different videos. In the same field of endeavor, Cuban et al teaches: The method of claim 2, wherein the object analytics data comprises data about an object detected in a second video [claim 1]. Therefore, it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of all to analyze object across several video sources to include information of the object detected from different sources.
61066.. Claims 3-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Frascati et al (US Pub: 2019/0087198) and in further view of Lugaresi et al (MediaPipe: A Framework for Building Perception Pipelines, 06/14/2019).
Regarding claim 3 (currently amended), Frascati et al teaches: A method of processing data, comprising: representing a video as a first data object using a markup language [p0061]; representing actions to be taken on the video [p0120-p0123 (Nodes instruct camera API actions to take.)], wherein the actions are represented by data stored in a data object in the markup language [p0096, p0097 (Nodes are data object in XML representing actions.)]; processing the video according to the actions [p0225]; and passing data to one or more of a detector, a classifier, and/or a tracker according to a node structure represented in the second data object in the markup language [p0096, p0125, p0126, p0129].
Frascati et al passes data along a node structure defined in XML and enables nodes to be custom processing modules like detector, classifier or tracker. In the same field of endeavor, Lugaresi et al further discloses object detection node in node workflow [page 1: fig. 1]. Therefore, given Lugaresi et al’s prescription on graph based perception framework with object detection nodes, it would have been obvious for an ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of the two to pass data to a detector in graph based pipeline framework for tracking purpose based on user preference.
Regarding claim 4 (original), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 3 has been incorporated herein. Frascati et al further teaches: The method of claim 3, wherein the markup language is organized as a graph of nodes and edges, with edges connecting nodes and each edge representing an output of one node to which the edge is connected and an input of another node or inputs of nodes to which the edge is connected [p0061, p0126-p0129 (Topology is a graph and NodePortLinkage specifies linkage between nodes. One-to-one or one-to-many mapping represented by edge.)]
Regarding claim 5 (original), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 4 has been incorporated herein. Lugaresi et al further teaches: The method of claim 4, wherein at least one node comprises a nested graph [page 4: 3.6 (subgraph)].
Regarding claim 6 (original), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 4 has been incorporated herein. Frascati et al and Lugaresi et al further teach: The method of claim 4, wherein the graph of nodes and edges includes terminal nodes that correspond to physical processes [Frascati: p0029 (Nodes are tied to hardware/software processing components.); Lugaresi: page 3: 3.5 (Each node performs computation as the graph is executed at runtime.)].
Regarding claim 7 (original), the rationale applied to the rejection of claim 6 has been incorporated herein. Frascati et al further teaches: The method of claim 6, wherein the physical processes include a data transformation process that might be performed by a processor that is processing a markup language file, wherein at a runtime a pipeline execution engine receives the graph of nodes [p0095, p0100, p0225 (XML DAG, markup defined graph, is loaded by processor to route data.)].
Conclusion
7. There is a new ground of rejection necessitated by the corresponding amendment 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 mailing date of this final action.
Contact
8. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to FAN ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-3751. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri 9:00-5:00.
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/Fan Zhang/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2682
Prosecution Insights