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 .
Response to Amendment
This Office Action is in response to Applicant’s amendment/response filed on 22 January 2026, which has been entered and made of record.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments have been fully considered but they are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection presented 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, 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, 14, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US 2024/0020897; hereinafter “Wang”) in view of Thomas et al. (US 2023/0148225; hereinafter “Thomas”).
Regarding claim 1, Wang discloses A method, comprising: generating a vector of numbers representing at least a portion of a first image (e.g. Input Image 102 of Fig. 1; it is well-known that all data on a computer, including images, are stored numerically such as by using a binary representation) of a human face (“a person in a portrait image,” para. 56); determining a low-resolution profile of a set of components of the first image from the vector of numbers and an illumination profile along a specified set of directions (“diffuse and specular light maps 116, 118 [of Fig. 1] are predicted, such as by using specular network 110, with respect to a target environment map illumination,” para. 74); and generating a second image of the human face based on a lighting of the first image of the human face using the (“a portrait relighting process can aim to re-illuminate a person in this image as if this person appeared in an environment with this target lighting,” para. 58; Fig. 1 illustrates generating a relit image “Final Output” using the diffuse and specular light maps 116 and 118).
Wang does not disclose producing a high-resolution profile of the set of components of the first image by performing an upsampling operation on the low-resolution profile of the set of components of the first image based on a machine learning model or generating the second image based on the high-resolution profile.
In the same art of image rendering, Thomas teaches producing a high-resolution profile of the set of components of the first image by performing an upsampling operation on the low-resolution profile of the set of components of the first image based on a machine learning model and generating the second image based on the high-resolution profile of the set of components of the image (“The neural network model 4962 [of Fig. 49B] generates signals that are upsampled 4966 to generate output signals 4950 at a higher (target) resolution, the output signals including albedo 4952, diffuse 4954, specular 4956, and normal 4958 components,” para. 501).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to apply the teachings of Thomas to Wang. The motivation would have been “to achieve a fast computational speed while generating high quality output images” (Thomas, para. 443).
Regarding claims 14 and 18, they are rejected using the same citations and rationales described in the rejection of claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-13, 15-17, 19, and 20 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.
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Wang and Rhee does not disclose producing the vector of numbers from another vector of numbers sampled from a probability distribution using a first model; inputting the vector of numbers into a second model which, upon an input of a positional encoding, is configured to produce a per-point albedo, per-point density, and per-point reflectance properties; inputting the positional encoding into the second model; and performing a volumetric rendering of the per-point albedo and per-point reflectance properties based on the per-point density to produce the low-resolution profile of the set of components of the first image. The closest prior art reference to this subject matter is Pan et al. (“A Shading-Guided Generative Implicit Model for Shape-Accurate 3D-Aware Image Synthesis”), but this reference does not disclose the claimed per-point reflectance properties. Such subject matter is allowable in the context of each of the limitations of this claim and the parent claim, but would not necessarily be allowable in a broader context.
Regarding claims 15 and 19, they contain allowable subject matter for the same reasons as claim 2.
Regarding claims 3-13, 16, 17, and 20, they contain allowable subject matter based on their dependence on one of claims 2, 15, or 19.
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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Ryan McCulley whose telephone number is (571)270-3754. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday, 8:00am - 4:30pm.
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/RYAN MCCULLEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611