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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 5/26/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment was filed on 5/26/2026.
Claims 1-3 and 5-16 are pending. Claim 4 is canceled.
Response to Arguments
Applicants’ arguments filed under Remarks on pages 9 on 5/26/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicants state on page 9:
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The Examiner respectfully disagrees with arguments related to additional limitations in the amended pending claims. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-6 and 13-16 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. See rejection below with additional reference of WO2021/231471A1 to Merrill, et al.
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 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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-3, 5-6 and 13-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2020/0053408 to Park et al. (hereafter, “Park) in combination with WO 2021/231471 to Merrill, et al. (hereafter, “Merrill”).
With regard to claim 1 Park discloses an image encoding method comprising: by an image encoding device, encoding an image to generate a bitstream (paragraph [0074]); adding, to the bitstream, one or more parameters that are not used for encoding the image (paragraph [0075], “encoded image data and the filter set for improved upscaling”); transmitting, to an image decoding device, the bitstream to which the one or more parameters have been added (paragraph [0075]); and outputting the image and the one or more parameters to a first processing device that executes predetermined [computer-vision] task processing using the image and one or more parameters (paragraph [0077]), wherein the predetermined [computer-vision] task processing includes a determination process, using a neural network (CNN at paragraphs [0014, 0071, 0100]), for at least one of: object detection, object segmentation, object tracking, action recognition, pose estimation, pose tracking, and hybrid vision (paragraph [0106]), [and wherein in executing the predetermined computer-vision task processing, the first processing device switches, based on the one or more parameters, at least one of: a machine learning model used for the determination process, a detection threshold used for the determination process, a scaling value for scaling the image, or a post-processing method applied to the image for the predetermined computer-vision task processing].
Park fails to disclose computer-vision task and wherein in executing the predetermined computer-vision task processing, the first processing device switches, based on the one or more parameters, at least one of: a machine learning model used for the determination process, a detection threshold used for the determination process, a scaling value for scaling the image, or a post-processing method applied to the image for the predetermined computer-vision task processing.
Merrill discloses computer-vision task (paragraphs [0072, 00124]) and wherein in executing the predetermined computer-vision task processing, the first processing device switches, based on the one or more parameters, at least one of: a machine learning model used for the determination process, a detection threshold used for the determination process, a scaling value for scaling the image, or a post-processing method applied to the image for the predetermined computer-vision task processing (switch data usage or data modelling modalities at paragraph [00125]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Park’s reference to have specifics of task being a computer-vision task and to have task based switching of Merrill’s reference. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to have images annotated using computer vision approach and to switch data modeling modalities for two way communications, as suggested by Merrill in paragraphs [0124-0125].
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Merrill with Park to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
With regard to claim 2 Park in combination with Merrill discloses wherein the image decoding device receives the bitstream from the image encoding device, and outputs the image and the one or more parameters to a second processing device that executes task processing which is same as the predetermined task processing (Park: Figure 2, encoder 22, decoder 28, outputting image on display 30).
With regard to claim 3 Park in combination with Merrill discloses wherein the first processing device and the second processing device switch at least one of a machine learning model, a detection threshold, a scaling value, and a post-processing method based on the one or more parameters when executing the predetermined task processing (Park: paragraph [0077]).
With regard to claim 5 Park in combination with Merrill discloses wherein the predetermined task processing includes image processing for improving image quality or image resolution of the image (Park: paragraphs [0106, 0120]).
With regard to claim 6 Park in combination with Merrill discloses wherein the image processing includes at least one of morphological transformation and edge enhancement processing for enhancing an object included in the image (Park: paragraphs [0106, 0140, 0171]).
With regard to claims 13-16, claims 13-16 are rejected same as claim 1 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 1 are equally applicable to claims 13-16, and all of the other limitations similar to claim 1 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
Claims 7-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2020/0053408 to Park et al. (hereafter, “Park) in combination with WO2021/231471 to Merrill, et al. (hereafter, “Merrill”), and further in view of US 2021/0168394 to Kato et al. (hereafter, “Kato”).
With regard to claim 7, Park in combination with Merrill teaches the image encoding method. However, Park or Merrill does not expressly teach wherein the one or more parameters include at least one of a mounting height of a camera that outputs the image, a tilt angle of the camera, a distance from the camera to a region of interest, and a visual field of the camera.
Kato teaches wherein the one or more parameters include at least one of a mounting height of a camera that outputs the image, a tilt angle of the camera, a distance from the camera to a region of interest, and a visual field of the camera (paragraphs [0082-0085]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Park’s and Merrill’s reference to have specifics of one or more parameters defined in Kato’s reference. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to have camera parameter index indicate a defined imaging situation, as suggested by Kato in paragraph [0090].
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Kato with Merrill and Park to obtain the invention as specified in claim 7.
With regard to claim 8 Park in combination with Merrill, further in view of Kato discloses wherein the one or more parameters include at least one of a depth and a size of the object included in the image (Kato: paragraphs [0082-0085]).
With regard to claim 9 Park in combination with Merrill, further in view of Kato discloses wherein the one or more parameters include boundary information indicating a boundary surrounding the object included in the image, and distortion information indicating presence or absence of distortion in the image (Kato: paragraphs [0082-0085]).
With regard to claim 10 Park in combination with Merrill, further in view of Kato discloses wherein the boundary information includes position coordinates of a plurality of vertices related to a figure defining the boundary (Kato: paragraphs [0082-0085]).
With regard to claim 11 Park in combination with Merrill, further in view of Kato discloses wherein the boundary information includes center coordinates, width information, height information, and tilt information related to a figure defining the boundary (Kato: paragraphs [0082-0085]).
With regard to claim 12, Park in combination with Merrill and Kato teaches the image encoding method. However, Park and Kato does not expressly teach wherein the distortion information includes additional information indicating that the image is an image captured by a fisheye camera, a super-wide angle camera, or an omnidirectional camera.
Merrill teaches wherein the distortion information includes additional information indicating that the image is an image captured by a fisheye camera, a super-wide angle camera, or an omnidirectional camera (Merrill: paragraphs [0070, 00122]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Park’s and Kato’s reference to have fisheye camera defined in Merrill’s reference. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to produce detailed images of the target product, as suggested by Merrill at paragraphs [0070, 00122].
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Merrill with Kato and Park to obtain the invention as specified in claim 12.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2019/0325080A1 – discloses assistant system that may use a visual-recognition agent capable of processing visual input included in the multimodal user input, where the visual-recognition agent may access various computer-vision models to understand the visual input. The understanding of the visual input may be used by the co-reference module to resolve the entities associated with the user input. Based on the understanding of the visual input and the resolved entities, the assistant system may use an assistant xbot to conduct a conversation with the user to further enhance the user's experience with the assistant system by executing different tasks corresponding to the visual input. The assistant system may reactively process multimodal user input in response to a user query. The assistant system may also proactively process a multimodal user input by making suggestions based on the user input. The capability of processing multimodal user input and seamlessly switching between different modalities of output makes the assistant system well adapted to various client systems and software, thus making it more useful and appealing to users.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHEFALI D. GORADIA whose telephone number is (571)272-8958. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8AM-6PM, Friday 8AM-12PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Henok Shiferaw can be reached at 571-272-4637. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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SHEFALI D. GORADIA
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2676
/SHEFALI D GORADIA/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2676
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