Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 18, 2026
Application No. 18/378,376

CONTENT TAGGING

Non-Final OA §112§DP
Filed
Oct 10, 2023
Examiner
STREGE, JOHN B
Art Unit
2669
Tech Center
2600 — Communications
Assignee
Snap Inc.
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
87%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
3y 1m
To Grant
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 87% — above average
87%
Career Allow Rate
929 granted / 1072 resolved
+24.7% vs TC avg
Moderate +14% lift
Without
With
+14.2%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 1m
Avg Prosecution
22 currently pending
Career history
1094
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
10.9%
-29.1% vs TC avg
§103
41.7%
+1.7% vs TC avg
§102
22.5%
-17.5% vs TC avg
§112
12.0%
-28.0% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 1072 resolved cases

Office Action

§112 §DP
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 . Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112 The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a): (a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention. The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112: The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claims contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. Specifically lines 10-12 discloses PNG media_image1.png 201 565 media_image1.png Greyscale The Examiner has read through the specification and the only part where floating point weights are mentioned is in paragraph 0085 PNG media_image2.png 382 578 media_image2.png Greyscale The part labeled 1 above has support from the original claim language of the parent application 15/247,697 with the original dependent claim 14 which mentions decompressing of floating point weight indices and is considered part of the written description. PNG media_image3.png 290 534 media_image3.png Greyscale However, neither the original claim 14 nor paragraph 0085 of the specification, nor any other part of the specification provide support the claim language noted as numeral 2 (lines 10-12) above, thus there is no written description to support claim 1 lines 10-12. Claims 2-16 are rejected due to their dependency on claim 1. Claims 17 and 19 are rejected as being analogous to claim 1. Claims 18 and 20 are rejected due to their dependency on rejected base claims. Note regarding Double Patenting No double patenting rejection is made in the current office action as none of the parent applications disclose decompressing a second plurality of floating point weights; processing, using the second plurality of floating point weights, the first intermediate data using a second layer of the DCNN to generate first output data. However as noted above there is no support for this limitation in the application, thus any amendments could result in the similar parent application 16/192,419 being applied as a double patenting rejection. Conclusion The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Liu et al. A Versatile Compression Method for Floating-point Data Stream discloses a reducing the size of data to be stored or transferred by using floating point data compression and decompression, but does not go into detail regarding using this with a deep convolution neural network to generate intermediate data using image data. Please see the attached 892 notice of references cited for additional references. 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). Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. 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. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /JOHN B STREGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2669
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Oct 10, 2023
Application Filed
Feb 09, 2026
Non-Final Rejection — §112, §DP
Apr 06, 2026
Response Filed

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
87%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+14.2%)
3y 1m
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 1072 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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