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 § 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.
All assertions made herein with respect to obviousness shall be understood to mean obvious at the time the application was effectively filed unless otherwise stated. Moreover, any assertions of obviousness shall be understood to be assertions that something would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art unless otherwise stated.
Claims 1-5, 7-20, 22-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moore (US 20190394567) and Bharitkar (US 20170373656).
Regarding claim 1, Moore teaches a method of estimating an acoustic transfer function in an environment (environmental characterization, [0225]) between a transducer and a microphone, the method comprising:
generating an audio test signal (test tones, [0226]), wherein an amplitude or energy of the audio test signal is selected, across a plurality of frequency bins, at least in part, to be at least partially masked by acoustic energy in the environment (tones having amplitude below human hearing perception relative to the music being played in the room, [0226]); providing the audio test signal to the transducer to be transduced into an acoustic signal in the environment (test signal is used to acoustically excite the room, [0226]); receiving a microphone signal from the microphone based upon the acoustic signal at the microphone in the environment (microphone is used to infer one or more characteristics of the acoustic space, [0225]); performing a summing method on the microphone signal (averaging or combining over time to determine the characteristic, [0228]) and determining the estimated acoustic transfer function based upon the summing method (averaging or combining over time to determine the characteristic, [0228]).
Although Moore does not explicitly teach performing the summing method on the microphone signal over a predetermined time duration of three (3) seconds or longer, Bharitkar teaches a tone sweep with a duration of 5 seconds (Bharitkar, [0076-0078]) and it would have been obvious to use a duration over 3 seconds in Moore since doing so is the use of a known technique to improve a similar system in the same way.
Regarding claim 2, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1 wherein the predetermined duration is at least one of five (5) seconds or longer (five (5) seconds, Bharitkar, [0078]), ten (10) seconds or longer, twenty (20) seconds or longer, or sixty (60) seconds or longer.
Regarding claim 3, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1 wherein the amplitude or energy of the audio test signal is selected based at least in part upon an acoustic energy content in the environment (tones having amplitude below human hearing perception relative to the music being played in the room, Moore, [0226]).
Regarding claim 4, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1 wherein the amplitude or energy of the audio test signal is selected based at least in part upon an energy content of a playback signal (tones having amplitude below human hearing perception relative to the music being played in the room, Moore, [0226]), the playback signal also being transduced into the environment (music being played in the room, Moore, [0226]).
Regarding claim 5, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1 wherein the summing method comprises: adding a first fractional value of the microphone signal to a second fractional value of a stored signal; and saving the result as a new version of the stored signal (multiple sound measurements may be averaged or combined over time to determine the characteristic. In some embodiments, incremental values of the characteristic may be determined multiple times using sound measurements over shorter time intervals, and these different instances or incremental values may be averaged or combined to determine the characteristic, Moore, [0228]).
Regarding claim 7, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 5 wherein the summing method further comprises repeatedly adding subsequent first fractional values of the microphone signal to subsequent second fractional values of the stored signal and saving the result as a next subsequent version of the stored signal multiple times over the duration (weighted average, Moore, [0228]).
Regarding claim 8, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 7 wherein the repeated summing method is performed at least one of ten (10) times or more, twenty (20) times or more, one hundred (100) times or more, or two hundred (200) times or more over the duration (would have readily occurred to one of ordinary skill in the art that measurements performed over “days” could involve at least ten measurements in the weighted average. Since Moore discloses “multiple times”, that is at least two (2) and it would have been a matter of common sense that it might have been ten and that Moore was likely not contemplating “no more than four” when using the word “multiple” as a matter of common sense in interpreting the disclosure of Moore).
Regarding claim 9, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1 wherein the summing method is performed on each of a plurality of frequency bins of the microphone signal (FFT, Moore, [0228]).
Claims 10 and 16 are each substantially similar to claim 1 and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claims 11 and 17 are each substantially similar to claim 2 and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claims 4 and 18 are each substantially similar to claim 4 and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claims 13 and 19 are each substantially similar to claim 7 and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claims 14 and 20 are each substantially similar to claim 8 and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claim 15 is substantially similar to claim 9 and is rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claim 22, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1, wherein selecting the amplitude or energy of the audio test signal further comprises using a spectral estimate of a concurrently reproduced playback signal in the environment such that the audio test signal is at least partially masked by the playback signal across said plurality of frequency bins (Moore, [0226]).
Regarding claim 23, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 1.
Although Moore and Bharitkar do not teach wherein the summing method comprises time domain accumulation or averaging of the microphone signal over a time window of at least ten (10) seconds, Bharitkar teaches a tone sweep with a duration of 5 seconds (Bharitkar, [0076-0078]) and it would have been obvious to simply double the period of Bharitkar as a matter of design’er preference to use a duration over 10 seconds in Moore since doing so is the use of a known technique to improve a similar system in the same way.
Regarding claim 24, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 23.
Although Moore and Bharitkar do not teach wherein the time window is at least twenty (20) seconds Bharitkar teaches a tone sweep with a duration of 5 seconds (Bharitkar, [0076-0078]) and it would have been obvious to simply quadruple the period of Bharitkar as a matter of designer preference to use a duration over 20 seconds in Moore since doing so is the use of a known technique to improve a similar system in the same way.
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moore, Bharitkar, and Govindarao (WO 2008086037).
Regarding claim 6, Moore and Bharitkar teach the method of claim 5.
Although Moore and Bharitkar do not teach wherein the first fractional value and the second fractional value add up to unity, Govindarao teaches a weighted average where gradients are normalized to add up to unity (Govindarao, [0026]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to properly scale or normalize the components of the average or combination of Moore (Moore, [0228]) with the motivation of avoiding arbitrarily large measurement level due to adding all of the measurements with no scaling or normalization since this is contradictory to the meaning of an average and the result would be too large.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 21 is 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 1/23/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that Moore fails to teach that the amplitude/energy of the test signal is selected "at least in part, to be at least partially masked by acoustic energy in the environment." Applicant states that this language reflects an objective spectral condition for measuring while content plays. However, the examiner asserts that Moore sets forth a similarly objective spectral condition that the amplitude may be below hearing human perception, such as relative to an amplitude of music played in a room (Moore, [0226]).
Furthermore, Moore teaches the sweep is across several frequency bins.
Applicant seems to be arguing that the claimed invention is directed to customizing the amplitude in each individual frequency bin; however, the examiner does not interpret the claim language to capture this by reciting that amplitude is selected “across a plurality of frequency bins”. While Moore may generally only suggest that the sweep tone will be generally masked across the whole relevant frequency spectrum (i.e. across a plurality of frequency bins) by the music playing in the room, the claim is not limited to the sweep tone being masked. Applicant returns to this on page 9 of the remarks (“intentionally mask a test signal per bin”) but this suggests something more particular than the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims.
Applicant also argues that the recovery relies on long duration summation. While Moore does not specify the length of the duration, 3 seconds is not particularly long. It is unclear what short duration applicant supposes that Moore likely contemplated that is significantly shorter than 3 seconds. In any event, Bharitkar is relied upon to show a duration over 3 seconds. Inherently, the sweep disclosed by Moore (Moore, [0226]) has to have some duration. Just because Moore does not specify a duration does not mean that one cannot look to similar prior art to find reasonable durations that could have been used with Moore.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
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/KILE O BLAIR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2691