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 .
Status of the Claims
Claims 1-27 are currently pending in the present application, with claims 1,13, and 25 being independent. Claims 1, 4, 13, 16, and 25 have been amended.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 07 August 2024, 28 May 2025, 03 March 2026 have been considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 15-19, filed 23 October 2025, with respect to the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph rejection of claims 1-27, along with accompanying amendments received on the same date, have been fully considered and are partially persuasive. The 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph rejection of claims 1, 11-13, and 23-25 has been maintained, while the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph rejection of claims 2-10, 14-22, 26, and 27 has been withdrawn.
With respect to claims 1, 13, and 25, applicant’s amendment has addressed previously raised points a) and b) by removing the language in question, such as “a first surface of the object is an image of the object corresponding to the first direction” and “rotating the original image” from the claim. With respect to point c, it remains unclear as to if essential subject matter is missing from the claim based on the original disclosure. For instance, it is not immediately clear as to how the method is performed without using a mask or an incomplete image. The originally filed disclosure appears to indicate that both are used throughout the originally filed disclosure, see for instance, fig. 2. While applicant argues the subject matter is implicitly within claim 1, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. In addition, if the subject matter of masking and incomplete image were implicitly in the claim, then some of the dependent claims may not be further limiting over the independent claim. Furthermore, applicant’s arguments argue subject matter that is not currently in the claims, such as “rotating the original image” and/or information which is not required, such as the claimed first image may be considered to be “incomplete” because information may be missing. Note claims 2, 14, and 26 incorporate a mask and incomplete image and thus overcome the rejection. Accordingly, the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph rejection of claims 1, 11-13, and 23-25 has been maintained, while the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph rejection of claims 2-10, 14-22, 26, and 27 has been withdrawn.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1, 11-13, and 23-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
With respect to claim 1, given the broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the corresponding disclosure, the scope of the claimed limitations is unclear. For instance, based on the original disclosure, it is unclear as to if the essential subject matter is claimed. For instance, it is not immediately clear as to if the method is performed without using a mask or an incomplete image. The originally filed disclosure appears to indicate that both are used throughout the originally filed disclosure, see for instance, fig. 2. The examiner respectfully requests the applicant clarify the scope of the claims.
Claims 13 and 25 recite substantially similar subject matter as to that of claim 1 and are correspondingly rejected using substantially similar rationale as to that set forth with respect to claim 1.
Claims 11, 12, 23, and 24 do not cure all of the deficiencies noted with respect to the claims from which they depend and accordingly also stand rejected.
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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 13-15, and 25-27 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jampani et al. (US PG Publication 2024/0249422) in view of Jampani et al. (“SLIDE: Single Image 3D Photography with Soft Layering and Depth-aware Inpainting”, 2021, hereinafter Jampani NPL).
Regarding claim 1, Jampani teaches a method for processing image data for scene completion, the method being executed by at least one processor and comprising:
receiving an original image from an original viewpoint corresponding to a first viewing direction (see for instance, paragraphs 26, 27);
obtaining a first image from a new viewpoint corresponding to a second viewing direction different from the first viewing direction based on 3-dimensional (3D) information generated from 2-dimensional (2D) information which is obtained from the original image (see for instance, paragraph 53);
determining an area within the first image for generating a second surface of the object based on depth information about a depth between the object and the background of the original image (see for instance, paragraphs 54 and 74); and
obtaining a second image by inputting the first image and the determined area to an artificial intelligence (AI) inpainting model, wherein the AI inpainting model generates the second surface of the object which occupies a portion of the determined area in the second image (see for instance, paragraphs 54, 62-66, 72, and 74. Inpainting model may be configured to generate inpainted image and inpainted depth image based on image, depth image, and background disocclusion mask, see paragraph 62. SA change to the initial viewpoint may result in apparent movement of one or more foreground regions, resulting in corresponding background regions becoming visible, see for instance, paragraph 63).
While Jampani appears to teach the limitations of claim 1, Jampani NPL is being brought in to specifically teach that the inpainting model is an AI inpainting model.
In the same art of 3D photography, Jampani NPL teaches that SLIDE has four main components: monocular depth estimation, soft layering, depth aware RGBD inpainting, and layered rendering, see section 3. Methods, paragraph 1 and the figures. Depth-Aware RGBD Inpainting is discussed in section 3.4. For depth-aware inpainting we employ a patch-based discriminator D to discriminate between real and generated results, and apply an adversarial loss to the inpainting network, as in Deepfillv2, see section 3.4, paragraph 4. Additional Details of the network are discussed in the supplemental material, see for instance, section 3.4, paragraph 4 and Supplementary Material.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art having the teachings of Jampani and Jampani NPL in front of them before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate AI inpainting as taught by Jampani NPL into Jampani’s Depth Aware Inpainting system, as having an AI inpainting network in a depth aware inpainting step, such as described by Jampani NPL was well known at the time of the effective filing date invention and would have yielded predictable results in combination with Jampani.
The modification of Jampani with Jampani NPL would have explicitly obtaining a second image by inputting the first image and the determined area to an artificial intelligence (AI) inpainting model, wherein the AI inpainting model generates the second surface of the object which occupies a portion of the determined area in the second image.
The motivation for combining Jampani with Jampani NPL would have been to improve the user experience, enhance functionality, and to expand on the teachings of the patent literature with other work by the same inventive entity.
Regarding claim 2, Jampani in view of Jampani NPL teach the method of claim 1 and further teach rendering an incomplete color image and an incomplete depth image corresponding to the new viewpoint based on the 3D information; masking a portion of the incomplete color image based on the 3D information and the incomplete depth image to obtain a masked color image, wherein the masked portion of the incomplete color image corresponds to the determined area and indicates that the masked portion of the incomplete color image is obscured by the object when the scene is viewed from the new viewpoint; and inpainting the masked color image to obtain the second image (see for instance, Jampani, paragraphs 51, 54, 62-66, 72, and 74, and figs. 3-6 and Jampani NPL, section 3.4 “Depth-Aware RGBD Inpainting and figs. 2-6). The motivation to combine Jampani and Jampani NPL is the same as that which was set forth in claim 1.
Regarding claim 3, Jampani in view of Jampani NPL teach the method of claim 2 and further teach wherein the obtaining the second image comprises: inpainting the masked color image based on the AI inpainting model to obtain the second image (see for instance, Jampani, paragraphs 51, 54, 62-66, 72, and 74, and figs. 3-6 and Jampani NPL, section 3.4 “Depth-Aware RGBD Inpainting and figs. 2-6). The motivation to combine Jampani and Jampani NPL is the same as that which was set forth in claim 1.
Regarding claims 13 and 25, claims 13 and 25 recite substantially similar subject as to that of claim 1 and are accordingly rejected using substantially similar rationale as to that set forth with respect to claim 1. In addition, Jampani in view of Jampani NPL further teaches an electronic device for processing image data for scene completion, the electronic device comprising: at least one memory configured to store instructions; and at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to perform different operations (see for instance, Jampani, paragraphs 45-50 and 133-134) and a non-transitory computer-readable medium configured to store instructions which, when executed by at least one processor of a device for processing image data for scene completion, cause the at least one processor to perform different operations (see for instance, Jampani, paragraphs 45-50 and 133-134).
Regarding claims 14 and 26, claims 14 and 26 recite substantially similar subject as to that of claim 2 and are accordingly rejected using substantially similar rationale as to that set forth with respect to claim 2.
Regarding claims 15 and 27, claims 15 and 27 recite substantially similar subject as to that of claim 3 and are accordingly rejected using substantially similar rationale as to that set forth with respect to claim 3.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 11, 12, 23, and 24 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Claims 4-10 and 16-22 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Kasahara et al. teaches scene reconstruction by structurally breaking the problem down into two steps: rendering novel views via inpainting and 2D to 3D scene lifting – specifically leveraging the generalization capability of large visual language models to inpaint the missing areas of scene color images rendered from different views...see abstract.
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 MICHAEL J COBB whose telephone number is (571)270-3875. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 11am - 7pm ET.
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/MICHAEL J COBB/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615
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