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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 06/01/2026 is/are being considered by the Examiner.
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 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18, and 20 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.
Regarding claims 2, 11, and 20, each in effect recite executing an image manipulation function that maintains a camera property of the at least one image to generate the at least one augmented image. However, the independent claims have been amended to recite that the image training set includes no images that have been generated by image manipulation functions that modify camera properties of the at least one image. Since the at least one augmented image is a modified version of the at least one image, the plain meaning of this language is that each image manipulation function would have to maintain all camera properties consistent with the present application and therefore reciting that only a camera property being maintained in claims 2, 11, and 20 appears to be a contradiction. Due to this, one of ordinary skill in the art would find the meets and bounds of the claims to be unclear. Dependent claims 3 and 12 do not cure claims 2 and 11, respectively, of this issue and are similarly rejected.
Regarding claims 5 and 14, both in effect recite wherein the image manipulation function modifies a camera property with respect to the at least one image. As noted above, the independent claims have been amended to recite that the image training set includes no images that have been generated by image manipulation functions that modify camera properties of the at least one image. Since the at least one augmented image is a modified version of the at least one image, this is a clear contradiction of the independent claims. Due to this, one of ordinary skill in the art would find the meets and bounds of the claims to be unclear.
Regarding claim 9, the final line of the claim has been amended to recite “by first at least one camera”. However, a previous “at least one camera” has been recited in earlier in the claim leading to confusion on if this element is the same or different as the previous recitation. It appears that this limitation should read “the at least one camera”.
Claim 18 recites the limitation "the first camera" in the final line. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 4, 6-8,10,13,15-17, and 19 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Regarding independent claims 1, 10, and 19, each of the claims have been amended to recite that the image training set including the at least one augmented image generated from the at least one image does not include images generated by image manipulation functions which modify camera properties of the at least one image. Prior primary reference Zhou teaches an image training set including augmented images generated via image manipulation functions which would modify camera properties of collected images (see Zhou Figure 4, “cropping” and “flipping”). One of ordinary skill in the art would not be motivated to remove such image manipulation functions without benefit of the present application.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
The Examiner attempted twice to contact an attorney of record to fix the issues noted above, but was unable to reach one in a timely fashion.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Huang et al, “AugGAN: Cross Domain Adaptation with GAN-Based Data Augmentation” (published in Computer Vision – ECCV 2018: 15th European Conference, September 2018) generally teaches modifying well-known synthetic and real data sets using a domain transfer for training vehicle detectors in autonomous vehicles (see Huang sections 3.1 and 3.2). However, Huang does not teach the identifying step nor training using a portion of not augmented images with at least one augmented image as required in the independent claims.
Carlson et al, “Modeling Camera Effects to Improve Deep Vision for Real and Synthetic Data” (published at https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.07721v1, March 2018, later version was previously cited by Applicant) generally teaches augmenting real images by modifying both camera properties and non-camera properties of images used for training (see Carlson Abstract and Figure 3).
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 CASEY L KRETZER whose telephone number is (571)272-5639. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00-7:00 PM Pacific Time.
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/CASEY L KRETZER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2635
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