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 .
DETAILED ACTION
The United States Patent & Trademark Office appreciates the application that is submitted by the inventor/assignee. The United States Patent & Trademark Office reviewed the following application and has made the following comments below.
Priority
This application claims benefit to continuation application of 17/805,515 dated 06/06/2022, now PAT 11900654, and 17/805,515 is a continuation application of 17/068,045 10/12/2020, now PAT 11386642.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group 1, Claims 1-11 in the reply filed on 12/9/2025 is acknowledged.
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(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim 1 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Klaus et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2019/0087635, hereafter referred to as Klaus) in further view of Kawabata et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2015/0221077, hereafter referred to as Kawabata).
Regarding Claim 1, Klaus teaches a system, comprising: a processor (paragraph 28, Klaus teaches a processor); and a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations (paragraph 31, Klaus teaches a computer and processor with memory to perform out of an image.), the operations comprising: generating a difference image (paragraph 76, Klaus teaches determining a difference image.) of matched pixels and mismatched pixels corresponding to a comparison between a source image and a counterpart image (paragraph 76, Klaus teaches difference image is done by subtracting form another image comparing intensity values.); generating a difference score representing the mismatched pixels (paragraph 76, paragraph 77, Klaus teaches determining a difference score for each pixel as well or for regions in the image.); and outputting a notification reporting the difference score (paragraph 76, paragraph 77, Klaus teaches comparing the difference score to a threshold and if so then the landing is compared, the Examiner interprets that “notification reporting the difference score” can be internal within the system and does not need to displayed.).
Klaus does not explicitly disclose displaying, at the difference image, the mismatched pixels being highlighted as compared to display of the matched pixels.
Kawabata is in the same field of art of image inspection of determining difference images. Further, Kawabata teaches displaying, at the difference image, the mismatched pixels being highlighted as compared to display of the matched pixels (paragraph 141-paragraph 143, Kawabata teaches a continuously at each threshold value that is number different points displaying parts.) .
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Klaus by incorporating the post processing of displaying difference pixels in difference image that is taught by Kawabata, to make the invention that capture different images and determines the difference between the images ; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since in the image inspecting apparatus 10, image inspections are performed simultaneously and collectively using the difference point representing image data 41 to 45 at each threshold value, thereby obtaining proper inspection results. As a result, the inspector can detect the difference points between the reference-image and the inspection-image (between the first and second image data 31, 32) by observing the difference point display images of the difference point display image data 33 represented on the display screen of the display unit 12 shown in FIG. 4. Therefore, anyone can easily perform the image inspection at a constant level in one inspection operation without mistake (paragraph 153, Kawabata).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
In regards to Claim 7, Klaus in view of Kawabata teaches wherein the generating the difference score comprises evaluating at least a portion of the difference image that is within a defined search window having a defined size (paragraph 77, Klaus teaches determine different regions and different score for pixels in one or more regions.).
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Klaus et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2019/0087635, hereafter referred to as Klaus) in further view of Kawabata et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2015/0221077, hereafter referred to as Kawabata) in view of Lee et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No 2015/0310602, hereafter referred Lee).
Regarding Claim 2, Klaus in view of Kawabata teaches a system for generating a different images and then displaying the difference. With respect to the claim, Klaus in view Kawabata teaches wherein the operations further comprise: comparing the score to a threshold score (paragraph 27, Klaus teaches comparing the score to a threshold), wherein the outputting is based on a result of the comparison to the threshold score (paragraph 27, Klaus teaches comparing the score if it exceeds a predetermined threshold).
Klaus in view of Kawabata does not explicitly disclose wherein the mismatched pixels are mismatched edge-pixels.
Lee is in the same field of art of image processing that determine the difference between images. Further, Lee teaches wherein the mismatched pixels are mismatched edge-pixels (paragraph 92, Lee teaches determining edge image.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Klaus in view of Kawabata by modifying the display to include edge pixels in the display that is taught by Lee, to make the invention that capture different images and determines the difference between the images and display the edge pixels for review; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since when a filter is used to reduce the image noise, edges used to distinguish important parts of the image may be weakened together with the noise reduction. Accordingly, a method of reducing edge deterioration while reducing image noise is needed (Lee, paragraph 7).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Klaus et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2019/0087635, hereafter referred to as Klaus) in further view of Kawabata et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2015/0221077, hereafter referred to as Kawabata) in view of Lee et al (U.S. Patent Pub. No 2015/0310602, hereafter referred Lee).
Regarding Claim 5, Klaus in view of Kawabata teaches a system for generating a different images and then displaying the difference.
Klaus in view of Kawabata does not explicitly disclose overlaying the difference image over at least one of the source image or the counterpart image.
Yamanaka is in the same field of art of image system that determine the difference between the images. Further, Yamanaka teaches overlaying the difference image over at least one of the source image or the counterpart image (paragraph 125, Yamanaka).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Klaus in view of Kawabata by modifying the display to include the overlap that is taught by Yamanak, to make the invention that captures images and display the overlap of the difference images; thus, one of ordinary skilled in the art would be motivated to combine the references since Such a moving object detection device imports two images consecutive in time, and differentiates the two images, and compares the differentiated two images to obtain a difference image, and detects a moving object from this difference image (paragraph 2, Yamanaka).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ONEAL R MISTRY whose telephone number is (313)446-4912. The examiner can normally be reached on 9am-5pm.
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/ONEAL R MISTRY/
Examiner, Art Unit 2665