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 .
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
The claim does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claim is directed to a “computer-readable medium,” whose broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) can encompass non-statutory transitory forms of signal transmission, such as a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se. When the BRI encompasses transitory forms of signal transmission, a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 as failing to claim statutory subject matter would be appropriate. Thus, a claim to a computer readable medium that can be a compact disc, or a carrier wave covers a non-statutory embodiment and therefore should be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. See MPEP section 2106.03, subsection II.
The rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 may be overcome by adding “non-transitory” to the claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
5. Claims 1-20 are allowed.
6. Claim 21 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action.
7. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 1, no prior art has been found to disclose or suggest Applicant’s method of processing image content, the method including the following steps, in combination:
- performing diffusion-based upsampling on the first graph representation having the first level of point sparsity to generate a second graph representation having a second level of point sparsity, wherein performing diffusion-based upsampling comprises:
- inputting the first graph representation into a diffusion-based trained model to generate a first intermediate graph representation having a first intermediate level of point sparsity, the first intermediate level of point sparsity being denser than the first level of point sparsity;
- inputting the first intermediate graph representation into the diffusion-based trained model to generate a second intermediate graph representation having a second intermediate level of point sparsity, the second intermediate level of point sparsity being denser than the first intermediate level of point sparsity; and
- generating the second graph representation having the second level of point sparsity based on at least on the second intermediate graph representation; and
- generating second point cloud data having the second level of point sparsity based on the second graph representation having the second level of point sparsity.
Claims 2-10 depend from claim 1.
Claim 11, directed to an apparatus for processing image content, and claim 21, directed to a computer-readable storage medium, similarly recite the allowable subject matter of claim 1.
Claims12-20 depend from claim 11.
8. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2018/0101932 A1 (Kwon et al.) discloses a system and method for upsampling of sparse point cloud for 3D registration.
U.S. Patent US 10,574,967 B2 (Kwon et al.) discloses autonomous performance of an operation on an object using a generated dense 3D model of the object.
9. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THOMAS D LEE whose telephone number is (571)272-7436. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 7:30AM-5:00PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Akwasi Sarpong can be reached at 571-270-3438. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/THOMAS D LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681
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