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 .
Notice to Applicants
This communication is in response to the Application filed on 9/26/2023.
Claims 1-5 and 7 are pending. Claim 6 is withdrawn from consideration.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of group I (claims 1-5 and 7) in the reply filed on 12/30/2025 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/30/2023 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “image acquiring unit”, “image preparing unit”, “calculation unit”, etc. in claims 1-5.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 3, and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Byun et al. ("Real-time positioning and orienting of pallets based on monocular vision." 2008 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 2. IEEE, 2008) (hereafter, “Byun”).
With regard to claim 7 Byun discloses an article detection method of detecting an article to be loaded/unloaded (page 505, last paragraph of Section 1. Introduction, right column), the article detection method comprising: an image acquiring step of acquiring a surroundings image by imaging surroundings of an article detection device (page 506, section 3 left column, first two paragraphs); a first information image preparing step of preparing a first information image by converting information on a load/unloading target portion of the article to an easily recognizable state based on the surroundings image (Figures 1 and 2, where fork coordinates are illustrated, Figure 5 where image of the pallet is illustrated with coordinates and image plane on page 506); a first calculation step of calculating at least one of a position and a posture of the load/unloading target portion based on the first information image (page 506, section 4 with 3D positioning and orienting of pallet, page 507 section 4.2 Finding position of pallet); a second information image preparing step of preparing a second information image by converting information on a pitch angle detection portion of the article to an easily recognizable state (Figure 2, finding the pan angle, page 507 paragraph above the section 4.2, Table 1 on page 508; note, pan and pitch angle are interchangeably used for this scope of the invention); and a second calculation step of extracting at least two edge candidates for the article extending in a specific direction (extracts the pallet features being used for localizing the pallet in 3D space in section 3 on page 506; Figure 4 for edge points in extracted pallet area; page 507 right column, paragraph under Figure 6 “the four intersected points (PTIPs) between the CLIP and four vertical boundaries of the two extracted holes are determined in the image plane.”, Figure 7) and included in the second information image based on a calculation result from the first calculation step and calculating a three-dimensional direction vector indicating a pitch angle of the article from the edge candidates (Figure 5, section 4.1 on page 506, “The normal vector of the pallet front plane in Figure 5 is represented similarly as in (Eq. 2) because the pallet front plane is also perpendicular to the ground.”; page 507 paragraph above section 4.2 “the orientation of the pallet front plane can be iteratively determined by finding the pan angle θ when the cosine value of the angle between the backprojected lines, m(θ), is equal to 1.”).
With regard to claim 1, claim 1 is rejected same as claim 7 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 7 are equally applicable to claim 1. Byun discloses a device comprising image acquiring unit, camera system in Figure 2; information processing and calculation units section 5 on pages 507-508, and all of the other limitations similar to claim 7 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
With regard to claim 3 Byun discloses wherein the second calculation unit extracts the edge candidates from one side and the other side in a transverse direction of a loading/unloading target in the second information image (Figures 3 and 4, the top side/line and bottom side/line are at transverse direction from the side of the edge lines).
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 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 of this title, 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Byun et al. ("Real-time positioning and orienting of pallets based on monocular vision." 2008 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence. Vol. 2. IEEE, 2008) (hereafter, “Byun”) in combination with US 2020/0074660 to Oki.
With regard to claim 5, Byun teaches article detection device according to claim 1 with calculations. However, Byun does not expressly teach to perform Hough transformation of edge points in a specific area for extracting the edge candidates in the second information image and determines that the edge candidates are present in the specific area when a length of an acquired straight line is equal to or greater than a predetermined length..
Oki teaches performing Hough transformation of edge points in a specific area for extracting the edge candidates in the second information image and determines that the edge candidates are present in the specific area when a length of an acquired straight line is equal to or greater than a predetermined length (Figure 2, paragraph [0034]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Byun’s reference to have Hough transformation be performed on edge points for extraction of Oki’s reference. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to extract a line segment in a case where there is a vanishing point or when four straight lines intersect each other, the line segment group is detected as edges, as suggested by Oki at paragraph [0034].
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Oki with Byun to obtain the invention as specified in claim 5.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 and 4 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 SHEFALI D. GORADIA whose telephone number is (571)272-8958. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8AM-6PM, Friday 8AM-12PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Henok Shiferaw can be reached at 571-272-4637. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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SHEFALI D. GORADIA
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2676
/SHEFALI D GORADIA/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2676