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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 1/29/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
This office action is in response to amendment/reconsideration filed on 1/29/2026, the amendment/reconsideration has been considered. Claims 1, 8, 12 and 13 have been amended. Claims 1-15 are pending for examination as cited below.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to amended claim(s) have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection necessitated by claim amendment.
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) 1-2, 7-9, 11-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Song et al. (Pub. No.: US 2015/0170004 A1), hereinafter “Song” in view of Fattal et al. (Pub. No.: US 2024/0155098 A1), hereinafter “Fatt”.
As to claim 1. Kim discloses, a method of sharing data between a device and at least one customer device (Song, Abstract) the method comprising the steps, performed by a processing unit of the publisher device of :
a) receiving, from a customer device a request for obtaining the data from the publisher device the request comprising customer data related to a customer data of a given scene indicated by a user of the device (Song, [0003], some search systems provide the ability to search for images by….uploading an image that is similar to the images for which the user is searching. [0018], this measure of image similarity can be used … to identify images that are responsive to query images or other search queries. These paragraphs show that the system receives an image from a user device as part of a request.);
b) determining a similarity score between the customer data and publisher data related to a data stored in the device (Song, [0019], disclose computing similarity scores (distance) between a query image and stored images. A distance between the feature vector… can be used as a measure of similarity between image A and the reference image. [0022], the distance can be a Euclidean distance, a Manhattan distance, a cosine distance….generally, the similarity between two images increases as the distance between the feature vectors decreases. Also see [0029]); and
c) depending on the similarity score, sending the data to the customer device (Song, [0018], ….used, for example, to identify images that are responsive to query images…. And [0023], a distance ranking…represents a relative measure of similarity ….This measure of similarity can be used to train image similarity model…[0003] and [0018], inherently includes returning search results to the user based on similarity.).
Song however is silent to disclose explicitly, a publisher or image acquired from a substantially same viewing angle.
Fatt discloses a similar concept in the same field of endeavor including, a publisher (Fatt, fig.4, [0046], system architecture where the captured images are stored and served. This Multiview capture system is a publisher device. It captures, stores and provides viewpoint-specific images.);
image acquired from a substantially same viewing angle (Fatt, fig.1, [0021], The multiview display 112 may accommodate a maximum or desired disparity level which may be defined as a percentage of the display width between neighboring views. For example, a multiview display 112 may have a predetermined disparity level of about one percent.).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to incorporate the teachings of “Fatt” into those of “Song” to provide a systems that is directed to a camera system configured to capture a multiview image of an object along an arc. Each camera in the camera system may correspond to a common field of view. In addition, a computing system coupled to the camera system may calculate a target camera baseline based on a first value and a second value, and dynamically adjust an inter-camera capture distance to match the target camera baseline. The first value may indicate the common field of view and the second value may indicate a distance between the camera system and the object.
As to claim 2. The combine system of Song and Fatt discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, comprising a preliminary step a0) wherein acquisition means of the publisher device acquire the publisher image (Fatt, [0027], the publisher device acquiring images from controlled viewpoint.) and
the processing unit of the publisher device generates the publisher image data from the publisher image (Song, [0018], “a feature vector for an image specifies …feature value. [0026], obtains…image feature vectors… specifying feature values..”. ).
As to claim 7. The combine system of Song and Fatt discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, wherein, in step c), the similarity score is compared to a threshold and the publisher device sends the data to the customer device depending of the results of the comparison (Song, [0022], he measures of similarity will be evaluated, at least in part, based on feature vectors 108, 110, and 112 for the images 102, 104, and 106 in the triplet and [0018], using similarity results to identify and return responsive images to a query (functional send of results.)).
As to claim 8 is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 1 above.
As to claim 9 is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 2 above.
As to claim 11, The combine system of Song and Fatt discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, comprising a step d) wherein the data is displayed by an interface of the customer device and/or used in an application installed on the customer device (Fatt, [0029], explicitly teaches presenting captured image data on a display so a viewer perceives the image; if the customer device includes such a display or app, Fatt supports the limitation that the returned data are displayed by the device interface. Also see Song, [0018]).
As to claim 12. Is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 1 and 8 above.
As to claim 13. Is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 1, 8 and 12 above.
Claim(s) 3, 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Song and “Fatt” as applied above in view of Venkatesan et al. (Patent No.: US 7421128 B2), hereinafter “Venk”.
As to claim 3. The combine system of Song and Fatt discloses the invention as in parent claim above. Song and Fatt however are silent to disclose explicitly, comprising a step a2) wherein the processing unit of the publisher device hashes the publisher image to obtain the publisher image data, the publisher image data being a hash code of the publisher image.
Venk however discloses a similar concept in the same field of endeavor including, comprising a step a2) wherein the processing unit of the publisher device hashes the publisher image to obtain the publisher image data, the publisher image data being a hash code of the publisher image (Ven, fig.1, col.5, lines 10-20, The processing system 32 has an image hashing unit 40 that hashes individual images to produce hash values that uniquely represent the images.).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to incorporate the teachings of “Venk” into those of “Song and Fatt” to provide a system that has an image store, a digital hashing unit, and a watermark encoder. A digital image hashing unit computes a hash value representative of a digital image in such a manner that visually similar images hash to the same hash value and visually distinct images hash to different values. The hash value is stored in an image hash table and is associated via the table with the original image. This image hash table can be used to index the image storage. A watermark encoder computes a watermark based on the hash value and a secret.
As to claim 10 is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 3 above.
Claim(s) 4-6 and 14-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Song and “Fatt” as applied above in view of Ives et al. (Pub No.: US 2017/0076522 A1), hereinafter “Ives”.
As to claim 4. The combine system of Song and Fatt discloses the invention as in parent claim above. Song and Fatt however are silent to disclose explicitly, wherein the publisher device is in the vicinity of the customer device and exchanges with the customer device via a shortrange wireless connection.
Ives discloses a similar concept in the same field of endeavor including, wherein the publisher device is in the vicinity of the customer device and exchanges with the customer device via a shortrange wireless connection (Ives, [0004], using short-range communication authorized users access the restricted resources).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the instant application it would have been obvious to incorporate the teachings of “Ives” into those of “Song and Fatt” to provide communications over short-range connections are used to facilitate whether access to resources is to be granted. For example, upon device discovery of one of an electronic user device and an electronic client device by the other device over a Bluetooth Low Energy connection, an access-enabling code associated with a user device or account can be evaluated for validity and applicability with respect to one or more particular resource specifications. User identity can be verified by comparing the user against previously obtained biometric information.
As to claim 5. The combine system of Song, Fatt and Ives discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, wherein the customer image and the publisher image are images of a scene of the surroundings of the publisher device (Fatt, [0028], the multiview camera as a device that captures and organizes multiple views of a scene (i.e. stores viewpoint-specific images). Those stored views constitute publisher images of the device’s surroundings.).
As to claim 6. The combine system of Kim and Nic discloses the invention as in parent claim above including, wherein the data comprises credentials for getting access to a service and the data is used by the customer device to get access to the service (Ives, [0004], using short-range communication authorized users access the restricted resources).
As to claim 14, is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 6 above.
As to claim 15, is rejected for same rationale as applied to claim 6 above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Please see the attached PTO-892.
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/Tauqir Hussain/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2446
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