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 .
The amendment of January 12, 2026 has been received and entered. New claim 19 has been added.
Specification –
In view of the amendments to the specification, the objection is withdrawn as moot.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments, see Remarks Pg. 10, filed 1/12/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that the prior art does not disclose the claimed limitation as written in claim 1.
Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Applicant argues (Pg. 10):
For example, Applicant submits that Connell fails to teach or suggest comparing the calculated translation distance against a translation distance calculated from information included in the displacement instruction.
Examiner responds:
Connell discloses issuing a displacement instruction (Para. 27), performing an affine transformation between the initial image and the image after the displacement instruction (Para. 23), and applying a threshold displacement verification to feature points (Para. 24). An affine transformation inherently decomposes into translation and rotational components, necessarily providing calculated translation distances between feature points. To the extent that Connell does not explicitly disclose comparing that translation distance against a distance derived from information included in the displacement instruction, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to do so. Connell explicitly teaches verifying that the user’s head movement complies with the displacement instruction (Para. 27), and using the translation distance inherently produced by the affine transformation as the basis for that verification is the straightforward mathematical expression of what Connell already teaches. One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized this as a predictable application of well-known affine transformation mathematics to the verification step Connell expressly discloses.
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) 1-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Connell et al. (US Patent Pub. No. 2017/0169303 A1, published 2017) in view of Shih et al. (US Patent Pub. No. 2021/0110142 A1, published 2021).
Regarding claim 1, Connell teaches a method for capturing genuine user image data (Abstract, “An embodiment of the invention provides a method of analyzing an image of a user to determine whether the image is authentic”) comprising: creating a displacement instruction (Para. 19, “A request can be made to the user to reorient his or her head in two or more particular directions… The system determines whether the head was reoriented in the requested direction in each image and whether the displacement of the points between two or more images in the sequence is consistent with a three-dimensional co-planar interpretation.”); displaying, by an electronic device, an instruction to the user in accordance with the displacement instruction (Para. 19, “A sequence of images of the user's face can be acquired, one after each directional request; and the same set of four or more points can be located in each image.”; Para. 27, “In at least one embodiment of the invention, the processor 130 can send an instruction to the user via an output device 140 (e.g., monitor, display, and/or speaker), where the instruction instructing the user to reposition the user's head.”); positioning the user facial image data to be located within a screen of the electronic device (Para. 27, “The processor 130 can determine whether the user's head was repositioned in compliance with the instruction in each additional image.”, the processor positions it in compliance within a screen); capturing facial image data of the user (Para. 27, “The processor 130 can determine whether the user's head was repositioned in compliance with the instruction in each additional image.”); calculating a translation distance of the captured user facial image data (Para. 19, “The system determines whether the head was reoriented in the requested direction in each image and whether the displacement of the points between two or more images in the sequence is consistent with a three-dimensional co-planar interpretation.”; Para. 23, “In at least one embodiment, the three-dimensional surface model is an affine transformation, which is a linear mapping method that preserves points, straight lines, and planes. Sets of parallel lines remain parallel after an affine transformation.”); comparing the calculated translation distance against a translation distance calculated from information included in the displacement instruction to determine whether the calculated translation distance is in accordance with the displacement instruction (Para. 24, “In at least one embodiment, the set of two-dimensional feature points includes the user's nose, and the processor 130 determines that the displacements conform to the three-dimensional surface model when the displacement of the user's nose feature point is below a threshold displacement (e.g., 2 mm)”, to the extent the affine transformation of Connell does not explicitly disclose a translation distance calculated from information included in the displacement instruction, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, as an affine transformation inherently decomposes translation and rotational components, and Connell expressly teaches verifying compliance with the displacement instruction (Para. 27)); and in response to determining the calculated translation distance is in accordance with the displacement instruction, determining the captured user facial image data is genuine and thus taken of a live person (Para. 25, “The processor 130 can determine whether to authenticate the user based on the determination of whether the displacements conform to the three-dimensional surface model (270). The determination of whether the displacements conform to the three-dimensional surface model can include authenticating the user when the displacements do not conform to the three-dimensional surface model or rejecting the user when the displacements conform to the three-dimensional surface model.”).
Connell does not explicitly disclose displaying, by an electronic device, facial image data of a user in accordance with the displacement instruction. However, they do teach providing an instruction to the user via a display in order to cause the user to reposition.
Shih teaches displaying, by an electronic device, facial image data of a user in accordance with the displacement instruction (Para. 29, “More particularly, facial regions of one or more input images; that is, regions of input image(s) that represent faces, can be locally corrected using a first projection and regions of input image(s) outside of facial regions can be corrected using a second projection… Also, one or more corrected images that reflect the corrections made to the one or more input images using the mesh, the first projection, and/or the second projection can be generated, displayed, transmitted, and/or otherwise produced—in some cases, a corrected image can reflect corrections made using the mesh, the first projection, and/or the second projection to most, if not all, pixels of a corresponding input image.”; Para. 147, “An upper portion of FIG. 16 shows that scenario 1600 begins with computing device 1610 receiving input image 1510 from a camera and then displaying input image 1510 and control 1620, where control 1620 includes a button labeled as “Apply Facial Correction”.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Connell to incorporate the teachings of Shih to include displaying, by an electronic device, facial image data of a user in accordance with the displacement instruction. Connell discloses a method of capturing facial image data for authentication, and also teaches the possibility of displaying an instruction to the user in order to facilitate the capturing of the image data. Shih teaches a method for cropping facial image data out of images and using correction techniques to optimize the captured image data, further allowing for the display of the results of the correction. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the advantage of displaying the facial image data once it is in accordance with the displacement instruction, as it would allow for robust verification of the facial image data, improving the accuracy of the authentication procedure.
Regarding claim 2, Connell as modified by Shih above teaches all of the elements of claim 1, as stated above, as well as further comprising the step of determining the captured user image data is fraudulent in response to determining the calculated translation distance fails to be in accordance with the displacement instruction (Para. 19, “The system determines whether the head was reoriented in the requested direction in each image and whether the displacement of the points between two or more images in the sequence is consistent with a three-dimensional co-planar interpretation. The face can be accepted if all determined reorientations match the requested directions and the point co-planarity test fails.”, if the displacement is consistent with the co-planar interpretation (translation fails to be in accordance with the displacement instruction), the image data is not accepted (fraudulent)).
Regarding claim 3, Connell as modified by Shih above teaches all of the elements of claim 1, as stated above, as well as capturing, by the electronic device, facial image data of the user without displaying a facial image of the user on the screen (Para. 21, “In at least one embodiment of the invention, an interface 110 receives a first image of a user's face (210)”, it is not specifically stated that this facial image is displayed); transmitting the captured image data to a second electronic device; creating the displacement instruction; and transmitting the displacement instruction from the second electronic device to the electronic device (Para. 19, “A request can be made to the user to reorient his or her head in two or more particular directions… The system determines whether the head was reoriented in the requested direction in each image and whether the displacement of the points between two or more images in the sequence is consistent with a three-dimensional co-planar interpretation.”; Para. 39, “The computer readable program instructions may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server.”, transmitting the image data to a second device, creating the displacement instruction on the second device, and then transmitting it back to the original device would be a routine design choice).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Connell and Shih to include transmitting the captured image data to a second electronic device; creating the displacement instruction; and transmitting the displacement instruction from the second electronic device to the electronic device. The method of Connell is mainly focused on performing the facial authentication processing within a system (Fig. 1). However, they do mention the possibility of connecting the device to a remote server in order to facilitate processing (Para. 39). One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the distribution of processing between a client and server is a routine, well-known design choice.
Regarding claim 4, Connell as modified by Shih above teaches all of the elements of claim 1, as stated above, as well as capturing, by the electronic device, facial image data of the user without displaying an image of the user on the screen (Para. 21, “In at least one embodiment of the invention, an interface 110 receives a first image of a user's face (210)”, the captured image is not required to be displayed); and determining, by the electronic device, the displacement instruction (Para. 22, “The interface 110 can receive one or more additional images of the user's face (230); and, the image processing device 120 can locate the set of two-dimensional feature points on each additional image (240). The image processing device 120 can also identify, for each additional image, displacements between the set of at least four two-dimensional feature points on the additional image and the set of at least four two-dimensional feature points on the first image (250).”).
Regarding claim 5, Connell as modified by Shih teaches all of the elements of claim 1, as stated above, as well as wherein the displacement instruction comprises at least one of: translating the captured user facial image data to a non-central location on the screen; translating the captured user facial image data to a central location on the screen (Para. 23, “A processor 130 connected to the image processing device 120 can determine whether the displacements conform to a three-dimensional surface model (260). In at least one embodiment, the three-dimensional surface model is an affine transformation, which is a linear mapping method that preserves points, straight lines, and planes.”; Para. 25, “if the feature points are truly on a two-dimensional plane (e.g., the surface of a phone screen), then the remapped nose will fall very close to the nose originally marked in the image.”, the disclosed affine transformation remaps coordinates of facial feature points between images. This remapping would translate captured facial image data within the coordinate frame. One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that translating the captured image data to a non-central location or to a neutral and centralized location for alignment would be a routine implementation of the affine transformation); rotating the captured user facial image data; and scaling the captured user facial image data (Para. 23, “ In at least one embodiment, the three-dimensional surface model is an affine transformation, which is a linear mapping method that preserves points, straight lines, and planes. Sets of parallel lines remain parallel after an affine transformation. An affine transformation does not necessarily preserve angles between lines or distances between points, though it does preserve ratios of distances between points lying on a straight line.”; Para. 30, “The processor 130 can fit the displacements of the facial feature points to a three-dimensional surface model (370).”, An affine transformation matrix necessarily includes rotational and scaling components. Fitting displacements to a 3-D surface model would involve computing such rotations and scaling factors to perform robust alignment in order to test conformance; Shih, Para. 90, “At block 940, the computing device can set up and/or initialize two implicit variables for face k: transformation matrix S.sub.k and translation vector t.sub.k. S.sub.k can include a transformation matrix representing scaling and/or rotation of face k and t.sub.k can include a translation vector representing translation of face k.” ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Connell and Shih to include translating the captured user facial image data to a non-central location or to a central location on the screen. Connell discloses determining authenticity of facial image data by identifying displacements of facial feature points and fitting those displacements to a 3-D surface model. They explicitly disclose that this model is an affine transformation, which is a linear mapping that includes translation, rotation, and scaling of image data. Shih also discloses utilizing a transformation matrix which can include a translation vector as well as the ability to scale and rotate. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to implement these transformations as translations of the captured image to a non-central or central location because these are routine normalization steps when aligning images, especially in facial analysis, where analyzing from different viewpoints can help to detect spoofing attempts (See Figs. 5A-5B as well as Para. 32).
Regarding claim 6, Connel as modified by Shih teaches all of the elements of claim 1, as stated above, and Connell also teaches wherein the facial image data is captured without being displayed by the electronic device (Para. 21, “In at least one embodiment of the invention, an interface 110 receives a first image of a user's face (210)”, it is not specifically stated that this facial image is displayed).
Connell does not explicitly disclose cropping a rectangular region of facial image data captured by the electronic device and manipulating the corners of the cropped region to correspond to respective corners of the screen. However, they do locate facial feature points of the user.
Shih teaches cropping a rectangular region of facial image data captured by the electronic device (Fig. 2, Para. 45, “ A face box for an image can indicate a region of the image that represents a face, such as a human face.”, a face box is analogous to a crop) and manipulating the corners of the cropped region to correspond to respective corners of the screen (Para. 71, “At block 774, the computing device can determine a maximum conformality cost CC.sub.k of the four corners C1, C2, C3, and C4 of face box FB.sub.k.”; Para. 169, “In some examples, determining the warping mesh for the image can include determining whether the first image area has an area greater than a threshold image area; and after determining that the first image area has an area greater than a threshold image area, determining the warping mesh”; Para. 170, “In other examples, the one or more face-related transformations of at least the first image area can include a rotation of the first image area, a translation of the first image area, and/or a scaling of the first image area; then, determining the warping mesh for the image can include… determining a dimension of the boundary vertices of the third mesh to be perpendicular to a boundary of the image”, the face box corners are considered, and transformations are applied to manipulate the image to correspond to boundary vertices).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Connell to incorporate the teachings of Shih to include cropping a rectangular region of facial image data captured by the electronic device and manipulating the corners of the cropped region to correspond to respective corners of the screen. Connell discloses capturing facial image data and locating facial landmarks for liveness analysis. Shih teaches cropping a rectangular region of facial image data and manipulating the corners to correspond to respective boundaries. One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that supplementing the method of Connell with the teachings of Shih would enhance the capturing of facial image data, allowing for more precise capturing of the facial region and providing the ability to manipulate the specific facial region, improving and facilitating the alignment of facial features.
Regarding claim 7, the computer system recites variably the same function as the method of claim 1. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 8, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 2. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 9, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 3. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 10, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 4. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 11, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 5. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 12, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 6. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 13, the non-transitory computer-readable recording medium (Para. 69, “Computer system/server 12 may further include other removable/non-removable, volatile/non-volatile computer system storage media.”) recites variably the same function as the method of claim 1. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 14, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 2. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 15, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 3. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 16, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 4. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 17, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 5. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 18, the recited elements perform variably the same function as that of claim 6. It is rejected under the same analysis.
Regarding claim 19, Connell as modified teaches all of the elements of claim 1, as stated above, as well as further comprising implementing, by the electronic device, the displacement instruction (Para. 27, “In at least one embodiment of the invention, the processor 130 can send an instruction to the user via an output device 140 (e.g., monitor, display, and/or speaker), where the instruction instructing the user to reposition the user's head… For example, the instruction instructs the user to reposition his head to the left and the processor 110 compares the feature points on the additional image to the feature points on the first image to determine whether the user repositioned his head to the left.”).
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 DAVID A WAMBST whose telephone number is (703)756-1750. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-6:30 EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Gregory Morse can be reached at (571)272-3838. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/DAVID ALEXANDER WAMBST/Examiner, Art Unit 2663
/GREGORY A MORSE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2698
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