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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 6/4/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
The claim objection has been withdrawn in light of the amended claims.
The rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) has been withdrawn in light of the amended claims. However, a new rejection under 112(a) has been proposed in light of the Applicant’s amendments and remarks.
The rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) has been withdrawn in light of the amended claims.
The Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 18, 22-25, 27, 31-34 under the rejection of 35 U.S.C. 101 have been considered but are unpersuasive. Obtaining RoI-related information and obtaining the reference images with the plurality of RoIs are well-understood, routine and conventional activities of data gathering, and thus, the claims are still directed towards an abstract idea. The rejection below will go in further detail.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 18, 22-25, 27, 31-34 under the rejection of 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged that application claims priority to foreign application with application number KR10-2022-0131751 dated 10/13/2022. Copies of certified papers required by 37 CFR 1.55 have been received. Priority is acknowledged under 35 USC 119(e) and 37 CFR 1.78.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claims 18, 22-25, 27, 31-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, had possession of the claimed invention.
Claim 18 (and correspondingly claim 27) recites “obtaining, from a bitstream, Rol-related information for a plurality of RoIs (Region of Interests) accumulated in a reference image of a current image”. The Applicant on page 6 of Remarks states “Accordingly, Claims 18 and 27 are amended based on paragraph [0077] of the specification to clarify that the plurality of RoIs is accumulated in a reference image of a current image, and that the plurality of RoIs is accumulated from a plurality of images including a previous image of the current image and the current image, which belong to a same picture group”, thus claiming that multiple ROIs are determined in one image. However, specification paragraph [0077] states “In a reference image, a region of interest of a current image may be cumulatively expressed”, thus stating only one region of interest is found in an image. This is further supported by the following paragraph in [0078], stating “For example, three objects of interest exist in one or more images, which is referred to as a first object of interest, a second object of interest and a third object of interest, respectively. An object may be searched from an image through machine learning based object search. It is assumed that only a first object of interest is searched in a first image (frame 0), only a third object of interest is searched in a second image (frame 1) and only a second object of interest is searched in a third image (frame 2)”. While there is support for cumulating multiple regions of interest throughout a plurality of images, there lacks support for finding a plurality of regions of interest in one image. If the applicant believes there is sufficient support elsewhere in the specification, they are respectfully requested to point out the support.
Claims 22-25 and 31-34 are rejected for their dependencies on claims 18 and 27 respectively.
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.
Claims 18, 22-25, 27, 31-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claim 18 recites:
“obtaining, from a bitstream, Rol-related information for a plurality of RoIs (Region of Interests) accumulated in a reference image of a current image” is a well-understood, routine, and conventional insignificant extra-solution activity of data gathering.
“obtaining the reference image in which the plurality of RoIs is accumulated, wherein the plurality of RoIs is accumulated from a plurality of images including a previous image of the current image and the current image, and wherein the previous image and the current image belong to a same picture group” is a well-understood, routine, and conventional insignificant extra-solution activity of capturing consecutive images with regions of interest.
“and decoding the current image using the reference image including the plurality of RoIs” amounts to a mathematical concept including mathematical calculations.
“wherein the plurality of RoIs includes a first Rol that is searched only in the previous image and a second Rol that is searched only in the current image” which can be reasonably interpreted as a human observer mentally determining an ROI in one image and another ROI different in another image.
“and wherein a sample in a non-interest region, which is a region excluding the plurality of RoIs in the reference image, has a predetermined transformed sample value representing a specific color” is a well-understood, routine, and conventional insignificant extra-solution activity of a colored image.
Claim 22 recites “wherein the Rol-related information on a Rol is derived for each of the RoIs”. A person can mentally derive information from a region of interest, such as the size and position.
Claim 23 recites “wherein the Rol-related information on the Rol comprises at least one of a size information of the Rol or position information of the Rol”. A person can mentally derive the size and position of a region of interest.
Claim 24 recites “wherein the Rol-related information on the Rol comprises at least one of a size information of the Rol or position information of the Rol”. A person can, with the aid of a pen and paper, mentally determine a region of interest by shading an ROI in block partitions.
Claim 25 recites “wherein a number of the plurality of RoIs is determined differently based on an accumulation period defined by a number of the plurality of images”. A person can mentally determine the number of regions of interest based on the number images, such as determining 2 RoIs in 2 images, 3 RoIs in 3 images, and so on and so forth.
Claim 27 corresponds to claim 18 whilst reciting encoding instead of decoding. However, both encoding and decoding amounts to a mathematical concept including mathematical calculations. Thus, they are rejected for the same reasons of being directed towards an abstract idea.
Claims 31-34 correspond to claims 22-25. Thus, they are rejected for the same reasons of being directed towards an abstract idea.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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) 18, 22-25, 27, 31-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sato (US 20150023407 A1) in view of Mukherjee (US 20110276652 A1).
Regarding claim 18, Sato discloses a method of decoding an image (Sato, paragraph [0001], "The present disclosure relates to an image decoding device, an image decoding method, an image encoding device, and an encoding method").
While Sato teaches obtaining from an encoded stream (Sato, paragraph [0071], “As a result, a series of partial images displaying only the ROI tiles can be decoded from an encoded stream”) Rol-related information for a plurality of RoIs (Region of Interests) accumulated in a reference image of a current image (Sato, paragraph [0074], Fig. 6a below, "Referring to FIG. 6A, a picture PIC5 is partitioned into 9 tiles T.sub.50 to T.sub.58. The tiles T.sub.53 and T.sub.55 are ROI tiles. The tiles T.sub.50 to T.sub.52, T.sub.54, and T.sub.56 to T.sub.58 are non-ROI tiles. In this way, two or more mutually independent ROI tiles may be set in one image"), they do not teach “obtaining from a bitstream, ROI-related information”.
PNG
media_image1.png
330
466
media_image1.png
Greyscale
However, Mukherjee teaches obtaining, from a bitstream, Rol-related information for a plurality of RoIs (Region of Interests) (Mukherjee, paragraph [0172], “In particular, the compressed bitstream for the block of pixels for the first frame is decoded using the same procedure that was described in step 605.”),
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to obtain ROIs through a bitstream in place of Sato’s encoded stream, as taught by Mukherjee.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to save storage and computational resources.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results.
Sato in view of Mukherjee discloses obtaining the reference image in which the plurality of RoIs is accumulated, wherein the plurality of RoIs is accumulated from a plurality of images including a previous image of the current image and the current image, and wherein the previous image and the current image belong to a same picture group (Sato, paragraph [0074], " To recognize which ROI of a certain picture corresponds to which ROI of a subsequent picture, each ROI can be tracked through a plurality of images."),
and decoding the current image using the reference image including the plurality of RoIs (Sato, paragraph [0125], "More specifically, the lossless decoding section 63 decodes the image data of the ROI tile discriminated based on the above-described tile parameters"),
wherein the plurality of RoIs includes a first Rol that is searched only in the previous image and a second Rol that is searched only in the current image (Sato, paragraph [0074], " To recognize which ROI of a certain picture corresponds to which ROI of a subsequent picture, each ROI can be tracked through a plurality of images."),
While Sato in view of Mukherjee teaches and wherein a sample in a non-interest region, which is a region excluding the plurality of RoIs in the reference image (Sato, paragraph [0074], "Referring to FIG. 6A, a picture PIC5 is partitioned into 9 tiles T.sub.50 to T.sub.58. The tiles T.sub.53 and T.sub.55 are ROI tiles. The tiles T.sub.50 to T.sub.52, T.sub.54, and T.sub.56 to T.sub.58 are non-ROI tiles"), they do not explicitly teach “the sample in the non-interest region having a predetermined transformed sample value representing a specific color”.
However, Mukherjee additionally teaches the sample in the non-interest region having a predetermined transformed sample value representing a specific color (Mukherjee, paragraph [0062], "Reception module 315 includes a decoding module 317 that is constructed to decode the received encoded image data for the region of interest and the region surrounding the region of interest, and to convert the decoded image data from Y'C.sub.BC.sub.R color space to RGB color space.").
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to apply a specified color to the non-ROIs of Sato’s (in view of Mukherjee) images, as additionally taught by Mukherjee.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to distinctly outline regions of non-interests and improve detections of ROIs for applications such as recognizing humans.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known methods 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 Sato in view of Mukherjee with the additional teachings of Mukherjee to obtain the invention as specified in claim 18.
Regarding claim 22, Sato in view of Mukherjee discloses the method of claim 18, wherein the Rol-related information on a Rol is derived for each of the RoIs (Sato, paragraph [0120], "Then, the tile partitioning section 12 generates the tile parameters including the parameter indicating the position of the ROI tile (step S114).").
Regarding claim 23, Sato in view of Mukherjee discloses the method of claim 22, wherein the Rol-related information on the Rol comprises at least one of a size information of the Rol or position information of the Rol (Sato, paragraph [0120], "Then, the tile partitioning section 12 generates the tile parameters including the parameter indicating the position of the ROI tile (step S114).").
Regarding claim 24, Sato in view of Mukherjee discloses the method of claim 18, wherein a boundary of a Rol coincides with a boundary of block partitioning (Sato, paragraph [0074], "Referring to FIG. 6A, a picture PIC5 is partitioned into 9 tiles T.sub.50 to T.sub.58. The tiles T.sub.53 and T.sub.55 are ROI tiles. The tiles T.sub.50 to T.sub.52, T.sub.54, and T.sub.56 to T.sub.58 are non-ROI tiles. In this way, two or more mutually independent ROI tiles may be set in one image").
Regarding claim 25, Sato in view of Mukherjee discloses the method of claim 18, wherein a number of the plurality of RoIs is determined differently based on an accumulation period defined by a number of the plurality of images (Sato, paragraph [0121], "When a human region or other ROIs are not detected, the tile partitioning section 12 may set a tentative ROI tile in the encoding target image. For example, the tile partitioning section 12 can set the tentative ROI tile at a previously decided position (the middle or the like of the image) or the same position as the position of the finally set ROI tile", the ROIs are decided differently and can depend on the previous positions/images).
Claim 27 corresponds to claim 18, whilst reciting encoding the current image using the reference image including the plurality of RoIs, wherein Rol-related information for the plurality of RoIs accumulated in the reference image is encoded into a bitstream (Sato, paragraph [0151], "The first encoding section 1a encodes the ROI tile image to generate an encoded stream of the base layer."). The remaining limitations are rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as claim 18.
Claims 31-34 correspond to claims 22-25. Thus, they are rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as claims 22-25.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WAYNE ZHANG whose telephone number is (571) 272-0245. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 10:00-6:00 EST.
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, Ms. Sumati Lefkowitz can be reached on (571) 272-3638. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/WAYNE ZHANG/Examiner, Art Unit 2672
/SUMATI LEFKOWITZ/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2672
Prosecution Insights