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 .
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s response to the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection is noted. As applicant has amended the claims as suggested (non-final rejection at 2), the rejection is withdrawn.
Applicant indicates at p. 11 that some of the language of Claim 6 (previously indicated as allowable) was moved to claim 1. Not all of claim 6 was incorporated into Claim 1; amended Claim 1 is addressed below.
The Information Disclosure Statement of 1/23/2026 has been considered. It is noted that the PCT written opinion considered claims 1-20 to lack an inventive step over Letunovskiy. The cited portions of Letunovskiy on the PCT/ISA/210, page 2, have been considered but do not suggest that a rejection is appropriate under U.S. practice.
Claims 6-7, 13-14, 19-20 have been cancelled; claims 21-26 have been added; Claims 1-5, 8-12, 15-18 and 21-26 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 4-5, 11-12, and 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 4 is representative of these. In Claim 1, the system “generat[es], from the first image, a first embedding”. Claim 4 requires “wherein the first embedding includes a first image embedding”. This seems to be duplicative or circular and, if not, is confusing as to what else is added by this limitation.
Claims 5, 12 and 18 are rejected for dependency on a rejected parent claim.
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) 1-4, 8-11, and 15-17 as best understood is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dong, USPGP 20240362267 (previously cited) in view of Pardeshi et al, USPGP 20220012568 (previously cited).
With respect to Claim 1, Dong shows an image search tool that is based on measuring similarities of embeddings. See paragraph [0050]. This includes “generate, from the first image, a first embedding (Images corresponding to items in item database are also converted into vectors by the image embedding model and stored at image embedding database 210); associate the first embedding with the first determine a similarity between the query embedding and each embedding of a plurality of embeddings associated with a plurality of images, the plurality of images including the first image (By comparing the vectors to the vector of the image (i.e., a similarity search) ); based on at least the similarity between the query embedding and the first embedding, select the first embedding as a match for the query embedding; based on at least the selection of the first embedding, select the first
Dong does not identify that the stored images are compressed or compressed with any particular algorithm, or appear to specify any particular image storage format. Dong shows images (e.g. Fig. 7) as item database search results.
Pardeshi et al (previously cited, non-final rejection at 4) shows a desirable way to store digital images. Pardeshi et al. describes a processor 802 and a computer-readable medium 820 storing instructions that are operative upon execution by the processor to: receive a first image of a first image type for compression (para [0051]: scene image 302 and object image 304 can each be analyzed by at least one autoencoder, such as a variational autoencoder (VAE)), the first image being in pixel space; provide the first image to a first variational autoencoder, the first variational autoencoder having a bottleneck layer (nature of a variational autoencoder); persist an output of the bottleneck layer of the first variational autoencoder as a first compressed image (para [0051, "VAE 310 can determine features of these objects and can encode those features into a latent space/In at least one embodiment, this can include generating a latent space in a target format, such as a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file that adheres to a specified schema"), the first compressed image comprising a latent tensor (nature of a variational autoencoder); and based on at least receiving a request to decompress the first compressed image, decompress, by a first variational autodecoder, the first compressed image into a first recovered image (para [0051, "this latent space can be used as a constraint for a generator network 316 that will generate one or more images showing those objects in that scene"; also para [0054: "In at least one embodiment, this can include having multiple VAEs encode and recreate portions of these images and select one or more VAEs that produce a best result, or most accurate recreation."), the first recovered image being in pixel space.
As outlined at pp. 3-4 of the prior action, a bottleneck layer appears to be a characteristic of a variational autoencoder. The response of 1/22/2026 does not appear to contest this issue. Official notice is taken that a bottleneck layer is a typical (and probably inherent) part of a variational autoencoder. Yadav (previously cited) is evidence of this.
As Dong does not specify a storage format for the images retrieved from the item database, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to store them as embeddings as described in Pardeshi et al. in order to store them in a compact manner that facilitates further processing.
Re Claim 2, Pardeshi describes using multiple VAEs for different image types at [0052]: "a set of autoencoders can be utilized, such as a VAE for each class of a set of object classes. In at least one embodiment, these VAEs can be selected using a gating network 308. In at least one embodiment, a sampling of image data can be processed by these VAEs to determine a VAE for an appropriate class of
object, where that determination can correspond to a VAE with best performance on this sampled image data".
Re Claim 3, paragraph [0052] would be understood to mean that the VAEs have been trained before use. Also see para [0053]: "an encoder that is trained for that class of object (specifically or as a set of classes) can be utilized".
Re Claim 4, as noted for Claim 3 the model (VAE) would be understood to be trained before use. As noted in the 112(b) rejection above, the first embedding was generated from the first image in the parent Claim, therefore the first embedding is already a first image embedding.
Claims 8-11 and 15-17 parallel system Claims 1-4 and are rejected for the same reasons.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 21-26 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.
Claims 5, 12, 18 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Duan et al. shows a VAE used for efficient compression; this appears to be directed more at entropy coding than at using and embedding from e.g. a bottleneck layer as the compressed image. See Col. 2.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/GREGORY A MORSE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2698
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