DETAILED ACTION
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 allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). 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, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 05/04/2026 has been entered.
Response To Arguments / New Grounds Of Rejection
Applicant's arguments filed with the Request for Continued Examination (RCE) have been considered. However, upon reconsideration and review of the newly cited art submitted with the IDS, the previous allowance is withdrawn and the following rejection is maintained.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-4, 7-9, 11-13, 15-18 and 21-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over (US 20210368157 A1), and further in view of in view of Nakata et al (US 20190304050 A1), Ren et al. (Ren et al., “SBNet: Sparse Blocks Network for Fast Inference,” arXiv:1801.02108 (Jun. 7, 2018, newly cited by Applicant in the IDS accompanying the RCE) and Cordonnier et al (Cordonnier, Jean-Baptiste, et al. "Differentiable patch selection for image recognition." Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF conference on computer vision and pattern recognition. 2021.).
RE claim 1, Overbeck teaches A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions stored thereon that, when executed by at least one processor (abstract, [0015]), are configured to cause a computing system to at least: generate multiple mesh cells based on multiple mesh layers, the multiple mesh layers representing a volumetric scene, the multiple mesh cells including multiple mesh blocks (Figs 6-7, 12-13, [0015], [0090]-[0092]);
Overbeck is silent RE: determine scores for the multiple mesh blocks based on densities of the multiple mesh blocks; select, from the multiple mesh blocks, k selected blocks based on the scores for the multiple mesh blocks, k being a predetermined number; and store the selected blocks and identifiers of locations of the selected blocks.
However Nakata teaches determine scores for the multiple blocks based on densities of the multiple blocks in abstract, Figs 1-2, [0028], to process the blocks based on the scores for load balancing ensuring high quality. Further more Ren teaches selecting occupied/dense blocks based where regions of higher spatial density or occupancy are assigned active values (ones), while inactive or zero-density regions are excluded and stored with location identifiers in Figs 2-3, Abstract; page 8711 col 2, Section 3, Sparse Blocks Network page 8713 cols 1-2. In addition Cordonnier teaches selecting most relevant K patches, k being a predetermined number as the Top K scoring patches are selected for downstream processing (abstract, page 2351 col 2). This can be equally combined and applied to the mesh blocks in each layers generated from for the depth maps in order to reduce computational cost in processing large volumetric meshes by focusing computation only on dense/occupied blocks and further improve the storage and transmission efficiency, wherein the system transmits layered mesh blocks (Overbeck [0023]), as readily recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to include in Overbeck a system and method of determine scores for the multiple mesh blocks based on densities of the multiple mesh blocks; select, from the multiple mesh blocks, k selected blocks based on the scores for the multiple mesh blocks, k being a predetermined number; and store the selected blocks and identifiers of locations of the selected blocks, as set forth above applying Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier, to improve the storage and transmission efficiency, and thereby increasing system effectiveness and user experience.
RE claim 2, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the computing system to delete non-selected blocks, the non-selected blocks being the multiple mesh blocks other than the selected blocks (Ren Figs 2-3, Abstract; page 8711 col 2, Section 3, Sparse Blocks Network page 8713 cols 1-2, Cordonnier abstract, page 2351 col 2).
RE claim 3, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the storing includes storing the selected blocks, identifiers of locations of the selected blocks, and sizes of the selected blocks (Ren Figs 2-3, Abstract; page 8711 col 2, Section 3, Sparse Blocks Network page 8713 cols 1-2 and Overbeck [0064]).
RE claim 4, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the storing further includes storing a number of the multiple mesh layers (Overbeck [0062], [0064]).
RE claim 7, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the computing system to generate an array of layers based on the selected blocks and expanding sizes of the selected blocks (Overbeck [0034], [0140] and Ren Figs 2-3, Abstract; page 8711 col 2, Section 3, Sparse Blocks Network page 8713 cols 1-2).
RE claim 8, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the multiple mesh layers are each different distances from a reference point (Overbeck Figs 6-7, 12 [0015], [0090]-[0092]) ).
RE claim 21, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the densities of the multiple mesh blocks are based on a number of points representing a presence of an object in the multiple mesh blocks (Nakata [0028]).
RE claim 22, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the k selected blocks have highest scores among blocks within the multiple mesh blocks (Nakata [0028], Cordonnier abstract, page 2351 col 2).
RE claim 23, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier teaches wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the computing system to delete at least one mesh block that includes at least one point representing the presence of the object but is not within the k selected blocks having highest scores (Ren Figs 2-3, Abstract; page 8711 col 2, Section 3, Sparse Blocks Network page 8713 cols 1-2, Cordonnier abstract, page 2351 col 2).
Claims 9, 11-13, 15-16 recite limitations similar in scope with limitations of claims 1-4, 7-8 as corresponding methods and therefore rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 17-18 recite limitations similar in scope with limitations of claims 1, 3, 8 and therefore rejected under the same rationale. In addition Overbeck a teaches A computing system comprising: at least one processor; and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions stored thereon (Fig 5, [0108]).
Claims 6, 14 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier, and further in view of Baik (US 20130162634 A1).
RE claim 6, Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier is silent RE: wherein the instructions are further configured to cause the computing system to generate multiple new mesh layers based on the selected blocks and a predetermined value for mesh blocks within the multiple new mesh layers that do not correspond to the selected blocks.
However Baik teaches in Figs 7-9, abstract, [0105], [0109] to generate new depth layers to consolidate, replace or remove given depth layers. This can be equally applied to generate multiple new mesh layers based on the selected blocks and a predetermined value for mesh blocks within the multiple new mesh layers that do not correspond to the selected blocks to efficiently manage the number of mesh layers and faithfully reconstruct the scene information including occluded/discontinuous areas, as readily recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to include in Overbeck as modified by Nakata, Ren and Cordonnier a system and method generate multiple new mesh layers based on the selected blocks and a predetermined value for mesh blocks within the multiple new mesh layers that do not correspond to the selected blocks, as set forth above applying Baik, to efficiently manage the number of mesh layers and faithfully reconstruct the scene information including occluded/discontinuous areas and thereby increasing system effectiveness and user experience.
Claims 14 and 19 recite limitations similar in scope with limitations of claim 6 and therefore rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure (See attached 892).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SULTANA MARCIA ZALALEE whose telephone number is (571)270-1411. The examiner can normally be reached Monday- Friday 8:00am-4:30pm.
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/Sultana M Zalalee/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2614
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