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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This non-final office action is in response to the Application filed on 11/9/2023.
Claim(s) 1-20 are pending for examination. Claim(s) 1, 11, 20 is/are independent claim(s).
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, 10, 11-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mehra; Ashutosh et al. US Pub. No. 2021/0117667 (Mehra).
Claim 1:
Mehra teaches:
A computer-implemented method for resolving conflicts in document layout [¶ 0036] (post-processing techniques involve using document content adjacent to or overlapping with the erroneously classified structural element to correct the error), the method comprising:
receiving, by a processor coupled to a memory, layout information for two or more layouts of a document, each layout of the two or more layouts having a layout bounding box [¶ 0037-40] (Structure Detection Module, document structure could be considered “layout”) [¶ 0033, 46,72] (bounding box);
identifying, by the processor, one or more areas of overlap between the layout bounding boxes of the two or more layouts [¶ 0036, 45, 59, 61-63, 79, 81, 84, 101] (post-processing techniques involve using document content adjacent to or overlapping with the erroneously classified structural element to correct the error), respectively;
identifying, by the processor, content associated with each area of overlap, the content including stylometric features [¶ 0046, 49, 53, 56, 58, 61, 64, 70, 74] (font properties (for text structures), and location or size of the elements on the page);
determining, by the processor and based at least on the layout information for the document, the one or more areas of overlap, and the content associated with each area of overlap, a layout bounding box configuration for the two or more of the layouts of the document [¶ 0036, 45, 59, 61-63, 79, 81, 84, 101] (post-processing techniques involve using document content adjacent to or overlapping with the erroneously classified structural element to correct the error) [¶ 0037-40] (Structure Detection Module, document structure could be considered “layout”) [¶ 0033, 46,72] (bounding box); and
applying, by the processor, the layout bounding box configuration to the document [¶ 0066-69] (Figs. 9A-9B, correcting errors and merging lists could be considered “applying”) [¶ 70-72] (Fig. 10A-10B, correcting errors and merging lists could be considered “applying”).
Mehra teaches all the elements of the claim, however some of these elements may by in different embodiments and use different terminology, for example document structure could be considered “layout” and correcting errors and merging lists could be considered “applying”. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the different embodiments of Mehra and that the difference in terminology is an obvious variant.
The reason, rationale, and motivation for this combination would have been to more “accurately identifying document structures” [Mehra: ¶ 0002].
Claim 2:
Mehra teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein applying the layout bounding box configuration to the document includes replacing the layout bounding box for each layout of the two or more layouts with a respective adjusted layout bounding box, and wherein the adjusted layout bounding boxes for the two or more layouts have no areas of overlap [¶ 0066-69] (Figs. 9A-9B, correcting errors and merging lists with no “overlap”) [¶ 70-72] (Fig. 10A-10B, correcting errors and merging lists with no “overlap”).
Claim 3:
Mehra teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein applying the layout bounding box configuration to the document includes replacing a layout bounding box of at least one of the two or more layouts with an adjusted layout bounding box [¶ 0066-69] (Figs. 9A-9B, correcting errors and merging lists with no “overlap”) [¶ 70-72] (Fig. 10A-10B, correcting errors and merging lists with no “overlap”).
Claim 4:
Mehra teaches:
The method of claim 3, wherein the replacement of a layout bounding box includes combining the two or more layouts into a single layout [¶ 0066-69] (Figs. 9A-9B, correcting errors and merging lists with no “overlap”) [¶ 70-72] (Fig. 10A-10B, correcting errors and merging lists with no “overlap”).
Claim 10:
Mehra teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the stylometric features include text characteristics and line breaks [¶ 0046, 49, 53, 56, 58, 61, 64, 70, 74] (font properties (for text structures), and location or size of the elements on the page) [¶ 0068, 73, ] (a new line could be considered a “line break”).
Claim(s) 5-9, 15-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mehra; Ashutosh et al. US Pub. No. 2021/0117667 (Mehra) in view of Kyre; Mark Stephen et al. US Pub. No. 20170199860 (Kyre).
Claim 5:
Mehra does not appear to explicitly disclose “total area”.
However, the disclosure of Kyre teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising:
receiving, by the processor; section information associated with one or more sections of the document, each section including a section bounding box [¶ 0009, 16-18, 61, 64, 107-108] (bounding box delineating outer borders of the corresponding wrapping region);
for at least one layout with an adjusted layout bounding box or a layout bounding box, identifying, by the processor, one or more sections where the respective section bounding box overlaps with the adjusted layout bounding box or the layout bounding box [¶ 0128-131, 228, 232] (Wrapping region overlap: High numbers of overlaps between wrapping regions produced by a set of separation thresholds negatively impacts the score for those thresholds);
determining, by the processor, a total area associated with one or more area of overlap, each area of overlap associated with the respective section bounding box overlapping with the adjusted layout bounding box or the layout bounding box [¶ 0169] (the area of all the text fragment intersections is subtracted from the combined area of the text fragments within the wrapping region identified);
assigning, by the processor, at least one layout to at least one section based on a largest area of overlap associated with the respective section bounding box overlapping with the adjusted layout bounding box or the layout bounding box [¶ 0008, 127-147] (calculating, by the processor, for each of the one or more wrapping regions of the wrapping region collection, a tabular score, a narrative score, and a label score, indicating how closely each of the one or more wrapping regions is related to a tabular block type, a narrative block type and a label block type, respectively; assigning, by the processor, a block type (e.g., tabular, narrative, label) to each of the one or more wrapping regions based on the corresponding calculated tabular score, narrative score and label score); and
adjusting a layout bounding box for each of the at least one assigned layout [¶ 0016-19, 88-89, 203-215] (combines the lines within a region into paragraphs; merging, by the processor, with the current block, each of the one or more intersecting blocks comprising an intersecting block merge score higher than a predetermined intersecting block merge threshold).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method of document structure identification in Mehra and the method of combining bounding box overlaps in Kyre, with a reasonable expectation of success.
The motivation for doing so would have been the use of known technique to improve similar devices (methods, or products) in the same way; (See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 US 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (U.S. 2007) and MPEP § 2143(D)).
The know technique of bounding box area in Kyre could be applied to the structure identification in Mehra. Kyre and Mehra are similar devices because each identify document structure. One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying the known technique would improve the similar devices and resulted in an improved system, with a reasonable expectation of success, to make “data easier and quicker to consume (e.g., to generate tables), less prone to errors, and more reliable” [Kyre: ¶ 0005].
Claim 6:
The combination of Mehra and Kyre discloses the limitations recited in the parent claim(s) for the reasons discussed above. In addition, the present claim would be further obvious using the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above, over the disclosure of Mehra, which teaches:
The method of claim 5, wherein prior to receiving, by a processor coupled to a memory, layout information for two or more layouts of a document, the method further comprises:
receiving, by the processor, a document; and
dividing, by the processor, the document into one or more individual pages [¶ 0037, 47] (identify structural elements on a page-by-page basis).
Claim 7:
The combination of Mehra and Kyre discloses the limitations recited in the parent claim(s) for the reasons discussed above. In addition, the present claim would be further obvious using the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above, over the disclosure of Mehra, which teaches:
The method of claim 6, wherein after dividing the document into one or more individual pages, the method further comprises detecting, by the processor, one or more structures within each of the one or more individual pages [¶ 0037-40] (Structure Detection Module, document structure could be considered “layout”) [¶ 0033, 46,72] (bounding box).
Claim 8:
The combination of Mehra and Kyre discloses the limitations recited in the parent claim(s) for the reasons discussed above. In addition, the present claim would be further obvious using the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above, over the disclosure of Mehra, which teaches:
The method of claim 7, wherein the one or more structures are each a section of the one or more sections [¶ 0066-69] (Figs. 9A-9B, correcting errors and merging lists could be considered “sections”) [¶ 70-72] (Fig. 10A-10B, correcting errors and merging lists could be considered “sections”).
Claim 9:
The combination of Mehra and Kyre discloses the limitations recited in the parent claim(s) for the reasons discussed above. In addition, the present claim would be further obvious using the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above, over the disclosure of Mehra, which teaches:
The method of claim 8, further comprising standardizing, by the processor, a dataset associated with the detected one or more structures [¶ 0076] (reformatted) [¶ 0046] (rich information can include details about a given structural element such as, for example, its bounding box, general type (text, graphic, vector, etc.), font properties (for text structures), and location or size of the elements on the page).
Claims 11-20:
Claim(s) 11 is/are substantially similar to claim 1 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim 1 is a “method” claim, claim 11 is a “system” claim, but the steps or elements of each claim are essentially the same.
Claim(s) 12 is/are substantially similar to claim 2 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 13 is/are substantially similar to claim 3 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 14 is/are substantially similar to claim 4 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 15 is/are substantially similar to claim 5 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 16 is/are substantially similar to claim 6 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 17 is/are substantially similar to claim 7 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 18 is/are substantially similar to claim 8 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 19 is/are substantially similar to claim 9 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above.
Claim(s) 20 is/are substantially similar to claims 1 and 5 and is/are rejected using the same prior art and the same reason, rationale and/or motivation as used above. Claim 20 does not recite “stylometric” as recited in claim 1, but the other element of the claim are a combination of claims 1 and 5.
Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Please See PTO-892: Notice of References Cited.
Evidence of the level skill of an ordinary person in the art for Claim 1:
Pito; Richard Anthony US 20210390298 logical similarities between portions of text.
Evidence of the level skill of an ordinary person in the art for Claim 5:
Xie; Miao et al. US 20210326655 teaches: overlapping area, merge; ratio of overlapping areas.
Richardson; Joshua et al. US 20130174017 teaches: assembling words into lines, and lines into paragraphs, and assembling paragraphs into respective bounding boxes or regions.; combining intersecting bounding boxes.
Sun; Jun et al. US 20120045129 teaches: determining one or more text overlapping regions in the document image, based on the values of the elements of the merged overlapping matrix MO, merging the overlapping matrix in the vertical and horizontal direction.
Citations to Prior Art
A reference to specific paragraphs, columns, pages, or figures in a cited prior art reference is not limited to preferred embodiments or any specific examples. It is well settled that a prior art reference, in its entirety, must be considered for all that it expressly teaches and fairly suggests to one having ordinary skill in the art. Stated differently, a prior art disclosure reading on a limitation of Applicant's claim cannot be ignored on the ground that other embodiments disclosed were instead cited. Therefore, the Examiner's citation to a specific portion of a single prior art reference is not intended to exclusively dictate, but rather, to demonstrate an exemplary disclosure commensurate with the specific limitations being addressed. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331, 1332-33,216 USPQ 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006, 1009, 158 USPQ 275, 277 (CCPA 1968". In re: Upsher-Smith Labs. v. Pamlab, LLC, 412 F.3d 1319, 1323,75 USPQ2d 1213,1215 (Fed. Cir. 2005); In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1264,23 USPQ2d 1780, 1782 (Fed. Cir. 1992); Merck & Co. v. Biocraft Labs., Inc., 874 F.2d 804, 807,10 USPQ2d 1843, 1846 (Fed. Cir. 1989); In re Fracalossi, 681 F.2d 792,794 n.1, 215 USPQ 569, 570 n.1 (CCPA 1982); In re Lamberti, 545 F.2d 747, 750, 192 USPQ 278, 280 (CCPA 1976); In re Bozek, 416 F.2d 1385,1390,163 USPQ 545, 549 (CCPA 1969).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BENJAMIN J SMITH whose telephone number is (571)270-3825. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 11:00 - 7:30 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, ADAM QUELER can be reached at (571) 272-4140. 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.
/Benjamin Smith/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2172 Direct Phone: 571-270-3825
Direct Fax: 571-270-4825
Email: benjamin.smith@uspto.gov
Prosecution Insights