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 .
Double Patenting
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1, 8, 15 of Patent 11847999. For more detail of the rejections, see previous Office action dated 1/12/2026.
The rejection is being maintained in this office action because applicants did not submit a terminal disclaimer(See Applicants’ Remarks filed 5/7/2026).
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) 1-3, 8-10, and 15-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Soulodre (US 2008/0069366) in view of Ohta (US 2009/0220100).
Regarding claim 1, Soulodre teaches A method comprising: receiving, by an autoencoder (Soulodre circuit of figure 3), an audio signal representation of an audio signal and a target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components) comprising information about a target room (Soulodre figure 1, reverberant room. Reverberations are considered echoes); generating, based on the audio signal representation and by a trained encoder of the autoencoder (Soulodre figure 3 and ¶0049, analysis window 21 and time to frequency domain processor 22.), a content embedding and an estimated echo embedding (Soulodre figure 3 and ¶0054, decompose processor 33…produce an estimate of the original dry signal and estimates of one or more components of the reverberant signal.); generating, by a trained decoder (Soulodre figure 3, processor 30 and root hanning window 31) of the autoencoder, an echo recording representation based on the content embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Dry signal modifier 36…produce a modified estimate of the original dry signal.) and the target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components); and outputting the echo recording representation (Soulodre figure 3, output 32), however does not clearly teach the target echo embedding.
Ohta teaches the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108, “reverberation time desired by the user, which is preliminarily set via the operating unit 128”), and generating an echo recording representation based on the content embedding and the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Ohta to improve the known method of Soulodre to achieve the predictable result of achieving an enhanced audio experienced tailored to the user’s selected preference.
Regarding claims 2, 9, and 16, Soulodre in view of Ohta teaches wherein the target echo embedding encodes information about a geometry of the target room and one or more echo paths (Ohta ¶0107, “when the reverberation characteristic in the listening room 10 is analyzed…shape of the listening room”).
Regarding claims 3, 10 and 17, Soulodre in view of Ohta teaches wherein the target echo embedding is generated by inputting into the autoencoder a second audio signal representation that represents a second audio signal that was recorded in the target room (Soulodre figure 3, and ¶0109, “second input signal s2(t) 40”).
Regarding claim 8, Soulodre teaches A system comprising: a non-transitory computer-readable medium; and one or more processors configured to execute processor-executable instructions stored in the non-transitory computer-readable medium to: receive, by an autoencoder (Soulodre circuit of figure 3), an audio signal representation of an audio signal and a target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components) comprising information about a target room (Soulodre figure 1, reverberant room. Reverberations are considered echoes); generate, based on the audio signal representation and by a trained encoder of the autoencoder (Soulodre figure 3 and ¶0049, analysis window 21 and time to frequency domain processor 22.), a content embedding and an estimated echo embedding (Soulodre figure 3 and ¶0054, decompose processor 33…produce an estimate of the original dry signal and estimates of one or more components of the reverberant signal.); generate, by a trained decoder of the autoencoder (Soulodre figure 3, processor 30 and root hanning window 31), an echo recording representation based on the content embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Dry signal modifier 36…produce a modified estimate of the original dry signal.) and the target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components); and output the echo recording representation (Soulodre figure 3, output 32), however does not clearly teach the target echo embedding.
Ohta teaches the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108, “reverberation time desired by the user, which is preliminarily set via the operating unit 128”), and generating an echo recording representation based on the content embedding and the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Ohta to improve the known system of Soulodre to achieve the predictable result of achieving an enhanced audio experienced tailored to the user’s selected preference.
Regarding claim 15, Soulodre teaches A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising processor-executable instructions configured to cause one or more processors to: receive, by an autoencoder (Soulodre circuit of figure 3), an audio signal representation of an audio signal and a target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components) comprising information about a target room (Soulodre figure 1, reverberant room. Reverberations are considered echoes); generate, based on the audio signal representation and by a trained encoder of the autoencoder (Soulodre figure 3 and ¶0049, analysis window 21 and time to frequency domain processor 22.), a content embedding and an estimated echo embedding (Soulodre figure 3 and ¶0054, decompose processor 33…produce an estimate of the original dry signal and estimates of one or more components of the reverberant signal.); generate, by a trained decoder of the autoencoder (Soulodre figure 3, processor 30 and root hanning window 31), an echo recording representation based on the content embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Dry signal modifier 36…produce a modified estimate of the original dry signal.) and the target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components); and output the echo recording representation (Soulodre figure 3, output 32), however does not clearly teach the target echo embedding.
Ohta teaches the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108, “reverberation time desired by the user, which is preliminarily set via the operating unit 128”), and generating an echo recording representation based on the content embedding and the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Ohta to improve the known system of Soulodre to achieve the predictable result of achieving an enhanced audio experienced tailored to the user’s selected preference.
Claim(s) 4, 11 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Soulodre (US 2008/0069366) in view of Ohta (US 2009/0220100) in further view of Esparza (US 2016/0093278).
Regarding claims 4, 11 and 18, Soulodre in view of Ohta does not explicitly teach wherein the autoencoder comprises one or more weights that are based on training the autoencoder in a Siamese reconstruction network.
Esparza teaches wherein the autoencoder comprises one or more weights that are based on training the autoencoder in a Siamese reconstruction network (Esparza ¶0094, “Siamese neural network that has identical structure and mirrored weights is given two arbitrary inputs”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Esparza to improve the known method of Soulodre in view of Ohta to achieve the predictable result of a more consistent and stable system.
Claim(s) 7, 14 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Soulodre (US 2008/0069366) in view of Ohta (US 2009/0220100) in further view of Fazeli (US 10803881).
Regarding claims 7, 14 and 20, Soulodre in view of Ohta does not explicitly teach training an automatic echo cancellation (“AEC”) system based on the echo recording representation.
Fazeli teaches teach training an automatic echo cancellation (“AEC”) system based on the echo recording representation.(Fazeli figures 1B, AEC 110, figure 2 : echo estimator 230, microphone 14).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Fazeli to improve the method of Soulodre in view of Ohta to achieve the predictable result of achieving an optimal signal by reducing the % of unwanted noise.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 12, and 19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if 1) a terminal disclaimer is filed to overcome the double patenting rejection(s) set forth in this office action and 2) rewritten to overcome the 112(d) rejection, 3) rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims because the closest prior art either alone or in combination, fail to anticipate or render obvious, the claimed limitation of “wherein the Siamese reconstruction network comprises two copies of the autoencoder in series, wherein an output of a first copy of the autoencoder comprises an input to a second copy of the autoencoder” in combination with all other limitations in the claim(s) as defined by the applicant.
Claims 6, and 13 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if 1) a terminal disclaimer is filed to overcome the double patenting rejection(s) set forth in this office action, 2) rewritten to overcome the 112(d) rejection, 3) rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims because the closest prior art either alone or in combination, fail to anticipate or render obvious, the claimed limitation of “wherein the Siamese reconstruction network is trained to minimize reconstruction loss between an input audio signal representation and input echo embedding of the Siamese reconstruction network and an output audio signal representation and output echo embedding of the Siamese reconstruction network” in combination with all other limitations in the claim(s) as defined by the applicant.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 5/7/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant argues on page 6 of Remarks that Soulodre in view of Ohta does not teach receiving “receiving, by an autoencoder, an audio signal representation of an audio signal and a target echo embedding comprising information about a target room” or “generating, by a trained decoder of the autoencoder, an echo recording representation based on the content embedding and the target echo embedding.” Examiner respectfully disagrees. Applicant stated that the office action acknowledge that Soulodre does not disclose or make obvious the “target echo embedding” and mistakenly relies on Ohta. Examiner disagrees, Soulodre does teach “target echo embedding” with BRI as shown in the rejection above: an audio signal representation of an audio signal and a target echo embedding (Soulodre ¶0055, Reverberant signal modifier 37 is operable to independently adjust frequency components of one or more of the estimates of the reverberant signal to produce modified estimates of the reverberant signal components) since modifying a reverberant signal can be consider embedding new information into the reverberant signal, and the result of the reverberant modification can be considered the target echo. In addition, with BRI, Soulodre also teaches the target echo embedding (Ohta ¶0108, “reverberation time desired by the user, which is preliminarily set via the operating unit 128”), since the reverberation time desired by the user set is considered a target echo, and it is used for further processing which can be considered “embedding” into the process (Soulodre figure 8). Therefore, the arguments are not persuasive and the claims stand rejected.
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 extension fee 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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