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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of species 1 (claims 1-4 and 10-14) in the reply filed on March 21, 2026 is acknowledged.
Claims 5-9 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected species, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on March 21, 2026.
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.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a
“Computer readable recording medium” that is non-statutory subject matter. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer-readable medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations) typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent. See MPEP 2111.01.
A claim drawn to such a computer-readable medium that covers both transitory and non-
transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments
to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by adding the limitation "non-transitory" to the claim.
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 2 and 11 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 2 recites the limitation "a high-quality region" in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 11 recites the limitation "a high-quality region" in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the 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.
Claims 1, 4, 10, 13, and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ahn US20220180625 (hereinafter “Ahn”) in view of Li US12524832 (hereinafter “Li”).
Regarding claim 1, Ahn teaches a non-uniform (see Fig 1 and paragraph 0050, the computing device 100 and the input image which includes instances with motion and without, leading the object with no motion have good image quality and the object may have poor image quality [the inclusion of areas with good quality and poor quality is interpreted as non-uniform]):
an image separation unit which separates an input image into a high-quality region and a low-quality region based on a quality map image (see paragraph 0132 and 0134 and Fig 6, the use of the segmentation module to receive the features of the input image to create an instant map, which is then used to predict quality scores and generate an instance quality score map);
an image quality conversion unit which acquires a converted high-quality region by converting image quality of the high-quality region (see paragraph0114, the instance image quality processing module which processes (converts) the instances (regions) based on the corresponding image quality control parameters (0113, based on the quality score), and see paragraph 0053, the method of processing the high-quality regions);
and a first image combination unit which combines the converted high-quality region and the low-quality region (see paragraph 0116, the merging module receives and merges the image quality processed instances from the different processing modules to generate an output image).
Ahn does not teach a super-resolution device and transmitting the image to the super-resolution network.
Li teaches a super-resolution device of an image (see col 1 lines 47-48, implementation of methods and apparatus of image frame super-resolution),
region to transmit them to a super-resolution network (see col 35 lines 17-23, the input of the image frame into the super-resolution network).
Ahn and Li are analogous art because they are both from the field of endeavor separating images based on quality scores for the purpose of quality processing of an image.
Before the effective filling date of the invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Ahn to use of the super-resolution network in image processing as taught by Li. The motivation for doing so would have been to obtain an output image with a higher resolution then the input image (Li, col 35 lines 20-23).
Regarding claim 4, Ahn and Li teach the device of Claim 1. Ahn teaches the conversion of the high-quality region of the image quality conversion unit (see paragraph0114, the instance image quality processing module which processes (converts) the instances (regions) based on the corresponding image quality control parameters (0113, based on the quality score), and see paragraph 0053, the method of processing the high-quality regions).
Ahn does not teach conversion is performed by using any one of the method of downscaling, blurring, or repacking.
Li teaches conversion is performed by using any one of the method of downscaling, blurring, or repacking (see Figure 2 and col 14 lines 43-46, the use of down sampling (a method of downscaling), on the high-resolution image frames).
Claims 10 and 14 are analogous method to the apparatus of claim 1, thus are analyzed and rejected similar to claim 1.
Claim 13 is analogous method to the apparatus of claim 4, thus is analyzed and rejected similar to claim 4.
Claims 2 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ahn in view of Li in view of Putnam US10169852 (hereinafter “Putnam”).
Regarding claim 2, Ahn and Li teach the device of Claim1. Ahn and Li teach the non-uniform super-resolution device
Ahn nor Li teaches a second image combination unit which selectively replaces a high-quality region of the image obtained from the super-resolution network with an existing high-quality region.
Putnam teaches a second image combination unit which selectively replaces a high-quality region of the image obtained from the super-resolution network with an existing high-quality region (see col 20 lines 4-7, the assembly module can replace the super-resolution image tile (region) with the high-resolution image resolution image tile (region).
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Putnam, Ahn and Li are analogous art because they are all from the field of endeavor processing of images while using different processing method levels for different regions .
Before the effective filling date of the invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Ahn and Li to use of replacing super-resolution output regions with high-resolution regions as taught by Putnam. The motivation for doing so would have been to replace tiles of an image that may be un-suitable for super-resolution imaging (Putnam, col 19 line 41 through col 20 line 9).
Claim 11 is analogous method to the apparatus of claim 2, thus is analyzed and rejected similar to claim 2.
Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ahn in view of Li in view of Laroche US20230281756 (hereinafter “Laroche”).
Regarding claim 3, Ahn and Li teach he device of Claim 1. Ahn teaches the first image combination unit
Ahn nor Li teach downsample a size of a combined image according to an input format of the super-resolution network.
Laroche teaches downsample a size of a combined image according to an input format of the super-resolution network (see paragraph 0028, after summing regions the resulting image is down-sampled according to the desired scaling factor and noise [the scaling factor is given to the neural network for super-resolution, Figure 4]).
Laroche, Ahn and Li are analogous art because they are both from the field of endeavor processing of images with regions of different quality using neural networks.
Before the effective filling date of the invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Ahn and Li to use of down-sampling combined regions according to the input of the super-resolution neural network as taught by Laroche. The motivation for doing so would have been to obtain image of the desired scale (Laroche, paragraph 0028).
Claim 12 is analogous method to the apparatus of claim 3, thus is analyzed and rejected similar to claim 3.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Please see the attached notice of reference cited.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EMILY R. HAUK whose telephone number is (571)272-5966. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00-5:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Chan Park can be reached at 571-272-7409. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/EMILY R HAUK/
Examiner, Art Unit 2669 /CHAN S PARK/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2669