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
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 final rejection. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 07/13/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendment filed on 07/13/2026 has been entered. Claims 1 and 13-30 and 32-37 are still pending in this application.
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, 13, 18-19, 21-22, 27 and 31-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural et al. (US 5664031) in view of Takami et al. (US 7999828) and Kurzweil et al. (US 6587583)
Regarding claim 1, Mural teaches an information processing apparatus comprising: a controller including a processor and memory, the controller configured to:
Mural does not teach wherein the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region are indicated with different colors.
Takami teaches wherein the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region are indicated with different colors (fig. 5: 405 and 404: col. 7 Lines:55-60: the areas 404 and 405 can also be displayed with a different color).
Mural and Takami are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural with the teaching of Takami for purpose for user to easily see the selection when display in different color.
Mural in view of Takami does not teach a setting for filling the set character recognition region in such a manner that the characters within the set character recognition region in the scanned image are not visually identifiable.
Kurzweil teaches a setting for filling the set character recognition region in such a manner that the characters within the set character recognition region in the scanned image are not visually identifiable (col. 6, lines 1-10:The OCR mask as illustrated in FIG. 12A represents regions of the image containing text recognized by OCR software).
Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Kurzweil for purpose for compressing data files representative of an image document
Regarding claim 13, claim 13 recites substantially similar limitations as claim1, therefore it is rejected for the same reason as claim 1.
Regarding claim 31, claim 1 recites the limitations of claim 31, therefore it is rejected for the same reason as claim 1.
Regarding claim 18, Mural teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the set mask region is displayed on the display device in such a manner that an image within the mask region in the scanned image is not visually identifiable by a user( col.5 Lines:55-60: masking processing of transducing the information of picture elements corresponding to addresses of the frame region into "white"), and wherein the region to be filled which is set based on the position information of the character recognition region is displayed on the display device in such a manner that an image within the region to be filled in the scanned image set based on the position information of the character recognition region is visually identifiable by the user (col.1 Lines: 19-25: optical character reading apparatus (hereinafter referred to as an OCR) is generally filled in a frame region (blank) 3 in a dropout color which can be discriminated by man).
Regarding claim 19, Mural teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 18, wherein the region to be filled which is set based on the position information of the character recognition region is displayed on the display device in such a manner that information of characters in an image within the region to be filled in the scanned image set based on the position information of the character recognition region is visually identifiable by a user (col.1 Lines: 19-25: optical character reading apparatus (hereinafter referred to as an OCR) is generally filled in a frame region (blank) 3 in a dropout color which can be discriminated by man.
Regarding claim 21, Mural and Takami teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a frame of the region to be filled which is set based on the position information of the character recognition region, and a frame of the mask region are capable of being displayed on the display device in the different colors (Takami: 5: 405 and 404: col. 7 Lines:55-60: the areas 404 and 405 can also be displayed with a different color).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 22, Mural and Takami teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to: perform masking processing to fill both the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region in the scanned image (Takami: akami: 5: 405 and 404: col. 7 Lines:55-60: the areas 404 and 405 can also be displayed with a different color).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 27, Mural and Takami teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region are indicated in the different colors on the scanned image displayed on the display device Takami: akami: 5: 405 and 404: col. 7 Lines:55-60: the areas 404 and 405 can also be displayed with a different color).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 32, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the mask region is set based on a user operation on the scanned image displayed on the display device for designating a position of the mask region on the scanned image displayed on the display device (Takami: fig. 2).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 33, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 32, wherein the user operation for designating the position of the mask region is a user operation for designating a rectangular region on the scanned image displayed on the display device (Takami: fig. 2).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 34, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the character recognition region is set based on a user operation on the scanned image displayed on the display device for designating a position of the character recognition region on the scanned image displayed on the display device (Takami: fig. 2).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 35, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 34, herein the user operation for designating the position of the character recognition region is a user operation for designating a rectangular region on the scanned image displayed on the display device (Takami: fig. 2).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Claim 36 has been analyzed and rejected with regard to claim 1 and in accordance with Takami's further teaching on: A computer-readable memory that contains instructions, which when executed by a processor perform steps in a method.
Claim 37 has been analyzed and rejected with regard to claim 13 and in accordance with Takami's further teaching on: A computer-readable memory that contains instructions, which when executed by a processor perform steps in a method.
Claims 14-15 and 29 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 1/13 above, and further in view of Fujisaki (US 20230280954).
Regarding claim 14, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil does not teach the information processing apparatus according to claim 13, wherein the information of characters is included in a file name of a file generated based on the scanned image.
Fujisaki teaches wherein the information of characters is included in a file name of a file generated based on the scanned image (p0074: file name extraction are both functions that use the OCR function).
Mural in view of Takami, Kurzweil and Fujisaki are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Fujisaki for purpose of saving files.
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 recites the same limitations as claim 14, therefore it is rejected for the same reason as claim 14.
Regarding claim 29, claim 29 recites the same limitations as claim 14, therefore it is rejected for the same reason as claim 14.
Claim 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 1/13 above, and further in view of Fujisaki (US 20230280954) and Mao (US 9824270).
Regarding claim 16, Mural in view of Takami, Kurzweil and Fujisaki teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to: store a file generated based on another scanned image different from the scanned image, the file being stored with a file name including information of characters obtained from a character recognition region which is in the another scanned image and is located at a position indicated by the stored position information (Fjuisaki: p0074: file name extraction are both functions that use the OCR function).
Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil and Fujisaki does not teach store the position information of the character recognition region; and after the position information of the character recognition region has been stored, store a file.
Mao teaches store the position information of the character recognition region; and after the position information of the character recognition region has been stored, store a file (fig. b: OCR receipt template)
Mural in view of Takami and Fujisaki and Mao are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Fujisaki for purpose of OCR receipts have very different formats for different vendors.
Claim 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Duan et al. (US 20190206088).
Regarding claim 17, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil does not teach the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the setting for filling the set character recognition region is performed based on a user operation on an option to select whether or not to fill the character recognition region.
Duan teaches wherein the setting for filling the set character recognition region is performed based on a user operation on an option to select whether or not to fill the character recognition region (p0033: the user 110 can fill regions corresponding to different objects using predefined different colors, to generate a color distribution diagram 104 corresponding to the training image 102.).
Mural in view of Takami and Duan combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Duan for purpose for processing an image.
Claim 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Aggarwal et al. (US 20210110587).
Regarding claim 20, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil does not teach the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a position of the character recognition region set to be filled can be changed by a drag-and-drop operation performed by a user on the character recognition region.
Aggarwal teaches wherein a position of the character recognition region set to be filled can be changed by a drag-and-drop operation performed by a user on the character recognition region (p0021:move the textual content from the placement region to a different region of the digital image (e.g., drag-and-drop” input).
Mural in view of Takami and Aggarwal are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Aggarwal for purpose of enable the user to provide user input to reposition the textual content into different ones of the candidate placement regions (p0021).
Claims 23-26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 22 above, and further in view of Shank et al. (US 20220358234).
Regarding claim 23, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil does not teach the information processing apparatus according to claim 22, wherein in the masking processing, images within both the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region in the scanned image is filled in such a manner that the images are not visually identifiable.
Shank teaches wherein in the masking processing, images within both the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region in the scanned image is filled in such a manner that the images are not visually identifiable (p0019: redact (mask) those regions from the transmitted image).
Mural in view of Takami and Shank are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Shank for purpose of This prevents the sensitive information contained in content 170 from being transmitted (p0019).
Regarding claim 24, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil and Shank teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 23, wherein the controller is further configured to: store a file generated based on the scanned image on which the masking processing is performed (Shank:p0019).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 23 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 25, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil and Shank teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 23, wherein the controller is further configured to: print the scanned image on which the masking processing is performed (Shank:p0019. Transmitted, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to printing transmitted document).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 23 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 26, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 23, wherein in the masking processing, both the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region in the scanned image is filled is filled with a color designated by a user (Takami: fig. 5: 405 and 404: col. 7 Lines:55-60: the areas 404 and 405 can also be displayed with a different color).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 23 has been incorporated herein.
Claim 28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 27 above, and further in view of Wajs et al. (US 9456195).
Regarding claim 28, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil teaches the information processing apparatus according to claim 27, a document printed based on the scanned image although the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region are indicated with the different colors on the scanned image displayed on the display device (Takami: fig. 5: 405 and 404).
Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil does not teach wherein the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region are indicated with a same color in at least one of a file generated based on the scanned image.
Wajs teaches wherein the region set based on the position information of the character recognition region and the mask region are indicated with a same color in at least one of a file generated based on the scanned image (col. 11, lines:60-65:the Processed image data contains color image, IR image and depth data that has been processed. These data may be converted into a conventional RGB format, a monochrome image file).
Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil and Wajs are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Mural in view of Takami with the teaching of Wajs for purpose of control the image capture and processing in a convenient manner.
Claim 30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Thompson et al. (US 20240362197).
Regarding claim 30, Mural in view of Takami and Kurzweil does not teach the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein regions to be filled are indicated with colors based on whether a region to be filled is set based on the position information of the character recognition region or as the mask region.
Thompson teaches wherein regions to be filled are indicated with colors based on whether a region to be filled is set based on the position information of the character recognition region or as the mask region (p0195: Painting” all rectangle with one color causes the rectangle to appear faint, undesirably leading to potential erroneous detection of lines at the rectangle sides).
Mural in view of Takami and Thompson are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Bermundo in view of China with the teaching of Thompson for purpose of transforming information represented in image form into a textual representation (p0002).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HELEN Q ZONG whose telephone number is (571)270-1600. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9-6.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Abderrahim Merouan can be reached at 5712705254. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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HELEN ZONG
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2683
/HELEN ZONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2683
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