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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 01/21/2026 has been entered.
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) 5-7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHANG et al. (US 20150067549).
Regarding claim 5, CHANG discloses A non-transitory recording medium storing instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform processing (CHANG, claim 20, “A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed, cause at least one processor to perform the method of claim 15”), comprising:
generating a source image to which no distortion is provided (CHANG, “[0071] The controller 220 generates media data. In detail, the controller 220 may decode video data, such as still picture data or moving picture data, audio data, application data, and/or the like, and generate a screen image or audio to be reproduced by the display unit 215. Furthermore, the controller 220 may generate a menu screen image or a UI screen image”);
generating a head-mounted display image to be displayed on a head-mounted display, in reference to the source image (CHANG, “[0042] an electronic device may be a smart phone, a tablet Personal Computer (PC), a mobile phone, a video phone, an e-book reader, a desktop PC, a laptop PC... a wearable device (e.g., a Head-Mounted Device (HMD). [0047] According to various embodiments of the present disclosure, a sink device, a source device and the display device may respectively be electronic devices. [0061] the at least one source device 210 and the at least one sink device 260 may be connected via a designated communication network 250. [0092] The display unit 290 displays a designated screen image generated by the controller 280. Because a mirroring service is being executed, the display unit 290 and the display unit 215 display a same screen image”. Therefore, the sink device may be a HMD, and the HMD displays an image in reference to the source image).
On the other hand, the above embodiment of CHANG fails to explicitly disclose but a second embodiment of CHANG discloses generating a mirroring image for mirroring of the head-mounted display image on a flat plate type display, in reference to the source image and without reference to the head-mounted display image (CHANG, “[0042] an electronic device may be a smart phone, a tablet Personal Computer (PC), a mobile phone, a video phone, an e-book reader, a desktop PC, a laptop PC, a netbook PC… [0065] According to various embodiments of the present disclosure, one source device and a plurality of sink devices may be mutually connected via an 1:n network topology. [0084] The sink device 260 is a display device which mirrors at least one screen image displayed on the source device 210 and which displays the mirrored screen image on at least one other display device connected to the source device 210 via the designated communication network 250”. Therefore, a second sink device may be a laptop PC, and displays a mirroring image of the HMD image, which is the same as the source image. The second sink device image is in reference to the source image directly and without reference to the HMD image according to the network topology).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the above embodiments of CHANG, to include all limitations of claim 5. That is, adding the second sink device in the second embodiment of CHANG to the first embodiment of CHANG. The motivation/ suggestion would have been to provide the user with multiple sink devices in addition to the HMD to enhance user’s experience.
Regarding claim(s) 6, 7, they are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim(s) 5.
Claim(s) 10, 15, 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHANG et al. (US 20150067549) in view of TAMARU (US 20130241955).
Regarding claim 10, CHANG discloses The non-transitory recording medium according to claim 5.
On the other hand, CHANG fails to explicitly disclose but TAMARU discloses wherein the source image includes an image for the right eye and an image for the left eye of the head-mounted display, and wherein the mirroring image is generated by using a portion of one of the image for the right eye and the image for the left eye (TAMARU, fig.2, “[0046] When the two-dimensional virtual object image for right eye is input from the virtual image processing unit 13, the virtual image combining unit 14R combines the reality image for right eye output from the reality image processing unit 10R and the virtual object image for right eye, generates a virtual combined image for right eye, and outputs the virtual combined image to the display unit 3R and the output control unit 15. [0047] When the two-dimensional virtual object image for left eye is input from the image processing unit 13, the virtual image combining unit 14L combines the reality image for left eye output from the reality image processing unit 10L and the virtual object image for left eye, generates a virtual combined image for left eye, and outputs the virtual combined image to the display unit 3L and the output control unit 15. [0050] The output control unit 15 outputs the virtual combined image to an external display device provided externally to the HMD 100. The external display device is configured to display an image for right eye and an image for left eye in order for a viewer to see a stereoscopic image”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined TAMARU and CHANG, to include all limitations of claim 10. That is, applying the source image, HMD image and the external display image of TAMARU to the source image, HMD image and the second sink device image of CHANG, respectively. The motivation/ suggestion would have been to enable a viewer to see a stereoscopic image (TAMARU, [0050]).
Regarding claim(s) 15, 19, they are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim(s) 10.
Claim(s) 11, 16, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHANG et al. (US 20150067549) in view of TAMARU (US 20130241955), and further in view of Bleyer et al. (US 11037359) and Venshtain (US 20190215486).
Regarding claim 11, CHANG in view of TAMARU discloses The non-transitory recording medium according to claim 10.
On the other hand, CHANG in view of TAMARU fails to explicitly disclose but Bleyer discloses wherein the head- mounted display image is generated by performing a reprojection process for the portion of the image (Bleyer, col.10, lines 3-8, “The reprojections are based on a current perspective 375 of the HMD 300 relative to its surrounding environment. Based on the perspective 375 and the depth maps that are generated, the embodiments are able to correct parallax by reprojecting a perspective embodied by the raw images to coincide with a perspective of the user's pupils 330 and 335”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined CHANG, TAMARU and Bleyer. That is, adding the reprojection process of Bleyer to the HMD of CHANG and TAMARU. The motivation/ suggestion would have been to provide improved passthrough images in the form of a stylized parallax-corrected image (Bleyer, col.2, lines 62-64).
On the other hand, CHANG in view of TAMARU and Bleyer fails to explicitly disclose but Venshtain discloses wherein the mirroring image of a three-dimensional display mode is generated by referring to a texture corresponding to a viewing angle of the head-mounted display relating to the head-mounted display image on which the reprojection process is reflected (Venshtain, “[0426] In cases where the HMD 112 determines that a given vertex is visible from two different perspectives, the HMD 112 may carry out a process that is known in the art as texture blending, projective texture blending, and the like. In accordance with that process, the HMD 112 may render that vertex in a color that is a weighted blend of the respective different color pixels that the HMD 112 projected on to that same 3D location in the shared geometry 1040 from however many camera-assembly perspectives are being blended in the case of that given vertex”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined Venshtain into the combination of CHANG, TAMARU and Bleyer, to include all limitations of claim 11. That is, adding the texture blending of Venshtain to the mirroring image generation unit of the HMD of CHANG, TAMARU and Bleyer. The motivation/ suggestion would have been capturing, transferring, and rendering viewpoint-adaptive 3D personas (Venshtain, [0026]).
Regarding claim(s) 16, 20, they are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim(s) 11.
Claim(s) 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHANG et al. (US 20150067549) in view of TAMARU (US 20130241955), and further in view of Bleyer et al. (US 11037359), Venshtain (US 20190215486), and Hoof et al. (US 20150312561).
Regarding claim 13, CHANG in view of TAMARU, Bleyer and Venshtain discloses The non-transitory recording medium according to claim 11.
On the other hand, CHANG in view of TAMARU, Bleyer and Venshtain fails to explicitly disclose but Hoof discloses generating a plurality of texture images corresponding to the portion of the one of the image for the right eye and the image for the left eye; and superimposing the plurality of texture images (Hoof, “[0134] a virtual reality engine configured to: set the left-eye display coordinates relative to the right-eye display coordinates as a function of an apparent real-world position of the virtual surface; and overlay a first texture on the right-eye virtual object and a second texture on the left-eye virtual object, the first texture derived from a two-dimensional image of a scene as viewed from a first perspective, and the second texture derived from a two-dimensional image of the scene as viewed from a second perspective, different than the first perspective”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined Hoof into the combination of CHANG, TAMARU and Bleyer, Venshtain, to include all limitations of claim 13. That is, adding the texture overlay of Hoof to generate the mirroring image of CHANG, Bleyer, TAMARU and Venshtain. The motivation/ suggestion would have been to create an appearance of pseudo-three-dimensional video perceivable on the virtual surface by the user viewing the right and left near-eye displays (Hoof, [0136]).
Claim(s) 14, 18, 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHANG et al. (US 20150067549) in view of TAMARU (US 20130241955), and further in view of Lavine et al. (US 20060139371).
Regarding claim 14, CHANG in view of TAMARU discloses The non-transitory recording medium according to claim 10.
On the other hand, CHANG in view of TAMARU fails to explicitly disclose but Lavine discloses wherein the mirroring image of a two-dimensional display mode is generated by pasting the portion of the one of the images to a panel corresponding to a screen size of the flat plate type display (Lavine, claim 1, “cropping the source image at the coordinate points to generate a cropped image bounded by the crop rectangle; and sending the cropped image to a remote device, the cropped image having a size which corresponds with dimensions of the display screen of the device”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined CHANG, TAMARU and Lavine, to include all limitations of claim 14. That is, adding the cropping image corresponding to the remote display screen of Lavine to the second sink device of CHANG and TAMARU. The motivation/ suggestion would have been to improve the speed with which an image is delivered to a device (Lavine, [0022]).
Regarding claim(s) 18, 22, they are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim(s) 14.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 1, 3, 4, 8 is/are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Regarding claim 1, as amended, it recites, “adjust a horizontal width of the mirroring image displayed on the flat plate type display based on the viewing angle of the head-mounted display image after the reprojection process”. None of the prior arts on the record or any of the prior arts searched, alone or in combination, renders obvious the combination of elements recited in the claim(s) as a whole.
Claim(s) 12, 17, 21 is/are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter.
Regarding claim 12, it recites, “wherein the processing further comprises adjusting a horizontal width of the mirroring image displayed on the flat plate type display based on the viewing angle of the head-mounted display image after the reprojection process”. None of the prior arts on the record or any of the prior arts searched, alone or in combination, renders obvious the combination of elements recited in the claim(s) as a whole.
Regarding claim(s) 17, 21, they are interpreted and allowed under similar rationale set forth in claim 12.
Response to Arguments
The objection to claim 7 is withdrawn in view of the amendment.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 5-7, 10-22 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
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/GRACE Q LI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2618 2/19/2026