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 .
Response to Amendment
In response to the amendment of 4/16/2026 canceling claims 1-11, the previously-applied prior art, indefiniteness, and commensurate scope rejections are withdrawn.
Claims 12-34, all new, have been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 16 April 2026 have been fully considered and are persuasive when taken in conjunction with the cancellation of original claims 1-11. However, upon further consideration, a new ground of rejection is made under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Examiner notes that no arguments were made as to the application of the Inoue and Mahamuni references.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 12-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yamauchi et al. (US Pat. No. 9,510,583, hereafter referred to as Yamauchi) in view of Mahamuni et al. (“MOVING OBJECT DETECTION USING BACKGROUND SUBTRACTION ALGORITHM USING SIMULINK”, International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology, June 2014, 2014, hereafter referred to as Mahamuni).
Regarding claims 12, 20-21, 27 and 29-30, Yamauchi discloses a method for counting bird parasites, comprising: capturing, using a camera (Col. 22, lines 48-53), a plurality of images of a target area, wherein the target area is a portion of a substrate on which birds are kept (Col. 22, lines 40-46, wherein an image of the colony of chicken mites is captured by an image capture apparatus within the accumulation system, captured in a chicken coop environment); detecting, in the difference image, incidents of temporary local disturbance of the topography of the target area; and counting the detected incidents of temporary local disturbance as a measure of a number of bird parasites in the target area. Yamauchi further describes that multiple images are captured over time to detect changes (i.e an alert that the number has changed) in the colonies/number of mites. Col. 27 lines 8-16; Col. 27 lines 30-60. Yamauchi does not specify how changes between the digital images are identified; therefore, this is to be done with methods known in the art.
Yamauchi does not disclose a step of generating a reference image which shows a background in the form of a texture of the substrate, whereas other image features are suppressed, and a step of subtracting the reference image from a captured image, thereby to suppress the background.
However, Mahamuni discloses a step of generating a reference image which shows a background whereas other image features are suppressed (pg. 596 section 3.1, directed to the collection of the reference image as the first image of purely the background; further visual proof of only the background being present is given in Fig. 5(a)), and a step of subtracting the reference image from a captured image thereby to suppress the background (pg. 597, section 4, paras. 2-4 and Figs. 5(b) and 5(c), wherein the subject’s face and motion are detected as non-background image features and thus, upon subtraction, remain within the image as a “difference mask”; Mahamuni further identifies that this can be used for motion detection within an extended series of image frames (pgs. 597-598)).
Specifically, Mahamuni discloses a method and system of background subtraction-based object detection within image frames..
Thus, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have utilized the reference image generation and background suppression disclosed by Mahamuni within the method and system of Yamauchi as the application of a known method to a known device ready for improvement to yield the predictable result of a more accurate, robust pest identification method and system due to the removal of background noise and confounding textures which might limit the ability of the image processing algorithm to accurately identify mites.
With respect to Claim 22-23, there is necessarily a minimum disturbance that is captured in an image, and therefore images below that threshold are excluded. Yamauchi also identifies that mites are on the order of 0.5-1.0 mm in length (Col. 1 line 60) and that the camera captures 1000-5600 pixels per mite. (Col. 25 lines 5-10) When analyzing the image there will be a minimum and maximum size that plausible corresponds to a mite, and therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to exclude changes in a image that are above or below those size thresholds.
Claim 32 is rejected, mutatis mutandis, for reasons similar to claim 12.
Regarding claims 13-14 and 16, Yamauchi in view of Mahamuni discloses all limitations of claim 12. Yamauchi further discloses wherein the substrate has a topography that is stable in time and wherein a topography of the substrate does not undergo substantial changes from one image to another (Col. 22 line 55 – Col. 23 line 13, wherein local disturbances (image analysis-based detection of disturbances within the detection area) are counted as mites; and col. 6, lines 50-58, wherein the composition of the “floor” of the pest detection device within the chicken coop is textured and unchanging, according to an aspect of the invention; furthermore, specifically regarding claim 14, as the aforementioned topography is stable in time and the images are collecting an image stream over time at a consistent rate, the topography would then necessarily be substantively unchanged overtime).
Claims 33 and 34 are rejected, mutatis mutandis, for reasons similar to claims 13 and 14, respectively.
Regarding claim 15, Yamauchi in view of Mahamuni discloses all limitations of claim 12. Yamauchi further discloses wherein the target area is a portion of a surface of a perch (Col. 6, lines 50-58 and col. 24, lines 50-63 and Figs. 2A and 2B, wherein the poultry enclosure comprises a windowless house with multiple levels with perches containing the pest accumulation device, and wherein the target area includes a portion of a textured surface within the enclosure’s levels).
Regarding claims 17-18 and 31, Yamauchi in view of Mahamuni discloses all limitations of claim 12. Mahamuni further discloses wherein generating the reference image comprises stacking a plurality of images captured at different times in combination as an average (pg. 596, “There are many ways to obtain the initial background image [(reference image)]. For example, take the first frame as the background directly, or the average pixel brightness of the first few frames as the background or using a background image sequences without the prospect of moving objects to estimate the background model parameters.”).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the disclosures of Mahamuni and Yamauchi according to the rationale of claim 12.
Regarding Claim 24, the timing of the images is necessarily related to a meaningful change in the size of the colonies, which in turn is broadly “adapted to an average crawling speed of the bird parasites” in that the speed of the parasites is related to how fast the colony grows/shrinks.
Regarding Claim 28, Col. 29 lines 34-50 describe sensing temperature and humidity over time as part of the analysis.
Claim Objections
Claims 19 and 25-26 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.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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.
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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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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/GREGORY A MORSE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2698
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