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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (“IDS”) filed on 05/25/2024 and 12/02/2025 were reviewed and the listed references were noted.
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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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 9-10, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan et al. (US 20210343051 A1) in view of Bourdev et al. (US 20130121584 A1) and Zheng et al. (US 20200104633 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, Hasan teaches "A method comprising: receiving, by a processing device, an input image having a particular visual appearance"; (Hasan, FIG. 8 and Para. 120, teaches receiving a digital image of a target physical material, i.e., input image has a particular visual appearance being the target material).
However, Hasan does not explicitly teach "generating, by the processing device, a histogram representation of the input image that represents a color prominence of pixels of the input image; identifying, by the processing device, a procedural material that has a visual similarity to the particular visual appearance of the input image based on the color prominence and at least one semantic feature of the input image; and outputting, by the processing device for display in a user interface, the procedural material".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Bourdev teaches "generating, by the processing device, a histogram representation of the input image that represents a color prominence of pixels of the input image"; (Bourdev, Para. 91, teaches determining features from the image data such as color, type, and texture of material wherein the feature extractor may extract the color histogram of the pixels in an image region to determine color, i.e., generating a histogram representation of the image to represent color prominence of pixels in the image being the color histogram of the pixels to determine color in the region).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan by including the generation of a histogram of color prominence of pixels in an image taught by Bourdev. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves recognition (Bourdev, Abstract, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve recognition in digital images).
However, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev does not explicitly teach “identifying, by the processing device, a procedural material that has a visual similarity to the particular visual appearance of the input image based on the color prominence and at least one semantic feature of the input image; and outputting, by the processing device for display in a user interface, the procedural material".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Zheng teaches "identifying, by the processing device, a procedural material that has a visual similarity to the particular visual appearance of the input image based on the color prominence and at least one semantic feature of the input image"; (Zheng, FIG. 1 and Paras. 56 and 101, teaches obtaining a first dress image from an input image and a first dress feature of the first dress image and identifying a collocating dress identical to and/or similar to a reference image from the recommendation databased based on the numerical dress feature and the semantic dress feature wherein the semantic dress feature is obtained by converting an image by means of a computer algorithm and taken as an attribute for describing in the form of text and may include a category, a pattern, a color, a material, a shape, a size, etc. and wherein the numerical dress feature is used for determining whether two images are similar including pixel values, i.e., identifying a dress image comprising a material that has similarity to the appearance of the input image based on color and at least one semantic feature of the input image);
"and outputting, by the processing device for display in a user interface, the procedural material"; (Zheng, FIG. 1 and Paras. 56, 103, and 173, teaches outputting the identical and/or similar dress image in which an output section comprising a liquid crystal display connected to the I/O interface, i.e., outputting the dress image comprising a material for display in a user interface).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan and Bourdev wherein color is determined from a histogram representation and the material is a procedurally generated material by including the identification of a material with visual similarity to the appearance of the image based on color and semantic feature of the image and outputting it for display taught by Zheng. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it provides a more objective search result (Zheng, Abstract, teaches the motivation of combination to give a recommendation result that is more objective and in accordance with user demands).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Regarding Claim 9, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng teaches "The method as described in claim 1, wherein the at least one semantic feature includes one or more of a pattern, image object, or text-based attribute of the input image"; (Zheng, Para. 56, teaches semantic dress features in the form of text including a dress category, a pattern, shape, size, and details, i.e., semantic feature includes pattern, image object being the dress, and text-based attributes of the input image being the text based features).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng references presented in the rejection of Claim 1, applies to claim 9. Thus, the method recited in claim 9 is met by Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng.
Claim 10 recites a system with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 1. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng references, presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng references discloses a processor and a memory to execute instructions (for example, see Hasan, Paragraph 116).
Claim 16 recites a system with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 9. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng references, presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng references discloses a processor and a memory to execute instructions (for example, see Hasan, Paragraph 116).
Claims 2 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Motiian et al. (US 20210073270 A1).
Regarding Claim 2, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng does not explicitly teach "The method as described in claim 1, wherein the histogram representation is three dimensional and is generated in an LAB color space".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Motiian teaches "The method as described in claim 1, wherein the histogram representation is three dimensional and is generated in an LAB color space"; (Motiian, Para. 4, teaches the image search system determining color histograms as three-dimensional histograms in a 3D color space such as a LAB color space, i.e., histogram representation is 3D and in an LAB color space).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, and Zheng by including the histogram being 3D in the LAB color space taught by Motiian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it provides improvements for search (Motiian, Para. 32, teaches the motivation of combination to be to provide numerous improvements over conventional image search).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Regarding Claim 11, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Motiian teaches "The system as described in claim 10, wherein the histogram representation is three-dimensional, each dimension of the histogram representation corresponding to a dimension of an LAB color space"; (Motiian, Para. 4, teaches the image search system determining color histograms as three-dimensional histograms in a 3D color space such as a LAB color space, i.e., histogram representation is 3D and in an LAB color space for each dimension).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Motiian references presented in the rejection of Claim 2, applies to claim 11. Thus, the system recited in claim 11 is met by Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Motiian.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Motiian, Han et al. (CN 103810503 A), and Yang et al. (US 20110274314 A1).
Regarding Claim 3, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Motiian does not explicitly teach "The method as described in claim 2, wherein the histogram representation includes eight bins for a luminance dimension, thirty-two bins for a first color dimension, and thirty-two bins for a second color dimension”.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Han teaches "The method as described in claim 2, wherein the histogram representation includes eight bins for a luminance dimension"; (Han, Pg. 2 fourth to last paragraph and Pg. 4 paragraph 8, teaches the color histogram in the LAB color space having 8 bins for the L channel, i.e., luminance dimension has eight bins in the histogram representation).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Motiian by including the histogram including 8 bins for a luminance dimension taught by Han. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it provides a larger and more significant saliency value (Han, Abstract, teaches the motivation of combination to be to get a larger and more significant saliency value).
However, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Motiian, and Han does not explicitly teach "thirty-two bins for a first color dimension, and thirty-two bins for a second color dimension".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Yang teaches "thirty-two bins for a first color dimension, and thirty-two bins for a second color dimension"; (Yang, Para. 25, teaches the color histogram in the LAB color space has 32 bins for each channel, i.e., first and second color dimensions have 32 bins).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, Zheng, Motiian, and Han by including the color dimensions each having thirty-two bins taught by Yang. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it helps recognize categories from video (Yang, Para. 6, teaches the motivation of combination to be to recognize categories from video for profile analysis and computer aided design).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claims 4 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan et al. (CN 116320607 A).
Regarding Claim 4, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, and Zheng does not explicitly teach "The method as described in claim 1, wherein the identifying the procedural material includes filtering a plurality of candidate procedural materials based on a semantic similarity to the input image using a vision language model"; (Pan, Pg. 5 Para. 8, teaches each picture in a material library corresponding to description sentences according to a vision language model and determining semantic similarity between the search sentence and the description sentences corresponding to each picture and obtaining the semantic similarity greater than the preset value and taking the associated pictures as the picture set corresponding to the sentence result, i.e., identifying the material includes filtering the candidate material images being the comparison to a preset value based on semantic similarity to the input using a vision language model).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, and Zheng by including the identifying a material to include filtering candidates based on semantic similarity to the image using a vision language model taught by Pan. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves efficiency (Pan, Pg. 4 Paras. 2-3, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve work efficiency).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claim 12 recites a system with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 4. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan references, presented in rejection of Claim 4, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan references discloses a processor and a memory to execute instructions (for example, see Hasan, Paragraph 116).
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Pan, and Tong et al. (CN 111539883 A).
Regarding Claim 5, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan does not explicitly teach "The method as described in claim 4, wherein the identifying the procedural material includes generating a color distribution for the input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to color distributions associated with the plurality of candidate procedural materials using a Wasserstein distance".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Tong teaches "The method as described in claim 4, wherein the identifying the procedural material includes generating a color distribution for the input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to color distributions associated with the plurality of candidate procedural materials using a Wasserstein distance"; (Tong, Pg. 13 fourth to last paragraph, teaches evaluating a difference between the generated image and the target image wherein the average value of the color histogram of the generated image and the target image are calculated and then the Wasserstein distance between the two histogram distribution is compared, i.e., generate a color distribution of an input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to color distribution of another image using a Wasserstein distance).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan wherein the images are representative of procedural materials to identify a match to the candidate materials being compared by including the evaluation of a difference between images includes generating a color distribution for the image based on the histogram and comparing the color distribution to other color distributions associated with other images or candidates using a Wasserstein distance taught by Tong. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it greatly improves processing speed (Tong, Pg. 13 second to last paragraph, teaches the motivation of combination to be to greatly improve processing speed).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claims 6, 7, and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard et al. (US 20110085697 A1).
Regarding Claim 6, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng does not explicitly teach "The method as described in claim 1, wherein the identifying the procedural material is based in part on a weight to determine an amount of influence of the color prominence on identifying the procedural material".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Clippard teaches "The method as described in claim 1, wherein the identifying the procedural material is based in part on a weight to determine an amount of influence of the color prominence on identifying the procedural material"; (Clippard, Para. 53, teaches applying weighting values to each feature so that the relative importance of each feature can be evaluated to determine its ability to retrieve closely matching images from the database wherein color is a type of image feature data, i.e., identifying a match is based in part on a weight to determine an amount of influence of the color on identifying the match).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, and Zheng wherein the matching images comprise identifying matches of procedural materials by including the identifying is based in part on a weight to determine an amount of influence the color has on identifying the match taught by Clippard. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves similarity based image retrieval performance (Clippard, Para. 166, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve similarity based image retrieval performance).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Regarding Claim 7, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard teaches "The method as described in claim 6, wherein the user interface includes a slider to control the weight"; (Clippard, Para. 56, teaches the relative importance of the features including color is controlled by sliders on the screen, i.e., user interface includes a slider to control the weight).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard references presented in the rejection of Claim 6, applies to claim 7. Thus, the method recited in claim 7 is met by Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard.
Claim 14 recites a system with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 6. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard references, presented in rejection of Claim 6, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard references discloses a processor and a memory to execute instructions (for example, see Hasan, Paragraph 116).
Claims 8 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Clippard, and Liu et al. (CN 102110235 A).
Regarding Claim 8, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard does not explicitly teach "The method as described in claim 6, wherein the amount of influence is based in part on an alpha blending between the color prominence and the at least one semantic feature".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Liu teaches "The method as described in claim 6, wherein the amount of influence is based in part on an alpha blending between the color prominence and the at least one semantic feature"; (Liu, Pg. 9 fifth to last paragraph, teaches the media type icon performing alpha combination or mix to the original document to reduce the influence of the semantic of the original document and aiming at different color channels and area changing using an alpha blending coefficient to change the text color or picture color mark in the area, i.e., influence between color and semantics based at least in part on alpha blending/combination/mixing).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, Zheng, and Clippard by including the alpha blending between color and semantic feature taught by Liu. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves retrieval accuracy (Liu, Pg. 8 Para. 8, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve the retrieval accuracy).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claim 15 recites a system with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 8. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Clippard, and Liu references, presented in rejection of Claim 8, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Clippard, and Liu references discloses a processor and a memory to execute instructions (for example, see Hasan, Paragraph 116).
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Pan, and El Bakry (US 20250182369 A1).
Regarding Claim 13, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan does not explicitly teach "The system as described in claim 12, wherein the identifying the procedural material includes generating a color distribution for the input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to color distributions associated with the plurality of candidate procedural materials using an earth mover distance".
In an analogous field of endeavor, El Bakry teaches "The system as described in claim 12, wherein the identifying the procedural material includes generating a color distribution for the input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to color distributions associated with the plurality of candidate procedural materials using an earth mover distance"; (El Bakry, Para. 74, teaches comparing the scene histograms of the first 3D image with the model histograms of the second 3D image and determining a color score from the scene histograms and model histograms using histogram comparisons such as determining histogram distances using the earth mover's distance in which the color score is indicative of a rate of similarity or matching between the histograms, i.e., identifying similarity or matching of images by generating a color distribution of an input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to another color distribution using an earth mover distance).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan wherein the images are representative of procedural materials to identify a match to the candidate materials being compared by including the identification of the match image includes generating a color distribution for the input image based on the histogram representation and comparing the color distribution to the distributions associated with the candidates using an earth mover distance taught by El Bakry. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves accuracy of matching (El Bakry, Para. 79, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve the accuracy of surface matching when color information is used in addition to the 3D geometric information).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee et al. (US 20130148882 A1), and Zheng.
Regarding Claim 17, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng teaches "A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing executable instructions, which when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform operations comprising: receiving a data source that includes a procedural material"; (Hasan, FIG. 8 and Paras. 3 and 120, teaches a non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions executed by a device cause the retrieval of a base procedural material with differentiable nodes from a database, i.e., receive a data source including a procedural material);
"generating, for the procedural material in the data source, a color distribution based on a color prominence of the procedural material"; (Bourdev, Para. 91, teaches determining features from the image data such as color, type, and texture of material wherein the feature extractor may extract the color histogram of the pixels in an image region to determine color, i.e., generating a color distribution based on color prominence of a material region being the color histogram of the pixels of a material region to determine color in the region);
"
"and identifying the procedural material from the data source as having a visual similarity to the particular visual appearance based on the color prominence and at least one semantic feature of the reference digital image"; (Zheng, FIG. 1 and Paras. 56 and 101, teaches obtaining a first dress image from an input image and a first dress feature of the first dress image and identifying a collocating dress identical to and/or similar to a reference image from the recommendation databased based on the numerical dress feature and the semantic dress feature wherein the semantic dress feature is obtained by converting an image by means of a computer algorithm and taken as an attribute for describing in the form of text and may include a category, a pattern, a color, a material, a shape, a size, etc. and wherein the numerical dress feature is used for determining whether two images are similar including pixel values, i.e., identifying a dress image comprising a material that has similarity to the appearance of the input image based on color and at least one semantic feature of the input image).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng references presented in the rejection of Claim 1, applies to claim 17.
However, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev and Zheng does not explicitly teach "generating a reference color distribution for a reference digital image that has a particular visual appearance".
In an analogous field of endeavor, Lee teaches "generating a reference color distribution for a reference digital image that has a particular visual appearance"; (Lee, Paras. 14 and 25, teaches determining a set of reference color histograms for a set of reference images depicting reference objects to be detected by the example image object detection system, i.e., generating a reference color distribution for the reference image with particular visual appearance being the color histograms for reference images having reference objects as the particular appearance).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, and Zheng by including the generation of reference color distributions from reference images with particular appearance taught by Lee. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves accuracy and robustness (Lee, Para. 31, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve object detection accuracy and robustness).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, Su (US 20220270313 A1), and Kovalan et al. (US 20130121548 A1).
Regarding Claim 18, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, and Zheng does not explicitly teach "The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as described in claim 17, wherein the generating the color distribution for the procedural material includes: illuminating the procedural material under soft environmental lighting conditions; generating an image slice of the procedural material; and generating the color distribution based on a color prominence of the image slice”.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Su teaches "The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as described in claim 17, wherein the generating the color distribution for the procedural material includes: illuminating the procedural material under soft environmental lighting conditions"; (Su, Paras. 72 and 119, teaches fusing the original color with the color of the second target material via soft light to obtain the fused facial image, i.e., illuminate the material under soft lighting conditions).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, Lee, and Zheng by including the illumination of the material under soft lighting taught by Su. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves realness of the image (Su, Para. 72, teaches the motivation of combination to be to improve the realness of the fused color in the image).
However, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, and Su does not explicitly teach “generating an image slice of the procedural material; and generating the color distribution based on a color prominence of the image slice”.
In an analogous field of endeavor, Kovalan teaches "generating an image slice of the procedural material"; (Kovalan, Para. 71, teaches a 2D image slice of a 3D volume visualization image of an anatomical structure representative of the materials that form the boundaries in a scan, i.e., generate an image slice of the material);
"and generating the color distribution based on a color prominence of the image slice"; (Kovalan, Para. 71, teaches creating a histogram from the 2D image slice of a 3D volume visualization image wherein there is a map of color and transparency values to the intensity values in the marked regions of a histogram containing a visual representation of the distribution of data, i.e., generate color distribution being the histogram based on color prominence of the slice being the map of color values to intensity).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Hasan, Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, and Su wherein the image of a procedural material in which the histogram represents color prominence of pixels by including the generating of an image slice of a material and generating color distribution based on the image slice taught by Kovalan. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references since it improves modification of a 3D volume image in real time (Kovalan, Para. 16, teaches improving the modification of a 3D volume visualization image in real time).
Thus, the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, and El Bakry.
Regarding Claim 19, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, and Zheng teaches "The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as described in claim 17, wherein the data source includes a plurality of procedural materials"; (Hasan, Para. 17, teaches retrieving the base procedural material from among the stored differentiable procedural materials, i.e., the data source includes a plurality of procedural materials).
However, the combination of references of Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, and Zheng does not explicitly teach "and identifying the procedural material includes comparing color distributions for the plurality of procedural materials with the reference color distribution".
In an analogous field of endeavor, El Bakry teaches "and identifying the procedural material includes comparing color distributions for the plurality of procedural materials with the reference color distribution"; (El Bakry, Para. 74, teaches comparing the scene histograms of the first 3D image with the model histograms of the second 3D image and determining a color score from the scene histograms and model histograms using histogram comparisons such as color histogram intersection or by determining histogram distances using the earth mover's distance in which the color score is indicative of a rate of similarity or matching between the histograms, i.e., identifying similarity or matching of images by comparing the color distribution to another color distribution using an earth mover distance).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, Pan, and El Bakry references presented in the rejection of Claim 13, applies to claim 19. Thus, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium recited in claim 19 is met by Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, and El Bakry.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, and Pan.
Claim 20 recites a computer-readable storage medium storing a program with instructions corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 4. Therefore, the recited programming instructions of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Zheng, and Pan references, presented in rejection of Claim 4, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Hasan in view of Bourdev, Lee, Zheng, and Pan references discloses a computer readable storage medium (for example, see Hasan, Paragraph 116).
Conclusion
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/ANDREW S BUDISALICH/Examiner, Art Unit 2662
/AMANDEEP SAINI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2662