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
Claims 8-13 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected species 2, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 12/23/25.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1 and 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Augusto et al. (US-20060261996-A1, hereinafter Augusto).
Re claim 1, Augusto discloses, a method for performing readout of a pixel array associated with an image sensor, the method comprising: for a first exposure row and one or more additional exposure rows of the pixel array (pars [0480]-[0482], each row of the pixel matrix comprises a first exposure row and at least one additional exposure row), detecting, using processing circuitry, completion of exposure operations of the first exposure row and the one or more additional exposure rows (pars [0474]-[04079]); and reading, using the processing circuitry, pixel values from sets of columns associated with sets of analog to digital converters (ADCs) corresponding to the first exposure row and the one or more additional exposure rows (fig 5, 139, pars [0369] and [0480]-[0496]).
Claim 14 is rejected for the reasons stated in claim 1. The system as claimed would have been anticipated by the method of Augusto.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7 and 15-20 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.
Re claim 2, Augusto fails to explicitly or implicitly disclose the limitations as follows: “… the second ramp gains being different from the first ramp gain; and the reading the pixel values further includes, reading, from the first set of ADCs within a first time period, pixel values from a first set of columns associated with the first set of ADCs from among a plurality of columns in the first exposure row of the pixel array, and reading, from the one or more additional sets of ADCs within the first time period, pixel values from a second set of columns associated with the one or more additional sets of ADCs from among the plurality of columns in the one or more additional exposure rows of the pixel array, wherein the first set of columns are different from the second set of columns” along with all other limitations of claim 2.
Claim 15 recites a similarly allowed limitation.
Dependent claims 3-7 and 16-20 are objected to for the same reasons.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOEL W FOSSELMAN whose telephone number is (571)270-3728. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 - 5:00 M-F.
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/JOEL W FOSSELMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2639
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