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 .
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 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
Claims 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jannarone et al. (WO 2011133720 A2, AUTO-ADAPTIVE EVENT DETECTION NETWORK: VIDEO ENCODING AND DECODING DETAILS), in view of Su et al. (USPAP 2021/0306,401), hereinafter, “Su”.
Regarding claim 1 Jannarone teaches, receiving a plurality of images from at least one camera (Please note, page 6, last paragraph. As indicated detector 20 may be include a video camera.); encoding the images in a first format (Please note, paragraph 109. As indicated FIG. 9 is a block diagram illustrating example encoding of reduced video data over time according to an embodiment of the invention.); detecting that there has been an event based on the images (Please note, paragraph 109. As indicated FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment with five consecutive frames, labeled from 301 to 305, which were generated by a video camera while a vehicle was moving. In alternative embodiments, the both the camera and the vehicle may be in motion or only the camera may be in motion relative to the vehicle. The motion may be synchronous or asynchronous.); encoding the images in a second format in response to detecting that there has been an event (Please note, paragraph 109. As indicated FIG. 9 shows the system converting the frames into compressed form. The encoded version of reference frame 301 looks like the complete video camera frame. However, the encoded version of
frame 302, labeled 302A, contains only pixels that changed between 302 and 301 and the encoded version of frame 303, labeled 303A, contains only pixels that changed between 303 and 301, and so on.); and storing the images into a non-volatile memory. (Please note, paragraph 20. As indicated the detector 20 is also configured with data storage area 25 that may comprise volatile and/or non-volatile memory as suitable for the particular purpose of detector 20.).
Jannarone does not expressly teach, wherein the images encoded in the second format are higher quality than the images encoded in the first format.
Su teaches, wherein the images encoded in the second format are higher quality than the images encoded in the first format. (Please note, paragraph 0044. As indicated process 100 can identify the second format based on a determination that a quality of the network connection (e.g., a speed of the network connection, a latency of the network connection, a bandwidth of the network connection, and/or any other suitable quality metric) has changed by more than a predetermined threshold. As a specific example, in an instance in which a quality of the network connection has increased, process 100 can identify a second format that has a relatively higher resolution than the first format.).
Jannarone & Su are combinable because they are from the same field of endeavor.
At the time before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to utilize this wherein the images encoded in the second format are higher quality than the images encoded in the first format of Su in Jannarone’s invention.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been as indicated on paragraph 0049, “in an instance in which process 100 identified a potential second format that has an increased resolution relative to the first format because a quality of the network connection has increased, the trained model can take as inputs indications of both the first format and the potential second format with the increased resolution.”.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Su with Jannarone to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
Regarding claim 2, Su recites, wherein the step of encoding images from the first format to the second format comprises: encoding the images by changing resolution, frame rate, or both, of the images. (Please note, paragraph 0049. As indicated in an instance in which process 100 identified a potential second format that has an increased resolution relative to the first format because a quality of the network connection has increased, the trained model can take as inputs indications of both the first format and the potential second format with the increased resolution.
Regarding claim 3, Jannarone teaches, recovering the images to encode them in the first format after the event is over. (Please note, paragraph 78. As indicated the above process also reduces data storage and transmission by transmitting only changed pixels while setting other pixel values to zero. For example, received and recovered data may be used to reproduce images with high resolution by overlaying changed values on baseline images.).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-8 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: The closest applied Prior Art of record fails to disclose or reasonably suggest wherein storing the images encoded in the first format into a volatile memory before detecting that there has been an event; and storing the images encoded in the first format into the volatile memory after the event is over; wherein the images are from a first predetermined period before the event is detected to a second predetermined period after the event is over and wherein the images received from the at least one camera originally have a third format, the method further comprising: receiving the images that are in a fourth format from the at least one camera in response to detecting that there has been an event; wherein the images in the fourth format are a higher quality than the images in the third format.
Examiner’s Note
The examiner cites particular figures, paragraphs, columns and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified
citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claims, other passages and figures may apply as well.
It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in their entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
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/AMIR ALAVI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2668 Wednesday, June 17, 2026
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