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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements filed 7/12/24 and 1/31/25 have been considered.
Drawings
The drawings filed 3/29/25 are acceptable to the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 5-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 5, lines 2-3 uses the language “at least one of” in combination with “and”; that provides multiple interpretations what would is being set forth causing confusion. For example a phase at least one of A, B and C can be interpreted as including one of A, one of B and one of C or alternatively interpreted as only including A or only including B or only including C. Examiner suggest to change the word “and” claim 5, line 3 to the word - - or - - to clearly define the language being set forth. Appropriate correction is required. Similar use of language is present in claim 6 requiring correction.
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.
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.
Claim(s) 1-2, 4-6, 19 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Murgai et al. (US 12,556,878 B2) in view of Takumai (US 2011/0013778 A1).
Re claims 1, 19 and 20: Murgai et al. teaches an audio rendering method, comprising:
obtaining audio metadata (figure 3, metadata (114) column 3, lines 64-65), the audio metadata including acoustic environment information (column 4, lines 40-43);
setting parameters for audio rendering according to the acoustic environment information (see for example column 3, line 66 – column 4, line 2; column 4, lines 40-45 and column 5, lines 37-43) by the use of processing system (116), the parameters for audio rendering including acoustic information of different room geometries room scenes (column 4, lines 58-60)
rendering an audio signal according to the parameters for audio rendering (by the use of renderer (306), figure 3. Although Murgai et al. teaches that the rendered audio can be obtained for different sized room scenes with different geometries, a room scene that is approximately rectangular parallelepiped room scene is not specifically discussed. Takumai teaches in a similar environment that rooms used in audio acoustics include rooms that are rectangular parallelepiped in shape (Paragraph [0007]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing of the invention to perform audio rendering for a variety of room geometries, taught by Murgai et al. including a room that is rectangular parallelepiped as taught by Takumai since such a rectangular parallelepiped shaped room is predictably one that has a specific room geometry and would obviously allow for audio rendering for one of a variety of different geometrically shaped rooms, including one that is rectangular parallelepiped shaped. Therefor the claimed subject matter would have been obvious before the filing of the invention. Claims 19 and 20 set forth similar features as discussed above satisfied by the combination of Murgai et al. (US 12,556,878 B2) in view of Takumai (US 2011/0013778 A1) as applied. Additionally, the processor and memory as set forth in claim 19 is satisfied by Murgai et al., as elements (804) and (810), discussed in column 14, line 62 – column 15, line 3. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having a computer program, i.e. instructions stored thereon of claim 20 is taught by Murgai et al. column 15, lines 38-49.
Re claim 2: note teaching in Takumai, paragraph [0007] rooms that are rectangular parallelepiped in shape include rooms that are cubed shaped.
Re claim 4: note in Murgai et al. the rendered audio signal is a spatial audio signal that is reproduced to the user (column 5, lines 54-64)
Re claim 5: note column 10, lines 19-32 teaches that the spatial audio is at least channel based satisfying the alternative language being set forth
Re claim 6: note teaching in Murgai et al., column 4, lines 58-60 teaches room scenes that have different sizes or damping surfaces (acoustic properties) satisfying the alternatively language as set forth)
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Murgai et al. (US 12,556,878 B2) in view of Takumai (US 2011/0013778 A1) as applied to claims 1-2, 4-6, 19 and 20 above, and further in view of Laaksonen (US 2018/0270601 A1).
Re claim 3: The teaching of Murgai et al. (US 12,556,878 B2) in view of Takumai (US 2011/0013778 A1) is discussed above and incorporated herein. This combination does not teach that when rendering audio that the rendering includes spatially encoding audio and spatially decoding the encoded audio. Laaksonen teaches in a similar environment to use spatial audio encoding and spatial audio decoding (see figure 4 along with paragraph [0035] as a possible way of forming spatial audio that is rendered and provided to a user. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing of the invention to incorporate such spatial encoding/spatial decoding as taught by Laaksonen into the arrangement of Murgai et al. in view of Takumai as applied to predictably provide one possible way of forming spatial rendered audio for a user. Therefor the claimed subject matter would have been obvious before the filing of the invention.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-18 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 claimed audio recording method including in combination those features of claim 1, wherein the acoustic environment information includes a scene point cloud consisting of a plurality of scene points collected from a virtual scene as set forth in claim 7 is neither taught by nor an obvious variation of the art of record. The limitations of claims 8-18 depend upon those features of claim 7/1.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDREW SNIEZEK whose telephone number is (571)272-7563. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7:00 AM-3:30 PM EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ahmad Matar can be reached at 571-272-7488. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ANDREW SNIEZEK/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693
/A.S./Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693 2/26/26
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