DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The United States Patent & Trademark Office appreciates the response filed for the current application that is submitted on 05/18/2026. The United States Patent & Trademark Office reviewed the following documents submitted and has made the following comments below.
AMENDMENTS
Applicant/s submitted arguments and remarks on 05/18/2026. The Examiner acknowledges the arguments and reviewed the claims accordingly.
Applicant/s amended claims 1, 8, 15 and 18. Claims 1 – 20 are currently pending.
Response to Arguments
In regards to Argument 1, with respect to the rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 101 for being directed to mental process, the applicant/s states that the claims have been amended to overcome the objections. The applicant/s further states that amended independent claims integrate into a practical application by reflecting an improvement to the technology of real-time digital image processing. The applicant/s states that the claims recite significantly more than any abstract idea. Therefore, the applicant/s request the withdrawal of rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 101. (See Remarks, page 6 – 8, dated, 05/18/2026)
In response to Argument 1, with respect to the rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 101, the Examiner states that the applicant/s arguments have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 101 have been withdrawn.
In regards to Argument 2, with respect to the rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 103, the applicant/s states that the independent claims 1, 8 and 15 have been amended. The applicant/s further states that Schloter in view of Cheng fails to teach all the features recited in the amended independent claims. Therefore, the applicant/s requests the withdrawal of rejection of independent claims 1, 8 and 15 and their dependent claims respectively under 35 U.S.C. 103. (See Arguments/Remarks, page 8 – 9, dated 05/18/2026)
In response to Argument 2, with respect to the rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 103, the Examiner states that the applicant/s arguments have been fully considered but are rendered moot in view of the amendments made to the independent claims. Therefore, the Examiner states that the rejection of claims 1 – 20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been withdrawn. However, upon further search and consideration, the following new grounds of rejection have been necessitated by the amendments.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
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.
Claims 1 – 6, 8 – 13 and 15 – 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schloter et al. (US 20130201307 A1; hereafter referred to as Schloter) in view of Cheng et al. (See Machine Translation for CN 114723768 A; hereafter referred to as Cheng) further in view of Mao et al. (US20240028904 A1; hereafter referred to as Mao).
Regarding Claim 1, Schloter teaches:
A method, comprising:
obtaining, by a processor, a data stream from a camera of a client device (Schloter, [0014] “A computing device (e.g., a smart phone, a tablet computer, etc.) may include an image capture device (e.g., a digital camera) that captures images of expense receipts …. the image capture device may constantly obtain and/or capture images of the expense receipt (e.g., may obtain and/or capture image data)”);
identifying an object in the data stream (Schloter, [0061] “the receipt processing module 415 may identify the amount, business name, the item purchased, the service rendered, the city, the state, and/or the country of the expense buy analyzing the text of the receipt (e.g., may identify the receipt information in the receipt)”);
performing one or more operations to crop the object (Schloter, [0033] “the image filter may be implemented as a software algorithm, function, and/or operation that processes the image”; [0037] “the image module 213 may use one or more additional image filters that apply a threshold color to remove backgrounds, perform noise filtering on an image or a filtered image, crop and image”); and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device (Schloter, [0034] The image module 213 may display one or more filtered images (e.g., filtered image data) in the preview portion of the GUI (as illustrated in FIG. 1B)).
However, Schloter teaches cropping the object and filtering the background and displaying the filtered image on GUI, but does not explicitly teach:
performing one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream, wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames; and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device, a cropped version of the object.
In the same field of endeavor, Cheng teaches:
performing one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream (Cheng, page 7, para 4, “the background of the image to be cropped is a colored background, the electronic device can first identify the background color of the image to be cropped, and then find out pixels of other colors that are different from the background color, which will be different from the background color. Pixels of other colors of the background color are determined as colored pixels of the image to be cropped”); and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device, a cropped version of the object (Cheng, Abstract, “ finally displaying the cutting image, by identifying the boundary position of each image content in the image, determining the cutting area of the image, so as to accurately and quickly cut the blank area around the image, increasing the display area of the core content of the image in the display interface”; Cheng, page 2, summary, para 5, “based on the border position of each trimming border, each image border of the to-be-cropped image is trimmed to obtain a trimmed image; the trimmed image is displayed”).
Schloter and Cheng are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter with the invention of Cheng to perform one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream and display the cropped/trimmed object on a user display; doing so can efficiently crop the images to remove background and improve users reading ability (Cheng, page 2, background, para 2); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
However, Schloter in view of Cheng does not explicitly teach:
wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames;
In the same field of endeavor Mao teaches:
wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames (Mao, [0168] “The frame cropping and scaling system 800 includes a region of interest (ROI) determination engine 804, an object detection and tracking system 806, a frame cropping engine 808, a frame scaling engine 810, and a smoothing engine 812”; Mao, [0171] “A sequence of frames 802 is input to the frame cropping and scaling system 800. The frame 802 can be part of a sequence of frames. The sequence of frames can be a video, a group of consecutively captured images, or other sequence of frames. The ROI determination engine 804 can determine an initial region of interest (ROI) in particular frame based on user input and/or automatically”; [0173] “on the selected portion of the initial frame, the ROI determination engine 804 can define a ROI around the selected portion (e.g., around a selected object). The ROI indicates a size (e.g., an ideal size) for which to keep the object throughout the video or other sequence of frames”; Mao, [0208] As a result of the cropping a scaling, a cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 is generated…. resulting in the person being maintained in the cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 at the same position as the person was located in the initial frame 1032. The person depicted in the cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 is thus the same size as the person depicted in the initial frame 1002 and is maintained in a consistent location as other frames throughout the video”);
Schloter, Cheng and Mao are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter in view of Cheng with the invention of Mao to analyze a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames; doing so can efficiently maintain consistent size for a target object in one or more frames (Mao, [0002]); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
Regarding Claim 2, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising:
performing one or more operations to change an orientation of the cropped version of the object (Schloter, [0038] “the image module 213 may also determine the orientation of the expense receipt… the image module 213 may determine that the image of the expense receipt should be rotated clockwise in order for the text to appear upright when the image of the expense receipt is viewed in the GUI”; Schloter, [0048] “The filter module 305 may also apply additional filters (e.g., filters to sharpen the edges of text, to perform color correction, to crop the image, etc.) on the images received from the image capture device 211).
Regarding Claim 3, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising:
displaying an overlay on the cropped version of the object, wherein the overlay comprises data identified based on the object (Schloter, [0054] “The GUI module 315 may present multiple previews in the GUI or may overlay a filtered image over another image in the preview”; Cheng, page 9, para 3, “the center recognition of the to-be-cropped image is performed by first obtaining the minimum circumscribed rectangle of each image content in the to-be-cropped image, then overlapping and aligning multiple image pages of the to-be-cropped image, and then aligning the plurality of minimum circumscribed rectangles”).
Regarding Claim 4, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the object comprises one or more of a receipt, an invoice, or a document (Schloter, [0014] ‘ An expense receipt (or a receipt) may be one or more of an invoice, form, bill, a certificate, a declaration, a letter, a notice, a proof of purchase, a sales slip, a stub, a voucher and/or any other document that includes information about a product and/or a service that has been purchased, bought, and/or paid for by a user”).
Regarding Claim 5, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the cropped version of the object is presented in real time or near real time (Schloter, [0028] “the preview 155 allows users to see how an image may look when the image filter is applied to the image (e.g., when the image data is processed using the image filter) in real time or near real time. This allows users to more quickly see the preview of the filtered image and determine whether they should capture the filtered image or repositioned the receipt and/or the image capture device for a better viewpoint of the expense receipt”).
Regarding Claim 6, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising:
performing a shape-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream (Cheng, page 14, para 4, “After the electronic device displays the cropped image 301, the user can perform the cropping operation on the cropped image as needed. Paging operation, click the paging operation control 206, the electronic device can display the cross-shaped dividing line 601 on the cropped image in response to the paging operation on the cropped image, and then, the user can drag the cross-shaped dividing line 601 as required”).
Regarding Claim 8, Schloter teaches:
A system, comprising:
a memory device (Schloter, [0045] “The data store 350 may be a memory (e.g., random access memory), a cache, a drive (e.g., a hard drive), a flash drive, flash memory, a database system, and/or another type of component or device capable of storing data”); and
a processing device, operatively coupled to the memory device (Schloter, [0079] “The image module 726 may also reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory 704 and/or within the processing device 702 during execution thereof by the computing device 700, the main memory 704 and the processing device 702 also constituting computer-readable media”), to perform operations comprising:
obtaining, by a processor, a data stream from a camera of a client device (Schloter, [0014] “A computing device (e.g., a smart phone, a tablet computer, etc.) may include an image capture device (e.g., a digital camera) that captures images of expense receipts ….the image capture device may constantly obtain and/or capture images of the expense receipt (e.g., may obtain and/or capture image data)”);
identifying an object in the data stream (Schloter, [0061] “the receipt processing module 415 may identify the amount, business name, the item purchased, the service rendered, the city, the state, and/or the country of the expense buy analyzing the text of the receipt (e.g., may identify the receipt information in the receipt)”);
performing one or more operations to crop the object (Schloter, [0033] “the image filter may be implemented as a software algorithm, function, and/or operation that processes the image”; [0037] “the image module 213 may use one or more additional image filters that apply a threshold color to remove backgrounds, perform noise filtering on an image or a filtered image, crop and image”); and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device (Schloter, [0034] The image module 213 may display one or more filtered images (e.g., filtered image data) in the preview portion of the GUI (as illustrated in FIG. 1B)).
However, Schloter teaches cropping the object and filtering the background and displaying the filtered image on GUI, but does not explicitly teach:
performing one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream, wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames; and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device, a cropped version of the object.
In the same field of endeavor, Cheng teaches:
performing one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream (Cheng, page 7, para 4, “the background of the image to be cropped is a colored background, the electronic device can first identify the background color of the image to be cropped, and then find out pixels of other colors that are different from the background color, which will be different from the background color. Pixels of other colors of the background color are determined as colored pixels of the image to be cropped”); and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device, a cropped version of the object (Cheng, Abstract, “ finally displaying the cutting image, by identifying the boundary position of each image content in the image, determining the cutting area of the image, so as to accurately and quickly cut the blank area around the image, increasing the display area of the core content of the image in the display interface”; Cheng, page 2, summary, para 5, “based on the border position of each trimming border, each image border of the to-be-cropped image is trimmed to obtain a trimmed image; the trimmed image is displayed”).
Schloter and Cheng are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter with the invention of Cheng to perform one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream and display the cropped/trimmed object on a user display; doing so can efficiently crop the images to remove background and improve users reading ability (Cheng, page 2, background, para 2); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
However, Schloter in view of Cheng does not explicitly teach:
wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames;
In the same field of endeavor Mao teaches:
wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames (Mao, [0168] “The frame cropping and scaling system 800 includes a region of interest (ROI) determination engine 804, an object detection and tracking system 806, a frame cropping engine 808, a frame scaling engine 810, and a smoothing engine 812”; Mao, [0171] “A sequence of frames 802 is input to the frame cropping and scaling system 800. The frame 802 can be part of a sequence of frames. The sequence of frames can be a video, a group of consecutively captured images, or other sequence of frames. The ROI determination engine 804 can determine an initial region of interest (ROI) in particular frame based on user input and/or automatically”; [0173] “on the selected portion of the initial frame, the ROI determination engine 804 can define a ROI around the selected portion (e.g., around a selected object). The ROI indicates a size (e.g., an ideal size) for which to keep the object throughout the video or other sequence of frames”; Mao, [0208] As a result of the cropping a scaling, a cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 is generated…. resulting in the person being maintained in the cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 at the same position as the person was located in the initial frame 1032. The person depicted in the cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 is thus the same size as the person depicted in the initial frame 1002 and is maintained in a consistent location as other frames throughout the video”);
Schloter, Cheng and Mao are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter in view of Cheng with the invention of Mao to analyze a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames; doing so can efficiently maintain consistent size for a target object in one or more frames (Mao, [0002]); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
Regarding Claim 9, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the system of claim 8, further comprising:
performing one or more operations to change an orientation of the cropped version of the object (Schloter, [0038] “the image module 213 may also determine the orientation of the expense receipt… the image module 213 may determine that the image of the expense receipt should be rotated clockwise in order for the text to appear upright when the image of the expense receipt is viewed in the GUI”; Schloter, [0048] “The filter module 305 may also apply additional filters (e.g., filters to sharpen the edges of text, to perform color correction, to crop the image, etc.) on the images received from the image capture device 211).
Regarding Claim 10, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the system of claim 8, further comprising:
displaying an overlay on the cropped version of the object, wherein the overlay comprises data identified based on the object (Schloter, [0054] “The GUI module 315 may present multiple previews in the GUI or may overlay a filtered image over another image in the preview”; Cheng, page 9, para 3, “the center recognition of the to-be-cropped image is performed by first obtaining the minimum circumscribed rectangle of each image content in the to-be-cropped image, then overlapping and aligning multiple image pages of the to-be-cropped image, and then aligning the plurality of minimum circumscribed rectangles”).
Regarding Claim 11, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the system of claim 8, wherein the object comprises one or more of a receipt, an invoice, or a document (Schloter, [0014] ‘ An expense receipt (or a receipt) may be one or more of an invoice, form, bill, a certificate, a declaration, a letter, a notice, a proof of purchase, a sales slip, a stub, a voucher and/or any other document that includes information about a product and/or a service that has been purchased, bought, and/or paid for by a user”).
Regarding Claim 12, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the system of claim 8, wherein the cropped version of the object is presented in real time or near real time (Schloter, [0028] “the preview 155 allows users to see how an image may look when the image filter is applied to the image (e.g., when the image data is processed using the image filter) in real time or near real time. This allows users to more quickly see the preview of the filtered image and determine whether they should capture the filtered image or repositioned the receipt and/or the image capture device for a better viewpoint of the expense receipt”).
Regarding Claim 13, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the system of claim 8, further comprising:
performing a shape-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream (Cheng, page 14, para 4, “After the electronic device displays the cropped image 301, the user can perform the cropping operation on the cropped image as needed. Paging operation, click the paging operation control 206, the electronic device can display the cross-shaped dividing line 601 on the cropped image in response to the paging operation on the cropped image, and then, the user can drag the cross-shaped dividing line 601 as required”).
Regarding Claim 15, Schloter teaches:
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions for a server that, when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform operations comprising (Schloter, [0084] “a computer program may be stored in a non-transitory computer readable storage medium”):
obtaining, by a processor, a data stream from a camera of a client device (Schloter, [0014] “A computing device (e.g., a smart phone, a tablet computer, etc.) may include an image capture device (e.g., a digital camera) that captures images of expense receipts ….the image capture device may constantly obtain and/or capture images of the expense receipt (e.g., may obtain and/or capture image data)”);
identifying an object in the data stream (Schloter, [0061] “the receipt processing module 415 may identify the amount, business name, the item purchased, the service rendered, the city, the state, and/or the country of the expense buy analyzing the text of the receipt (e.g., may identify the receipt information in the receipt)”);
performing one or more operations to crop the object (Schloter, [0033] “the image filter may be implemented as a software algorithm, function, and/or operation that processes the image”; Schloter, [0037] “the image module 213 may use one or more additional image filters that apply a threshold color to remove backgrounds, perform noise filtering on an image or a filtered image, crop and image”); and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device (Schloter, [0034] The image module 213 may display one or more filtered images (e.g., filtered image data) in the preview portion of the GUI (as illustrated in FIG. 1B)).
However, Schloter teaches cropping the object and filtering the background and displaying the filtered image on GUI, but does not explicitly teach:
performing one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream, wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames; and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device, a cropped version of the object.
In the same field of endeavor, Cheng teaches:
performing one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream (Cheng, page 7, para 4, “the background of the image to be cropped is a colored background, the electronic device can first identify the background color of the image to be cropped, and then find out pixels of other colors that are different from the background color, which will be different from the background color. Pixels of other colors of the background color are determined as colored pixels of the image to be cropped”); and
presenting, on a user interface of the client device, a cropped version of the object (Cheng, Abstract, “ finally displaying the cutting image, by identifying the boundary position of each image content in the image, determining the cutting area of the image, so as to accurately and quickly cut the blank area around the image, increasing the display area of the core content of the image in the display interface”; Cheng, page 2, summary, para 5, “based on the border position of each trimming border, each image border of the to-be-cropped image is trimmed to obtain a trimmed image; the trimmed image is displayed”).
Schloter and Cheng are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter with the invention of Cheng to perform one or more operations to crop the object from background data of the data stream and display the cropped/trimmed object on a user display; doing so can efficiently crop the images to remove background and improve users reading ability (Cheng, page 2, background, para 2); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
However, Schloter in view of Cheng does not explicitly teach:
wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames;
In the same field of endeavor Mao teaches:
wherein the one or more operations comprise analyzing a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames (Mao, [0168] “The frame cropping and scaling system 800 includes a region of interest (ROI) determination engine 804, an object detection and tracking system 806, a frame cropping engine 808, a frame scaling engine 810, and a smoothing engine 812”; Mao, [0171] “A sequence of frames 802 is input to the frame cropping and scaling system 800. The frame 802 can be part of a sequence of frames. The sequence of frames can be a video, a group of consecutively captured images, or other sequence of frames. The ROI determination engine 804 can determine an initial region of interest (ROI) in particular frame based on user input and/or automatically”; [0173] “on the selected portion of the initial frame, the ROI determination engine 804 can define a ROI around the selected portion (e.g., around a selected object). The ROI indicates a size (e.g., an ideal size) for which to keep the object throughout the video or other sequence of frames”; Mao, [0208] As a result of the cropping a scaling, a cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 is generated…. resulting in the person being maintained in the cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 at the same position as the person was located in the initial frame 1032. The person depicted in the cropped and scaled subsequent frame 1032 is thus the same size as the person depicted in the initial frame 1002 and is maintained in a consistent location as other frames throughout the video”);
Schloter, Cheng and Mao are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter in view of Cheng with the invention of Mao to analyze a plurality of consecutive frames of the data stream to determine whether a shape of a candidate crop stays consistent across the plurality of consecutive frames; doing so can efficiently maintain consistent size for a target object in one or more frames (Mao, [0002]); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
Regarding Claim 16, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15, further comprising:
performing one or more operations to change an orientation of the cropped version of the object (Schloter, [0038] “the image module 213 may also determine the orientation of the expense receipt… the image module 213 may determine that the image of the expense receipt should be rotated clockwise in order for the text to appear upright when the image of the expense receipt is viewed in the GUI”; Schloter, [0048] “The filter module 305 may also apply additional filters (e.g., filters to sharpen the edges of text, to perform color correction, to crop the image, etc.) on the images received from the image capture device 211).
Regarding Claim 17, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15, further comprising:
displaying an overlay on the cropped version of the object, wherein the overlay comprises data identified based on the object (Schloter, [0054] “The GUI module 315 may present multiple previews in the GUI or may overlay a filtered image over another image in the preview”; Cheng, page 9, para 3, “the center recognition of the to-be-cropped image is performed by first obtaining the minimum circumscribed rectangle of each image content in the to-be-cropped image, then overlapping and aligning multiple image pages of the to-be-cropped image, and then aligning the plurality of minimum circumscribed rectangles”).
Regarding Claim 18, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the object comprises one or more of a receipt, an invoice, or a document (Schloter, [0014] ‘ An expense receipt (or a receipt) may be one or more of an invoice, form, bill, a certificate, a declaration, a letter, a notice, a proof of purchase, a sales slip, a stub, a voucher and/or any other document that includes information about a product and/or a service that has been purchased, bought, and/or paid for by a user”).
Regarding Claim 19, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the cropped version of the object is presented in real time or near real time (Schloter, [0028] “the preview 155 allows users to see how an image may look when the image filter is applied to the image (e.g., when the image data is processed using the image filter) in real time or near real time. This allows users to more quickly see the preview of the filtered image and determine whether they should capture the filtered image or repositioned the receipt and/or the image capture device for a better viewpoint of the expense receipt”).
Regarding Claim 20, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising:
performing at least one of a shape-based cropping technique or a depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream (Cheng, page 14, para 4, “After the electronic device displays the cropped image 301, the user can perform the cropping operation on the cropped image as needed. Paging operation, click the paging operation control 206, the electronic device can display the cross-shaped dividing line 601 on the cropped image in response to the paging operation on the cropped image, and then, the user can drag the cross-shaped dividing line 601 as required”: Examiners Note: since the claim recites performing a shape-based cropping or depth-based copping techniques to crop the image, the Examiner in mapping the shape-based cropping as taught by Cheng to read on the limitation).
Claims 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schloter et al. (US 20130201307 A1; hereafter referred to as Schloter) in view of Cheng et al. (See Machine Translation for CN 114723768 A; hereafter referred to as Cheng) further in view of Mao et al. (US20240028904 A1; hereafter referred to as Mao) and Li et al. (See Machine Translation for WO 2015141009 A1; hereafter referred to as Li).
Regarding Claim 7, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the method of claim 1, but fails to explicitly teach:
performing a depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream;
In the same field on endeavor, Li teaches:
performing a depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream (Li, page 6, para 4, “the crop processing unit 102 c determines the document area based on the color and the depth, and performs a cropping process on the document area”).
Schloter, Cheng, Mao and Li are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter in view Cheng further in view of Mao with the invention of Li to perform depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream; doing so can efficiently crop and accurately correct document distortions (Li, Summary, para 1 - 2); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
Regarding Claim 14, Schloter in view of Cheng further in view of Mao teaches the system of claim 1, but fails to explicitly teach:
performing a depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream;
In the same field on endeavor, Li teaches:
performing a depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream (Li, page 6, para 4, “the crop processing unit 102 c determines the document area based on the color and the depth, and performs a cropping process on the document area”).
Schloter, Cheng, Mao and Li are considered analogous art as they are reasonably pertinent to the same field of endeavor of image processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Schloter in view Cheng further in view of Mao with the invention of Li to perform depth-based cropping technique to crop the object in the data stream; doing so can efficiently crop and accurately correct document distortions (Li, Summary, para 1 - 2); thus one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the references.
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.
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VAISALI RAO. KOPPOLU
Examiner
Art Unit 2664
/JENNIFER MEHMOOD/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2664
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