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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-11 are pending in this application.
Drawings
The drawings received on 4/26/2024 are accepted for examination purposes.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 4/26/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because Claim 11 recites ‘a computer readable storage medium…’; however there is no explicit definition of a computer readable storage medium in Applicant's Specification. Further, paragraph 0081 of Applicant’s Specification describes reading out and executing computer-executable instructions (e.g., one or more programs) recorded on a storage medium (which may also be referred to more fully as a ‘non-transitory computer-readable storage medium’). Applicant’s Specification is silent of the storage medium excluding a signal. A claim drawn to such a storage medium that covers both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments by adding the limitation “non-transitory” to the claim.
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) 1-7 and 10-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Bala et al. (US-2010/0086230).
As to Claim 1, Bala teaches ‘A profile editing apparatus comprising: one or more memories that stores instructions; and one or more processors that causes, by executing the instructions, the profile editing apparatus to: acquire a color profile including a table for calculating an output color for an input color [Fig 3, par 0028-0029 – reading in a natural-language-color (NLC) private tag and LUT tag of an ICC profile]; acquire specific color information in which a relationship between input and output colors different from the output color calculated using the table included in the color profile is uniquely determined [par 0015-0019, 0028-0029 – displaying editing commands in a user interface to accept revised edits (specific color information) from a user to provide new color transforms (input/output colors) for translating to mathematical functions in 3D color space of an LUT]; and add the specific color information to the color profile [par 0028-0029 – writing out a new ICC profile with modified LUT and new NLC private tags]’.
Further, in regards to claim 10, the profile editing apparatus of claim 1 performs the method of claim 10.
Further, in regards to claim 11, the method of claim 10 is fully embodied in the computer readable storage medium of claim 11.
As to Claim 2, Bala teaches ‘wherein the color profile and the specific color information are expressed in a color space with three or more channels [par 0025 – profiles for device contain transformations between device independent or visually based color space used by particular devices]’.
As to Claim 3, Bala teaches ‘wherein the color space with three or more channels is a red-green-blue (RGB) color space [par 0025 – RGB]’.
As to Claim 4, Bala teaches ‘wherein the color space with three or more channels is a cyan-magenta-yellow-black (CMYK) color space [par 0025 – CMYK]’.
As to Claim 5, Bala teaches ‘wherein the color profile is an International Color Consortium (ICC) profile [par 0020-0021 – Internation Color Consortium (ICC) profile]’.
As to Claim 6, Bala teaches ‘wherein the specific color information is added as a private tag of the ICC profile [par 0020, 0028-0029 – private tags are used to store special information of a color transformation, where new NLC private tags and modified lookup table are written in a new ICC profile]’.
As to Claim 7, Bala teaches ‘wherein the specific color information includes information about an input color and information about an output color [par 0015-0019, 0028-0029 – revised edits (specific color information) provide new color transforms (input/output colors) for translating to mathematical functions in 3D color space of an LUT]’.
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.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bala et al. (US-2010/0086230) in view of Shaw (US-2020/0314288).
As to Claim 8, Bala teaches all of the claimed elements/features as recited in independent claim 1. Bala does not disclose expressly ‘wherein the one or more processors further causes, by executing the instructions, the profile editing apparatus to acquire a value of an input color and a value of an output color based on chart information as the specific color information’, although Bala teaches revised edits (specific color information) provide new color transforms (input/output colors) for translating to mathematical functions in 3D color space of an LUT [par 0015-0019, 0028-0029].
Shaw in the proposed combination teaches ‘wherein the one or more processors further causes, by executing the instructions, the profile editing apparatus to acquire a value of an input color and a value of an output color based on chart information as the specific color information [par 0008-0009, 0017, 0025, 0036 – reconstructed look up table for an ICC profile builder can be a table of data that can be represented by a plurality of numerical blocks organized in rows and columns]’.
Bala and Shaw are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely digital image data color systems. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to include rows and columns in a reconstructed lookup table, as taught by Shaw. The motivation for doing so would have been to determining corrective data using a generated key. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Shaw with Bala to obtain the invention as specified in claim 8.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bala et al. (US-2010/0086230) in view of Gil et al. (US-2010/0225939).
As to Claim 9, Bala teaches ‘An image forming apparatus comprising: the profile editing apparatus according to claim 1 [par 0015-0020, 0025, 0028-0029 – color editing profile used by a particular device, for printers]’.
Bala does not disclose expressly ‘an image processing apparatus configured to perform color adjustment on image data based on the color profile and the specific color information and to generate print image data’.
Gil in the proposed combination teaches ‘an image processing apparatus configured to perform color adjustment on image data based on the color profile and the specific color information and to generate print image data [par 0080-0081 – generating and utilizing a modified LUT and a stored ICC profile based on the modified LUT when outputting a hard copy of an image by a hard copy output device]’.
Bala and Gil are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely digital image data color systems. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to include outputting a hard copy based on modified LUT and stored ICC profile, as taught by Gil. The motivation for doing so would have been to maintaining high image quality for resulting images. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Gil with Bala to obtain the invention as specified in claim 9.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record
a. US Publication No. 2010/0086230
b. US Publication No. 2020/0314288
c. US Publication No. 2010/0225939
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/MIYA J CATO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681