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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 08/12/2026 with respect to the rejection of claims 1-12, 16-20 under 35 U.S.C. 102 and also claims 13-15 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejections have been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of WO 2024/241307 A1 as set forth, infra.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim 8 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WO 2024/241307 A1, hereinafter “WO’307.”.
As per claim 8, WO’307 discloses a system that is implemented, at least in part, by hardware, comprising: a transform component configured to apply a two-dimensional discrete cosine transform upon an area of interest of a spatial image to transform the area of interest of the spatial image into an area of interest of a frequency domain image (See [0041] “a region of interest (ROI) may be obtained from the user” and [0043] “converting the time series into the frequency domain, e.g. using a fast Fourier transform (FFT) or any other applicable transformation into the frequency domain”); and an identification component configured to identify a sub-area of interest from the area of interest of the frequency domain image through employment of a threshold, where the sub-area of interest is a single pixel ([0041] “only the ROI may be analysed for detecting hazard lights” and once the ROI of each image frame is converted into the frequency domain, “determining that the down-sampled pixel includes hazard lights if a detected peak satisfies a threshold” at [0043] where the down-sampled pixel is the sub-area of interest within the ROI and is comprised of a single pixel).
However, WO’307 fails to explicitly disclose the use of a discrete cosine transform when converting the images from the time domain to the frequency domain (WO’307 teaches at [0043] that in addition to an FFT, other applicable transformations are considered).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have substituted a discrete cosine transform for the FFT taught by WO’307 when converting the images from the time domain to the frequency domain as both FFTs and discrete cosine transforms are well known in the art of image analysis and one of ordinary skill in the art would have turned to either method of transformation depending on the user’s preference.
As per claim 16, WO’307 discloses a non-transitory computer-readable medium, communicatively coupled to a processor (see [0052]-[0056]), that stores a command set executable by the processor to facilitate operation of a component set, the component set comprising: a first capture component configured to cause a capture of a first spatial image of a location at a first time by an imager (see [0041] where sequential frames of a user defined ROI from a video are analysed); a second capture component configured to cause a capture of a second spatial image of the location at a second time subsequent to the first time by the imager (see again [0041] – sequence of images); a first transform component configured to apply a two-dimensional discrete cosine transform upon an area of interest of the first spatial image to transform the area of interest of the first spatial image into an area of interest of a first frequency domain image (see [0043] - generating a time series for one or more pixels in the sequential frames and converting the time series to the frequency domain via an FFT); and a second transform component configured to apply the two-dimensional discrete cosine transform upon an area of interest of the second spatial image to transform the area of interest of the second spatial image into an area of interest of a second frequency domain image (see again [0043]), where the area of interest of the first spatial image and the area of interest of the second spatial image cover about the same portion of the location (due to the sequential nature of video frames, e.g. 30 frames per second, inherently the first image frame covers about the same portion as the following image frame in the sequence).
However, WO’307 fails to explicitly disclose the use of a discrete cosine transform when converting the sequential image frames from the time domain to the frequency domain (WO’307 teaches at [0043] that in addition to an FFT, other applicable transformations are considered).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have substituted a discrete cosine transform for the FFT taught by WO’307 when converting the images from the time domain to the frequency domain as both FFTs and discrete cosine transforms are well known in the art of image analysis and one of ordinary skill in the art would have turned to either method of transformation depending on the user’s preference.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7, 17-24 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.
Claims 9-12 are allowed.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID OMETZ whose telephone number is (571)272-7593. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 8am-4pm.
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DAVID OMETZ
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2672
/DAVID OMETZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2672
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