DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to communications filed 5/29/2024:
claims 20-39 are pending
claims 1-19 are cancelled
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 § 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 36-37 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 36 recites the limitation "the second parameters". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 37 recites the limitation “the detecting means”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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(s) 20-21 and 30-39 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shi et al (NPL: “Authentication of Voice Commands by Leveraging Vibrations in Wearables, hereinafter “Shi”, disclosed by Applicant) in view of Wu et al (CN108305638, hereinafter “Wu”, disclosed by Applicant).
Regarding claim 20, Shi teaches an apparatus (pg. 2, user authentication framework for VA systems) comprising:
at least one processor (Fig. 1, VA system includes processor); and
at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor (Fig. 1, VA system comprising of memory and processor), cause the apparatus at least to perform:
providing first data derived from a signal received by a microphone of a user device (Fig. 1, pg. 3, capturing user’s speech signal using microphone of the user’s device);
providing second data representing mechanical oscillations within a gyroscope of the user device (pg. 3, capturing user’s speech vibrations through wearable’s accelerometer – pg. 3, however, sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, and microphones are commonly found in commercial wearables);
detecting, based on the first data and the second data, that the signal received by the microphone comprises an ultrasonic signal (pg. 2-3, wearID examines the data captured by the microphone and accelerometer to determine whether an ultrasound attack was used wherein launching ultrasound attacks involves mapping a voice command to ultrasound frequency bands (see pg. 2));
processing third data to generate fourth data representing an estimate of one or more audible sounds in the first data, wherein the third data is either the second data or is derived from the second data (pg. 4, processing/denoising the accelerometer data to generate speech data);
Shi fails to explicitly teach and subtracting the fourth data from the first data to provide fifth data.
Wu teaches and subtracting the fourth data from the first data to provide fifth data (pg. 5, the audio signal processed from the ultrasound signal can be filtered out and/or discarded to avoid a malicious attack on the user’s device).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to substitute the user authentication method via a similarity comparison (as taught by Shi) for the filtering/discarding of a received signal approach to user authentication (as taught by Wu). The rationale to do so is to substitute one well known signal processing technique for another to yield the predictable result of user authentication.
Regarding claim 21, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the processing comprises a filter configured to receive the third data and to generate, based at least in part on filter coefficients of the filter, the fourth data (Shi, pg. 7, high-pass filtering to remove effects of low-frequency motions to enhance speech vibrations).
Regarding claim 30, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the detecting comprises detecting that the signal received by the microphone comprises an ultrasonic signal for a time period T and wherein the subtracting comprises subtracting the fourth data from the first data for only part of the time period T (Shi, pg. 7, time-frequency analysis done in short frames and Fig. 5 shows the comparison of data done in a time axis-based fashion).
Regarding claim 31, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the subtracting comprises subtracting the fourth data from the first data for a plurality of spaced-apart sub-periods within the time period T (Shi, Fig. 5, pg. 7, the captured data has been converted to the T-F domain to be examined/compared thus it would’ve been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to examine sub-periods).
Regarding claim 32, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the first data is provided at the output of one or more non-linear components that process the signal received by the microphone (Shi, pg. 2, due to their non-linearity, microphones can render commands in ultrasound frequency bands into normal frequency bands).
Regarding claim 33, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the detecting comprises detecting that the signal received by the microphone comprises an ultrasonic signal based, at least in part, on identifying non-zero values of the first data and the second or third data for one or more corresponding instances or periods (Shi, pg. 7, time-frequency feature extraction calculates energy distributions across frequencies within a time window).
Regarding claim 34, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the detecting comprises performing amplitude envelope correlation using respective waveforms represented by the first data and the second or third data for generating a first parameter indicative of a similarity between the respective waveforms, and wherein the detection is based, at least in part, on the first parameter (Wu, pg. 5, comparing amplitude of audio signal with amplitude of ultrasonic signal; Shi, Fig. 2, similarity comparison based on extracted features).
Regarding claim 35, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the detecting comprises performing spectral analysis of frequency domain representations of respective waveforms represented by the first data and the second or third data for generating a second parameter indicative of similarity between the frequency domain representations, and wherein the detection is based, at least in part, on the second parameter (Shi, Fig. 2, detecting similarities based on extracted features; pg. 7, using time-frequency analysis to extract features).
Regarding claim 36, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the detection is based, at least in part, on the first and second parameters meeting respective predetermined conditions (Shi, Fig. 2, a similarity threshold has to be met in order to determine authentication; pg. 7, using time-frequency analysis to extract features).
Regarding claim 37, Shi in view of Wu teaches wherein the detecting means comprises one or more machine-learned models trained using training data comprising predetermined sets of first and second parameters known to be generated responsive to ultrasonic signals being transmitted to the user device, wherein the detection is based on an output of the one or more machine-learned models (Shi, pg. 7, using machine learning approach to detect wake words based on time-frequency features).
Regarding claim 38, it is rejected similarly as claim 20. The method can be found in Wu (pg. 1, signal processing method).
Regarding claim 39, S it is rejected similarly as claim 20. The medium can be found in Wu (pg. 11, storage medium).
Claim(s) 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shi et al (NPL: “Authentication of Voice Commands by Leveraging Vibrations in Wearables, hereinafter “Shi”, disclosed by Applicant) in view of Wu et al (CN108305638, hereinafter “Wu”, disclosed by Applicant) in further view of He et al (NPL: “Canceling Inaudible Voice Commands Against Voice Control Systems”, hereinafter “He”, disclosed by Applicant).
Regarding claim 22, Shi in view of Wu fail to explicitly teach wherein the filter is an adaptive filter in which current values of the filter coefficients are modified based, at least in part, on the fifth data to provide updated filter coefficients.
He teaches wherein the filter is an adaptive filter in which current values of the filter coefficients are modified based, at least in part, on the fifth data to provide updated filter coefficients (§4.2.3, adaptive filtering can be used in determining a cancellation signal wherein the adaptive filter has to take into account parameters for voice vs non-voice).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply a technique of using adaptive filtering in determining attack signals (as taught by He) user authentication system (as taught by Shi in view of Wu). The rationale to do so is to use a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 23-29 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Refer to PTO-892, Notice of References Cited for a listing of analogous art.
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/QIN ZHU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2691