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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Species (i) in the reply filed on 07/07/2026 is acknowledged.
Newly submitted claims 28-33 are directed to an invention that is independent or distinct from the elected invention for the following reasons: Claims 28-33 require two different warping of two different sets of control points and providing two different warped images to two different recipients. Such requirements are independent or distinct from the elected invention.
Accordingly, claims 28-33 are withdrawn from consideration as being directed to a non-elected invention. See 37 CFR 1.142(b) and MPEP § 821.03.
To preserve a right to petition, the reply to this action must distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement. Otherwise, the election shall be treated as a final election without traverse. Traversal must be timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are subsequently added, applicant must indicate which of the subsequently added claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
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, 3-4, 7, 21-22, 24, 27 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Maes (US 2001/0002931).
As to claim 1, Maes discloses a computer-implemented method of image warping for information security, the method comprising:
accessing an image (para. 0022, “The arrangement receives an input image I”);
identifying candidate control points corresponding to image features within the image (para. 0024, “The salient point extraction module 10 identifies a fixed number K of most significant pixels (hereinafter also referred to as most salient points or salient points for short) of the input image I”);
selecting a portion of the candidate control points corresponding to copy-resilient image features (para. 0026, “This set of pixels is applied to the matching module 11, which matches the salient points with the watermark and identifies a set S1 of salient points that lie on the watermark W, and a set S0 of salient points that does not”);
generating a set of control points randomly determined from the selected portion of candidate control points (para. 0026, 0047; “This set of pixels is applied to the matching module 11, which matches the salient points with the watermark and identifies a set S1 of salient points that lie on the watermark W “; “The watermark consists of a pseudo-random, dense subset of image pixels, e.g., a pattern of lines (20)“); and
warping the image using the set of control points (para. 0027).
As to claim 3, Maes discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: determining pixel neighborhoods for the image features (para. 0023); and identifying the copy-resilient image features based on a pixel contrast of pixels in the pixel neighborhoods para. 0024, 0025, “Salient points can be, inter alia, the pixels giving the highest response to an edge-detect filter, but there are many other ways of finding significant points. Other examples of significant points are corners of edges, or local maxima or local minima. The saliency of pixels may be derived from the luminance of pixels, the chrominance, or both”; e.g., “significant points are corners of edges, or local maxima or local minima, or saliency of pixels derived from the luminance of pixels, the chrominance, or both” are “based on a pixel contrast of pixels”).
As to claim 4, Maes discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving a selection of an area within the image (para. 0026); and
removing candidate control points located within the selected area of the image (para. 0026, 0027).
As to claim 7, Maes discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein: warping the image is performed using a decay function that adjusts pixels based on proximity to a control point, where pixels closer to control points are adjusted to a greater degree than pixels farther from control points (para. 0027, “The geometric changes introduced by warping affect neighborhoods of the pixels of S in a smooth way, such that at some distance of a given pixel the geometric change decays to zero. The warping algorithm is preferably such that it does not create too many new significant points. The direction into which a point is warped should be adapted to local image features, such that it does not introduce visual artifacts”; and
pixels within a select portion of the image are held constant during the warping (para. 0029).
As to claims 21-22, 24, 27, these claims recite features similar to those discussed above. Therefore, they are rejected for reasons similar to those discussed above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 5-6, 23, 25-26 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 prior art discloses the claim limitations discussed above, but fails to disclose the combined features required by each of dependent claims 2, 5-6, 23, 25-26.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Aller relates to decoding a digital watermark from imagery captured by the device and, by reference to watermark payload data, obtaining salient point data corresponding to an object depicted in the imagery.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHUOC TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-7399. The examiner can normally be reached 9am-5pm.
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/PHUOC TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2668
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