DETAILED ACTION
Acknowledgement is made of the preliminary amendment submitted on 02/20/2024. In virtue of this amendments:
Claims 1-15 are currently amended; and thus,
Claims 1-15 are pending;
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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of this application’s status as a 371 of PCT/EP2022/073077 filed on 08/18/2022.
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy of EP21196205.5 filed on 09/13/2021 has been received/retrieved by the office.
Acknowledgment is made of this Patent Application claims priority under 35 U.S.C § 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. 63/236,486 filed on 08/24/2021.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 02/20/2024 has been considered by the examiner.
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.
(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.
Claims 1, 3-8, 11-12 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US2021/0160975A1 hereinafter “Cremer”
Regarding claim 1, Cremer discloses a method (10) for lighting system control, comprising:
extracting, via a feature extractor (¶25L2-3: content identifier generator), one or more features from data generated by a smart coated surface (¶25L3-4: fingerprint generation on incoming media content), the data corresponding to content on the smart coated surface (¶25L7-10: an image sensor to monitor incoming video data from the content provider);
selecting, via a content classifier, one of a plurality of content labels for the data based on the one or more features (¶30L1-15: the content identifier may return a content identifier upon identifying the media content) and an output of a recurrent neural network (RNN) (¶45L11-17: Recurrent Neural Network and other machine learning engines to pre-process signals), wherein the selected content label indicates a type of content provided on the smart coated surface (¶34L1-19: a mood classification engine may classify media content as a first mood classification, a second mood classification); and
controlling, via a lighting controller, one or more luminaires based on the content label. (¶40L1-21: light control generator combines the information into a light drive waveform that informs LEDs to adjust brightness levels)
Regarding claim 3, Cremer discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising
generating, via the feature extractor, a fused feature vector by concatenating the extracted features. (¶39L1-14: the light control generator retrieves tempo data and mood data from the metadata database corresponding to the content identifier)
Regarding claim 4, Cremer discloses the method of claim 3, wherein
the selecting of the content label is further based on the fused feature vector. (¶40L1-21: light control generator combines the information into a light drive waveform that informs LEDs to adjust brightness levels)
Regarding claim 5, Cremer discloses the method of claim 1, wherein
the one or more features include one or more time domain features. (¶99L1-7: the signal plot is a time domain plot, includes time in seconds)
Regarding claim 6, Cremer discloses the method of claim 5, wherein
the one or more time domain features include at least one of a mean, a median, and a skewness. (¶99L1-7: the signal plot is a time domain plot, includes time in seconds)
Regarding claim 7, Cremer discloses the method of claim 1, wherein
the one or more features include one or more frequency domain features. (¶25L1-26: determines the frequency composition of the audio as time progress)
Regarding claim 8, Cremer discloses the method of claim 7, wherein
the one or more frequency domain features include at least one of a spectral entropy, a median frequency, and a fundamental frequency. (¶25L1-26: determines the frequency composition by performing a Fourier transform on a short window of time)
Regarding claim 11, Cremer discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising
splitting the data into one or more sub-sequences prior to extracting the features. (¶34L1-19: a mood classification engine may classify media content as a first mood classification, a second mood classification)
Regarding claim 12, Cremer discloses the method of claim 1, wherein
the selecting of the content label is further based on external data. (¶188: exchange of data with external machines)
Regarding claim 15, the claim recites similar limitations as recited in claim 1, and therefore rejected for the same reasons.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cremer.
Regarding claim 2, Cremer discloses the method of claim 1,
Cremer does not expclitly disclose:
the recurrent neural network is a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network.
It would have been obvious to one ordinarily skilled in the art prior to the effective filing date of the application to modify the RNN disclosed by Cremer to be a LSTM.
One of ordinary skill in the art would’ve been motivated because it is well know that LSTM overcomes the limitations of standard RNNs, particularly the vanishing/exploding gradient problem and the difficulty in learning long-term dependencies.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9-10 and 13-14 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RAYMOND R CHAI whose telephone number is (571)270-0576. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:30AM-5:00PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alexander H Taningco can be reached at (571)272-8048. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/Raymond R Chai/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2844