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
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the subject matter of claims 1-16 suffice to obviate the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 as directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more. However, the broadest reasonable interpretation of claim 16 includes embodiment upon transitory media and the claim is thus considered to recite a signal per se and as such remains rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 based thereon as ¶ 22 of the instant PGPub 20240221777 does not effectively preclude such an embodiment.
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 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 of this title, 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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
Claims 1-17 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang: 20120221131 further in view of Joren; “PANAKO-ASCALABLEACOUSTICFINGERPRINTINGSYSTEM HANDLINGTIME-SCALEANDPITCHMODIFICATION,” (copy provided by Examiner, copyright 2014 and hereinafter Jo) and further in view of Wang: 7627477 hereinafter Wang_2
Regarding claim 1
Wang teaches:
An apparatus for processing an audio stream (Wang: Abstract; Fig 1: system acquires and processes first audio signal such as comprising a stream of sampled data), comprising:
one or more processors (Wang: ¶ 42, 43: system comprises one or more processors, operative in concert with coded instructions such as borne upon storage media) configured to cause performance of at least the following:
obtaining first peaks of an audio stream, wherein each of the first peaks comprises a first peak amplitude at a first frequency and at a first time offset from a beginning of the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 21, 48, 54-57, 61, 62, etc. ; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: system acquires a landmark comprising a first peak point upon first frequency thereof with a particular coefficient of energy thereof and determines a time differential or offset based thereon, said offset capturing a relationship relative to the beginning of a file);
for each first peak, detecting a second peak in a window with a predetermined offset from the first peak, wherein the second peak comprises a second peak amplitude at a second frequency and at a second time offset from the beginning of the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 48, 53-57, 61, 62, etc.; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: system acquires additional landmarks comprising second, etc. peaks comprising energy at particular frequencies at a predetermined sampling window where the time for the second peak is calculated as a distance from the first landmark , peak thereof; wherein said landmarks are acquired at fixed offsets from each from the other and comprise peak frequency, coefficient thereof, time with respect to a first peak; in the spectrogram depicted in figures 7 the particular amplitude of a particular frequency at a particular time is represented by the intensity or color of each point in the image); and
for each first peak, generating a fingerprint hash based on the first frequency, a time difference between the first time offset and the second time offset, a frequency difference between the first frequency and the second frequency (Wang: ¶ 54, 61-64, 71; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: system computes plurality of fingerprints from sampled data each fingerprint comprising a hashed function of plural features is encoded comprising landmark data such as a spectrogram; said spectrogram including the first, second, etc. peaks, frequencies corresponding thereto and a frequency ratio of frequency differences corresponding to time differences among the peaks, which are hashed together to form distinct fingerprints relevant to distinct times in the capture of samples).
Wang strongly suggests the claimed subject matter as in both Wang and the instant application the fingerprint is derived from, based on, etc. a spectrogram itself derived from, based on, etc. a stream of PCM samples, spectral components thereof; which as shown in Wang includes amplitude values, such as coefficients on and about the significant peak frequencies, differences among the frequencies present about the peaks; timewise differences from a beginning point of spectrogram capture; and strongly suggests amplitude differences represented by difference of color encoding the energy values about the peaks (Wang: ¶ 24, 39 54, 58-61, 67, 76; Figs 7: coordinate and difference values of a spectrogram concatenated into bit fields to form a hashed fingerprint). Wang does not explicitly teach the fingerprint wherein each of the first peaks comprise an explicit amplitude value sufficient to thereby encode a difference value between amplitudes with respect to different frequencies and frequency differences thereof corresponding thereto.
In a related field of endeavor Jo teaches a system and method for granular acoustic fingerprinting wherein the system encodes a frequency difference between two frequencies into a fingerprint hash (Jo: § 2.3); and determines a maxima of event points in a spectrogram window based on time and frequency (Jo: § 2.1) and as such stores a time ratio encoding a time difference (Jo: ¶ 2.1-2.3). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to include the encoding of explicit frequency differences as taught or suggested by Jo in a fingerprint such as that of Wang bearing encoded time differences into a fingerprint, hash, etc. such as that of Wang and/or Jo and for at least the purpose of improving speed and reliability of identification of audio fragments in the face of distortions of the audio; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Wang in view of Jo thus teaches the benefit of encoding difference values of spectral parameters such as frequency difference values and time difference values and strongly suggests but does not explicitly discuss the encoding of amplitude difference values within the fingerprint, hash, etc.
In a related field of endeavor Wang_2 teaches a system and method for generating fingerprints of audio such as for matching audio (Wang_2: Abstract) wherein each fingerprint comprises local features such as spectral peaks corresponds to a frequency value and coefficient, amplitude, energy value etc. thereof, as well as variant and invariant components of the underlying audio (Wang_2: Col 3:25-3:30) and the variant component comprises a value that may be distorted such as by variations to frequency, amplitude, and/or time (Wang_2: 5:35-5:60); as such any parameter value—time, frequency, energy may comprise a variant component and the variant components are encoded alongside the invariant components as most and least significant bits respectively of the fingerprint (Wang_2: 5:18-5:30) and for pairs of fingerprint objects a relational value is encoded wherein the relational values comprises a difference of logarithm of parameter values therein which is used to generate a histogram by which audio samples are matched (Wang_2: Col 3:45-51, 6:9-6:14). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to encode an amplitude difference as taught or suggested by Wang_2 within the Wang in view of Jo system and method for at least the purpose of further improving the matching of samples as discussed with respect to Wang in view of Jo supra; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 2
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are configured to cause performance of at least the following:
for each first peak, detecting also a third peak in the window with the predetermined offset from the first peak, wherein the third peak comprises a third peak amplitude at a third frequency and at a third time offset from the beginning of the audio stream; and
for each first peak, generating the fingerprint hash also based on an additional time difference, an additional frequency difference and an additional amplitude difference (Wang: ¶ 48, 53-59, 61-64, 71, etc.; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: such as for a multi-slice peak comprising three or more peaks, frequency, amplitude, offset, difference, etc. data thereof); (Jo: ¶ 2.1-2.3: such as by maintaining difference values of frequency and time for a plurality of event values); (Wang_2: 3:25-3:51, 5:18-5:60, 6:9-6:14: such as by encoding difference values of amplitude, frequency, time). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 3
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the additional time difference is defined between the first time offset and the third time offset, the additional frequency difference is defined between the first frequency and the third frequency, and the additional amplitude difference is defined between the first amplitude and the third amplitude (Wang: ¶ 48, 53-59, 61-64, 71, etc.; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: such as for a multi-slice peak comprising three or more peaks, frequency, amplitude, offset, difference, etc. data thereof); (Jo: ¶ 2.1-2.3: system maintains relative information for frequency and time for a plurality of first, second, third, etc. event timings) Wang_2: 3:25-3:51, 5:18-5:60, 6:9-6:14: system encodes plural difference values of amplitude, frequency, and/or time for a plurality of peaks. The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 4
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the additional time difference is defined between the second time offset and the third time offset, the additional frequency difference is defined between the second frequency and the third frequency, and the additional amplitude difference is defined between the second amplitude and the third amplitude (Wang: ¶ 48, 53-59, 61-64, 71, etc.; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: such as for a multi-slice peak comprising three or more peaks, frequency, amplitude, offset, difference, etc. data thereof); (Jo: ¶ 2.1-2.3: such as by maintaining difference values of frequency and time for a plurality of event values); (Wang_2: 3:25-3:51, 5:18-5:60, 6:9-6:14: such as by encoding difference values of amplitude, frequency, time). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 5
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configured to cause performance of at least the following: for each first peak, after the generating, applying an additional hash function on the fingerprint hash. Examiner has taken official notice which Applicant has failed to timely and explicitly traverse and it is thus accepted as Admitted Prior Art (APA: please see MPEP 2144.03) that application of a second or additional hashing to a fingerprint hash would have comprised an obvious inclusion for at least the purpose of embedding additional metadata; efficiently encoding plural time offsets; including additional services such synchronized lyrics, hyperlinks, etc. into the hashed fingerprint; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom. The claim is thus considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 6
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configured to cause performance of at least the following: for each first peak, storing the fingerprint hash and the first time offset in a same data structure (Wang: Fig 8A, 8B: a soundID comprises a fingerprint and a landmark including an offset value); (Jo: ¶ 2.1-2.3); (Wang_2: 3:25-3:51, 5:18-5:60, 6:9-6:14). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 7
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the obtaining comprises: transforming the audio stream from a time-domain to a frequency-domain (Wang: ¶ 51, 61, 76: such as using a Fourier transform to generate PCM sample stream); and analyzing the audio stream in the frequency-domain to detect the first peaks (Wang: ¶ 51, 61, 76: the PCM stream of the captured sample is analyzed to generate an index set of fingerprints with respect to landmarks). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 8
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the transforming comprises: using a Fourier to transform the audio stream into a spectrogram describing audio amplitudes at different frequencies over time (Wang: ¶ 51, 61, 76: FFT used to generate spectrogram of an acquired stream). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 9
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the obtaining comprises: limiting the audio stream to a subset of a full frequency range of the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 37, 51, 61, 76: the transforming to a frequency domain at a particular sampling rate determines a predetermined frequency range of the resultant signal and as such the amount of frequency spectrum, above and/or below any particular frequency is pre-determined by the sampling rate and in the case of an 8k sampling rate limits the audio stream to a less than full frequency range; similarly the system functions upon acquired signals which may be band limited, quantized, or reduced to voice quality compression or other similarly compressed streams). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 10
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the obtaining comprises: dividing the audio stream into a predetermined number of frequency bands (Wang: ¶ 8, 21, 37: such as by using MFCC coefficients, frequency components of a spectrogram, etc.; further pulse code modulations is generally considered to break an audio signal up into a plurality of frequency bands based on sampling frequency such as for numerical representation, subsequent storage, and reproduction thereof); and using a decaying value for each frequency band to detect the first peaks (Wang: ¶ 93: exponential decay utilized to decay a score over time). Examiner has taken official notice which Applicant has failed to timely and explicitly traverse and it is thus accepted as Admitted Prior Art (APA: please see MPEP 2144.03) that the utility of an exponential decay threshold value would have comprised an obvious inclusion for at least the purpose of managing buffering or persisting of audio over time with respect to a plurality of search windows; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom. The claim is thus considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 11
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the window with the predetermined offset from the first peak covers a predetermined amount of frequency spectrum both above and below the first frequency (Wang: ¶ 51, 61, 76: the transforming to a frequency domain at a particular sampling rate determines a predetermined frequency range of the resultant signal and as such the amount of frequency spectrum, above and/or below any particular frequency is pre-determined by the sampling rate). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 12
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the one or more processors are configured to cause performance of at least the following: obtaining tracks, each track comprising stored fingerprint hashes (Wang: ¶ 40, 54, etc.; Fig 1: a plurality of matching fingerprints comprising hashed features are retrieved from a database to determine a matching track to generated fingerprints of a captured sample stream); and matching recursively the generated fingerprint hashes of the audio stream against the stored fingerprint hashes of the tracks using match time offsets between the audio stream and each track in order to identify the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 39-41, 78-84; fig 1: generated fingerprint matched against retrieved fingerprints to determine a matching track by subtracting landmarks one from the other and recursively generating a histogram based thereon; this process is considered recursive as it is based on a determine succession of elements by operations thereon which depend stepwise on a similar determination having been conducted at a previous step). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 13
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the matching comprises: taking into account a varying playback speed of the audio stream by, when finding a matching stored fingerprint hash of a specific track, searching for earlier stored fingerprint hashes of the specific track, and if the matching stored fingerprint is by an allowable deviation within a previously used match time offset, accepting the matching stored fingerprint hash into a sequence of matches of the specific track (Wang: ¶ 39-41; fig 1: generated fingerprint matched against retrieved fingerprints to determine a matching track; this process is considered recursive as it is based on a determine succession of elements by operations thereon which depend stepwise on a similar determination having been conducted at a previous step); previously stored fingerprint/landmark pairs within a determine threshold are admitted to a candidate set of correspondences to determine a match). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 14
Wang in view of Jo in view of Wang_2 teaches or suggests:
The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the one or more processors comprise: one or more memories including computer program code; and one or more processors configured to execute the computer program code to cause performance of the apparatus (Wang: ¶ 42, 43: system comprises one or more processors, operative in concert with coded instructions such as borne upon storage media). The claim is considered obvious over Wang as modified by Jo and Wang_2 as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Wang, Jo, and/or Wang_2 to the modified device of Wang, Jo, and Wang_2; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claims 15, 16—the claims are considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 1 and are similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 17
Wang teaches:
(Wang: Abstract; Fig 1: system acquires and processes first audio signal such as comprising a stream of sampled data), comprising:
one or more processors (Wang: ¶ 42, 43: system comprises one or more processors, operative in concert with coded instructions such as borne upon storage media) configured to execute instructions for:
obtaining first peaks of an audio stream, wherein each of the first peaks comprises a first peak amplitude at a first frequency and at a first time offset from a beginning of the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 21, 48, 54-57, 61, 62, etc. ; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: system acquires a landmark comprising a first peak point upon first frequency thereof with a particular coefficient of energy thereof and determines a time differential or offset based thereon, said offset capturing a relationship relative to the beginning of a file);
obtaining tracks, each track comprising stored fingerprint hashes (Wang: Abstract; ¶ 48, 72-74: such as to generate a sound database of tracks indexed by fingerprinting in the disclosed manner and querying said database using an obtained query track to resolve matches thereto);
for each first peak, detecting a second peak in a window with a predetermined offset from the first peak, wherein the second peak comprises a second peak amplitude at a second frequency and at a second time offset from the beginning of the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 48, 53-57, 61, 62, etc.; Fig 1, 7A, 7B: system acquires additional landmarks comprising second, etc. peaks comprising energy at particular frequencies at a predetermined sampling window where the time for the second peak is calculated as a distance from the first landmark , peak thereof; wherein said landmarks are acquired at fixed offsets from each from the other and comprise peak frequency, coefficient thereof, time with respect to a first peak; in the spectrogram depicted in figures 7 the particular amplitude of a particular frequency at a particular time is represented by the intensity or color of each point in the image);
for each first peak, generating a fingerprint hash based on the first frequency, a time difference between the first time offset and the second time offset, a frequency difference between the first frequency and the second frequency (Wang: ¶ 39-41, 54, 78-84; Fig 1; wherein the matching comprises: taking into account a varying playback speed of the audio stream by, when finding a matching stored fingerprint hash of a specific track, searching for earlier stored fingerprint hashes of the specific track, and if the matching stored fingerprint is by an allowable deviation within a previously used match time offset, accepting the matching stored fingerprint hash into a sequence of matches of the specific track);
matching recursively the generated fingerprint hashes of the audio stream against the stored fingerprint hashes of the tracks using match time offsets between the audio stream and each track in order to identify the audio stream (Wang: ¶ 39-41, 78-84; fig 1: generated fingerprint matched against retrieved fingerprints to determine a matching track by subtracting landmarks one from the other and recursively generating a histogram based thereon; this process is considered recursive as it is based on a determine succession of elements by operations thereon which depend stepwise on a similar determination having been conducted at a previous step); wherein the matching comprises:
taking into account a varying playback speed of the audio stream by, when finding a matching stored fingerprint hash of a specific track, searching for earlier stored fingerprint hashes of the specific track (Wang: ¶ 87 such as by increasing offset bin values), and
if the matching stored fingerprint is by an allowable deviation within a previously used match time offset, accepting the matching stored fingerprint hash into a sequence of matches of the specific track (Wang: ¶ 40, 81-87: such as by forcing linear correspondences by increasing the offset bin values to accommodate a determined range of values, such as based on linear relationships, a determined margin thereof, etc.).
Wang strongly suggests the claimed subject matter as in both Wang and the instant application the fingerprint is derived from, based on, etc. a spectrogram itself derived from, based on, etc. a stream of PCM samples, spectral components thereof; which as shown in Wang includes amplitude values, such as coefficients on and about the significant peak frequencies, differences among the frequencies present about the peaks; timewise differences from a beginning point of spectrogram capture; and strongly suggests amplitude differences represented by difference of color encoding the energy values about the peaks (Wang: ¶ 24, 39 54, 58-61, 67, 76; Figs 7: coordinate and difference values of a spectrogram concatenated into bit fields to form a hashed fingerprint). Wang does not explicitly teach the fingerprint wherein each of the first peaks comprise an explicit amplitude value sufficient to thereby encode a difference value between amplitudes with respect to different frequencies and frequency differences thereof corresponding thereto.
In a related field of endeavor Jo teaches a system and method for granular acoustic fingerprinting wherein the system encodes a frequency difference between two frequencies into a fingerprint hash (Jo: § 2.3); and determines a maxima of event points in a spectrogram window based on time and frequency (Jo: § 2.1) and as such stores a time ratio encoding a time difference (Jo: ¶ 2.1-2.3). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to include the encoding of explicit frequency differences as taught or suggested by Jo in a fingerprint such as that of Wang bearing encoded time differences into a fingerprint, hash, etc. such as that of Wang and/or Jo and for at least the purpose of improving speed and reliability of identification of audio fragments in the face of distortions of the audio; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Wang in view of Jo thus teaches the benefit of encoding difference values of spectral parameters such as frequency difference values and time difference values and strongly suggests but does not explicitly discuss the encoding of amplitude difference values within the fingerprint, hash, etc.
IN a related field of endeavor Wang 2 teaches a system and method for generating fingerprints of audio such as for matching audio (Wang_2: Abstract) wherein each fingerprint comprises local features such as spectral peaks corresponds to a frequency value and coefficient, amplitude, energy value etc. thereof, as well as variant and invariant components of the underlying audio (Wang_2: Col 3:25-3:30) and the variant component comprises a value that may be distorted such as by variations to frequency, amplitude, and/or time (Wang_2: 5:35-5:60); as such any parameter value—time, frequency, energy may comprise a variant component and the variant components are encoded alongside the invariant components as most and least significant bits respectively of the fingerprint (Wang_2: 5:18-5:30) and for pairs of fingerprint objects a relational value is encoded wherein the relational values comprises a difference of logarithm of parameter values therein which is used to generate a histogram by which audio samples are matched (Wang_2: Col 3:45-51, 6:9-6:14). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to encode an amplitude difference as taught or suggested by Wang_2 within the Wang in view of Jo system and method for at least the purpose of further improving the matching of samples as discussed with respect to Wang in view of Jo supra; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments in concert with narrowing amendments to the independent claims, see Remarks and Claims, filed 2/13/26 with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-16 under 35 USC 103 over Wang in view of Archambault have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Wang, Joren, and Wang_2.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PAUL C MCCORD whose telephone number is (571)270-3701. The examiner can normally be reached 730-630 M-F.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, CAROLYN EDWARDS can be reached at (571) 270-7136. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PAUL C MCCORD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2692
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