DETAILED ACTION
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
2. This office action is responsive to the Applicant’s amendment filed on 4/21/2026. Claims 1, 3-4, and 6-7 have been amended. Claims 1-7 are pending and will be considered for examination.
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.
3. Claims 1-2 and 6-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dubba et al. (US 2021/0216336 A1) in view of Nozue et al. (US 2019/0129670 A1) and further in view of Ardhanari et al. (US 2021/0248268 A1).
As in Claim 1, Dubba teaches a document masking device (FIGS. 1-2, pars. 29-30a computing system 10 comprising one or more computers 20 ), comprising:
a memory configured to store instructions (pars. 30-31, a memory 23 stores programs and data for execution thereof); and
at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to (pars. 31-31, a processor 22 configures to execute the programs stored on the memory):
extract a word belonging to a concealment target attribute representing a type of a word that is to undergo a masking process from text data of a document by using a natural language processing technology (pars. 13, 31, 84-87, 93-95, the system can extract sensitive information (e.g., names, dates of birth, addresses, health record, etc.) that is to be blurred from the text or image data of a document by using a natural language processing).
output the document in which the masking process has been performed on a word of a masking target designated as the masking target from the masking candidate (see FIGS. 4 and 6, pars. 93-95, the image containing the sensitive data can be blurred, as shown in box 616 of FIG. 6, which corresponds to box 416 of FIG. 4).
Dubba does not appear to explicitly teaches presenting the extracted word as a masking candidate.
However, in the same filed of the invention, Nozue teaches presenting the extracted word as a masking candidate (pars. 73-75, 87-79, 90, the confidential information list (area 31), which contains information designated by the user to be concealed, can be presented to the user. Further, the designation candidate list (e.g., names, email addresses, organization, department, user IDS, etc.), which can be presented to the user).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system and method for masking the designated sensitive information on the displayed document, as taught by Dubba, and to present the confidential information list, as taught by Nozue. The motivation is to ensure the authorized user can review, verify, or manage their own confidential data while keeping it hidden from unauthorized parties via masking processing.
Dubba and Nozue do not teach that the natural language processing technology is Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), and
wherein the at least one processor is configured to further extract, as a word belonging to the concealment target attribute, a word that has been erroneously recognized by optical character recognition when the word is determined to belong to the concealment target attribute based on a determination from context according to the BERT technology.
However, in the same field of the invention, Ardhanari teaches that the natural language processing technology is Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), and wherein the at least one processor is configured to further extract, as a word belonging to the concealment target attribute, a word that has been erroneously recognized by optical character recognition when the word is determined to belong to the concealment target attribute based on a determination from context according to the BERT technology (at least pars. 185, 188, 204-208, 242, BERT-based NLP models identify, recover, and mask sensitive entities (e.g., phrases/words/terms) that have been missed during earlier processing stages, including an optical character recognition (OCR) from extracting text data from the document; further see pars. 174, 176, 180, 193, 215-216, 223, 236).
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system and method for masking the designated sensitive information on the displayed document, as taught by Dubba, in view of Nozue’s teachings, and to masking sensitive entities that have been missed during OCR-driven text processing, as taught by Ardhanari. The motivation is to identify and correct or add missed or misread words in OCR text by understanding the context of the sentence, thereby improving text accuracy and completeness using BERT.
As in Claim 2, Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari teaches all the limitations of Claim 1. Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari further teaches that the at least one processor is configured to use a model, the model is generated by performing machine learning on the word belonging to the concealment target attribute and outputs the word belonging to the concealment target attribute included in text data of the document by using the text data of the document as an input (Dubba, pars. 84-88, the system uses machine learning models, including NLP models, to identify and extract sensitive data in both text and image formats. These models can detect information that needs to be masked and apply blurring to display the sensitive information in a protected form; further see pars. 131-133).
Claims 6 and 7 are substantially similar to Claim 1 and rejected under the same rationale.
4. Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dubba et al. (US 2021/0216336 A1) in view of Nozue et al. (US 2019/0129670 A1) in view of Ardhanari et al. (US 2021/0248268 A1) and further in view of Park et al. (US 2021/0377423 A1).
As in Claim 3, Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari teaches all the limitations of Claim 1. Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari does not teach that the document masking device is connected to an information source that outputs reference information including information indicating a word that is to undergo the masking process, and wherein the at least one processor is further configured to extract information of a word of a masking target that is to undergo a masking process from the reference information, and perform a presentation in a state in which information indicating that the word is the word of the masking target is associated with the masking candidate associated with the word of the masking target based on the extracted information.
However, in the same field of the invention, Park teaches that the document masking device is connected to an information source that outputs reference information including information indicating a word that is to undergo the masking process, and wherein the at least one processor is further configured to extract information of a word of a masking target that is to undergo a masking process from the reference information, and perform a presentation in a state in which information indicating that the word is the word of the masking target is associated with the masking candidate associated with the word of the masking target based on the extracted information (FIGS. 1, 5-13, pars. at least 16, 18, 26, 37-44, 57-58, 61-63, 67, 80, the image forming apparatus 100 is connected with various external devices (e.g., a mobile device, a computer, a Cloud based device, a server, another image forming apparatus, a smartphone, or the like) for exchanging data with these external sources and supports redaction of data (e.g., personal information). The sensitive or personal information –whether received from external devices, designated by the user, or automatically detected using OCR/ICR technologies--can be identified, and the image forming apparatus can mask, blur, or obscure on the preview (i.e., image of the document))
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system and method for masking the designated sensitive information on the displayed document, as taught by Dubba, in view of Nozue’s and Ardhanari’s teachings, and to incorporate the way to receive the sensitive information from the external devices for masking processing, as taught by Park. The motivation is to accurately protect privacy by automatically masking sensitive information supplied by external sources before printing, storing, or sharing the document.
5. Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dubba et al. (US 2021/0216336 A1) in view of Nozue et al. (US 2019/0129670 A1) in view of Ardhanari et al. (US 2021/0248268 A1) and further in view of Kobayashi et al. (US 20220309232 A).
As in Claim 4, Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari teaches all the limitations of Claim 1. Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari further teaches that wherein the document is a document included in a paper surface image representing a paper surface converted into an image (Dubba, see FIGS. 4 and 6, pars. 32, 75, 87).
Dubba does not appear to explicitly teach that wherein the at least one processor is further configured to acquire, from the paper surface image, information of an arrangement position of a text represented by the text data in the paper surface image and a width of an occupied area in the paper surface image with respect to the text represented by the text data; specify a masking area of the paper surface image in which the word of the masking target designated as the masking target from the masking candidate is masked by using the information of the arrangement position of the text and the width of the occupied area acquired from the paper surface image; and output the paper surface image including the document in which the masking process has been performed on the masking area.
However, in the same filed of the invention, Kobayashi teaches that wherein the at least one processor is further configured to acquire, from the paper surface image, information of an arrangement position of a text represented by the text data in the paper surface image and a width of an occupied area in the paper surface image with respect to the text represented by the text data (see FIGS. 2, 4-7 and 11-13, at least pars. 26-28, 34-38, 40-42, 55, the system acquires text strings corresponding to predetermined items (e.g., personal information) from a scanned document image, along with their position data (X/Y coordinates, width, and height));
specify a masking area of the paper surface image in which the word of the masking target designated as the masking target from the masking candidate is masked by using the information of the arrangement position of the text and the width of the occupied area acquired from the paper surface image (see FIGS. 2, 4-7 and 11-13, at least pars. 26-28, 34-38, 40-42, 55, based on the identified text strings, the system determines the appropriate masking areas and generates mask images that cover those regions. The size of each mask is based on the width and height of the corresponding text); and
output the paper surface image including the document in which the masking process has been performed on the masking area (see FIGS. 2, 4-7 and 11-13, at least pars. 26-28, 34-38, 40-42, 55, the generated masked images are then superimposed onto the document image to obscure the underlying text)
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the system and method for masking the designated sensitive information on the displayed document, as taught by Dubba, in view of Nozue’s and Ardhanari’s teachings, and to incorporate the way to generate masked image based on the coordinate data of the sensitive information on the document, as taught by Kobayashi. The motivation is to accurately cover only the targeted text during masking processing, ensuring precise and consistent removal of sensitive information.
As in Claim 5, Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari and Kobayashi teach all the limitations of Claim 4. Dubba-Nozue-Ardhanari and Kobayashi further teach that the at least one processor is further configured to extract the text data of the document included in the paper surface image from the paper surface image by an optical character recognition technology (Dubba, pars. 75, 87, and 32, the sensitive data or personal information in the document that needs to be masked (blurred) can be extracted using OCR. The image of the document ca be readily obtained using an image scanner).
Response to Arguments
6. Applicant's arguments with respect to the claims 1-7 have been fully considered, but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 extension fee 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Rinna Yi whose telephone number is (571) 270-7752 and fax number is (571) 270-8752. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:30am-5:00pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Fred Ehichioya can be reached on (571) 272-4034.
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/RINNA YI/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2179
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