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 .
Response to Amendment
Claim 8 is cancelled. Claims 1-3, 5 and 6 are currently amended. Claims 1-7 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks, filed June 10, 2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1, 4 and 5 under 35 USC 103 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 Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn.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 Application of ID Assignment Features in Rosebrocks’ Simple Object Tracker to Kinasih et al. and US 9633268 B1 to Ma et al.
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s)1, 3, 4, and 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Application of ID Assignment Features in Rosebrocks’ Simple Object Tracker to Kinasih et al., hereinafter, “Kinasih” and US 9633268 B1 to Ma et al., hereinafter, “Ma”.
Claim 1. (currently amended): Kinasih teaches An object tracking processing apparatus comprising: [Title]…Simple Object Tracker, [Abstract] …computer vision system for tracking specific objects of interest.
and at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to; [IV. EXPLOITING ID PERSEVERANCE PROPERTY] Rosebrock’s ID assignment property concurrently with an object detection method …implemented in entry level computational hardware (such as an Intel NUC mini pc being used in this research)
and assign a tracking ID [[for]] identifying an object belonging to the similar object group to the object. [Abstract] ID assignment that can be used even for objects that belong to the same class
[Introduction] the system should be able to assign identifiers or distinguish between objects even when they belong to the same class / has a similar appearance
[A. Computing Centroid from Bounding Boxes] The bounding boxes of the detected object, belong to the target class should be passed to the centroid tracker & ID assignment process.
[IV. EXPLOITING ID PERSEVERANCE PROPERTY] it is possible to get a computer vision system that can automatically detect a target object (such as a specific class of object) and distinguish which one from the other objects belong to the same class.
Kinasih fails to explicitly teach calculate at least one similar object group including at least one object similar to a tracking target object, on the basis of at least a feature amount of the tracking target object. Ma, in the field of object detection in image data, teaches calculate at least one similar object group including at least one object similar to a tracking target object, on the basis of at least a feature amount of the tracking target object; [col. 5, lines 47-55] gait feature of the person to be recognized and the optimized gait feature (feature amount) of each known person in a matching library, and determining information of the person (one similar object) to be recognized according to information of the known person (target object) in the matching library corresponding to the optimized gait feature which has the highest degree of similarity (similar) with the optimized gait feature of the person to be recognized.
[col. 5, lines 57-60] calculate the degree of similarity between the optimized gait feature (feature amount) of the person (one similar object) to be recognized and the optimized gait feature of each known person (target object) in the matching library
at least one memory storing instructions, [col. 6, lines 22-29] …can be stored in the matching library.
Thus, before the effective filing date of the present application, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Kinasih with the teachings of Ma [Background] to improve the accuracy of object recognition.
Claim 3. (currently amended): Kinasih teaches the object tracking processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the instructions to: parallelly execute processing of assigning the tracking ID for identifying the object belonging to the similar object group to the object. [IV. EXPLOITING ID PERSEVERANCE PROPERTY] Rosebrock’s ID assignment property concurrently with an object detection method (face, person, or any other arbitrary object of interest) to show how this feature can benefit the computer vision system
Claim 4. (previously presented): Kinasih teaches further comprising an object tracking information storage unit configured to store the tracking ID assigned. Kinasih [A. Face Detection and ID Assignment]… new ID assignment/register of a new object Examiner interprets registering to be storing.
[IV. EXPLOITING ID PERSEVERANCE PROPERTY] implemented in entry level computational hardware (such as an Intel NUC mini pc being used in this research) it is understood that the PC has the ability to store data i.e. tracking ID.
Claim 6. (currently amended): Reviewed and analyzed in the same way as claim 1. See the above analysis and rationale.
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Application of ID Assignment Features in Rosebrocks’ Simple Object Tracker to Kinasih et al., hereinafter, “Kinasih” and US 9633268 B1 to Ma et al., hereinafter, “Ma”.
Claim 5. (currently amended): Kinasih fails to detect the tracking target object in each frame configuring a video and the feature amount of the tracking target object. Asada, in the field of object detection in image data, teaches wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the instructions to: detect the tracking target object in each frame configuring a video and the feature amount of the tracking target object; Asada [0018] color information (color parameter) of a uniform is acquired as a feature amount of a person, and team classification of players is performed based on the color information
Asada [0034] each successive frame
(Kinasih [A. Computing Centroid from Bounding Boxes] … to detect the target object's existence in each frame… For the first frame, each detected bounding box will be assigned a unique ID)
Asada teaches and the object tracking processing apparatus further comprising an object feature amount storage unit configured to store, for each object detected, a position of the object, a detection time of the object, a feature amount of the object, and a group ID assigned to the object, [0020] The feature amount is a parameter unique to each player or ball (each character) necessary for tracking each player or ball, that is, each individual character, and here, as the feature amount, position information and color information necessary for team classification
Asada teaches wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the instructions to refer to a part or all of the object feature amount storage unit Asada [0015] extracting and tracking a player, a ball, or the like as described above is not limited to the form of computer software, but can be implemented in the form of a microprogram processed by a DSP (digital signal processor)
Asada teaches to calculate at least one similar object group including at least one object similar to the tracking target object, on the basis of at least the feature amount of the tracking target object. Asada [0018] color information (color parameter) of a uniform is acquired as a feature amount of a person, and team classification of players is performed based on the color information
Thus, before the effective filing date of the present application, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Kinasih with the teachings of Asada [Advantage] to track a player with high accuracy.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 7 is allowable.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: the innovation that makes claim 7 allowable is “executing batch processing of assigning a tracking ID for identifying an object belonging to the similar object group to the object with reference to the object group information storage unit, at predetermined intervals”.
Claim 2 is 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 innovation that makes claim 2 allowable is “the batch processing is processing of acquiring updated information relevant to the object belonging to the similar object group from the object group information storage unit and assigning the tracking ID for identifying the object belonging to the similar object group to the object, on the basis of the acquired information”.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DELOMIA L GILLIARD whose telephone number is (571)272-1681. The examiner can normally be reached 8am-5pm.
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/DELOMIA L GILLIARD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2661
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