DETAILED ACTION
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-9 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.
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.
Claim(s) 1-2 and 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hery et al. US 10,438,403 hereinafter referred to as Hery in view of Sorbel US 11,150,135 hereinafter referred to as Sorbel.
In regards to claim 1, Hery teaches:
“A scaling module, comprising: a plurality of observation planes”
Hery teaches in Figures 3A-C and column 4 lines 19-21 Set 300 includes multiple objects 302. For example, illustrated in set 300 are a cube-shaped object 304. The Examiner interprets a cube shaped object is made up of a plurality of planes.
“wherein at least two of the plurality of observation planes intersect with each other, the plurality of observation planes have a certain relative space positional relationship”
Hery teaches in Figures 3A-C and column 4 lines 19-21 Set 300 includes multiple objects 302. For example, illustrated in set 300 are a cube-shaped object 304. The Examiner interprets that the surfaces of the cubes intersect at edges of the cube. Furthermore, all things that exist in space have a relative positional relationship.
“each observation plane is provided with an observation region”
Hery Figure 3C and column 4 lines 57-59 teach At step 206, the illumination agent 140 receives instructions that define an amount of photons to be directed towards to the one or more regions of interest. The Examiner interprets Figure Figure 3C the black dots are regions where photons are directed and represent observation regions.
“and each observation region has a corresponding … bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) value”
Hery column 4 lines 40-42 teach If the photon reflects, the surface's bidirectional reflectance distribution function is used to determine the ratio of reflected radiance.
Hery does not explicitly teach:
“calibrated [BRDF]”
However, this would be implicitly understood as Hery teaches the surfaces BDRF is known and used to calculated reflectance. Regardless, it is known to calibrate a BDRF for a surface. For example, Sorbel teaches in column 4 lines 58-67 The measurement system 10 and the calibration reference 16 described herein may be used to measure large photonic spectral bandwidth areas of samples in a full Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) or 2π measurement that was typically inaccessible due to limited diffuse reference samples that were limited to one plane (e.g. Directional Hemispherical Reflectance that provides reflection versus angle of incidence (AOI)) compared to the measurement system described herein (e.g. BRDF, full 2π steradians). It would have been obvious for a person with ordinary skill in the art before the invention was effectively filed to have modified Hey in view of Sorbel to include the features of “calibrated [BRDF)” because measurement systems measure the angular performance of sample reflectivity that includes diffuse and specular components, but have difficulty finding very diffuse scattering standards (Sorbel column 1 lines 20-23).
In regards to claim 2, Hery/Sorbel teach all the limitations of claim 1 and further teach:
“wherein shapes of the observation region comprise: a regular triangle, a square, a regular pentagon, a regular hexagon, and a regular octagon”
Hery teaches in Figures 3A-C and column 4 lines 19-21 Set 300 includes multiple objects 302. For example, illustrated in set 300 are a cube-shaped object 304. The Examiner interprets a cube shape is equivalent to the claimed “a square”.
In regards to claim 4, Hery/Sorbel teach all the limitations of claim 1 and further teach:
“wherein the plurality of observation planes enclose a closed cavity”
Hery teaches in Figures 3A-C and column 4 lines 19-21 Set 300 includes multiple objects 302. For example, illustrated in set 300 are a cube-shaped object 304. The Examiner interprets a cube shape is equivalent to the claimed “a square”. The Examiner interprets a cube is a closed cavity.
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hery in view of Sorbel in view of Nayar et al. US 2004/0070565 hereinafter referred to as Nayar.
In regards to claim 3, Hery/Sorbel teach all the limitations of claim 1 and further teach:
“wherein the observation region is divided into a plurality of standard regions, and the plurality of standard regions at least have [a BRDF value]”
The Examiner interprets that a “standard region” as claimed does not required any more features than being a region. The Examiner interprets Figure 3C the black dots are regions where photons are directed and represent observation regions.
Hery/Sorbel do not explicitly teach:
“two BRDF characteristics”
Nayar paragraph [0096] teaches for each color channel of each pixel of the content, the computation of desired brightness is the sum, over all relevant light sources, of the source magnitude multiplied by the BRDF, wherein the BRDF of each content pixel is indexed according to the angle of each light source with respect to the content pixel. The Examiner interprets that different angles for different sources provide more than one value for the BDRF. It would have been obvious for a person with ordinary skill in the art before the invention was effectively filed to have modified Hery/Sorbel in view of Nayar to have included the features of “two BRDF characteristics” to provide an image-displaying system which detects environmental lighting conditions and adjusts the displayed image in order to compensate for degradation of the displayed image caused by the environmental lighting (Nayar [0006]).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL E TEITELBAUM, Ph.D. whose telephone number is (571)270-5996. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30AM-5:00PM EST.
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/MICHAEL E TEITELBAUM, Ph.D./ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2422
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