DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . It is responsive to the submission dated 07/02/2025. Claim 1 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
2. The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 07/02/2024 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and are being considered by the Examiner.
Double Patenting
3. The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the claims at issue are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP §§ 706.02(l)(1) - 706.02(l)(3) for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/forms/. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
4. Claim 1 is rejected on the ground of non-statutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 12067669, hereinafter the ’69 patent in view of Woop (NPL Doc, "Watertight Ray/Triangle Intersection").
Although the two claims at issue are not verbatim identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the limitations of the application’s claim and the patent’s claim appear to be an obvious variation of one another as they have somewhat similar structural and functional features.
For examples, each claim has similar elements such as using hardware circuitry to determine whether a ray intersects an edge or vertex shared by more than one primitive. In addition, each claim identifies a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex being intersected by the ray.
The only distinction between the between the instant application claim and claim 1 of the ’69 patent is that the instant application claim 1 includes: identify a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex as being intersected by the ray without using arithmetic that is higher than said predetermined precision.
Claim 1 of the ’69 patent already teaches to determine a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex being intersected by the ray. Woop in the abstract teaches of using precision not higher than double precision for these ray-on-edge or ray-on-vertex intersection calculations. Woop in the caption of table 1 teaches of using a processor as the arithmetic unit, e.g. they refer to: “For different scenes, we show primary ray performance in million rays per second measured on a dual socket Xeon E5-2690 CPU (16 hyper-threaded cores total) running at 2.9 GHz". The claimed feature is taught when the ray-surface testing hardware of Woop performs ray intersection testing being perform by claim 1 of the ’69 patent; and together, they contribute to performing identifying a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex as being intersected by the ray without using arithmetic that is higher than said predetermined precision, as claimed.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the instant applications’ claim to include: identify a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex as being intersected by the ray without using arithmetic that is higher than said predetermined precision, in the same conventional manner as thaught by Woop. The advantage to yield the instant claim 1 by combining the ’69 patent’s claim 1 with Woop would have been to allow efficient computation of ray-edge calculations even for complex case situations. See abstract of Woop.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5. 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.
6. Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MacGillivray (Patent No.: US 8,059,122 B1) in view of Woop et al., NPL document entitled: "Watertight Ray/Triangle Intersection", hereinafter, Woop.
Regarding claim 1, MacGillivray teaches the claimed: 1. A device including hardware circuitry configured to: receive a ray and a plurality of primitives (see figure 7 wherein a flowchart is shown a plurality of rays are received in the 2ⁿᵈ step during the ray casting. In addition, in the 3rd step, facets (primitives) are received for ray intersection testing);
determine, using an arithmetic unit (see col 6, lines 33-35 where the single processor corresponds to the claimed "arithmetic unit") -- whether the ray intersects an edge or vertex of the primitives (see, for example the flowchart in figure 7 where it states "Does ray intersect facet interior?". At this step answering no means that the system then considers the possibility that the ray has intersected an edge or vertex of the primitives (facets). Also please see the end of the abstract where it states "a novel exact arithmetic tie -breaking algorithm for rays intersecting facet edges and vertices "); and
when the ray is determined to intersect an edge or vertex shared by two or more primitives (see figure 3 where a ray has intersected an edge between primitives A and B), identify a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex as being intersected by the ray (see, for example, the bottom of col 3 where it states "Novel Tie-Breaking Algorithm - A tie-breaking algorithm is crucial for handling cases where the ray passes exactly through the edge or vertex of a facet. Two facets can share the same edge and multiple facets can share the same vertex. Thus, if a ray hits multiple facets at the same location, a tie-breaker must be introduced so that the ray trace does not incorrectly place an ending surface location at the same starting location, i.e. only one 'hit' should be saved". See also col 4, lines 36-45 where it describes a cast ray intersects the common edge between two facets. In this example the two facets are part of the same starting surface since both have a negative orientation (all three orientation tests are less than or equal to zero for each facet). This can also be seen by simply applying the right-hand rule If the two facets are part of the same surface, a tie-breaker test must be applied so that only one of the two hits is retained. One of the hits can be thrown out by once again using the right-hand rule. According to these passages, the system is able to identify a single one of the two or more primitives (facets) sharing the edge or vertex as shown in figure 3 as being intersected by the ray).
MacGillivray fails to explicitly teach using an arithmetic unit having a predetermined precision and the identified single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex as being intersected by the ray is performed without using arithmetic that is higher than said predetermined precision, which is disclosed by Woop (see abstract and pages 70-71).
For example, Woop on page 70 in the last paragraph in section 3 describes: "To avoid false negatives for rays hitting exactly on the edge, it is important that the chosen triangle test handles an edge that evaluates to 0 as being inside the triangle"; and in the abstract "We propose a novel algorithm for ray/triangle intersection tests that, unlike most other such algorithms, is watertight at both edges and vertices for adjoining triangles, while also maintaining the same performance as simpler algorithms that are not watertight Using our algorithm, numerically challenging cases, where single precision is insufficient, can be detected with almost no overhead and can be accurately handled through a (rare) fallback to double precision.' Also please see Woop at the bottom of page 71 where they refer to "Nevertheless, an algorithm that works under all circumstances can easily be obtained through a fallback of the 2D edge test to double precision if and only if one of the single-precision tests evaluates to 0. In this instance, the "double precision" in the quoted passage corresponds to the claimed "predetermined precision". Woop in the caption of table I further teaches of using a processor as the arithmetic unit, e.g. they refer to "For different scenes, we show primary ray performance in million rays per second measured on a dual socket Xeon E5-2690 CPU (16 hyper-threaded cores total) running at 2.9 GHz ")
Furthermore, Woop teaches performing these calculations without using arithmetic higher than said predetermined precision (double precision). See abstract, wherein the claimed feature is taught when the arithmetic unit with predetermined precision of Woop is used with the tie-breaking ray tracing step of MacGillivray).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to to have modified the instant applications’ claim to include: identify a single one of the two or more primitives sharing the edge or vertex as being intersected by the ray without using arithmetic that is higher than said predetermined precision, in the same conventional manner as thaught by Woop. The advantage for combining ray tracing step of MacGillivray with the teachings of Woop would have been to allow efficient computation of ray-edge calculations even for complex case situations. See abstract of Woop.
Conclusion
7. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Obert et al. (US 20160110910) discloses a method and apparatus for ray tracing may include using texture pipeline hardware of a GPU to perform ray intersection testing for a first ray and a first shape. Using the texture pipeline hardware to perform ray intersection testing may include calculating a plurality of dot products with the texture pipeline hardware, and determining whether the first ray intersects the first shape based on the plurality of dot products.
8. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WESNER SAJOUS whose telephone number is (571) 272-7791. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 10:00 TO 7:30 (ET).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Said Broome can be reached on 571-272-2931. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WESNER SAJOUS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2612
WS
02/20/2026