CTNF 18/770,386 CTNF 81209 Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status 07-03-aia AIA 15-10-aia The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA. 07-30-03-h AIA Claim Interpretation 07-30-03 AIA The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f): (f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof. The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph: An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof. 07-30-05 The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked. As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph: (A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function; (B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and (C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function. Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function. Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function. Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. This is applied to claims 16-20 which recite mean for. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102 07-07-aia AIA 07-07 The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action: A person shall be entitled to a patent unless – 07-08-aia AIA (a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. 07-15 AIA Claim (s) 1, 3, 7, 16, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102( a)(1 ) as being anticipated by Li ("Fully Convolutional Networks for Panoptic Segmentation") . Regarding claim 1, Li teaches a computerized system comprising one or more processors and computer storage memory having computer-executable instructions implementing a method comprising: receiving an input image that includes one or more pixels (Section 3, Fig. 2, input image to backbone and FPN); generating a first channel and a second channel, the first channel including one or more row coordinates of the one or more pixels, the second channel including one or more column coordinates of the one or more pixels (Section 3.1, Kernel head: "we first capture spatial cues by directly concatenating relative coordinates to the feature ….”); generating a coordinate map by concatenating the first channel and the second channel with the input image (Section 3.1: "directly concatenating relative coordinates…); in response to the generating of the coordinate map, applying a convolutional filter to the coordinate map (Section 3.1: "stacks of convolutions are adopted…”); based on the applying of the convolutional filter to the coordinate map, causing presentation of an output image associated with the input image (Section 3.3: panoptic segmentation result produced by convolving generated kernels with the encoded feature). Regarding claim 3, Li teaches applying the convolutional filter to the coordinate map at an encoder's bottleneck blocks and each layer of a decoder. Li uses FPN as the backbone, which is an encoder-decoder architecture (Section 3.1). Coordinate concatenation is applied at FPN stages P3-P7 in the kernel head and at the feature encoder operating on P2-P5 stages (Sections 3.1 and 3.3; Table 2). Regarding claim 7, Li teaches performing ReLU activation in response to applying the convolutional filter to the coordinate map. See Section 4.1: "All convolutions in kernel generator are equipped with GroupNorm and ReLU activation." Regarding claim 16, see the rejection of claim 1. Regarding claim 18, see the rejection of claim 3 . 07-21-aia AIA Claim (s) 2 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Liu ("An Intriguing Failing of Convolutional Neural Networks and the CoordConv Solution") . Regarding claim 2, Li teaches the system of claim 1. Li does not explicitly teach providing the coordinate map in Cartesian Space as input to a network indicative of a request to generate an image highlighting a position of the first pixel, such that the convolutional filter determines where, in the Cartesian Space and one-hot pixel space, the first pixel is located. Liu teaches that CoordConv solves the coordinate transform problem of mapping between "coordinates in (x, y) Cartesian space and coordinates in one-hot pixel space" (Abstract). Liu further teaches the Supervised Coordinate Classification task where "given a pixel's (x, y) coordinates as input, we train a CNN to highlight it as output" (Section 4.1). It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Li the Cartesian-to-pixel-space mapping as taught by Liu. The reason is to provide the network with spatial awareness for coordinate-dependent tasks. Regarding claim 17, see the rejection of claim 2 . 07-21-aia AIA Claim (s) 4, 6, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Cheng ("Panoptic-DeepLab: A Simple, Strong, and Fast Baseline for Bottom-Up Panoptic Segmentation") . Regarding claim 4, Li teaches the system of claim 1, including center-based object detection using center heatmaps (Section 3.1, Eq. 1). Li does not teach generating a center offset map indicating a location of each pixel relative to the center pixel. Cheng teaches generating a center map indicating a probability of each pixel being a center pixel and a center offset map indicating a location of each pixel relative to the center pixel, and generating a panoptic segmentation map that refines masks based on the center offset map and center map (Sections 3.2-3.3). It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Li the center offset map as taught by Cheng. The reason is to provide a pixel-to-instance grouping mechanism for improved panoptic segmentation. Regarding claim 6, Li teaches concatenating coordinates with image features in Section 3.1. Cheng teaches concatenating instance segmentation maps and semantic segmentation maps with input features (Sections 3.2-3.3). Regarding claim 19, see the rejection of claim 4 . 07-21-aia AIA Claim (s) 5 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Tian ("FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detection") . Regarding claim 5, Li teaches the system of claim 1. Li does not teach generating a bounding box offset map indicating a distance that a first pixel is from each side of a bounding box encompassing the first instance. Tian teaches per-pixel prediction of a 4D bounding box offset vector (l, t, r, b) representing distances from each pixel location to the left, top, right, and bottom sides of the associated bounding box (Section 3.1). It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Li the bounding box offset map as taught by Tian. The reason is to provide additional spatial constraints for instance grouping. Both Li and Tian are fully convolutional, anchor-free frameworks. Regarding claim 20, see the rejection of claim 5 . Double Patenting 08-33 AIA 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 conflicting claims 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); 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 nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined 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 § 2146 et seq. 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 filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13. The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual 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 www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer. 08-34 AIA Claim s 8-15 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim s 1-8 of U.S. Patent No. 12067730 . Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because there is just a different wording and the examiner believes a coordinate map is read on by a feature map . Regarding claim 8, see claim 1 of the patent and note that a coordinate map is read on by a feature map. Regarding claims 9-10, see claim 1 of the patent. Regarding claim 11, see claim 5 of the patent. Regarding claim 12, see claim 9 of the patent. Regarding claim 13, see claim 18 of the patent. Regarding claim 14, see claim 1 of the patent. Regarding claim 15, see claim 1 of the patent. Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HADI AKHAVANNIK whose telephone number is (571)272-8622. The examiner can normally be reached 9 AM - 5 PM Monday to Friday. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Henok Shiferaw can be reached at (571) 272-4637. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /HADI AKHAVANNIK/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 2 Art Unit: 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 3 Art Unit: 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 4 Art Unit: 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 5 Art Unit: 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 6 Art Unit: 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 7 Art Unit: 2676 Application/Control Number: 18/770,386 Page 8 Art Unit: 2676
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