DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Claims 1-20 are present for examination.
Claim Interpretation
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.
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 application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: a first generator and a discriminator in claim 19.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 19, it recites, inter alia, a first generator configured to receive a color image and a reference image and configured to output the sketch image which has a same shape as the color image and a same sketch style as the reference image; and a discriminator configured to discriminate a similarity of a sketch style of the reference image and a sketch style of the sketch image. (Emphasis added.)
According to claim 19, the sketch image output from the first generator has a same sketch style as the reference image. Therefore, it is not clear how the sketch style of the reference image and the sketch style of the sketch image can be discriminated a similarity because they should be the same unless the “sketch style of the sketch image” is different than the “same sketch style as the reference image”.
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 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chinese Patent Publication No. CN 116579919 A to Qu et al.
Regarding claim 1, Qu discloses A method for automatically generating a sketch image (Qu, Translation, para. [n0013], disclosing performing image translation and obtaining the target image), the method comprising:
inputting a color image (Qu, Translation, para. [n0088], disclosing the original image can be a color image), and extracting a shape data from the color image (Qu, Translation, para. [n0090], disclosing extracting shape feature information from the original image); inputting a reference image (Qu, Translation, para. [n0088], disclosing acquiring original images and reference images), and extracting a style data from the reference image (Qu, Translation, para. [n0097], disclosing the content feature information can be obtained by segmenting the reference image, para. [n0101], disclosing the content feature information includes global feature information and local feature information, the global feature information includes structural feature information, texture feature information, and color feature information, and the local feature information includes special point feature information and special local feature information, special points include corner points, edges, and spots. Although Qu does not expressly disclose extracting a style data, it would have been obvious for a person skilled in the art to consider some of the content feature data such as texture feature information and color feature information as the style data in the feature data extracted from the image because by using the extracted feature data, the generated target sample image can be more in line with the style of the reference image, as suggested by Qu (see Qu, Translation, para. [n0101])); and outputting the sketch image based on the shape data and the style data (Qu, Translation, para. [n0070], disclosing obtaining shape feature information from the original image, obtaining content feature information from the reference image, and the shape feature information and content feature information are combined to obtain target feature information, which can be decoded to obtain a target sample image. As discussed above, although Qu does not expressly disclose style data, it would have been obvious for a person skilled in the art to consider some of the content feature data such as texture feature information and color feature information as the style data in the feature data extracted from the image because by using the extracted feature data, the generated target sample image can be more in line with the style of the reference image, as suggested by Qu (see Qu, Translation, para. [n0101]).
Regarding claim 2, Qu discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the extracting the shape data comprises: extracting a shape feature from the color image by a first encoder (Qu, Translation, para. [n0039], disclosing segmenting the original image through the feature extraction network to obtain shape feature information, para. [n0040], disclosing constructing feature information pairs based on the shape feature information and content feature information); and extracting a spatial attention data from the shape feature by a spatial attention block (Qu, Translation, para. [n0041], disclosing an attention module to perform attention processing on the feature information pairs through the attention network to obtain target feature information, para. [n0110], disclosing performing attention processing on one of the attention layers for the first information pair to obtain reference feature information focusing on the overall shape and contour matching degree between the reference image and the original image, indicating the reference feature information can correspond to a spatial attention data extracted from first information pair including the shape feature information and content feature information by the attention layers as a special attention block because the reference feature information focusing on the overall shape and contour matching degree between the reference image and the original image).
Regarding claim 20, it recites A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon program instructions, which when executed by at least one hardware processor, performs the method of claim 1. The rationale of claim 1 rejection is applied to reject claim 20. In addition, Qu discloses A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon program instructions (Qu, Translation, para. [n0185]).
Claim(s) 3 and 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qu as applied to claim 2 above, and further in view of US Patent Publication No. 20250078349 A1 to Cho et al.
Regarding claim 3, Qu discloses the method of claim 2. However, Qu does not expressly disclose wherein the extracting the style data comprises: extracting a style feature from the reference image by a second encoder; and extracting a channel attention data from the style feature by a channel attention block.
On the other hand, Cho discloses wherein the extracting the style data comprises: extracting a style feature from the reference image by a second encoder (Cho, para. [0114], disclosing the style encoder output style code of a reference image); and extracting a channel attention data from the style feature by a channel attention block (Cho, para. [0115], disclosing the style code is applied using channel-wise affine transformation, Claim 4, disclosing performing a channel-wise operation based on the style embedding and the image is generated based on the channel-wise operation, indicating the channel-wise transformation/operation can correspond to channel attention data extraction from the style code as the style feature by a channel attention block).
Before the invention was effectively filed, it would have been obvious for a person skilled in the art to combine Qu and Cho. The suggestion/motivation would have been to increase the efficiency and accuracy of content-preserving style transfer, as suggested by Cho (see Cho, para. [0003]).
Regarding claim 4, Qu in view of Cho discloses the method of claim 3, wherein a number of channels included in the shape data is equal to or greater than a number of channels included in the style data (Qu, Translation, para. [n0088], disclosing the original image can be color image, and the reference image can be color image, para. [n0101], disclosing the content feature can include color feature information, indicating the number of channels corresponding to the color channels included in the original image including the shape data can be equal to the number of channels corresponding to the color channels included in the reference image including the style data).
Claim(s) 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deelaka (Deelaka, Neural Artistic Style Transfer with Conditional Adversarial Networks).
Regarding claim 19, Deelaka discloses An apparatus for automatically generating a sketch image comprising (Deelaka, Abstract, disclosing a neural artistic style transformation (NST) model that can modify the appearance of a simple image by adding the style of a famous image):
a first generator configured to receive a color image and a reference image and configured to output the sketch image which has a same shape as the color image and a same sketch style as the reference image (Deelaka, Fig. 2, showing a generator taking style image and content image to generated image, Fig. 4, showing the content images are color images and style images, the style transferred images having same shapes as the corresponding content color images and same sketching style as the style images, indicating the style images can correspond to reference images and the style transferred images can correspond to the sketch images output from the generator having the same shapes as the content images corresponding to the color images and same sketch styles as the style images corresponding to the reference images); and
a discriminator configured to discriminate a similarity of a sketch style of the reference image and a sketch style of the sketch image (Deelaka, Fig. 2, showing a style discriminator taking style image and the generated image as input,, p. 4, col. 2, Sec. 3.1.3, 1st para., disclosing training between generator model and discriminator model to get the generator to converge into a point where loss is minimized, 3rd para., disclosing for style loss function, implementing a version of the pairwise marginal loss function. Although Deelaka does not expressly disclose the discriminator is configured to discriminate a similarity of a sketch style of the reference image and the sketch style of the sketch image, before the invention was effectively filed, it would have been obvious for a person skilled in the art to consider the style loss function to discriminate the similarity of a sketch style of the style image as the reference image and the sketch style of the generated image as the sketch image so that the generator can converge into a point where the loss is minimized (i.e., the similarity is maximized). The suggestion/motivation would have been to provide a much higher resemblance to the respective art style, as suggested by Deelaka (see Deelaka, p. 4, col. 1, Sec. 4.1, 1st para.).
PNG
media_image1.png
274
884
media_image1.png
Greyscale
PNG
media_image2.png
216
424
media_image2.png
Greyscale
PNG
media_image3.png
366
426
media_image3.png
Greyscale
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-18 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 5, none of the prior art references on the record discloses performing a first operation of an adaptive instance normalization on the spatial attention data and the channel attention data; inputting an output of the first operation into a plurality of residual blocks; and generating the sketch image by inputting an output of the residual blocks into a decoder.
Claims 6-18 depend from claim 5 with respective additional limitations.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HAIXIA DU whose telephone number is (571)270-5646. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:00 am-4:00 pm.
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, Kee Tung can be reached at 571-272-7794. 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.
/HAIXIA DU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611
Prosecution Insights