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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
Claims 1-7 and 10-12 are pending in this application [7/17/2026].
Title and Claims 1-2 and 4-6 have been amended [7/17/2026].
Claims 10-12 have been added [7/17/2026].
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-7 and 10-12 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument based on newly applied references Kazume (US-2019/0303701) and Arakawa et al. (US-2014/0029048). In addition, previously applied reference Nakamura et al. (US-2019/0362143) teaches identifying a target area to perform character recognition [par 0025, 0039-0040] which corresponds to Applicant’s ‘receiving a designation of an area; obtain a character from the designated area of an image’, as recited in independent claims 1, 11 and 12.
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, 4-7 and 10-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kazume (US-2019/0303701) in view of Nakamura et al. (US-2019/0362143).
As to Claim 12, Kazume teaches ‘An information processing apparatus comprising, a memory that stores instructions; and a controller that causes, by executing the instructions, the information processing apparatus to: obtain a character from an area of an image; divide image data, generated by reading a plurality of documents, into a plurality of pieces of image data; identify a folder based on the obtained character, wherein one of the plurality of pieces of image data is first image data corresponding to images of a plurality of pages, wherein a folder for storing the first image data is identified based on a character obtained from the area of an image of a specific page among images of the plurality of pages corresponding to the first image data, and wherein the folder for storing the first image data is identified regardless of contents of images of pages other than the specific page among the images of the plurality of pages corresponding to the first image data; and store the first image data in the identified folder [par 0090-0098 – when the first character string is included in the OCR result of a first page, the acquiring of OCR result can be omitted for one or more subsequent pages (i.e., divided image data), that is extracting a character string from data of a particular page before completing processing the data of all of the pages and the circuitry stops acquiring the OCR result from data of one or more pages remaining after the particular page and designates a folder name based on the acquired character string to store the image data of the plurality of pages. Therefore, the subsequent pages are not analyzed and do not affect the determination based on the detected character string. Accordingly, the subsequent processing (e.g., creation of the time-limit-information-added filename) is performed independently of the contents of those later pages]’.
Kazume does not disclose expressly ‘receive a designation of an area; obtain a character from the designated area of an image’.
Nakamura teaches ‘receive a designation of an area; obtain a character from the designated area of an image [Fig 8 (S102-S103), par 0039-0040 – information processing apparatus includes a processor and memory and the processor identifies a target area used for determining an attribute name based on analyzing an image representing a document and performing character recognition processing on the target area of the read document]’.
Kazume and Nakamura are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely digital image data processing systems. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to include identifying a target area, as taught by Nakamura. The motivation for doing so would have been to improving the search of a document in a document filing system when assigning an attribute name of the document based on character recognition. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Nakamura with Kazume to obtain the invention as specified in claim 12.
Further, in regards to claim 11, the information processing apparatus of claim 12 performs the method of claim 11.
Further, in regards to claim 1, the method of claim 11 is fully embodied in the non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 1.
As to Claim 2, Kazume teaches ‘wherein the control method further comprises: storing a path of a folder, wherein the folder to which the first image data is identified based on at least the path of the folder and the obtained character [Fig 12B, par 0096, 0098 – a folder that has been transferred with the image data may include the extracted first character string and second character string to be used as the folder name (directory name), where directory is considered a path of a folder]’.
As to Claim 4, Kazume teaches ‘wherein a folder indicated by a path obtained by adding, under a lower-level directory of the stored path, a folder having a name corresponding to the obtained character is identified as the folder for storing the first image data [Fig 12B, par 0096-0098 – a folder that has been transferred with the image data may include the extracted first character string and second character string to be used as the folder name (directory name), where directory is considered a path of a folder, and that folder name is in a hierarchical structure in a folder at a time when the time limit management is not yet performed]’.
As to Claim 5, Kazume teaches ‘wherein the specific page is a page corresponding to a document that is first read among the plurality of documents [par 0090-0095 – extracting a character string from data of a particular page before completing processing the data of all of the pages and the circuitry stops acquiring the OCR result from data of one or more pages remaining after the particular page and designates a folder name based on the acquired character string to store the image data of the plurality of pages]’.
As to Claim 6, Kazume teaches ‘wherein the plurality of documents is read in response to a single reading instruction [par 0075, 0077 – inputting an instruction for executing the image data having “k” pages by a user for receiving image data read by scanner]’.
As to Claim 7, Kazume teaches ‘wherein the character includes a number [Figs 6, 12B, par 0027, 0098 – folder name includes character strings with text and numbers]’.
As to Claim 10, Kazume teaches ‘wherein another one of the plurality of pieces of image data is second image data corresponding to images of a plurality of pages, wherein a folder for storing the second image data is identified based on a character obtained from the area of an image of a specific page among the images of the plurality of pages corresponding to the second image data, wherein the folder for storing the second image data is identified regardless of contents of images of pages other than the specific page among the images of the plurality of pages corresponding to the second image data, and wherein the second image data is stored in the identified folder [par 0090-0098 – processing multi-page image data and performing OCR to obtain a character string (CS1) from a page of the image data, once CS1 is obtained, OCR processing for one or more subsequent pages may be omitted, such that the contents of those subsequent pages are not analyzed and therefore do not affect the subsequent determination based on CS1; using the obtained character string to designate a folder name and storing the image data in the designated folder. Accordingly, Kazume teaches identifying a folder for storing the multi-page image data based on a character obtained from a specific page, while the folder identification is made without regard to the contents of the omitted subsequent pages]’.
Claim(s) 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kazume in view of Nakamura et al. and further in view of Arakawa et al. (US-2014/0029048).
As to Claim 3, Kazume in view of Nakamura teaches all of the claimed elements/features as recited in dependent claim 2 and independent claim 1. Kazume in view of Nakamura does not disclose expressly ‘wherein the path of the folder includes a host name’, although Kazume teaches a folder that has been transferred with the image data may include the extracted first character string and second character string to be used as the folder name (directory name), where directory is considered a path of a folder [Fig 12B, par 0096-0098].
Arakawa in the proposed combination teaches ‘wherein the path of the folder includes a host name [par 0056, 0061 – folder creating section contains a host name, a path name, a user name, and so on]’.
Kazume in view of Nakamura are analogous art with Arakawa because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely digital image data processing systems. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to include a host name, as taught by Arakawa. The motivation for doing so would have been to eliminating the operator's work for setting the host name, the path name, the user name, the password, and so on for the folder to the image forming apparatus 1, thus reducing the workload of specifying the destination to save data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Arakawa with Kazume in view of Nakamura to obtain the invention as specified in claim 3.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record
a. US Publication No. 2019/0303701
b. US Publication No. 2014/0029048
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/MIYA J CATO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681
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