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 .
Priority
The current application claims foreign priority from the India application (IN202321060137). Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 08/07/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 8 and 15 are objected to because of the following informalities: in claims 1, 8 and 15, “the product dictionary” should read “a product dictionary”. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1, 4, 8, 11, 15 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yebes Torres et al. (US 2023/0005286 A1) in view of Lin (US 10769200 B1).
Regarding claim 1, Yebes Torres discloses a processor implemented method comprising: receiving, by one or more hardware processors (paragraph 0121: “processor circuitry such as a central processing unit executing instructions”), an image (paragraph 0122: “receive and/or retrieve a receipt image 108”) and a plurality of seed words (paragraph 0096: “The internal dictionary 124 is a database that includes associations between product descriptions and barcodes”); identifying, by the one or more hardware processors, a plurality of word level text regions from the image (FIGs. 4A-B, paragraph 0123: “detect regions of interest from the receipt image 108”) using a text region detection technique (paragraph 0124: “the regions detection model 306 is based on computer vision algorithms that focus on object detection and classification techniques”); extracting, by the one or more hardware processors, a text value corresponding to each of the plurality of word level text regions using a text extraction technique (paragraph 0090: “the example OCR circuitry 116 can apply an OCR-based algorithm over the receipt image 108 to obtain text data”); extracting, by the one or more hardware processors, a plurality of text characteristics corresponding to each of the plurality of word level text regions using a text characteristics extraction technique (paragraphs 0128-0129 and 0142: “each pixel within the region can be identified as belonging to a first class or a second class…the pixel-wise mask includes pixels classified as row pixels grouped into clusters”; “the pixel-wise mask includes groups of pixels classified as belonging to a column in a cluster”); obtaining, by the one or more hardware processors, a plurality of matching seed word regions based on a comparison between the plurality of seed words and a plurality of text values corresponding to each of the plurality of word level text regions (paragraph 0187: “the matching is based on a similarity search between an item description extracted by the extraction circuitry 118 and a database description as listed in a data source”); identifying, by the one or more hardware processors, a plurality of meaningful text blocks by merging a plurality of adjacent word level text regions (FIGs. 6A-B, paragraph 0134: “The example line merging circuitry 318 is structured to identify and connect bounding boxes that belong to the same line”); identifying, by the one or more hardware processors, a plurality of seed blocks by finding a merged word level text region overlapping with each of a corresponding plurality of matching seed word region (paragraph 0153: “an area of a word that is intersected with a row bounding box and/or a column bounding box is calculated to determine a highest overlapping bounding box in which to position the word”); and identifying, by the one or more hardware processors, a plurality of product names based on the plurality of meaningful text blocks, the plurality of seed blocks and a plurality of seed parameters (paragraph 0097: “The internal dictionary 124 can store various information. For example, entries in the internal dictionary 124 can include different fields”) associated with the plurality of seed words (FIG. 17, paragraph 0209: “the response generating circuitry 1732 is structured to aggregate and format the matched items to as the final response”) using a matrix based product name detection technique (FIG. 21), wherein the plurality of product names are updated in a product dictionary (paragraph 0208: “the updating circuitry 1730 updates the internal dictionary 124 to leverage historic data for recognized items in previous processed receipts”). However, Yebes Torres fails to explicitly disclose the plurality of seed words is associated with a marketing collateral; and the comparison between the plurality of seed words and the plurality of text values corresponding to each of the plurality of word level text regions is based on a Levenshtein distance based matching technique. In the related art of text recognition, Lin discloses the plurality of seed words is associated with a marketing collateral (Lin FIGs. 10A-B, col 5 lines 36-45: “words, text strings, or phrases can classified into semantically relevant categories for product search, such as brand names, model numbers, and noun phrases related to products”); and the comparison between the plurality of seed words and the plurality of text values corresponding to each of the plurality of word level text regions is based on a Levenshtein distance based matching technique (Lin col 6 lines 1-15: “approximate matches are accepted while matching the list of remaining words against the noun phrase, brand, and model number lists. The words are then compared against the approximate matches and the matches are scored based on a Levenshtein distance that has been generalized to take OCR errors into account”). 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 Yebes Torres to incorporate the teachings of Lin to improve the accuracy of identifying words, characters, or strings in an image (Lin Abstract).
Regarding claim 4, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the processor implemented method of claim 1, wherein the seed words are valid product names associated with the marketing collateral used for identifying other product names (Lin FIG. 10A, col 8 lines 20-46: “The query from this image might then include words such as "gameday," "drink," and "energy." From viewing the example it can be determined that the product being advertised is "ACME Energy Shots." By querying items using those terms, however, matching products can be identified such as the "SystemShock Energy Drink," which includes the terms "energy" and "drink" from the image”).
Regarding claim 8, it is the corresponding system configured to execute the method claimed in claim 1. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the limitations of claim 8 as it does the limitations of claim 1.
Regarding claim 11, it is the corresponding system configured to execute the method claimed in claim 4. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the limitations of claim 11 as it does the limitations of claim 4.
Regarding claim 15, it is the corresponding non-transitory machine-readable information storage medium configured to execute the method claimed in claim 1. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the limitations of claim 15 as it does the limitations of claim 1.
Regarding claim 18, it is the corresponding non-transitory machine-readable information storage medium configured to execute the method claimed in claim 4. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the limitations of claim 18 as it does the limitations of claim 4.
Claim(s) 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yebes Torres and Lin in view of Abdo et al. (US 2012/0294523 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the processor implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of text characteristics comprises a height of the text region (Lin col 5 lines 14-23: “the word or text string priorities are further reordered as a function of text height or font size”). However, Yebes Torres and Lin fail to disclose the plurality of text characteristics comprises a text pixel density and a foreground text color. In the related art of text recognition, Abdo discloses the plurality of text characteristics comprises a text pixel density (Abdo FIG. 4, paragraph 0038: “compare successive rows of pixels of the image and determine where there is a large change between the ratio of background pixels to foreground pixels” where the foreground pixels are text pixels) and a foreground text color (Abdo paragraph 0055: “determining a color of a first pixel of the first sub-glyph”). 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 Yebes Torres and Lin to incorporate the teachings of Abdo to identify and extract text in graphical data for compression and transmission (Abdo paragraphs 0004-0006).
Regarding claim 3, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin, discloses the processor implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of seed parameters comprises a height of the text region (Lin col 5 lines 14-23: “the word or text string priorities are further reordered as a function of text height or font size”). However, Yebes Torres and Lin fail to disclose the plurality of seed parameters comprises a text pixel density and a foreground text color. In related art, Abdo discloses the plurality of seed parameters comprises a text pixel density (Abdo FIG. 4, paragraph 0038: “compare successive rows of pixels of the image and determine where there is a large change between the ratio of background pixels to foreground pixels” where the foreground pixels are text pixels) and a foreground text color (Abdo paragraph 0055: “determining a color of a first pixel of the first sub-glyph”). 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 Yebes Torres and Lin to incorporate the teachings of Abdo to identify and extract text in graphical data for compression and transmission (Abdo paragraphs 0004-0006).
Regarding claim 9, it is the corresponding system configured to execute the method claimed in claim 2. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin and Abdo, discloses the limitations of claim 9 as it does the limitations of claim 2.
Regarding claim 10, it is the corresponding system configured to execute the method claimed in claim 3. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin and Abdo, discloses the limitations of claim 10 as it does the limitations of claim 3.
Regarding claim 16, it is the corresponding non-transitory machine-readable information storage medium configured to execute the method claimed in claim 2. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin and Abdo, discloses the limitations of claim 16 as it does the limitations of claim 2.
Regarding claim 17, it is the corresponding non-transitory machine-readable information storage medium configured to execute the method claimed in claim 3. Therefore, Yebes Torres, modified by Lin and Abdo, discloses the limitations of claim 17 as it does the limitations of claim 3.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7, 12-14 and 19-20 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 claims 5, 12 and 19, the cited prior art either alone or in combination fails to disclose, teach, or suggest “identifying a dominant color value for each of the plurality of text regions by converting the each of the plurality of text regions into LAB color space and masking an L component with the white pixel mask”.
Regarding claims 6, 13 and 20, the cited prior art either alone or in combination fails to disclose, teach, or suggest “computing a merged region distinct row count value by counting a number of distinct rows associated with the first matrix corresponding to each of the plurality of meaningful text blocks” and “identifying a plurality of product names from the plurality of probable product names corresponding to each of the plurality of meaningful text blocks if the corresponding text value is one of a) a noun and b) a pronoun only if the merged region distinct row count value corresponding to each of the plurality of meaningful text blocks is greater than or equal to a minimum count value”.
Claims 7 and 14 are also objected to as being directly or indirectly dependent of claims 6 and 13, respectively.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Wang et al. (CN113822264A) discloses generating a similarity matrix for each image region.
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/C.Z./Examiner, Art Unit 2677
/ANDREW W BEE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2677
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