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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claims 1, 3-5, 13 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Salemann (US 20110202538 A1) in view of HEC-RAS Mapper User’s Manual (v6.3).
Regarding claim 1, Salemann discloses a method for model and simulation (M&S) of digital imagery and terrain data (terrain repositories for modeling and simulation, para. 0001) comprising:
receiving preexisting terrain and/or imagery files (receiving many different types of data 113 from different data sources (e.g., imagery, elevation, point cloud, and other information types) can be received, processed, and stored, para. 0024) including geographic metadata (a set of geospatially aligned vector datum and/or vector layers, such as road centerlines, water areas, and building footprints, para. 0024);
extracting the geographic metadata of the received terrain and/or imagery files (feature extraction algorithms can dynamically create multi-resolution terrain feature vector models "on-the-fly", para. 0005);
Salemann does not expressly disclose providing a user with the ability to selectively modify the extracted geographic metadata to represent changes in the terrain or to add assets to the received terrain and/or imagery files based, in part, on received one or more object files; and generating new altered terrain and/or imagery files by rewriting the geographic metadata with the modified extracted geographic data, wherein the new altered terrain and/or imagery files represent a permanent alteration of the terrain and/or imagery files.
HEC-RAS Mapper User’s Manual (v6.3) teaches modifying the geospatial layout of the cross sections (terrain information) in a Geometry Data Editor (see Geometry Data section, step 7) and use of a Polygon Editor to alterterrain and image files by rewriting terrain values and “snapping tolerance”, see “Terrain Modification” section.
Salemann in view of HEC-RAS are analogous art because they are from the similar problem solving area of mapping customization. At the time of the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to add the modification tools of HEC-RAS to the method of Salemann in order to to create a compilation of vector additions to the underlying GeoTiff representation of the grounds surface. The motivation for doing so would be to create a more accurate model.
Regarding claim 3, Salemann discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the assets include buildings, geographic features, or trees (geospatially aligned vector datum and/or vector layers, such as road centerlines, water areas, and building footprints, para. 0024; trees, para. 0070, 0081).
Regarding claim 4, HEC-RAS discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the terrain and/or imagery files are GeoTIFF files (see at least “Terrain Layer” and “Terrain Modification” sections.
Regarding claim 5, Salemann discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising:
receiving the one or more object files (imagery, elevation, point cloud, and other information types can be received, para. 0024); and
parsing the one or more object files to extract boundary or elevation characteristics in the one or more object files (imagery, elevation, point cloud, and other information types can be processed, and stored, para. 0024);
wherein modifying the extracted geographic metadata to represent changes in the terrain or to add assets to the received terrain and/or imagery files further includes modifying the extracted geographic metadata based on the extracted boundary or elevation characteristics (a set of geospatially aligned vector datum and/or vector layers, such as road centerlines, water areas, and building footprints, para. 0024).
Claim 13, a non-transitory computer-readable medium claim, is rejected for the same reason as claim 1.
Claim 14, an apparatus claim, is rejected for the same reason as claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-10 and 12 are allowed.
Conclusion
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/THOMAS J LETT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611
