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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 –
(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.
Claim(s) 1, 8 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being unpatentable by Grant et al. (US 2021/0375067 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Grant teaches:
A computer-implemented method to provide fitted clothing on three-dimensional (3D) avatars, (FIG. 2) the method comprising:
identifying a reference region of an avatar body of an avatar; (FIG. 2, the avatar upper body [0051], “according to an overall size of the avatar model (135),”) determining a reference dimension of the reference region of the avatar body; [0051], “according to an overall size of the avatar model (135), The overall size of the avatar model (135) can be automatically computed from the avatar model (135), or explicitly specified by the user of the user account (137).”)
identifying a first region of a clothing item that is to be fitted to the reference region of the avatar body, wherein the first region has a first dimension; (FIG. 2 and FIG. 3, 149. [0042], “The server system (101) scales the piece of clothing uniformly according to the overall size of the avatar.” It is inherent that the clothing has a size information, in order to be scaled.)
identifying at least one second dimension of the clothing item; ([0053], “sizes of edges of the clothing (e.g., 163 and 155)”) determining at least one first relationship between the first dimension and the at least one second dimension;(clothing and clothing edges relationship.)
changing the first dimension to correspond to the reference dimension of the reference region of the avatar body so as to fit the first region of the clothing item to the reference region of the avatar body, wherein changing the first dimension correspondingly causes a scaling in size of the clothing item; (FIG. 3, [0051], “In FIG. 3, the cloth model (149) is uniformly scaled (171), according to an overall size of the avatar model (135), to generate a scaled model (161).”) and
changing the at least one second dimension of the clothing item to scale the clothing item along the at least one second dimension, (FIG. 3, [0053]-[0055], “The server system (103) compares sizes of edges of the clothing (e.g., 163 and 155) with the sizes of corresponding body components of the avatar model (135) to select edges for stretching or shrinking by the mesh deformer (139). For example, when the edge (155) is too loose for fitting on the arm of the avatar model (135), the server system (103) may select the edge (155) for shrinking by the mesh deformer (139). For example, when the edge (163) is too small for fitting on the torso of the avatar model (135), the server system (103) may select the edge (163) for stretching by the mesh deformer (139).”) wherein the at least one first relationship between the first dimension and the at least one second dimension is maintained after completion of the changing of the at least one second dimension. (still are clothing and clothing edges relationship.)
Regarding claim 8, Grant teaches:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium with instructions stored thereon that, responsive to execution by a processing device, causes the processing device to perform operations comprising: (Claim 14: “A non-transitory computer storage medium storing instructions configured to instruct a computer device to”) the rest of claim 8 recites similar limitations of claim 1, thus are rejected accordingly.
Claim 15 recites similar limitations of claim 8, thus are rejected accordingly.
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) 2, 9, 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grant in view of Masuko et al. (US 20150003690 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Grant teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1,
However, Grant does not, but Masuko teaches:
wherein the clothing item comprises a shoe. ([0147], “The third size adjusting unit 106C adjusts the size of the shoe image 32C based on the width obtained by the third width obtaining unit 102C. In other words, the third size adjusting unit 106C adjusts the size of the shoe image 32C based on the length of the size adjustment line 80C in the shoe image 32C.”)
Grant teaches clothing fitting on an avatar. Masuko teaches the clothing can be a shoe.
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to have combined the teachings of Grant with the specific teachings of Masuko to enable clothing fitting to be used in different clothing scenario.
Claim 9, 16 recites similar limitations of claim 2, thus are rejected accordingly.
Claim(s) 7, 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grant in view of Kaufman et al. (US 12412342 B2).
Regarding claim 7, Grant teaches:
The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein changing the first dimension and the at least the second dimension of the clothing item comprises modifying a mesh of the clothing item. (Abstract: “deforms a clothing mesh of the scaled clothing model at the one or more edges by stretching and/or shrinking the edges,”)
However, Grant does not, but Kaufman teaches:
Mesh can be replaced by a cage representation (para 69-70: “In some embodiments, parameters 102 can include collision geometries. Cloth model interaction with time-varying collision geometries provides an intuitive and effective means of manipulating cloth drape. Collision geometries are meshes with fully prescribed vertex motion per step and utilize the same penalty energy, P, described in Equation (5) when moving, while fixing their locations with hard positional constraints when not moving, without need of membrane and bending energies. In some embodiments, parameters 102 including adding nested cages. While collision geometries can be treated directly, nested cages can also be used and refined in tandem with a primary simulation mesh. The nesting property of nested cages allows for safe swapping of each new refined nested collision geometry from a previous nested collision geometry while preserving a safe initialization.”)
Grant teaches using mesh to represent clothing. Kaufman teaches using cages to replace meth to allow saft swapping of nested geometry collision.
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to have replaced the mesh of Grant with the cages of Kaufman to allow saft swapping of nested geometry collision.
Claim 14 recites similar limitations of claim 7, thus are rejected accordingly.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-6, 10-13, 17-20 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: none of the references alone or in combination teaches the limitations of “identifying the reference region of the avatar body comprises identifying an ankle of the avatar body; determining the reference dimension of the reference region of the avatar body comprises determining a diagonal of the ankle; identifying the first region of the clothing item that is to be fitted to the reference region of the avatar body comprises identifying a mouth of the shoe that is to be fitted to the ankle of the avatar body, wherein the first dimension comprises a diagonal of the mouth of the shoe; identifying the at least one second dimension of the clothing item comprises identifying a height of the shoe; determining the at least one first relationship between the first dimension and the at least one second dimension comprises determining a ratio between the diagonal of the mouth of the shoe and the height of the shoe; changing the first dimension to correspond to the reference dimension of the reference region of the avatar body comprises changing the diagonal of the mouth of the shoe to match the diagonal of the ankle; and changing the at least one second dimension of the clothing item to scale the clothing item along the at least the second dimension comprises changing the height of the shoe.” Recited in claim 3 and similar recited in claim 10 and 17.
none of the references alone or in combination teaches the limitations of “wherein the at least one first relationship comprises a ratio between the first dimension and the at least one second dimension, the ratio being within a predetermined range of values.” Recited in claim 6 and similar recited in claim 13 and 20.
Conclusion
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/YANNA WU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615