DETAILED ACTION
Status
This Office Action is responsive to claims filed on 08/12/2024. Please note Claims 1-18 are pending and have been examined.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-18 are 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “… and based on the first feature map about the object, training the improved NeRF by performing iterative operations of:
receiving, from a user of an electronic device, a request for the novel view of the object;
generating, by using the improved NeRF, a second feature map from the novel view of the object; and
generating, by a decoder of the autoencoder, an image about the novel view of the object based on the second feature map,
providing, to the user of the electronic device, the image about the novel view of the object.”
It’s unclear whether the last step, “providing, …”, is part of the iterative operations or not. Applicant is suggested to properly use semicolon and conjunctive terms to clarify the claimed features.
Claim 7 recites “… based on the first feature map about the object, train the improved NeRF by performing iterative operations;
receive, from a user of an electronic device, a request for a novel view of the object;
generate, by using the improved NeRF, a second feature map from the novel view of the object;
generate, by a decoder of the autoencoder, an image about the novel view of the object based on the second feature map; and
provide, to the user of the electronic device, the image about the novel view of the object.”
It’s unclear whether the last four steps, i.e. “receive…; generate…; generate…; and provide…”, are part of the iteration. If they are not part of the iterative operations, applicant is suggested to clarify whether “the improved NeRF” used to generate the second feature map is the one after the training or before the training.
Claim 13 recites similar features of claim 7, and is therefore rejected. Other claims are dependent from claim 1, 7 or 13, and are therefore rejected
As a side note, Examiner notice that, in the field of Machine Learning, it’s inefficient to include a step of receiving user input in iterative operations. It’s more likely that, none of the last four steps is part of the iterative operations. Instead, these are subsequent steps after the training step is finished. Applicant is suggested to review the Specification and clarify: (1) whether these “receiving …”, “generating …”, “generating…”, and “providing…” steps are included in the iterative operations; and (2) whether “the improved NeRF” used to generate the second feature map is the one after the training.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Jampani (US 20240412458 A1) – This reference discloses obtaining an input image, generating a latent image, training a NeRF neural networks by performing iterative operations, and generating output images using the trained NeRF neural networks.
Li (US 20240338917 A1) – This reference discloses obtaining a plurality of multi-view images and generating latent representations corresponding to the plurality of images.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHONG WU whose telephone number is (571)270-5207. The examiner can normally be reached MON-FRI: 9AM-5PM EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Xiao Wu can be reached at 571-272-7761. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHONG WU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2613
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