DETAILED ACTION
[1] Remarks
I. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
II. Claims 1-20 are pending and have been examined, where claims 1-20 is/are rejected. Explanations will be provided below.
III. Inventor and/or assignee search were performed and determined no double patenting rejection(s) is/are necessary.
IV. Patent eligibility (updated in 2019) shown by the following: Claims 1-20 pass patent eligibility test because there is/are no limitation or a combination of limitations amounting to an abstract idea. Also, the following limitation or the combinations of the limitations:
“at least one processing unit configured to perform computations of the artificial neural network based on the data stored in the memory; and wherein the removable media is configured to process data written by the controller into the removable media using the artificial neural network” effects a transformation or a reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing / adds a specific limitation(s) other than what is well-understood, routine and conventional in the field, or adding unconventional steps that confine the claim to a particular useful application and providing improvements to the technical field of deep learning computing resources, which recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application and amounting significant more.
V. There are no PCT associated with the current application.
[2] Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
Use of the word “means” (or “step for”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim element is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph). The presumption that 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph) is invoked is rebutted when the function is recited with sufficient structure, material, or acts within the claim itself to entirely perform the recited function. Absence of the word “means” (or “step for”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim element is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph). The presumption that 35 U.S.C. 112(f) (pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph) is not invoked is rebutted when the claim element recites function but fails to recite sufficiently definite structure, material or acts to perform that function.
Claim elements in this application that use the word “means” (or “step for”) are presumed to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Similarly, claim elements that do not use the word “means” (or “step for”) are presumed not to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
Claim(s) 1-10 are not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA U.S.C. 112 6th paragraph because of the following reason(s): limitations are modified by sufficient structure or material for performing the claimed function.
Claim(s) 11-20 do not require 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA U.S.C. 112 6th paragraph interpretation because they are method claims and / or they are CRM claims.
Upon examination of the specification and claims, the examiner has determined, under the best understanding of the scope of the claim(s), rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(a)/(b) is not necessitated because of the following reasons: sufficient support are provided in the written description / drawings of the invention.
[3] Grounds of Rejection
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
1. 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.
2. Claims 1-6, 11-14, and 18-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tremblay (US 20190251397) in view of HALTOVSKY (US 20100113148).
Regarding clam 1, Tremblay discloses a device, comprising:
a controller (see paragraph 102, CPU or GPU are read as the controller); and
a slot coupled to the controller and writes to a removable storage unit in a well-known manner, paragraph 112, the second subset of SMs 440 executes a pixel shader to produce processed fragment data, which is then blended with other processed fragment data and written to the frame buffer in memory 304, SMs 440 is the host interface operable to receive commands); wherein the removable media comprises:
a memory configured to store data representative of an artificial neural network (see paragraph 36, the training dataset is stored in a memory, where the training dataset is read as the ‘store data’); and
at least one processing unit configured to perform computations of the artificial neural network based on the data stored in the memory (see paragraph 21, the task-specific training data computation unit 115 may be implemented by the GPU 110 or an additional GPU 110, also see paragraph 25, the input image is paired with the task-specific training data to produce a test pair for generated labeled training data for training a neural network model, the training process is read as the computations); and
wherein the removable media is configured to process data written by the controller into the removable media using the artificial neural network (see paragraph 94, using the SM 440 to execute the program and perform calculations, shared memory/L1 cache 570 to communicate between threads, and the LSU 554 to read and write global memory through the shared memory/L1 cache 570 and the memory partition unit 380).
Tremblay is silent in disclosing a slot coupled to the controller and configured to receive a removable media. HALTOVSKY discloses a slot coupled to the controller and configured to receive a removable media (see paragraph 124, a central processing unit 314, which may include a graphic processing unit GPU, random access memory 316, flash memory 317, a removable media/memory insertion slot 318, a SD card socket).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include a slot coupled to a controller and configured to receive removable media to allows a device to read data from, or write data to, external storage cards or discs like SD cards or USB drive. Also this allows new software or firmware updates to be easily install from an external card.
Regarding claim 2, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 1, further comprising: a camera configure to generate video data to be written by the controller into the removable media (see paragraph 109, a digital camera, see paragraph 112, processing different data from the same scene in a pipelined fashion until all of the model data for the scene has been rendered to the frame buffer, the contents of the frame buffer are transmitted to a display controller for display on a display device, the frame buffer exist which assumes video frames are generated).
Regarding claim 3, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 2, wherein the removable media further includes a host interface operable to receive write commands from the controller when the removable media is inserted into the slot (see paragraph 107, the removable storage drive reads from and/or writes to a removable storage unit in a well-known manner, paragraph 102, the NVLink 310 allows direct load/store/atomic access from the CPU 530 to each PPU's 300 memory 304. In an embodiment, the NVLink 310 supports coherency operations, allowing data read from the memories 304 to be stored in the cache hierarchy of the CPU 530, the NV link is inserted into the slot between two GPUs).
Regarding claim 4, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 3, wherein the removable media is further configured to store an output of the artificial neural network responsive to an input corresponding to the video data written by the controller into the removable media (see paragraph 127, eventually being able to identify shapes without any coaching, a deep learning or neural learning system needs to be trained in object recognition and classification for it get smarter and more efficient at identifying basic objects).
Regarding claim 5, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 4, wherein the output includes a description of content in the video data (see paragraph 127, from automatic image captioning in online image databases to smart real-time language translation in video chat applications, where the image captioning is the description of the content of the video data).
Regarding claim 6, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 4, wherein the output includes analytics of the video data written by the controller into the removable media (see paragraph 56, the PPU 300 may be configured to accelerate numerous deep learning systems and applications including autonomous vehicle platforms, deep learning, … intelligent video analytics, paragraph 113, graphics processing pipeline 600 implemented by the PPU 300 … that is transmitted from one stage to the next stage of the graphics processing pipeline 600 to generate output data).
Regarding claims 11 and 18, see the rationale and rejection for claim 1.
Regarding claim 12, see the rationale and rejection for claims 2 and 3.
Regarding claim 13, see the rationale and rejection for claim 4.
Regarding claim 14, see the rationale and rejection for claims 5 and 6.
Regarding claim 19, see the rationale and rejection for claim 2-6.
3. Claims 7-10, 15-17, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tremblay (US 20190251397) in view of HALTOVSKY (US 20100113148) and Yogeshwar (US 20030206717).
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Tremblay and HALTOVSKY as whole discloses all the limitations of claim 6 but is silent in disclosing the device of claim 6, wherein the removable media is further configured to generate a compressed video based on the video data and the analytics.
Yogeshwar discloses the device of claim 6, wherein the removable media is further configured to generate a compressed video based on the video data and the analytics (see figure 1, 108 the video compression includes an encoded image and its metadata which reads on its analytics).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include configuring removable media or an associated device to generate compressed video based on video data and analytics optimizes storage efficiency, reduces bandwidth during transfer, and preserves details identified by analytical processing, which saving physical space on the removable media.
Regarding claim 8, Yogeshwar discloses the device of claim 7, wherein the removable media is further configured to store the compressed video as a replacement of the video data written by the controller into the removable media (see paragraph 34, Notably, at any time after encoding of the archived audio/video information the metadata and generated indexes can be updated as the need arises or as the desirability of additional search fields becomes apparent, where the updating process is read as replacement). See the motivation for claim 7. In addition, replacing file in storage keeps data up to date and current.
Regarding claim 9, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 8, wherein the removable media is configured in a form of a solid state drive, a memory card, a network storage device, or a universal serial bus (USB) drive (see paragraph 92, shared memory/L1 cache 570 is an array of on-chip memory that allows for data storage and communication between the SM 440 and the primitive engine).
Regarding claim 10, Tremblay discloses the device of claim 9, wherein the removable media further comprises: an integrated circuit package configured to enclose at least the memory and the at least one processing unit (see figure 5A, 550 core is the processing unit and 570 is read as the memory, both enclosed within 440).
Regarding claim 15, see the rationale and rejection for claim 7.
Regarding claim 16, see the rationale and rejection for claim 8.
Regarding claim 17, see the rationale and rejection for claims 9 and 10.
Regarding claim 20, see the rationale and rejection for claim 7-9.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEX LIEW (duty station is located in New York City) whose telephone number is (571)272-8623 (FAX 571-273-8623), cell (917)763-1192 or email alexa.liew@uspto.gov. Please note the examiner cannot reply through email unless an internet communication authorization is provided by the applicant. The examiner can be reached anytime.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, MISTRY ONEAL R, can be reached on (313)446-4912. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ALEX KOK S LIEW/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2674 Telephone: 571-272-8623
Date: 8/5/26
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