DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . It is responsive to the submission dated 09/25/2024. Claims 1-8 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
2. The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 09/03/2024 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and are being considered by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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.
4. Claims 1-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Erick (US 20150277838) in view of Eric et al. (US 20090243893) and further in view of True et al. (US 10901674).
Considering claim 1, Erik discloses a system (item 100 fig. 1) for displaying critical and non-critical information on a screen (e.g., Erik discloses a visual display suitable for presenting safety-critical information … with computationally lean safety verification. See par. 11), the system (see fig. 1) comprising an electronic monitoring circuit (102), and at least an electronic control circuit (items 103-106) configured to: process the critical information to be displayed (e.g., Erik discloses: An input signal S1 is fed to both a processing means 102 and a checksum predictor 105. On the basis of the input signal S1, the processing means 102 is adapted to generate a display drive signal S2 to be provided to a display 101. See par. 57);
construct at least one image from the non-critical information and incorporate therein the critical information to be displayed in order to form, on a first output of the electronic control circuit, an image signal to be transmitted to the screen, the image constructed by the electronic control circuit comprising a plurality of pixels, each pixel restoring at least part of critical or non-critical information (for examples, Erik discloses In order to verify the accuracy of the display drive signal S2, a checksum S4 generated by a checksum extractor 103 on the basis of the display drive signal S2 is compared with the reference checksum S5 by a display supervisor 104. Any difference between the reference checksum S5 and the checksum S4 that the display supervisor detects generates an error signal S6 which may trigger suitable safety measures, such as activation of a visual or audible signal to the user (e.g., complete or partial blanking of the display, or disconnection from a power supply) or interruption of receipt of the input signal S1, which notifies surrounding units of a malfunction of the visual display module 100. Upstream of the checksum extractor 103, there is arranged a colour filter 106 which acts as a value-selective (or value-discriminating) component that prevents pixel values in the display drive signal S2 from contributing to the checksum S4. For this purpose, the colour filter 106 outputs, based on the display drive signal S2, a filtered display drive signal S3, in which such pixel values that are equal to excluded elements in the pixel value range (see above) have been omitted or replaced by neutral values. See para. 57, wherein the filtered drive signal S3 corresponds to the constructed image and checksum S5 and checksum S4 correspond to respective critical and non-critical information. See also paras. 22-24, 28 and 31 which further describe the generation of an image with frames each being supervised according to regions being identified to encompass critical and non-critical information and excluding regions without defective pixels).
wherein the electronic control circuit (105) has at least one input (S5) connected to a data source (104), the critical information (S5 or S6) to be displayed being obtained from the data source (e.g., Erik discloses an input signal S1 is fed to both a processing means 102 and a checksum predictor 105. On the basis of the input signal S1, the processing means 102 is adapted to generate a display drive signal S2 to be provided to a display 101. …. The input signal S1 is also used by the checksum predictor 105 to generate a reference checksum S5 of a supervised area of the display frames. See fig. 1 and para. 57. Para. 31 of Erik also teaches that each distinct value of the safety-critical quantity may combine with all possible values assumed by the safety-noncritical quantity and lead to a corresponding number of different checksums),
the electronic monitoring circuit (either of elements 103-106) having an input (S5) connected to said first output (104) and being configured to determine expected critical information for display and to check whether the image signal contains critical information received corresponding to the expected critical information (for examples, para. 57 of Erik discloses: In order to verify the accuracy of the display drive signal S2, a checksum S4 generated by a checksum extractor 103 on the basis of the display drive signal S2 is compared with the reference checksum S5 by a display supervisor 104. Any difference between the reference checksum S5 and the checksum S4 that the display supervisor 104 detects generates an error signal S6 which may trigger suitable safety measures, such as activation of a visual or audible signal to the user (e.g., complete or partial blanking of the display, or disconnection from a power supply) or interruption of receipt of the input signal S1, which notifies surrounding units of a malfunction of the visual display module 100. Para. 31 of Erik also teaches that each distinct value of the safety-critical quantity may combine with all possible values assumed by the safety-noncritical quantity and lead to a corresponding number of different checksums),
to check whether the image signal contains information corresponding to the expected critical information, the electronic monitoring circuit is configured to: extract from the image constructed the critical information received from the indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by each pixel of the image constructed (for examples, para. 31 of Erik teaches: a given supervised region is used for representing both a safety-critical quantity to be verified by way of checksums and a safety-noncritical quantity which may be ignored as far as checksums are concerned. According to the prior art, each distinct value of the safety-critical quantity may combine with all possible values assumed by the safety-noncritical quantity and lead to a corresponding number of different checksums. According to this example embodiment, however, the safety-noncritical quantity is represented using an element in the pixel value range which is excluded from contributing to the checksum of that supervised region. For example, the colours used for both the symbols and their background are excluded elements, whereby the number of ignored pixels is kept constant between different frames and does not influence the checksum either directly or indirectly);
compare a first result of a hash function applied to the expected critical information and a second result of the hash function applied to the critical information received (for examples, Erik discloses: In order to verify the accuracy of the display drive signal S2, a checksum S4 generated by a checksum extractor 103 on the basis of the display drive signal S2 is compared with the reference checksum S5 by a display supervisor 104. Any difference between the reference checksum S5 and the checksum S4 that the display supervisor 104 detects generates an error signal S6 which may trigger suitable safety measures, such as activation of a visual or audible signal to the user (e.g., complete or partial blanking of the display, or disconnection from a power supply) or interruption of receipt of the input signal S1, which notifies surrounding units of a malfunction of the visual display module 100. See para. 57, wherein each of the computed error-corrected checksums obviously encompassed applying a hash function to the detected safety measures, as exemplified by para. 65 of Erik, which further teaches a lookup table 207 (or memory) returns at least one possible input signal value S7 which is associated with the current checksum value. For this purpose, the lookup table 207 stores predefined input signal values and associated pre-computed reference checksums. Because checksum functions are typically non-injective, there may be more than one distinct input signal value which will result in a given checksum value. In this visual display module 200, the display supervisor 104 may receive an actual input signal value S1 and compare this for each frame with at least one corresponding possible input signal value S7. If the display supervisor 104 detects at least one match, it may consider the display drive signal S2 as verified for the current frame. This may be signalled by outputting a negative error signal S6 from the display supervisor 104, indicating that the visual display module 200 is operating normally. See also paras. 80-84 in view of para. 52 for associating the computed checksums with hash functions being applied to critical and non-critical information).
Erik fails to particularly teach: the electronic control circuit is configured to obtain the expected critical information from the data source or to receive it from the electronic control circuit and transmit to the electronic monitoring circuit at least one indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by each pixel of the image constructed, wherein the electronic control circuit incorporates the critical information to be displayed into a first critical detail layer merged with at least one background detail layer to form the image to be displayed.
Nevertheless, Eric, in a similar art, discloses implementing a monitoring mechanism intended to detect errors of certain parameters intended to display information critical for the piloting of the aircraft. See para. 2. Paras. 18 of Eric further teaches generating digital images comprising a calculation unit of GPU type comprising at least one image memory, a memory dedicated to the "masks" also called "stencils" comprising at least one memory plane and a graphics processor, and said method comprises at least four steps: A first step of generating the non-critical symbols in the image memory; A second step of generating the critical symbols in the image memory and of generating the markers associated with said critical symbols in a memory plane of the memory dedicated to the "masks"; A third step of creating the image coded by the graphics processor while incorporating said markers into the components of the pixels of the critical symbols; and A fourth step of reading out the coded image. Paras. 46-53 of Eric further describe that the course of the non-critical symbols S.sub.NC is represented by dotted arrows and the course of the critical symbols S.sub.C is represented by continuous arrows: [0047] Step 1: any non-critical symbol S.sub.NC is generated conventionally in the image memory 10 of the GPU 1 in the RGB format, each pixel being coded on five bits on the LSBs of Red, six bits on the LSBs of Green and five bits on the LSBs of Blue; [0048] Step 2: any critical symbol S.sub.C is generated simultaneously in the image memory 10 in the RGB format and in a memory plane 12 dedicated to the masks which is one bit deep. In this step, any pixel written to image memory, and whatever its color, is assigned a corresponding pixel set to "1" in the mask plane. When the image is fully generated, the RGB color image is available in the image memory and the pixelwise markers are available in the mask plane. Each pixel is coded on five bits on the LSBs of Red, six bits on the LSBs of Green and five bits on the LSBs of Blue; [0049] Step 3: This step consists in inserting by means of the calculation unit 11 of the GPU 1 a marker into the image memory for each pixel for which there is a corresponding one set to "1" in the mask plane. The technique used consists in plotting a surface or a set of surfaces: [0050] Which cover the zone of the image into which the markers have to be inserted. By way of example, depending on the significance of the symbology generated, a single surface can overlap the whole of the image or one or more surfaces can overlap a sub-set of the image; [0051] Which are assigned a color whose active bits correspond to the markers which are inserted into the image memory. These active bits must be positioned on the bits of the image memory that are not used; [0052] Which will be subjected to a color mixing law such that, if a pixel of the mask plane is set to 1, then the color of the surface(s) plotted will be added to the color already present in the image memory. [0053] Step 4: This step corresponds to the reading out of the image memory by the graphical generation chain which then provides pixelwise on the digital video output the combination of the RGB color information and of the marking information for the pixels.
As such, it is submitted that by implementing the monitoring mechanism intended to detect errors of certain parameters intended to display information critical for the piloting of the aircraft using the described techniques above, the Eric reference at least obviously encompass : the electronic control circuit is configured to obtain the expected critical information from the data source or to receive it from the electronic control circuit and transmit to the electronic monitoring circuit at least one indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by each pixel of the image constructed, wherein the electronic control circuit incorporates the critical information to be displayed into a first critical detail layer merged with at least one background detail layer to form the image to be displayed, as claimed.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skilled in the art, before the effective filling date of the invention was made, to have modified the teachings of Erik to include electronic control circuit is configured to transmit to the electronic monitoring circuit at least one indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by each pixel of the image constructed, wherein the electronic control circuit incorporates the critical information to be displayed into a first critical detail layer merged with at least one background detail layer to form the image to be displayed; in the same conventional manner as taught by Eric. Combining the display of safety-critical parameters, as described in Erik together with the display monitoring mechanisms for error detections of Eric would be advantageous in that it would provide a system that, during air-traffic monitoring, can process and prevent the erroneous display of certain parameters, with information critical for the piloting of the aircraft, which may lead to a catastrophic situation in terms of dependability of operation, hence improving the integrity control of image information presenting for viewing on a display in an aircraft cockpit. See para. 2 of Eric.
The combination of Erik and Eric lacks the details for the monitoring circuit to develop a second critical detail layer in which the expected critical information obtained or received is incorporated, wherein a hash function being applied by the electronic monitoring circuit to a second critical detail layer in order to obtain the first hash result.
True, in a similar art, discloses using a verification protocol for embedded monitoring frames wherein special display frames are created and periodically embedded in the display data. See col. 11 lines 30-34. Hur further describes that in one refinement to the first verification protocol, the monitoring frames could be constructed to include coding information in addition to information used simply for recognition. The monitoring frames could be adapted to include coding information in the monitoring frames, such as a hash or CRC of incoming data to the display device 502 and/or outgoing data from the display device 502. The coding information to the display device 502 could be verified by the display device 502 and the coding information from the display device 502 could be verified by the high integrity server 504. This refinement to the first verification protocol can be used to provide an additional check on the processing and display functions of the low integrity display device 502. In a second refinement to the first verification protocol, a time synchronization check could be implemented by encoding a time-based signal as part of coding information included in the monitoring frames. See col. 12 lines 24-43. Furthermore, Hur teaches a process 700 of performing integrity verification on a real-time basis using an example system that supports the use of high integrity applications on uncertified display and control devices. The example process further includes generating an expected image (717) at the server from the application data (operation 716). The example process includes calculating one or more image characteristics 715 from the captured image 713 (operation 714) and calculating one or more image characteristics 719 from the expected image characteristics. The captured image characteristic 715 and the expected image characteristic 719 are compared (operation 720). A determination is made regarding whether a match exists, within tolerances, between the captured image characteristic 715 and the expected image characteristic 717 (decision 722). If the match is within tolerances (yes at decision 722), then processing of that frame ends. If the match is not within tolerances (no at decision 722), then the failure is caused to be annunciated (operation 724). Then processing of that frame ends. See col. 14 lines 15-50.
Thus, True, by using a verification protocol by periodically embedding previously created frames in the display data that supports the use of integrity applications and by calculating mismatch in image characteristics from the expected image characteristics using coding information (such as a hash or CRC of incoming data to the display device and/or outgoing data from the display device) included in the monitoring frames during the image display verification process; so as to generate and image that meets the conditions for integrity control of applications of display of critical data, Hur, therefore, provides a monitoring circuit for use to develop a second critical detail layer in which the expected critical information obtained or received is incorporated, wherein a hash function being applied by the electronic monitoring circuit to a second critical detail layer in order to obtain the first hash result, as claimed.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skilled in the art, before the effective filling date of the invention was made, to have modified the teachings of the Erik and Eric references to include a monitoring circuit for use to develop a second critical detail layer in which the expected critical information obtained or received is incorporated, wherein a hash function being applied by the electronic monitoring circuit to a second critical detail layer in order to obtain the first hash result; in the same conventional manner as taught by True; in order to provide a certifiable system for displaying critical information on uncertified displays or displays not approved for the display of data requiring high ICA. See col. 1 lines 44-46 of True.
As per claim 2, Eric, as modified by Erik and True, discloses the electronic control circuit is configured to transmit the indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by each pixel of the image constructed by incorporating into the image constructed, for each pixel of the image, the indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by the pixel by steganography and transmitting the image constructed to the electronic monitoring circuit via the output of the electronic control (for examples, Eric discloses: the course of the non-critical symbols S.sub.NC is represented by dotted arrows and the course of the critical symbols S.sub.C is represented by continuous arrows: [0047] Step 1: any non-critical symbol S.sub.NC is generated conventionally in the image memory 10 of the GPU 1 in the RGB format, each pixel being coded on five bits on the LSBs of Red, six bits on the LSBs of Green and five bits on the LSBs of Blue; [0048] Step 2: any critical symbol S.sub.C is generated simultaneously in the image memory 10 in the RGB format and in a memory plane 12 dedicated to the masks which is one bit deep. In this step, any pixel written to image memory, and whatever its color, is assigned a corresponding pixel set to "1" in the mask plane. When the image is fully generated, the RGB color image is available in the image memory and the pixelwise markers are available in the mask plane. Each pixel is coded on five bits on the LSBs of Red, six bits on the LSBs of Green and five bits on the LSBs of Blue; [0049] Step 3: This step consists in inserting by means of the calculation unit 11 of the GPU 1 a marker into the image memory for each pixel for which there is a corresponding one set to "1" in the mask plane. The technique used consists in plotting a surface or a set of surfaces: [0050] Which cover the zone of the image into which the markers have to be inserted. By way of example, depending on the significance of the symbology generated, a single surface can overlap the whole of the image or one or more surfaces can overlap a sub-set of the image; [0051] Which are assigned a color whose active bits correspond to the markers which are inserted into the image memory. These active bits must be positioned on the bits of the image memory that are not used; [0052] Which will be subjected to a color mixing law such that, if a pixel of the mask plane is set to 1, then the color of the surface(s) plotted will be added to the color already present in the image memory. [0053] Step 4: This step corresponds to the reading out of the image memory by the graphical generation chain which then provides pixelwise on the digital video output the combination of the RGB color information and of the marking information for the pixels. See paras. 46-53 of Eric, wherein the setting or insertion of a marker in the mask plane and the overlap of surfaces on the whole image encompass the restoration of information of pixel images by steganography. See the rationale with respect to the rejections of claim 1 above for reasons of obviousness.
As per claim 3, Eric, as modified by Erik and True, discloses the electronic control circuit incorporates into the image constructed, for each pixel of the image, the indicator of a critical state or a non-critical state of the information restored by the pixel by giving a predetermined value to at least one bit of the pixel of a colorimetry layer of the image constructed, the bit being chosen from: a least significant bit, a parity bit or a sign bit. See paras. 40-53 of Eric and the rationale with respect to the rejections of claim 1 above for reasons of obviousness.
As per claim 4, Erik discloses the hash function is selected from: SHA-1, MD5 or a cyclic redundancy check CRC function. See paras. 82-84 in view of para. 52 of Erick. See also col. 12 lines 25-30 of True.
As per claim 5, Erik discloses the electronic control circuit is further configured to receive, from the electronic control circuit, the image to be displayed, to extract from the image to be displayed the first detail layer (for examples, para. 31 of Erik teaches: a given supervised region is used for representing both a safety-critical quantity to be verified by way of checksums and a safety-noncritical quantity which may be ignored as far as checksums are concerned. According to the prior art, each distinct value of the safety-critical quantity may combine with all possible values assumed by the safety-noncritical quantity and lead to a corresponding number of different checksums. According to this example embodiment, however, the safety-noncritical quantity is represented using an element in the pixel value range which is excluded from contributing to the checksum of that supervised region. For example, the colours used for both the symbols and their background are excluded elements, whereby the number of ignored pixels is kept constant between different frames and does not influence the checksum either directly or indirectly); and to apply the hash function to the first critical detail layer extracted to obtain the second hash result (for examples Erik discloses a checksum (or hash sum or digest) is the value of a non-injective deterministic function (hash function) of the digital values of a set of pixels. A non-injective function with discrete values may be referred to as rank-deficient. The values of a checksum are numbers having a number of bits that may or may not coincide with the word length of the computer system in which it is implemented. As is known to the skilled person, checksums may be used to detect errors introduced by data transmission, which ideally delivers an identical copy at the destination. This may be achieved by sending a first checksum in parallel to the data and checking that a second checksum, computed on the basis of the transmitted data, agrees with the first checksum. By virtue of the non-injectivity of the checksum, this process entails transmitting a total amount of data that is less than twice the information to be transmitted. As only the two checksums are compared, it moreover reduces the comparison effort. According to the present invention, checksums computed in a specific, value-discriminating way are utilized to verify the correctness of a combined processing and (internal) transmission process, namely the generation and handling of the display drive signal for producing a human-readable representation of information encoded by an input signal in the form of a display image. Although such processing obviously does not produce an identical copy of the input signal, its result is yet deterministic and can be predicted once the input signal is known. It is emphasised that individual frames are verified continuously during operation of the display module, not only during a testing process or the like. See paras. 52-53 in view of paras. 80-84).
As per claim 6, Erik discloses the preceding claims, wherein the expected critical information is received by the electronic monitoring circuit from the electronic control circuit. See para. 57.
As per claim 7, Erik discloses the electronic monitoring circuit has an input connected to said data source (see fig. 1), wherein the electronic monitoring circuit is configured to receive critical information from the data source and to process the critical information received to obtain the expected critical information. See para. 57.
As per claim 8, Eric, as modified by Erik and True, discloses an aircraft equipped with at least one screen to which the output of a display system according to claim 1. See para. 2 and claim 1 of Eric and the rationale with respect to the rejections of claim 1 above for reasons of obviousness.
Conclusion
5. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Caillaud et al. (US 20210019045) discloses an electronic display device for a glass cockpit comprising a plurality of screens, the display device comprising, for each screen, an interactive display configuration tool, the device being configured, for each screen, to: display the configuration tool in at least one predetermined zone, the configuration tool comprising a plurality of user entry symbols each associated with a display configuration corresponding to the combination of a display format, a window size relative to the size of said screen, and a location of said window within said screen, modify the display configuration of said screen if a user entry symbol is selected that is different from the user entry symbol corresponding to the current display configuration.
6. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WESNER SAJOUS whose telephone number is (571) 272-7791. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 10:00 TO 7:30 (ET).
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/WESNER SAJOUS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2612
WS
03/14/2026