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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. JP2022-045687, filed on March 22, 2022.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, and 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurihara Pub. No. US 2022/0030188 A1 in view of Lin et al. Pub. No. US 2012/0044375 A1 (hereafter Lin).
Regarding claim 1, Kurihara teaches “A data generation apparatus ([0022-0023] & Fig. 1 teaches a configuration of electronic equipment and a sensor connected to ) comprising: a reception part ([0024] teaches a communication interface that receives packets transmitted from the processing circuit of the vision sensor) configured to receive line data holding event data generated in reference to an event signal indicative of a result of detecting a change in an amount of received light as an event ([0023-0024] teaches a vision sensor which detects a change in the intensity of light, wherein it generates packet data to be transmitted).
Kurihara may not explicitly teach of a data generation part for padding the received data.
Lin teaches padding to meet a required fixed size such that it teaches the limitation “and a data generation part configured to generate output data regarding the received line data, wherein the data generation part adds padding data to the output data regarding the line data with a data size smaller than a predetermined size, such that a data size of the output data reaches the predetermined size ([0043-0044] teaches an image encoder that may insert padding data to ensure that the final encoded image is close to or equal to the required predetermined size)”.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have applied the teachings of Lin to the invention of Kurihara to allow the padding of received packet data. A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination in order to improve imaging systems that produce output data streams having fixed output sizes and constant frame rates (Lin [0003]).
Regarding claim 8, it is similar to claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons. Claim 8 is directed towards “A program readable by a computer apparatus, the program causing the computer apparatus to implement functions (Kurihara [0010] & claim 8, Lin [0012] teaches imaging processing functions)”
Regarding claim 2, wherein the combination, Lin teaches “The data generation apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the data generation part generates the output data by adding information regarding a data size of the event data included in the line data ([0032] teaches a ‘sent-out-size’ that represents the amount of encoded image data already produced. Though it mentions that it may include padding data if desired, in the more obvious case, in order to generate the remaining data size to meet the predetermined size, the current size must be included in order to determine how much more data is required. Also see [0030])”.
Claim(s) 3, 7, 9, and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurihara and Lin as used above in claims 1 and 2, and in further view of Sunahara Pub. No. US 2009/0201949 A1.
Regarding claim 3, the combination may teach of packets, however may not explicitly teach of the payload region of the packet containing event data.
Sunahara teaches of event data, padding data, and data size of event within a packet payload such that it teaches the limitation “The data generation apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the data generation part stores the event data, the padding data, and the information regarding the data size into a payload region of the output data ([0186-0190] teaches a configuration of header information containing padding information wherein it indicates if padding data is present, alongside the data within the payload. [0192-0194] and figure 14 teaches size information including information relating to data size within the payload)”.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have applied the teachings of Sunahara to the combination of Kurihara and Lin to have stored event data, padding data, and size information within a payload header of a packet. A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination in order to enable proper packet processing, allowing the receiving process to identify and process the packet accordingly, reducing time of packet transmission and reception (Sunahara [0035]).
Regarding claim 7, the combination teaches “The data generation apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the data generation part generates the output data by adding thereto last line flag information indicating whether or not the output data is a piece of line data holding last event data indicative of a result of detecting a last event having occurred in one frame period (Sunahara [0187] teaches a 1 bit padding flag information, indicating that padding data has been added at the end of the payload such that it would indicate whether or not the output data was able to reach its predetermined size with event data within a frame period, resulting in the need for padding as taught in Lin)”.
Regarding claim 9, the combination teaches “A data reception apparatus comprising: a data reception part configured to receive output data having a payload region holding event data generated in reference to an event signal indicative of a result of detecting a change in an amount of received light (Kurihara [0023-0024]) as an event and padding data such that a data size of the output data has a predetermined size (Sunahara [0088] teaches a reception device that receives packets and extracts the encoded data, wherein such data contains the event output data along with padding data and data size as taught in [0186-0190])”.
Regarding claim 10, the combination teaches “A data structure for use by a data reception apparatus including a data reception part configured to receive output data having a payload region holding event data (Sunahara [0088] teaches reception device receiving a packet and extracting encoded data from the packets) generated in reference to an event signal indicative of a result of detecting a change in an amount of received light (Kurihara [0023-0024] teaches sensor generating data based on change in light intensity) as an event and padding data such that a data size of the output data has a predetermined size, wherein the data structure includes the event data and the padding data (Sunahara [0186-0194]), and the data structure is used by the data reception apparatus in identifying the output data holding last event data indicative of a result of detecting a last event having occurred in one frame period (Sunahara [0187] teaches that the packet contains a padding flag such that it may be used to determine whether the last frame period contained last event data with padding or not)”.
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurihara, Lin, and Sunahara as used above in claims 1 and 3, and in further view of Iverson et al. Pub. No. US 2021/0210046 A1 (hereafter Iverson).
Regarding claim 6, the combination may not explicitly teach of using a header region according to MIPI (mobile industry processor interface).
Iverson teaches data transmission using MIPI such that it teaches the limitation “The data generation apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the data generation part stores the information regarding the data size into the payload region by use of a structure complying with a data structure of a header region according to MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) ([0083] teaches transmission of image data frames including blanking intervals required by protocols such as MIPI. [0050] teaches that each data frame may have a frame header that includes identification information which may include pixel count)”.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have applied the teachings of Iverson to the combination of Kurihara, Lin, and Sunahara to have stored frame data within a payload header of a packet according to MIPI. A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination as the MIPI protocol has the ability to send other packet types such as dummy packets during times between when image data for a line is transported over the MIPI link (Iverson [0084-0085]).
Claim(s) 4 and 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurihara and Lin as used above in claim 1, and in further view of KATO Pub. No. US 2018/0063296 A1.
Regarding claim 4, the combination may not explicitly teach of indicating last data, and adding padding of a result.
Kato teaches of transmitting divided data, wherein last data is indicated such that it teaches the limitation “The data generation apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the data generation part generates last output data to be output next to the output data regarding line data holding last event data indicative of a result of detecting a last event having occurred in one frame period, and the last output data excludes the event data and includes the padding data ([0082] teaches that a frame to be processed may be the last data such that it holds the frame in an area of the storage and sets a flag to indicate the last data. [0116-0119] teaches using padding in cases where total calculated payload lengths do not match the total data length. It may also distinguish between padding from data based on packet length included in the IP header)”.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have applied the teachings of Kato to the combination of Kurihara and Lin to have identified last data within data frames. A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination as it would allow for downstream processes to distinguish between padded data and event data, especially if the event data is the last data of the frame.
Regarding claim 5, the combination teaches “The data generation apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the data size of the line data is indeterminate, and the data generation part generates the output data by also adding the padding data to line data other than the line data holding the last event data indicative of the result of detecting the last event having occurred in one frame period (Lin [0023] teaches that encoding an image with an accurately predicted final encoded size is difficult as each JPEG image may be of different sizes, of which results in the amount of padding data required to increase the JPEG output size to the required fixed size will vary with each JPEG image. Kato [0119] teaches that the frame in which padding is included is not limited to a frame including the last data such that other frames may need padding in order to reach the final output size).”
Conclusion
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/BRANDON NGUYEN/Examiner, Art Unit 2195
/Aimee Li/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2195
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