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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Preliminary Amendments
The preliminary amendments to specification, abstract and claims have been acknowledged and entered. Claims 10 and 11 have been canceled, and new claims 12-22 have been added in the preliminary amendment. Accordingly, claims 1-9 and 12-22 are examined in this Office Action.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 12/02/2025, 01/17/2025 and 10/18/2024 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are 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.
Claim 14 is 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 14 recites the limitation "the second input terminal" in line 1 of the claim. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 15-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because independent claim 15 recites “A computer-readable storage medium”. As originally filed in paragraphs [0070] and [0074] of the application specification, “the computer-readable storage medium may further be a USB flash drive, a removable hard disk, a read-only memory (ROM), a RAM, a magnetic disk, an optical disc, or other various media that can store program code” (specification, paragraphs [0070] and [0074]). As broadly understood from the Applicant’s disclosure, “other various media” may encompass both statutory subject matter (i.e., disk, tape, RAM, ROM or solid-state memory, etc.) and non-statutory subject matter (i.e., signal or carrier wave which are able to temporality store the program code). See MPEP 2111.01. When the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers a signal per se or transitory propagating signals, the claim must be rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter.
However, the Examiner respectfully submits a claim drawn to such a computer readable medium that covers both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by adding the limitation “non-transitory” to the claim (for example, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium). Such an amendment would typically not raise the issue of new matter, even when the specification is silent because the broadest reasonable interpretation relies on the ordinary and customary meaning that includes signals per se. The limited situations in which such amendment could raise new issues of new matter occur, for example, when the specification does not support a non-transitory embodiment because a signal per se is the only viable embodiment such that the amended claim(s) is impermissibly broadened beyond the supporting disclosure. See, e.g., Gentry Gallery, Inc. vs. Berkline Corp., 134 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1998).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claims 1, 8 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Xiao et al. (US 2021/0218913 A1, hereinafter “Xiao”).
Regarding claim 1, Xiao discloses an EVS pixel operating method, applied to an EVS pixel (also known as dynamic vision sensor), wherein the EVS pixel operating method comprises:
recording, at a first moment, an output voltage generated by the EVS pixel in response to an incident light intensity, to obtain a first voltage (Figs. 3-6 and par. [0049]-[0052]. Note that a first moment corresponding to a first sampling period);
integrating the output voltage with the first voltage as a reference voltage over a predetermined integration duration after the first moment to obtain a voltage variation value (by a second-order differential unit 122); comparing the voltage variation value with a predetermined voltage threshold range (by a comparator 130), and outputting an event signal under a condition that the voltage variation value is out of the voltage threshold range (see Figs. 5-7 and par. [0052]-[0053] & [0059]).
Regarding claim 8, the subject matter of this claim is also met by Xiao as discussed in claim 1. It is noted that “an input unit” (110), “a sampling unit” (121), “an integration unit” (120), “a comparison unit” (130) and “an output unit” (at the output of comparison unit) as shown in Figs. 3-7.
Regarding claim 15, the subject matter of this claim is also met by Xiao as discussed in claim 1. Note that “a computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon a computer program” is disclosed by Xiao in paragraph [0096].
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 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xiao in view of Zannoni et al. (US 2025/0211867 A1, hereinafter “Zannoni”).
Regarding claim 13, although Xiao discloses the event signal is a binary signal indicating an on-event and off-event, Xiao is silent about the event signal is a 2-bit vector, the voltage threshold range is defined by a first voltage threshold and a second voltage threshold, wherein under a condition that the voltage variation value is greater than the first voltage threshold, a 2-bit vector [1, 0], which represents an UP event signal, is output, under a condition that the voltage variation value is less than the second voltage threshold, a 2-bit vector [0, 1], which represents a DN event signal, is output. However, a 2-bit vector is well used in the art to represent event signals as taught by Zannoni who teaches an EVS sensor that implements sequential readout of two bits including pixel-on events and pixel-off events for each pixel encodes an event image describing a frame with 2-bit encoding per pixel (see Zannoni, par. [0129]).
Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated by the teaching of Zannoni to provide 2-bit vector representing the event signal as discussed above to obtain the claimed feature in a conventional fashion in EVS imaging technology.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xiao in view of Posch et al. (US 2010/0182468 A1, hereinafter “Posch”).
Regarding claim 14 (please note that this claim is rejected based on best understanding of the claim language in view the lack of antecedent basis mentioned in 35 U.S.C 112(b) rejection above), although Xiao does not explicitly disclose that [the] second input terminal is connected to the comparison unit, and a feedback capacitor is provided between the first input terminal and the output terminal, this lack of teaching is compensated by Posch in Fig. 1a where a second input terminal (via reset switch below the amplifier A2) is connected to the comparison unit, and a feedback capacitor (C2) is connected between the first input terminal and the output terminal (see Fig. 1a and par. [0058]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to configure the device in Xiao to a feedback capacitor and connection terminals as discussed above to finely control the amplification of the input and output signals under different conditions.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7, 9, 12 and 16-22 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 an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Regarding claims 2 and 3, the prior art references of record, either alone or in combination, fail to teach or suggest the limitations and formulas as recited in these claims.
Regarding claim 4, the prior art references of record also fail to teach or suggest: “before the step of integrating the output voltage with the first voltage as a reference voltage over a predetermined integration duration after the first moment to obtain a voltage variation value, the method further comprises: obtaining an image quality requirement indicator of an EVS vision sensor; setting the integration duration based on the image quality requirement indicator.”
Regarding claim 5, the prior art references of record also fail to teach or suggest: “the method further comprises: collecting statistics on an event signal generation rate of the EVS pixel per unit duration prior to a current moment; and under a condition that the event signal generation rate is out of a predetermined generation rate threshold range, correspondingly adjusting the time constants based on the event signal generation rate.”
Regarding claim 6, the prior art references of record also fail to teach or suggest: “after the step of comparing the voltage variation value with a predetermined voltage threshold range, the method further comprises: under a condition that the voltage variation value is within the voltage threshold range, collecting statistics on an event signal generation rate of the EVS pixel per unit duration prior to a current moment; and updating the reference voltage under a condition that the event signal generation rate is less than a first predetermined generation rate threshold.”
Regarding claim 7, the prior art references of record also fail to teach or suggest: “after the step of outputting an event signal under a condition that the voltage variation value is out of the voltage threshold range, the method further comprises: collecting statistics on an event signal generation rate of the EVS pixel per unit duration prior to a current moment; and updating the reference voltage under a condition that the event signal generation rate is greater than a second predetermined generation rate threshold.”
Regarding claim 9, the prior art references of record also fail to teach or suggest: “a first switch is provided between the input unit and the sampling unit, the integration unit comprises a first input terminal, a second input terminal, and an output terminal, the first input terminal is connected to the input unit, the second input terminal is connected to the sampling unit, the output terminal is connected to the comparison unit, a second switch is provided between the first input terminal and the output terminal, and the comparison unit is connected to the output unit, wherein before the first moment, the first switch and the second switch are both in a closed state; at the first moment, the first switch enters an open state; and after the first moment, the second switch enters an open state, and upon arrival of the integration duration, the second switch enters a closed state.”
Regarding claim 12, this claim is dependent from claim 3.
Regarding claims 16-22, these claims are also allowed for similar reasons indicated in claims 2-7, respectively.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NHAN T TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-7371. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm.
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/NHAN T TRAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2638
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