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 .
Response to Amendments and Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on 06/2026 with respect to interpretation of claims 11-24 under 35 U.S.C 112(f) have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the claim interpretation under 35 U.S.C 112(f) has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s amendments and arguments with respect to claims 11-14, 16-21, 23-27 and 29-30 rejected under 35 U.S.C 102/103 have been considered but are moot in view of a new ground of rejection because the new ground of rejection is based on a combination of prior art references not specifically challenged in the arguments.
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.
Claims 11-14, 16-21, 23-27, 29 and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lee et al. (US 2018/0032150 A1, hereinafter “Lee”) in view of Patrick Lichtsteiner et al. (“A 128x128 120 dB 15us Latency Asynchronous Temporal Contrast Vision Sensor”, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, cited in the Applicant’s submitted IDS filed on 01/17/2025, hereinafter “Patrick”) and in further view of Nakagawa et al. (US 2022/0172486 A1, hereinafter “Nakagawa”).
Regarding claim 11, Lee discloses an event-based vision sensor (EVS) (Figs. 1-13, par. [0002]), comprising:
an EVS panel comprising a pixel array, wherein each pixel in the pixel array generates an on-event or an off-event (Figs. 1-3 and par. [0058], [0061]);
a window counter unit that partitions the pixel array into a plurality of windows (215 shown in Fig. 2 and par. [0061]);
an on/off counter unit that counts on-events and off-events occurring for each window of the plurality of windows (par. [0047], [0068] & [0070]); and
an Identification of Condition (IoC) unit (signal processor 120 or 220) that determines whether to discard or flag each of the corresponding windows in accordance with the count (see par. [0060], [0064] & [0069]).
Lee fails to teach that generating an on-event when a change in luminance exceeds a positive-side threshold or an off-event when the change in luminance exceeds a negative-side threshold, and the on/off counter unit separately counts on-events and off-events. However, these limitations are well taught by Patrick in Fig. 1(a), (b) to Fig. 3(a), (b) and section II. Vision Sensor Design. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Lee and Patrick to achieve the above-mentioned limitations for improving detection accuracy for both on-events and off-events as well as increasing frame rate and dynamic range.
Although Lee teaches discarding or flagging the flickering event area as discussed above, and both Lee and Patrick do not directly use the term “mask”, this masking feature of a flickering event area is well taught by Nakagawa to reduce or avoid the occurrence of the erroneous detection such as the detection of the object on the road surface and the like on which nothing originally exists, so that it becomes possible to detect the object with higher accuracy as described in paragraph [0176].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to further configure the combined apparatus of Lee and Nakagawa to arrive at the current claim limitation in an alternative configuration for detection of object with higher accuracy.
Regarding claim 12, the combination of Lee, Patrick and Nakagawa also discloses that the IoC unit is configured to: determine that the corresponding window is a flicker window and mask the window when at least one of: the count is one or more of the on-events in succession; or the count is one or more of the off-events in succession; and determine that the corresponding window is a non-flicker window and let the sensor signal be output from each pixel in the window when the on-events and the off-events are mixed in the count (see Lee, Figs. 1-3 and par. [0061]-[0070] and Patrick, section II. Vision Sensor Design).
Regarding claim 13, as also disclosed by the combination of Lee, Patrick and Nakagawa, the IoC unit is further configure to: determine that the corresponding window is a flicker window when one or more of the on- events in succession and one or more of the off-events in succession continue in the count (see Lee, par. [0070]-[0072]).
Regarding claim 14, it is also seen in the combination of Lee, Patrick and Nakagawa that a flicker detection (FD) unit configured to: count the on-events and the off-events that are output from the on/off counter unit; increment the count in case of the on-event; decrement the count in case of the off-event; and when the count exceeds a threshold value, determine that the corresponding window is a flicker window and output a result of the determination (see Lee, par. [0062]-[0068] & [0070] and Patrick, section II. Vision Sensor Design).
Regarding claim 16, the combination of Lee, Patrick and Nakagawa further discloses a frequency calculation block configured to: calculate a flicker frequency based on a signal output from the IoC unit identifying the on-event and the off-event and a frame rate in operation (see Nakagawa, par. [0146], [0150], [0171]-[0172]).
Regarding claim 17, the combination of Lee, Patrick and Nakagawa also discloses that the frequency calculation block is further configured to: compare the calculated flicker frequency with a preset frequency; and the EVS is configured to: determine whether to mask each window in accordance with a result of the comparison (see Nakagawa, par. [0150] & [0176]. Note that the preset frequency is stored and compared to find a match to detect the flicker component).
Regarding claims 18-21, 23 and 24, these claims are also met by the combined teaching of Lee and Nakagawa as discussed in claims 11-14, 16 and 17, respectively.
Regarding claim 25, the subject matter of this claim is also met by the combined teaching of Lee and Nakagawa as discussed in claims 11 and 12.
Regarding claims 26, 27, 29 and 30, these claims are also met by the combined teaching of Lee and Nakagawa as discussed in claims 13, 14, 16 and 17, respectively.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 15, 22 and 28 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 a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The prior art references of record, either alone or in combination, fail to teach or suggest: “the IoC unit is further configured to: output a signal when both the on-event and the off-event occur simultaneously, and wherein, the EVS is configured to: calculate a logical sum (OR) of the signal and the result of the determination output from the FD; and determine that the corresponding window is a non-flicker window and let the sensor signal to be output from each pixel in the window according to the logical sum.” as recited in claims 15, 22 and 28.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lin Ye can be reached at 571-272-7372. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NHAN T TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2638
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