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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (lDS) submitted are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and have been considered by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 1, 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 (a) as being unpatentable over Chinese Patent Publication No.CN 111432114 A to CHEN et al. (employing the provided machine translation and hereafter “CHEN”), in view of Son et al. (US 20130265451 A1, hereinafter “Son”).
Regarding claim 1, CHEN teaches an image capture method, applied to an electronic device, wherein the electronic device comprises a camera (Figs. 1&3: shooting module 36), and the method comprises:
determining a composition indicator of each frame of image based on person information in the corresponding image, wherein the person information comprises a person quantity of target persons and one or more of a plurality of person parameters, the plurality of person parameters comprise a center of mass position of the target person, an area proportion of the target person, and a face position of the target person (Fig. 1, pgs. 4-6: in a shooting a composition grading method, calculating a face image composition score based on multiple human face frame, a center point of the face frame and a degree of area of all human face image),
the composition indicator comprises one or more of a plurality of composition parameters, the plurality of composition parameters comprise a distance parameter, a closeness parameter, and a compactness parameter, the distance parameter indicates a matching degree between the image and a preset composition rule, the closeness parameter indicates a closeness degree between at least two target persons in the image, and the compactness parameter indicates a dispersion degree of position arrangement between at least three target persons in the image (Fig. 1, pgs. 4-6: the face image composition score is based on distance from a reference point with a preset image center to judge the degree of area of all human face image located away from the center of the image (“distance parameter”), a parameter for evaluating the gathering position in all the human face image in the image (“compactness parameter”) and intimate relationship of between human face frame (“closeness degree”));
and storing one or more frames of images with highest composition quality in the plurality of frames of images, wherein when the distance parameter, the closeness parameter, or the compactness parameter is smaller, the composition quality of the image is higher (Fig. 3, pg. 8: shooting module 36, used for shooting and storing image patterning human face image score greater than the preset score value, or the stored image patterning human face image recommendation score greater than the preset score value to the user.).
CHEN does not teach displaying a plurality of frames of images captured by the camera in real time
However, Son discloses displaying a plurality of frames of images captured by the camera in real time (Fig. 10, [0099]: mobile device 100 displays a plurality of images 10, which are continuously taken, on a touch screen 190, and displays a recommended image mark 11 indicating the recommended image on the selected and recommended image 10-7 among the continuously taken images.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate displaying a plurality of frames of images captured by the camera in real time as taught by Son into CHEN image device process. The suggestion/ motivation for doing so would be to make it is easy for a user to recognize that the image 10-7, on which the recommended image mark 11 is displayed, among the continuously taken images 10 has a high quality and is an excellent image (Son: [0099]).
Regarding claim 3, CHEN and Son combination teaches the method according to claim 1, in addition CHEN discloses wherein the composition indicator comprises the distance parameter, and when the person quantity N is equal to 1, the person information comprises a center of mass position of each target person (Exemplary, there is only one human face in the frame when the face image, the center point of the face frame is the compositional analysis reference point);
and the determining a composition indicator of each frame of image based on person information in the corresponding image comprises: obtaining a corresponding basic distance parameter based on a distance from a center of mass position of the target person to a preset reference position; and determining the basic distance parameter as the distance parameter (Fig. 1, pgs. 4-6: wherein compositional analysis reference point is a parameter for evaluating the gathering position in all the human face image in the image, and can be adjusted by calculating composing distance from a reference point with the preset image center to judge the degree of area of all human face image located away from the center of the image. wherein, the preset image center can be the geometric center point of the image, also can be all the human face in the image where the center point of an area, also can be other points, the present invention is not specifically limited.).
Regarding claim 12, CHEN and Son combination teaches the method according to claim 1, in addition CHEN discloses wherein the target person is every person in the image, or the target person is a person whose area proportion in the image is greater than a preset threshold and whose center of mass position is within a preset region (Fig. 1, pgs. 4-7: When the face image has multiple human face frame, calculating the midpoint of the outermost two human face frame, taking the midpoint as the compositional analysis reference point to a point of minimum distance from the preset image center corresponding to a single person in a face frame).
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 (a) as being unpatentable over CHEN and Son combination as applied above, in view of Cheatle et al. (US 20020110286 A1, hereinafter “Cheatle”).
Regarding claim 8, CHEN and Son combination teaches the method according to claim 1, except wherein the method further comprises: comparing composition indicators of any two frames of images in the plurality of frames of images, and removing a frame of image with lower composition quality in the two frames of images; and continuing comparing composition indicators of any two frames of images in a plurality of frames of images left after removing the frame of image with lower composition quality, until all the plurality of frames of images complete being compared.
However, Cheatle discloses wherein the method further comprises: comparing composition indicators of any two frames of images in the plurality of frames of images, and removing a frame of image with lower composition quality in the two frames of images; and continuing comparing composition indicators of any two frames of images in a plurality of frames of images left after removing the frame of image with lower composition quality, until all the plurality of frames of images complete being compared (Fig. 3, [0044] and Claim 2: in step 3g, the assigned quality factor for the current key frame 15 is compared with that previously assigned to the best frame. If it is lower, then this indicates a higher composition quality, and so the best frame is deleted and replaced with the current key fame 15. The next key frame 15 is then analyzed at step 3a, and so on, with the key frame previously analyzed being considered the best frame for this next analysis. If the quality factor is higher, this indicates a poorer composition quality and so the current key frame 15 is discarded and the process repeats from step 3a.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate wherein the method further comprises: comparing composition indicators of any two frames of images in the plurality of frames of images, and removing a frame of image with lower composition quality in the two frames of images; and continuing comparing composition indicators of any two frames of images in a plurality of frames of images left after removing the frame of image with lower composition quality, until all the plurality of frames of images complete being compared as taught by Cheatle into CHEN and Son combination. The suggestion/ motivation for doing so would be to selectively and automatically stores only that key frame (for each separate image group) which is considered the best composed version and free-up memory (Cheatle: [0045]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 4-7, 9-11 and 13-20 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.
Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ABDELAAZIZ TISSIRE whose telephone number is (571)270-7204. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM.
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/ABDELAAZIZ TISSIRE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2638
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