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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/29/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: Line 2 recites “webrtc enabling application” which Examiner suggests amending to “a webrtc enabling application” Line 4 recites “an edge device connects to the cloud platform and has a camera thereon, memory for” which Examiner suggests amending to “an edge device connecting to the cloud platform and having a camera thereon, a memory for”. Line 13 recites “the cloud platform web portal” which Examiner suggests amending to “the web portal of the cloud platform”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities: Line 2 recites “the detected object” which Examiner suggests amending to “the at least one detected object”. Line 3 recites “the plurality of frames” which Examiner suggests amending to “the plurality of video frames”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 7 is objected to because of the following informalities: Line 2 recites “mux” which Examiner suggests amending to “multiplexer” in order to provide clarity in the claim language. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 18 is objected to because of the following informalities: Line 2 recites “the object” which Examiner suggests amending to “the objects”. Lines 2-3 recites “the plurality of frames” which Examiner suggests amending to “the plurality of video frames”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 26 is objected to because of the following informalities: Line 3 recites “a plurality of edge devices connect to the cloud platform” which Examiner suggests amending to “a plurality of edge devices connecting to the cloud platform”. Line 14 recites “the cloud platform web portal” which Examiner suggests amending to “the web portal of the cloud platform” Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 4, 6, 16-20, 25, and 27 are 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 4 recites the limitation "the object within the region of interest" in Lines 2-3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim as it is unclear as to whether the object is referring to the at least one detected object within the region of interest disclosed in claim 2 or the object detected within the region of interest in claim 3. Examiner suggests amending the limitation to “the object that has been detected within the region of interest” and has interpreted the limitation as such.
Claim 6 recites the limitation "the object within the region of interest" in Lines 2-3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim as it is unclear as to whether the object is referring to the at least one detected object within the region of interest disclosed in claim 2 or the object detected within the region of interest in claim 3. Examiner suggests amending the limitation to “the object that has been detected within the region of interest” and has interpreted the limitation as such.
Claim 16 recites the limitations "the webrtc enabling application" in Line 8 and “the display of output” in Line 10. There is insufficient antecedent basis for these limitations in the claim as there is no earlier mention of a webrtc enabling application or a display of output. Examiner suggests amending the limitations to “a webrtc enabling application” and “a display of output”, respectively, and has interpreted the limitations as such.
Claims 17-20 and 25 depend on claim 16 and thus are also rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite.
Claim 27 recites the limitation "the cloud devices" in Line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim as there is no earlier mention of cloud devices. Examiner suggests amending to “cloud devices” (deleting “the”) and has interpreted the limitation as such.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
Claim(s) 16-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Maliuk et al. (US 2017/0163929) in view of Keighran et al. (US 10,498,794).
With regards to Claim 16, Maliuk et al. discloses a method for facilitating video analysis comprising:
capturing, from a camera, a video stream comprising a plurality of video frames (Para. 0017 lines 3-5 and 11-13, 0021 lines 9-13, "camera" "video stream");
generating, with a processor, a set of coordinates to define a region of interest to insert into at least one of the plurality of video frames to form a modified video stream (Para. 0019 lines 1-19, 0024 lines 8-13, 0025 lines 4-7, "coordinates of the ROI");
obtaining, with the processor, a plurality of inferences from the modified video stream (Para. 0036 lines 6-15, 0037 lines 1-15, "tracking");
uploading the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences to a cloud platform (Para. 0020 lines 1-4, 0021 lines 9-17, 0027 lines 7-12, "ROI" "sent to the video cloud" "broadcast");
sending, the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences to the cloud platform (Para. 0020 lines 1-4, 0021 lines 9-17, 0027 lines 7-12, "ROI" "sent to the video cloud" "broadcast"); and
enabling, with the cloud platform, the display of output relating to the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences on a display device (Para. 0025 lines 10-12, "display" "output network device").
Maliuk et al. does not explicitly teach uploading the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences to a web portal and sending, through a webrtc enabling application, the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences to the web portal, where the display device is in communication with the web portal.
However, Keighran et al. discloses the concept of uploading a video stream to a web portal residing within a cloud platform by sending through a webrtc enabling application and displaying the video stream on a display device in communication with the web portal in order to allow many participants to engage and see the same video stream in real-time (Col. 7 lines 63-67, Col. 8 lines 1-26 and 46-51, Col. 14 lines 5-18, "webrtc" "web browser" "cloud").
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include the concept of uploading a video stream to a web portal residing within a cloud platform by sending through a webrtc enabling application and displaying the video stream on a display device in communication with the web portal as taught by Keighran et al. into the method of Maliuk et al. The motivation for this would be to allow many participants to engage and see the same video stream in real-time.
With regards to Claim 17, the combination of Maliuk et al. and Keighran et al. discloses the method of claim 16, further comprising: detecting objects within the region of interest; and generating output relating to the objects (Maliuk et al.: Para. 0028 lines 3-11, Fig. 4, "objects of interests").
With regards to Claim 18, the combination of Maliuk et al. and Keighran et al. discloses the method of claim 17, further comprising: inserting at least one segment around the object into at least one of the plurality of frames (Maliuk et al.: Para. 0024 lines 8-13, 0025 lines 4-7, 0028 lines 3-11, Fig. 4, "objects of interests").
With regards to Claim 19, the combination of Maliuk et al. and Keighran et al. discloses the method of claim 16, further comprising: generating analytics relating to the region of interest for display on the display device in response to queries from a user (Maliuk et al.: Para. 0024 lines 6-13, 0028 lines 3-11, 0035 lines 1-10, "contrast" "hues").
Claim(s) 20 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Maliuk et al. (US 2017/0163929) in view of Keighran et al. (US 10,498,794) and further in view of Hogg et al. (US 2016/0042621).
With regards to Claim 20, the combination of Maliuk et al. and Keighran et al. discloses the method of claim 16.
The combination of Maliuk et al. and Keighran et al. does not explicitly teach further comprising: identifying an event within the region of interest; communicating with an interface that is connected to a control system; sending commands to the control system through the interface; controlling the control system with rules stored in memory on an edge device; and modifying the rules in response to input received from a user.
However, Hogg et al. discloses the concept of identifying an event within the region of interest, communicating with an interface that is connected to a control system, sending commands to the control system through the interface, controlling the control system with rules stored in memory on an edge device, and modifying the rules in response to input received from a user in order to allow the camera to learn how to respond to future similar motion events and not require a user to intervene every time (Para. 0090 lines 1-8, 0091 lines 1-18, 0092 lines 1-16, "motion event" "delete" "learn" "feedback").
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include the concept of identifying an event within the region of interest, communicating with an interface that is connected to a control system, sending commands to the control system through the interface, controlling the control system with rules stored in memory on an edge device, and modifying the rules in response to input received from a user as taught by Hogg et al. into the method of the combination of Maliuk et al. and Keighran et al. The motivation for this would be to allow the camera to learn how to respond to future similar motion events and not require a user to intervene every time.
With regards to Claim 25, the combination of Maliuk et al., Keighran et al., and Hogg et al. discloses the method of claim 20, further comprising: sending an alert when an event is identified within the region of interest (Hogg et al.: Para. 0091 lines 1-11, "notified").
Allowable Subject Matter
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
With regards to claims 1 and 26, Hogg et al. (US 2016/0042621) discloses an edge device with a camera, capturing a video stream from the camera, and a cloud computing platform that generates a set of coordinates to define a region of interest to insert into at least one of the video frames to form a modified video stream, processes the modified video stream to obtain a plurality of inferences, and sends a notification of the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences to the user to allow user to view the modified video stream and plurality of inferences. However, there is no mention of the cloud platform having a message broker, a webrtc enabling application, and a web portal, where the modified video stream is sent through the webrtc enabling application to the cloud platform web portal. Maliuk et al. (US 2017/0163929) discloses a camera in communication with a video cloud and an edge device, where the camera captures a video stream, and the edge device generates a set of coordinates to define a region of interest to insert into the video stream to generate a modified video stream and sends the modified video stream to the video cloud to display the modified video stream, however, there is no mention of processing the modified video stream to obtain a plurality of inferences nor is there any mention of the video cloud having a message broker, a webrtc enabling application, and a web portal, where the modified video stream and the plurality of inferences are sent through the webrtc enabling application to the web portal. Hawkins et al. (US 2023/0363851) discloses the concept of sending a modified video stream through a webrtc enabling application, however, there is no mention of the rest of the limitations of the claim. Thus, while different prior arts disclose parts of the claim, none of the prior arts disclose or have reasonable motivation to combine to disclose all of the limitations of the claim as a whole.
With regards to claims 2, 3, 5, 7-9, 11, 13, and 14, they are dependent on claim 1.
Claims 4, 6, and 27 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
With regards to claims 4 and 6, they are dependent on claim 1.
With regards to claim 27, it is dependent on claim 26.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Applicants are directed to consider additional pertinent prior art included on the Notice of References Cited (PTOL 892) attached herewith.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CAROL W CHAN whose telephone number is (571)272-5766. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30-3:30 M-F.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sumati Lefkowitz can be reached at (571) 272-3638. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CAROL W CHAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2672
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