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 .
This action is in response to the Preliminary Amendment filed on December 3, 2024.
Claims 1-20 are pending in this action. Claims 3-7, 14, and 20 have been amended. Claims 21 and 22 have been canceled.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) an abstract idea of generating textual outputs from images. The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the claims directed to an abstract idea of generating textual outputs from images. The claim is drawn to process/device (a series of steps or acts) that similar to an idea ‘Of itself such as an instantiated concept, plan or scheme, as well as a mental process (thinking) that “can be performed in the human mind, or by a human using a pen and paper’.
The claim does not require that the method be implemented by a particular machine. The method does not require a particular transformation of a particular article. There is not transformation of a physical objects or data into a different state or thing. This generating textual outputs from images is similar to collecting and comparing known information found by the courts to be abstract idea (Classen Immunotherapies, Inc. v. Elan Pharm., Inc., 114 USPQ2d 1920 (Fed. Cir. 2015)) and also displaying certain results of the collection and analysis found by the courts to be abstract idea (Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 119 USPQ2d 1739 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because claims broadly recites the result (generating textual outputs from images, matching with words available in the dataset, if no successful matches then splitting and matching, and out textual with matching words), rather than sufficiently claiming a technical means of achieving the result. See Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable Commons, LLC, 874 F.3d 1329, 1337 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (“The claim requires the functional results ... but does not sufficiently describe how to achieve these results in a non-abstract way.”).
The claims recite a Judicial exception relating to “generating textual outputs from images, along with a generic processor that simply used as tool to implement the abstract idea”. Here the claims do not change the underlying or other technology, rather the claimed techniques playing using computing device as pedagogical tool. The claimed additional elements - -the processor device - -“merely use a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea” or “do no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment.” Memorandum, 84 Fed. Reg. at 55; see Customedia Techs., LLC v. Dish Network Corp., No. 2018- 2239, 2020 WL 1069742, at *3 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 6, 2020) (“We have held that it is not enough, however, to merely improve a fundamental practice or abstract process by invoking a computer merely as a tool.”).
Accordingly, claims 1-20 do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. See Memorandum, 84 Fed. Reg. at 54. As the claim recites a judicial exception and fails to integrate the exception into a practical application, the claim is “directed to the .. . judicial exception.” Id. at 54.
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements are simply a generic processor. The claim amounts to no more than generating textual outputs from images. Taking the claimed elements either individually or as ordered combination, that transform claims into patent-eligible application, since claims merely recite use of already existing computer-based generating textual outputs from images, and there is no “inventive concept” in play using computing device well-understood, routine, and conventional activities commonly used in industry of generating text, since claims, at most, attempt to limit abstract idea to particular technological environment, and such limitation has been held insufficient to save claims in this context, and since dependent claims are not rendered patent-eligible by recitation of additional steps, such as per claim 2 and 13, recites: “calculate a highest similarity …”; as per claim 3 and 14 recites: “splitting the at least one word . . .”; as per claims 4 and 15, recites: “language dictionary …”; even though additional limitations may narrow scope of claims. The claim as a whole does not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Accordingly, claims 1-20, are ineligible.
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, 3-10, 12, 14-18, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Osindero (US 2017/0004374) in view of Shen et al (CN 112015721A).
As per claim 1, Osindero discloses, a computer-implemented method, comprising:
receiving, by a processor, an image comprising textual data (Paragraphs 0034-0035);
extracting, by the processor, machine-readable textual data from the image, the machine- readable textual data comprising one or more words (Paragraphs 0044-0047);
comparing, by the processor, each of the one or more words with a dataset comprising at least one of a domain lexicon database and a language dictionary database to determine a first set of words
generating, by the processor, a textual output associated with the image based at least on the first set of words and the third set of words (Paragraph 0070, Fig. 5, elements 510 and 512).
Osindero does not explicitly disclose, but Shen discloses, a second set of words, the second set of words being words with no successful matches with the words available in the dataset; splitting, by the processor, at least one word of the second set of words into two or more words to determine a third set of words that matches with the words available in the dataset (section: the OCR character recognition method, comprising the following steps: “comparing each split part word with the standard dictionary table; if some part of the word is in the standard dictionary table, then the word segmentation is successful, if some part of the word is not in the standard dictionary table, then the word segmentation is failed, continuously splitting and matching is needed until it is successful, counting each part of words of each user comment commodity effective sentence successfully split; each part of word set”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Osindero by including splitting and matching to have another set of words as taught by Shen for the advantage of improving the accuracy of the commodity feedback (Abstract).
As per claim 3, Osindero does not disclose, but Shen discloses, further comprising: splitting the at least one word of the second set of words into the two or more words based, at least in part, on a predefined text parsing rule; comparing the two or more words with the dataset to determine successful matches for the two or more words in the dataset; and in response to determining that the two or more words have successful matches in the dataset, categorizing the two or more words into the third set of words (section: the OCR character recognition method, comprising the following steps: “comparing each split part word with the standard dictionary table; if some part of the word is in the standard dictionary table, then the word segmentation is successful, if some part of the word is not in the standard dictionary table, then the word segmentation is failed, continuously splitting and matching is needed until it is successful, counting each part of words of each user comment commodity effective sentence successfully split; each part of word set”).
As per claim 4, Osindero discloses, wherein the language dictionary database is configured to store words in accordance with syntactic rules and semantic rules of at least one language (Paragraphs 0062-0070, “the text from an image can comprise a single character or it can comprise a string of characters that form a word or a combination of words that form a sentence”).
As per claim 5, Osindero discloses, wherein the domain lexicon database is configured to store keywords corresponding to at least one domain (Paragraph 0047).
As per claim 6, Osindero does not disclose, but Shen discloses, further comprising generating, by the processor, the textual output associated with the image based at least on the first set of words, the second set of words that remain unmatched after splitting, and the third set of words (section: the OCR character recognition method).
As per claim 7, Osindero discloses, wherein the image is processed based on at least one image pre- processing operation to enhance quality of the image, prior to extracting the machine-readable textual data from the image (Paragraphs 0053-0061).
As per claim 8, Osindero discloses, wherein the at least one image pre-processing operation comprises at least one of: (a) adaptive thresholding method, (b) image enhancement method, and (c) de-skewing method (Paragraphs 0053-0061, discloses image enhancement method).
As per claim 9, Osindero discloses, wherein the adaptive thresholding method comprises eliminating grey areas from the image (Paragraphs 0053-0061, weighted pixel contributions).
As per claim 10, Osindero discloses, wherein the image enhancement method comprises updating one or more image parameters of the image, the one or more image parameters comprising at least one of: (a) brightness, (b) contrast, (c) sharpness, and (d) aspect ratio (Paragraphs 0053-0061).
As per claims 12, 14-18, and 20, they are analyzed and thus rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of claims 1, 3-10, because the corresponding claims have similar limitations.
Claim(s) 2, 13, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Osindero (US 2017/0004374) in view of Shen et al (CN 112015721A) as applied to claims 1, 12 and 18 above, and further in view of Lin et al. (CN 109582972A).
As per claims 2, 13, and 19, Osindero in view of Shen do not disclose, but Lin discloses, wherein the step of comparing each of the one or more words comprises: calculating a highest similarity score for each of the second set of words with the words available in the dataset; upon determining that the highest similarity score is at least equal to a threshold similarity score, detecting a word from the dataset corresponding to the highest similarity score as a corrected word for the respective word of the second set of words; and categorizing the corrected word as the first set of words (Claim 1).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Osindero in view of Shen by including calculating a highest similarity score as taught by Lin for the advantage of obtaining optical character recognition result with high accuracy (Abstract).
Claim(s) 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Osindero (US 2017/0004374) in view of Shen et al (CN 112015721A) as applied to claims 8 above, and further in view of Bloomberg et al. (5,187,753).
As per claim 8, Osindero in view of Shen do not disclose, but Bloomberg discloses, wherein the de- skewing method comprises altering a skew angle of the image (Col. 2, lines 9-34).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Osindero in view of Shen by including de-skewing method as taught by bloomberg for the advantage of obtaining optical character recognition result with high accuracy.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Melamed et al. (US 2018/0197566) discloses, system and method for improving speech recognition accuracy using textual context.
Jahagirdar et al. (US 9,355,336) discloses, recognizing text from frames of image data using contextual information.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Abul K. Azad whose telephone number is (571) 272-7599. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Bhavesh Mehta, can be reached at (571) 272-7453.
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Commissioner for Patents
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May 29, 2026
/ABUL K AZAD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2656
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