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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claims 1-10, 21-23 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b), as being drawn to a nonelected Species I, III, IV, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Applicant timely traversed the restriction (election) requirement in the reply filed on 06/28/2026.
Applicant's election with traverse of the restriction requirement in the reply filed on 06/28/2026 is acknowledged. The traversal is on the grounds that the subject matter among the groups is not independent and distinct as required by statute, and that the Office has historically examined applications containing multiple species are not obvious variants of each other. This is not found persuasive because as set forth in the restriction requirement, the species and/or grouping(s) of patentably indistinct species represent separate and distinct inventions. Moreover, as specified on pages 3-4 of the office action, the search burden applies due the inventions having acquired a separate status in the art due to their different classification, the inventions requiring a different field of search, and the prior art applicability to one invention would not likely being applicable to another invention.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 11, 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by US 12,075,175 by Berkovich et al.
Regarding claim 11, an image sensor, comprising:
one or more wise pixels in pixel array (col. 21 lines 10-44 teaches “In some examples, pixel array programming map 720a/b can be generated by the application (e.g., application 708) operating at host device 702, or map generator 721 of pixel cell array control circuit 716, that consumes the pixel data from pixel cell array 718.”);
a pixel-selection circuitry coupled with the pixel array, configured to select wise pixels according to rules (in addition to discussion above, col. 21 lines 10-44 teaches “For example, application 708/map generator 721 may identify, from an image, pixels that contain relevant information, and determine a region of interest (ROI) comprising the pixels. Pixel cells that generate pixel data corresponding to the ROI can then be identified. As an illustrative example, referring back to the example of FIG. 6F, application 708/map generator 721 may identify an ROI including the group of pixel cells 650 as providing relevant information (e.g., pixel data of object 652) in an image at time T0. Application 708/map generator 721 can then predict the change in the ROI between times T0 and T6 based on, for example, a direction and a speed of movement of object 652 with respect to image sensor 600. Application 708/map generator 721 can then predict the new image location of the ROI at time T6, which includes the group of pixel cells 670, based on the image location of the group of pixel cells 650 at time T0 and the predicted change.”);
one or more parallel I/Os coupled with the pixel-selection circuitry, configured to output the locations or locations and intensities of the selected wise pixels (in addition to discussion above, col. 21 lines 10-44 teaches “Based on the image location of the group of pixel cells 670 at time T6, application 708/map generator 721 can generate pixel array programming map 720a by setting the programming data of the entries corresponding to the group of pixel cells 670 to one, while setting the programming data of the rest of the entries to zero, so that only the group of pixel cells 670 transmits pixel data to host device 702. In some examples, the ROIs can also be used to set a non-uniform spatial sampling rate such that each pixel cell corresponding to the ROIs transmits pixel data, whereas outside the ROI, a sparsely distributed set of pixel cells is selected to transmit pixel data. The selection of which pixel cells to transmit pixel data can be encoded in pixel array programming map 720a.”, col. 26 lines 23-32); and
a fast exporting architecture coupled with the parallel I/Os, configured to facilitate data exporting (in addition to discussion above, col. 21 lines 10-44 teaches “In some examples, the ROIs can also be used to set a non-uniform spatial sampling rate such that each pixel cell corresponding to the ROIs transmits pixel data, whereas outside the ROI, a sparsely distributed set of pixel cells is selected to transmit pixel data. The selection of which pixel cells to transmit pixel data can be encoded in pixel array programming map 720a.”, fig. 11, col. 35 lines 49-67).
Regarding claim 14, the image sensor wherein the pixel-selection circuitry is configured to select wise pixels according to at least any one of rules; the intensity of a wise pixel is larger than a threshold; or the intensity difference of a wise pixel with the pixel in its neighboring column is larger than a threshold (in addition to discussion above, col. 25 lines 4-25 teaches “In addition, to support a dynamic vision sensing (DVS) operation, feature extraction circuit 772 can use comparison circuits 775 to compare the pixels in the input image frame with corresponding pixels in the prior image frame stored in memory 776 to obtain temporal contrasts for the pixels. Comparison circuits 775 can also compare the temporal contrasts against a target threshold (received as part of second programming signals 732) to output the pixel locations of pixels having (or exceeding) a pre-determined threshold of temporal contrast.”, col. 25 lines 64-col. 26 lines 22 teaches “For example, in a case of object tracking/detection operation, host processor 706 can evaluate whether the sparse pixels in an image frame output by pixel cell array 718 contain all the pixels of the target object, and provide the evaluation result back to feature extraction circuit 772. Feature extraction circuit 772 can then adjust, for example, the selection of pixels to perform the feature extraction operation based on the evaluation result. In a case where the evaluation result indicate that the sparse pixels do not contain all the pixels of the target object, feature extraction circuit 772 can expand the ROI to process more pixels, or even forgo the ROI and process all pixels of the input image frame, to extract/detect the target features.”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 12 is 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.
Claims 13, 15-20 are depends on claim 12, therefore, claims 13, 15-20 are also objected.
Conclusion
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/NIGAR CHOWDHURY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2484
