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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group II (claims 12-14 and 16-17) in the reply filed on 4/7/26 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/20/24 and 11/25/25 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claim, as drafted, does not clearly recite subject matter within one of the four statutory categories. See MPEP § 2106(I). The preamble recites "an image area display space"; a space, standing alone, is a location or volume rather than a concrete apparatus (machine) or a manufactured article (manufacture). Although the body recites structural surfaces ("the respective rectangular surfaces surrounding the space") and means-plus-function elements that, if adequately supported in the specification, are construed under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f) as processor-based machine structure, the preamble does not make clear that "the space" is a physical, constructed enclosure rather than a mere field of use or abstract location. Applicant may overcome this rejection by amending the preamble to recite a statutory category directly, e.g., "An image area display apparatus" or "An image area display structure," consistent with the parallel system claim (claim 12).
Further or in the alternative, even if the claim is held to recite a statutory category, it is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to a judicial exception (an abstract idea) without significantly more. Under Step 2A, Prong One, the assigning-means limitation — determining features of the image areas and of the space and assigning the image areas, and derivatively the audio, on that basis — recites a scheme for organizing and routing information, comparable to the abstract ideas identified in Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A. (collecting, analyzing, and displaying/outputting information without more) and Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. (extracting and organizing data). Under Step 2A, Prong Two and Step 2B, the additional elements — generic rectangular display surfaces and generic reproduction devices reciting no more than their ordinary function — describe the environment in which the abstract routing scheme is carried out rather than a technical improvement to the routing itself, and considered individually or as an ordered combination do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. This rejection may be overcome by amending the claim, and supporting in the specification, a specific, non-conventional technique for determining the recited features and performing the assignment, rather than reciting the function in purely results-oriented terms.
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because, as drafted, it is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The preamble recites "an image area generation program," and the body recites a series of steps without reciting that the program is embodied on a non-transitory computer-readable medium, or otherwise tying the program to a statutory process or machine. A claim to a computer program per se, untethered to any tangible medium or execution context, is not a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. See MPEP § 2106.03. This rejection may be overcome by amending the preamble to recite, e.g., "A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a program that, when executed by a computer, causes the computer to perform a method comprising:", or by reciting the claim outright as a method (process) claim reciting the same steps without the word "program."
Further or in the alternative, for the same reasons set forth for claim 16, the assigning step recites an abstract idea (determining features of image areas and of the space and organizing/routing image and audio data accordingly) without additional elements sufficient to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or to supply an inventive concept under Step 2A/2B, and is separately rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 on that basis.
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 of this title, 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 12, 14, 16 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Griffin et al. (US 2016/0203579) in view of Hattingh et al. (US2018/0027219) and further in view of West (US 2013/0181901).
Regarding claim 12, Griffin and Hattingh teaches an image area generation system that generates image areas reproduced on respective rectangular surfaces surrounding a space (Griffin teaches in paragraph 2 of a video wall display area, but fails to that it surrounds a space per se, while Hattingh in paragraphs 23, 36, 85-86 teaches “a cinematic structure comprising a rear wall, a front wall, a floor, and left and right walls” onto images are displayed), comprising:
dynamic image acquiring means that acquires a dynamic image of at least any of a live video and an archived video, audio information corresponding to the dynamic image, and delivery destination information for delivering the dynamic image and the audio information (Griffin: paragraph 8: “source content can be changed dynamically (for example the live video feeds) without intensive pre-rendering of the source file itself. Paragraphs 25 and 30 teaches listed input sources include “a network video stream”. Paragraph 12 teaches “the information on the position, configuration and settings for each of individual physical display and how they relate to the video-wall canvas is stored in a computer-readable medium” – the claimed delivery destination information. Paragraph 20 teaches “configuration file including “uniquely identifying information for each network display device (e.g., MAC address and/or serial number), the display setting (e.g. resolution), its position within the video-wall array …. and its exact placement with the video wall canvas”);
image area clipping means that clips respective static images constituting the dynamic image into a plurality of image areas corresponding to a positional relation
between the respective surfaces based on the delivery destination information acquired by the dynamic image acquiring means (Griffin teaches in paragraph * of source content changed “dynamically (for example from live video feeds.” Paragraph 25 teaches HDMI capture card as video (audio-carrying) source input. paragraph 12 teaches position, configuration and settings for each physical display” stored – the delivery destination information. Paragraph 20 teaches per-display configuration file (MAC address/serial number, resolution, array position, rotation, canvas placement);
data transmitting means that transmits data including at least any of the respective image areas or the audio information assigned by the assigning means to respective reproduction devices including at least any of respective display devices for reproducing the image areas on the respective surfaces or respective audio devices for reproducing the audio information through mutually different channels (Griffin: paragraph 12 “server “sends each of these video frames over a standard TCP/IP network to the individual network-connected display device corresponding to the said display segment. Paragraphs 49 and Fig. 3, step 38 “encode sub-image data/frames and send to the secondary display adapters for output” Claim 3: “transferring ones of the encoded sub-images over a communications network to a network-connected receiver device”.).
However, while Griffin teaches the system above, fails to teach, but Hattingh teaches the claimed “rectangular surfaces surrounding a space” (while Hattingh in paragraphs 23, 36, 85-86 teaches “a cinematic structure comprising a rear wall, a front wall, a floor, and left and right walls” onto images are displayed) and assigning means that determines features of the respective image areas clipped by the image area clipping means and a feature of the space and assigns the respective image areas to the respective surfaces based on the determined features of the respective image areas and feature of the space (Hattingh paragraphs 104-108 teaches “the specific warp/perspective correction (a feature of each image area) is determined from the specific angle of the corresponding physical surface ( a feature of the space) before that area is assigned/rendered to its surface).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Hattingh into the system of Griffin because Griffin’s destination-addressable splitting architecture onto the enclosure of the kind Hattingh discloses would apply Hattingh’s angle-driven warp calculation to determine, for each of Griffin’s network-addressed destination displays, how its assigned area should be shaped, which is nothing more than using a known feature-driven transformation technique (Hattingh) to configure a known destination-driven splitting architecture (Griffin) for a new but predictable combination of enclosure surfaces, yielding the predictable result of feature-based area-to-surface assignment.
However, while Griffin and Hattingh teaches the claimed above, fails to teach, but West teaches the claimed “as well as assigns the audio information based on the respective assigned image areas” and teaches a way to separate audio channels routed to distinct loudspeaker groups positioned behind each screen section. (West in paragraphs 8 and 77 teaches the claimed);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of West into the proposed combination of Griffin and Hattingh because one of ordinary skill would have been motivated by the same, expressly-recognized goal the prior arts address, which preserves audio-visual spatial and temporal correspondence across multiple surrounding display surfaces, an application of a known technique (screen-matched, synchronized immersive-room audio) to a known system (multi-surface video splitting) in the same way it has already improved immersive multi-screen presentation generally.
Regarding claim 14, West in its proposed combination with Griffin and Hattingh teaches the claimed wherein the data transmitting means performs an adjustment to mutually synchronize the respective image areas and the audio information of the transmitted data on a time-series basis (see paragraph 77). The prior motivation as discussed above is incorporated herein.
Claims 16 and 17 are rejected for the same reasons as discussed in claim 12 above.
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over and further in view of Griffin et al. (US 2016/0203579) in view of Hattingh et al. (US2018/0027219) and further in view of West (US 2013/0181901)Liu et al. (US 2023/0025997).
Regarding claim 13, while the proposed combination of Griffin, Hattingh and Kanye teaches the claimed, fails to teach, but Liu teaches the claimed wherein the image area clipping means clips the respective static images constituting the dynamic image into the plurality of image areas corresponding to the positional relation between the respective surfaces based on the audio information (paragraphs 17-19 and 21 teaches the claimed).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Liu into the proposed combination of Griffin, Hattingh and Kanye, because while Griffin’s clipping is driven by stored per-display configuration data, Liu’s teaching uses the audio information to determine which column region of captured image is to be selected. A person of ordinary skill modifying Griffin’s per-destination clipping so that the clip boundaries (or the region-to-destination assignment) are also informed by Liu’s audio-correlated column/bin selection would have been motivated by this express, recognized benefit, which is to automatically and more reliably identifying the image region relevant to an active sound source rather than relying on fixed configuration data alone, an application of a known audio-localization-driven region selection technique to a known destination-driven image-splitting system, yielding predictable result of audio based/informed clipping.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GELEK W TOPGYAL whose telephone number is (571)272-8891. The examiner can normally be reached M-F (9:30-6 PST).
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/GELEK W TOPGYAL/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2481
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