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 filed 9/17/2024 has been considered by the examiner.
Drawings
The drawings filed 9/17/2024 are approved by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claims 1-3, 14 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Park et al (United States Patent Application Publication No. 20240430593).
With respect to claim 1, Park et al disclose: A distance measurement device [ taught by figure 1 ] comprising: a plurality of pixels each including a photoelectric conversion element [ taught by pixel array (110) ]; and a calculation circuit configured to generate distance information based on signals obtained by the plurality of pixels [ taught by image signal processor (150); paragraph [ 0034 ] ], wherein a sequence for generating the distance information includes a plurality of distance measurement frames [ figure 3 discloses a frame ], each of the plurality of distance measurement frames includes a plurality of subframes which are different from each other in a time between light emission by a light source [ taught by subframes (SF1, SF2, SF3 and SF4) in figure 3 ] and a period in which a detection operation of detecting light reflected by a target object is performed by applying a reverse bias to the photoelectric conversion element [ paragraph [ 0042 ] teaches reverse biasing the SPAD pixel in order to activate/deactivate the Geiger mode ], the device further comprises a stop control circuit configured to generate a stop signal if a plurality of signals obtained by the detection operations respectively performed in the plurality of subframes satisfy a predetermined condition in the plurality of distance measurement frames [ paragraphs [ 0100 ] and [ 0101 ] teach sending a control signal to SPAD controller (340) to enable “SPAD off” in response to the counter reaching a value of 7 ], and among the plurality of distance measurement frames, in a distance measurement frame after the stop signal is supplied from the stop control circuit, each of the plurality of pixels does not perform the detection operation [ paragraph [ 0101 ] states, “…the SPAD may enter the linear mode so that the SPAD might not react to a single photon of the incident light (IL) (i.e., SPAD off)…” ].
Figure 6 shows that each individual pixel is coupled to a TDC (320) and TDC memory (330) feeding back to a SPAD controller (340); thus, teaching claims 2 and 3.
Figure 6 teaches an SPAD as a detection pixel, thus teaching claim 14.
Claim 15 is taught by the image signal processor (150) in the context of figure 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-13 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication should be directed to MARK HELLNER at telephone number (571)272-6981.
Examiner interviews are available via a variety of formats. See MPEP § 713.01. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
/MARK HELLNER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3645
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