DETAILED ACTION
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 .
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-5, 9-14 and 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)as being anticipated by Kumar et al (US 2019/0215464).
Claims 1, 10 and 18, Kumar teaches a system, a medium and a method comprising:
receiving, by a processing device, a video stream comprising a plurality of images of a plurality of participants of a virtual meeting; (Fig. 1C, room video stream labeled as 140, [0048]. Also see Fig. 1D);
splitting the video stream into a plurality of screen tiles, wherein each screen tile is associated with one of the plurality of participants of the virtual meeting and comprises one or more images of one or more respective participants of the virtual meeting; (Fig. 1C, Rendered frames from the four face streams (i.e., frames with same time stamp) (labeled as 142, 144, 146 and 148) may be tagged as “Person 1”, “Person 2”, “Person 3” and “Person 4”, [0048]. Also see Fig. 1D);
identifying, in the plurality of screen tiles, a first screen tile that depicts multiple participants, wherein the first screen tile is associated with a first participant and includes a first image of the first participant and a second image of a second participant; (For example, rendered face stream 142 is labeled with the name “Rebecca”; rendered face stream 144 is labeled with the name “Peter”; rendered face stream 146 is labeled with the name “Wendy”; and rendered face stream 148 is labeled with the name “Sandy”. Fig. 2C, [0057, 0069, 0074])
causing the first screen tile to be modified to no longer depict the second image of the second participant; (From Figs. 4D to 4B, or 5D to 5E, or 6D to 6E) and
causing the plurality of screen tiles including the modified first screen tile to be presented in a virtual meeting user interface. (a rendering of the room video stream, in which the rendering automatically zooms and pans into the face of the active speaker, in this case “Rebecca”…. Wherein her face initially is rendered with a relatively small number of pixels in rendered frame 180, more pixels in rendered frame 182, and even more pixels in rendered frame 184, [0075]).
Claims 2 and 11, wherein the video stream is generated by a hardware device of a meeting room, wherein the plurality of participants is present in the meeting room during at least a portion of the virtual meeting, and wherein one or more additional participants remotely attend the virtual meeting. (Room video conference endpoint 102 may also include one or more displays to display a video stream and one or more speakers to play an audio stream captured at one or more endpoints remote from room video conference endpoint 102 (e.g., client device 116), [0039]).
Claims 3 and 12. The method of claim 1, wherein each screen tile represents a sequence of cropped video frames of the video stream of a particular participant. (Each of the face streams may be a cropped version of the video stream and focused on the face of an individual captured in the video stream, [0004, 0045, 0047, 0076-0080]).
Claims 4 and 13. The method of claim 1, wherein spitting the video stream into the plurality of screen tiles further comprises: identifying, in a sequence of video frames comprised by the video stream, a plurality of images of respective participants of the virtual meeting; and producing each screen tile of the plurality of screen tiles by cropping the sequence of video frames to include at least one image of a participant of the virtual meeting. (The output of face detector 110 may be a location of each of the faces in the initial frame, followed by an updated location of each of the faces in one or more of the subsequent frames. Stated differently, face detector 110 may generate a time-progression of the location of a first face, a time-progression of the location of a second face, and so on, [0041] where The N face streams are depicted in FIG. 1B as “Video Stream of Face 1, Video Stream of Face 2, . . . Video Stream of Face N”, where “Video Stream of Face 1” represents a cropped version of the room video stream which focuses on the face of the first person, and so on. These N face streams as well as the room video stream may be transmitted to MFU 114. [0047]).
Claims 5 and 14, wherein the second participant is associated with a second screen tile and is depicted in the first screen tile and the second screen tile. (See the independent claims or Figs. 1C, 2C, 4D to 4B, or 5D to 5E, or 6D to 6E).
Claims 9 and 17. The method of claim 1, wherein prior to causing the first screen tile to be modified to no longer depict the second image of the second participant ensuring that the plurality of screen tiles comprises a second screen tile that is associated with the second participant and depicts the second participant. (See the independent claims or where Figs. 4C, 4D, 4E identify Person 2 as Peter as shown in Figs. 5D, 5E, 6C, 6D).
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) 6-7, 15 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar in view of Amirghodsi et al (US 2024/0362757), Oh et al (US 2026/0024251) and/or Jung et al (US 2019/0197673)
Claims 6, 15 and 19, wherein the second image of the second participant is depicted in an area of the first screen tile, and wherein causing the first screen tile to be modified to no longer depict the second image of the second participant comprises: removing the second image of the second participant from the area of the first screen tile (see the independent claims and claim 5); and Kumar is not “using an artificial intelligence (AI) model to fill the area; wherein the AI model comprises a diffusion model”.
The current technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the best tool lately in addressing the claims. Thus examiner wishes to provide several references, such as:
Amirghodsi uses inpainting machine-learning model (i.e., diffusion-based model), [0075] (see [0057-0058] for more detail) to generate replacement background pixels for the removed portion, [0051-0055] and Fig. 3A). Please also see Fig. 2D, [0047-0048], Figs. 3B, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 for much more detail of how a removed portion was removed and replaced by diffusion-based artificial intelligence model.
Oh teaches via Fig. 1, Diffusion models are a class of generative AI models that operate by iteratively diffusing noise through a given data distribution. In a diffusion step, noise is added to a current sample, and the resulting noisy sample is gradually transformed to resemble an original sample using a learned diffusion process, [0052], and/or
Jung uses an AI system to fill in the removed area, see at least Fig. 1, [0069].
Therefore it would have been obvious to the ordinary artisan before the effective filing date to incorporate the teaching of Amirghodsi, Oh and/or Jung into the teaching of Kumar to provide an AI system/method for greater enhancement in communication.
Claim(s) 8, 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar in view of Adeel et al (US 2024/0143645) OR Beauchamp et al (US 2023/0419635).
Claims 8, 16 and 20, wherein causing the first screen tile to be modified to no longer depict the second image of the second participant comprises: applying a visual effect on the second image of the second participant, wherein the visual effect obfuscates the second image of the second participant.
While Kumar teaches the cropping method to remove frames from the room view, or zooming/panning capability to target the face of the selected participant)s), Kumar does not utilize the visual effect to obfuscate the target in the claims.
Adeel, [0045] The redaction module 420 may be activated to redact… the image of the item by applying a visual effect on the image of the item. For example, the visual effect may include a pixelation effect, a blurring effect, an opaque overlay effect, and/or some other obfuscation effect that renders the object in the image unrecognizable.
Beauchamp: [0127] The privacy settings may include the obfuscation action… where the obfuscation action may instruct the computing device to apply or include a preconfigured image file, a pattern, or other visual effect at the obfuscation region.
Therefore it would have been obvious to the ordinary artisan before the effective filing date to incorporate the teaching of Adeel or Beauchamp into the teaching of Kumar to provide additional protection, i.e, privacy, to the communication.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHUNG-HOANG J. NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)270-1949. The examiner can normally be reached Reg. Sched. 6:00-3:00.
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/PHUNG-HOANG J NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2691
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