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 .
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
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Claims 1-6 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-7 of U.S. Patent No. 12437688. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the instant application’s claims comprise similar and/or overlapping subject matter to the patented claims.
Per the instant claims 1 and 5, see at least patented claim 1.
Per the instant claim 2, see at least patented claims 3-4.
Per the instant claims 3-4, see at least patented claims 5-6.
Per claim 6, see at least patented claim 1, both the instant claims and the patent claims recite the projection pixel being projected from the panel pixel, K, being an integer of 2 or greater. Both are claiming similar optical shifting concept to achieve advantages such as optimizing display output, and thus, the various shifting including clockwise or counterclockwise would have at least obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention would be employed so as achieving advantages such optimized display output.
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.
Claims 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hosaka et al (US 2021/0280107) in view of Nakajima et al (US 2018/0336853) and Iisaka et al (US 2011/0205439)
US ‘571 illustrates and discloses a projection display device (see at least Figures 1-2, 5-23) comprising:
a liquid crystal panel (1a:100R,100G,100B) including a plurality of panel pixels, a first panel pixel and a second panel pixel among the plurality of panel pixels being adjacent to each other,
an optical path shift element (e.g., 2300) configured to shift an optical path of projection light projected from the panel pixels to shift a position of the projected pixel,
and a display control circuit (e.g., 200: video control circuit 210, video processing circuits 220R/220G/220B, conversion circuits 230R/230G/230G) configured to control the liquid crystal panel and the optical path shift element, wherein k pieces of video pixel data among video pixel data constituting video data input to the liquid crystal panel and arranged in a matrix individually correspond to the first panel pixel in the k unit periods, k being an integer equal to or greater than 2, , the k pieces of video pixel data individually correspond to the second panel pixel in the k unit periods, the k pieces of video pixel data corresponding to the first panel pixel and the k pieces of video pixel data corresponding to the second panel pixel are different, (see at least [0132], [0136], [0138]) and
the display control circuit
controls the shift of the position of the projected pixel with respect to the optical path shift element for each of the k unit periods (see at least [0136)),
supplies a data signal based on the video pixel data corresponding to the one unit period to the first panel pixel, and the data signal based on the video pixel data corresponding to the one unit period to the second panel pixel in one unit period among the k unit periods, (see at least [0045], [0061]).
The limitations not explicitly disclosed by US ‘107 are: “corrects at least a second gradation level so that a difference between a first gradation level of first video pixel data corresponding to the one unit period among the k pieces of video pixel data corresponding to the first panel pixel and the second gradation level of second video pixel data corresponding to the one unit period is reduced, and
adjusts gradation levels of k-1 pieces of video pixel data including the second video pixel data that are consecutive with respect to the first video pixel in a direction in which the second video pixel is located to a value that is the same as the corrected second gradation level.”
US ’107 illustrates and discloses the inventive concept including: display control circuit that divides a frame into k unit periods and drives both panel and to make a lower-resolution panel look sharper, shift device to move where the projected image lands on the screen during different parts of a frame. It is noted that improving gradation in the display art typically includes optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality. US ‘853 illustrates and discloses a liquid crystal display projection device employing a processing unit (21-24) is configured to determine a correction value corresponding to a target pixel based on differences between gradation data of the target pixel and gradation data of peripheral pixels arranged in the horizontal direction, the vertical direction, and an oblique direction with respect to the target pixel respectively to increase or decrease a pixel value of the target pixel based on the correction value, and to correct the gradation data of the target pixel to reduce the differences. US ‘439 discloses a liquid crystal display projection device employing a video processing circuit comprising: a boundary detecting unit which detects a boundary between a first pixel whose applied voltage specified by an input video signal is below a first voltage and a second pixel whose applied voltage is equal to or higher than a second voltage which is higher than the first voltage, a correction unit corrects the applied voltage to the liquid crystal elements corresponding to the set of pixels from the applied voltage specified by the video signal to the voltage which is equal to or higher than the first voltage and below the second voltage, such that the difference between the applied voltages to the liquid crystal elements corresponding to the first pixel and the second pixel next to each other is reduced, thus suppressing the generation of a reverse tilt domain, while suppressing a change in the transmittance of a dark pixel, without limiting brightness of the images.
Therefore, it would have been at least to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the time the invention was made to employ similar shifting and correcting concept of “corrects at least a second gradation level so that a difference between a first gradation level of first video pixel data corresponding to the one unit period among the k pieces of video pixel data corresponding to the first panel pixel and the second gradation level of second video pixel data corresponding to the one unit period is reduced, and adjusts gradation levels of k-1 pieces of video pixel data including the second video pixel data that are consecutive with respect to the first video pixel in a direction in which the second video pixel is located to a value that is the same as the corrected second gradation level.”, as evidenced by at least US ‘107, US ‘853 and US ‘439, for achieving advantages such as improved-gradation, i.e., optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality.
Per claim 2, as noted above per similar shifting and correcting concept for achieving improved-gradation per US ‘107, US ‘853 & US ‘439. US ’107 illustrates and discloses the inventive concept including: display control circuit that divides a frame into k unit periods and drives both panel and to make a lower-resolution panel look sharper, shift device to move where the projected image lands on the screen during different parts of a frame. It is noted that improving gradation in the display art typically includes optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality. US ‘853 illustrates and discloses a liquid crystal display projection device employing a processing unit (21-24) is configured to determine a correction value corresponding to a target pixel based on differences between gradation data of the target pixel and gradation data of peripheral pixels arranged in the horizontal direction, the vertical direction, and an oblique direction with respect to the target pixel respectively to increase or decrease a pixel value of the target pixel based on the correction value, and to correct the gradation data of the target pixel to reduce the differences. US ‘439 discloses a liquid crystal display projection device employing a video processing circuit comprising: a boundary detecting unit which detects a boundary between a first pixel whose applied voltage specified by an input video signal is below a first voltage and a second pixel whose applied voltage is equal to or higher than a second voltage which is higher than the first voltage, a correction unit corrects the applied voltage to the liquid crystal elements corresponding to the set of pixels from the applied voltage specified by the video signal to the voltage which is equal to or higher than the first voltage and below the second voltage, such that the difference between the applied voltages to the liquid crystal elements corresponding to the first pixel and the second pixel next to each other is reduced, thus suppressing the generation of a reverse tilt domain, while suppressing a change in the transmittance of a dark pixel, without limiting brightness of the images. Therefore, it would have at least obvious to ordinary skill in the art at the invention was made to employ ‘the display control circuit corrects the first gradation level in addition to the second gradation level’ for achieving advantages such as improved-gradation, i.e., optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality.
Per claims 3-4, as noted above per similar shifting and correcting concept for achieving improved-gradation per US ‘107, US ‘853 & US ‘439. US ’107 illustrates and discloses the inventive concept including: display control circuit that divides a frame into k unit periods and drives both panel and to make a lower-resolution panel look sharper, shift device to move where the projected image lands on the screen during different parts of a frame. It is noted that improving gradation in the display art typically includes optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality. US ‘853 illustrates and discloses a liquid crystal display projection device employing a processing unit (21-24) is configured to determine a correction value corresponding to a target pixel based on differences between gradation data of the target pixel and gradation data of peripheral pixels arranged in the horizontal direction, the vertical direction, and an oblique direction with respect to the target pixel respectively to increase or decrease a pixel value of the target pixel based on the correction value, and to correct the gradation data of the target pixel to reduce the differences. US ‘439 discloses a liquid crystal display projection device employing a video processing circuit comprising: a boundary detecting unit which detects a boundary between a first pixel whose applied voltage specified by an input video signal is below a first voltage and a second pixel whose applied voltage is equal to or higher than a second voltage which is higher than the first voltage, a correction unit corrects the applied voltage to the liquid crystal elements corresponding to the set of pixels from the applied voltage specified by the video signal to the voltage which is equal to or higher than the first voltage and below the second voltage, such that the difference between the applied voltages to the liquid crystal elements corresponding to the first pixel and the second pixel next to each other is reduced, thus suppressing the generation of a reverse tilt domain, while suppressing a change in the transmittance of a dark pixel, without limiting brightness of the images. Therefore, it would have at least obvious to ordinary skill in the art at the invention was made to employ ‘the display control circuit corrects the first gradation level and the second gradation level when the first gradation level is less than a first threshold and the second gradation level is equal to or greater than a second threshold’, the display control circuit corrects the first gradation level less than the first threshold to be equal to or greater than the first threshold, and corrects the second gradation level equal to or greater than the second threshold to be less than the second threshold’ for achieving advantages such as improved-gradation, i.e., optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality.
Per claim 5, as noted above per similar shifting and correcting concept for achieving improved-gradation per US ‘107, US ‘853 & US ‘439, US ‘853 further discloses the correction of the gradation data process so as decreasing the differences in gradation data between the target pixel and the peripheral pixels (see at least [0006-0008]. Therefore, it would have been at least obvious to one ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to employ ‘the display control circuit performs the correction so that a difference between gradation levels of adjacent pieces of video pixel data among the pieces of video pixel data arranged in the matrix is small’, as evidenced by at least US ‘107, US ‘853 and US ‘439, for achieving advantages such as improved-gradation, i.e., optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality.
Per claim 6, as noted above per similar shifting and correcting concept for achieving improved-gradation per US ‘107, US ‘853 & US ‘439, US ‘107 the k integer being more than 3 (see at least [0132], [0136] the shift operation shifting clockwise (see at least [0131]). Therefore, it would have been at least obvious to one ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to employ ‘k is 4, four pieces of video pixel data arranged in two rows and two columns among the pieces of video pixel data arranged in the matrix correspond to one panel pixel, and the display control circuit shifts four projection positions clockwise or counterclockwise with respect to the optical path shift element’, as evidenced by at least US ‘107, US ‘853 and US ‘439, for achieving advantages such as improved-gradation, i.e., optimized display output such as optimized resolution/contrast/brightness/image quality.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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/TOAN TON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2882
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