DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (“IDS”) filed on 02/03/2025, 05/02/2025, 08/08/2025, and 03/23/2026 were reviewed and the listed references were noted.
Drawings
The 5-page drawings have been considered and placed on record in the file.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
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 time-wise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory obviousness-type 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); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement.
Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign a terminal disclaimer. A terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b). In order to expedite the processing/approval of the terminal disclaimer, Applicants may choose to file an electronic terminal disclaimer (eTerminal Disclaimer) by referring to the following website:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp
Claims 1-20 of the instant application are rejected on the ground of obviousness-type nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims of parent U.S. Patent No. 12,142,068. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other in view of Gabriel Bowers (US 2012/0194720) and Jeffrey A. Matos (US 2009/0316012). For instance, the following charts compare Claim 1 of the instant application with Claim 7 of the Parent U.S. Patent No. 12,142,068.
Instant Application
Patent Application No. 12,142,068
Claim 1. A computing system comprising a processor and a memory, the computing system configured to perform a set of acts comprising:
capturing a first image of a media exposure environment at a first time using an image sensor;
capturing a second image of the media exposure environment at a second time that is subsequent to the first time using the image sensor;
determining, using the higher-contrast image,
based on the period of time, performing facial recognition on the second image.
Claim 1. A computing system comprising a processor and a memory, the computing system configured to perform a set of acts comprising:
accessing content identifying data from an audience measurement device at a first media exposure environment, the content identifying data corresponding to media content presented by a television within the first media exposure environment, the content identifying data based on an audio signature of the media content, the audio signature generated by the audience measurement device at the first media exposure environment;
accessing first exposure information including an identifier associated with a first person, the first exposure information indicative of exposure of the first person to the media content within the first media exposure environment, the first exposure information based on a match of a head present in one or more images of a sequence of images of the first media exposure environment to the first person, the sequence of images collected by a camera, the camera in communication with the audience measurement device in the first media exposure environment, the first person registered with an audience measurement entity as associated with the first media exposure environment, wherein the audience measurement device is configured to reduce a resolution of a first image of the one or more images so as to obtain a reduced-resolution image, and wherein the audience measurement device is configured to detect the first person in the first media exposure environment by analyzing the reduced-resolution image; and
compiling the first exposure information with second exposure information from a second media exposure environment, the second exposure information indicative of exposure of a second person in the second media exposure environment to the media content.
Claim 7. The computing system of claim 1, wherein the identifier of the first person is determined based on a facial recognition match between a region of a second image of the sequence of images corresponding to the head and a facial signature corresponding to the identifier.
Although, Patent No. 12,142,068 discloses use of a reduced resolution image, it does not explicitly recite “pixel binning” to obtain higher contrast images. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Bowers discloses pixel binning to obtain binned images with a resolution lower than a resolution of a corresponding pixel array (Bowers, Paragraph [0004]). At the time of invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the Patent no. 12,142,068 with the teachings of Bowers to obtain pixel binning as recited by the limitation of the instant application. One would be motivated to use “pixel binning” that results in higher contrast images with lower resolution. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Patent No. 12,142, 068 with Bowers to obtain the above-described limitation.
Patent No. 12,142,068 is not relied on to teach facial recognition during the time a person has occupied the same position. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Matos discloses “A comparison of a particular location at two different times can detect changes such as personnel or vehicle movement, changes in agricultural or foliage patterns, astronomical changes, changes in the internal, external or radiologic appearance of a body part, changes in the application of makeup or in the faithfulness of reproduction of a cosmetic "makeover." Yet another use of the system would be to match as accurately as possible, two visual images thought to be those of the same person, so as to confirm the identity of the person” (Matos, Paragraph [0097]). At the time of invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the Patent no. 12,142,068 with the teachings of Matos to perform facial recognition of the person who has occupied the same position in a period of time. One would be motivated to combine parent Patent no. 12, 142,068 and Matos to confirm identity of the same person in the image at two different times. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Patent No. 12,142, 068 with Matos to obtain the above-described limitation.
Allowable Subject Matter
The claims of the instant application are not rejected over prior art references and will be allowed if the above-described rejection of claims based on non-statutory double patenting is overcome. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Consider Claim 1, Lu et al. (US 2002/0059577) discloses “A television audience measurement system measures viewing of a television program viewed on digital television located in a statistically selected site by (i) retrieving an audience measurement data packet from a television set in order to identify the television program, (ii) detecting an audio code embedded in the television program in order to identify the television program, (iii) extracting an audio signature from the television program in order to identify the television program, (iv) identifying the television program through use of a software agent, and (v) selecting at least one of the retrieving means, the detecting means, the extracting means, and the software agent in order to identify the television program” (Lu, Abstract, also see Paragraphs [0017] and [0039]). In an analogous field of endeavor, Jeffrey A. Matos (US 2009/0316012) discloses a system that “would be to match as accurately as possible, two visual images thought to be those of the same person, so as to confirm the identity of the person. The image could be of a face, an iris, a retinal pattern, an iris pattern and/or one or more fingerprints or palmprints” (Matos, Paragraph [0097]). In yet, another analogous field of endeavor, Gabriel Bowers (US 2012/0194720) discloses “Pixel binning may be performed by forming groups of pixels and combining sampled values from the pixels in each group. The sampled values from the pixels may be combined by assigning weights to each pixel, scaling the sampled values by the corresponding weights, and summing the scaled values. The groups of pixels and pixel weights may be selected to produce binned images with even spatial distribution. The pixel binning operation may be performed by processing circuitry that receives captured image data from the imager” (Bowers, Abstract). In yet another analogous field of endeavor, Ying-li Tien (“Evaluation of Face Resolution for Expression Analysis”) discloses “In order to handle the full range of head motion for expression analysis in real environments, we also evaluate head pose detection for different image resolutions. We [26] detect the head instead of the face. Head detection uses the smoothed silhouette of the fore ground object as segmented using background subtraction, and computes the negative curvature minima (NCM) points of the silhouette. Other head detection techniques that use silhouettes can be found in papers [14]. After the head is located, the head image is converted to gray scale, histogram equalized and resized to 32x32. Then a three-layer neural network (NN) is employed to estimate the head pose. The inputs to the network are the processed head image. The outputs are the 3 head poses: 1) frontal or near frontal view, 2) side view or profile, 3) others such as back of the head or occluded face (see Table 2). In the frontal or near frontal view, both eyes and lip corners are visible. In side view or profile, at least one eye or one corner of the mouth becomes self-occluded because of the head. The expression analysis process is applied only to the frontal and near frontal view faces. More details about head pose estimation can be found in our paper [4]” (Tien, Section 2.1, 3rd and 4th paragraphs). However, none of the cited prior art references, alone or in combination, provides a motivation to teach the ordered combination of “capturing a second image of the media exposure environment at a second time that is subsequent to the first time using the image sensor; increasing a contrast level of the first image using pixel binning so as to obtain a higher- contrast image; determining, using the higher-contrast image, a period of time during which a person has occupied a same position in the media exposure environment; and based on the period of time, performing facial recognition on the second image.” In addition, independent Claims 8 and 15 disclose the above-described allowable subject matter, and therefore, not rejected over prior art. Finally, dependent Claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 are inherently including the above-described allowable subject matter due to their dependencies from the independent claims.
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Conclusion
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/Siamak Harandi/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2662
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