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 § 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-5, 12-16, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sharma et al. (US 2023/0316386 A1) in view of Harris et al. (US 12406575 B1) and Wang et al. (US 2025/0378619 A1).
Consider claim 1, Sharma teachces a method for improving ([0071]), comprising: identifying a gap in a training dataset of ([0071], [0123], [0136] – [0142], [0180] – [0194]), generating a synthetic image ([0206]); and retraining the license plate identification model using the synthetic license plate image ([0207] – [0208]; [0235] – [0243], [0412] – [0424]).
However, Sharma does not explicitly teach license plate images and a license plate identification model; generating a guidance prompt based on the underrepresented visual characteristics of the misidentified license plate; generating condition embeddings based on the guidance prompt; generating a synthetic license plate image by applying a diffusion model conditioned on the condition embeddings, wherein the diffusion model is trained to: receive a real license plate image as input; encode the real license plate image into a vector; apply forward diffusion to the vector to incrementally add noise, generating a noisy vector associated with the real license plate image with added noise; apply reverse diffusion to the noisy vector to produce a denoised vector representing a synthetic license plate image, conditioned on the condition embeddings; and decode the denoised vector to create the synthetic license plate image; and retraining the license plate identification model using the synthetic license plate image.
Harris teaches license plate images, and a license plate identification model (col. 23, lines 5-18; col. 16, line 38 – col. 18, line 33).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the known element of license plate images and a license plate identification model because such incorporation would help instances of vehicle misidentification. Col. 5, lines 15-40.
Wang teaches generating a guidance prompt based on the underrepresented visual characteristics of the misidentified license plate ([0033], [0078] – [0086], [0137]); generating condition embeddings based on the guidance prompt ([0033], [0074] – [0086], [0137]); generating a synthetic license plate image by applying a diffusion model conditioned on the condition embeddings ([0033], [0074] – [0086], [0137]), wherein the diffusion model is trained to: receive a real license plate image as input ([0033], [0074] – [0083], [0137]); encode the real license plate image into a vector ([0064] – [0065], [0074] – [0086], [0137]); apply forward diffusion to the vector to incrementally add noise, generating a noisy vector associated with the real license plate image with added noise ([0064] – [0065], [0074] – [0086], [0137]); apply reverse diffusion to the noisy vector to produce a denoised vector representing a synthetic license plate image, conditioned on the condition embeddings ([0071] – [0086], [0117], and [0151]); and decode the denoised vector to create the synthetic license plate image ([0080] – [0086], [0095], [0113] – [0114], [0122] – [0126]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the known technique of generating condition embeddings based on the guidance prompt because such incorporation would improve the quality and accuracy of the output. [0038].
Consider claim 2, Sharma teaches the underrepresented visual characteristics of the misidentified license plate includes one or more of a character font, character size, character spacing, character positioning, a symbol, a background color, a background graphic, and a slogan, specific to a jurisdiction's license plate ([0071], [0123], [0136] – [0141], [0180] – [0194]).
Consider claim 3, Sharma teaches identifying the gap in the training dataset comprises analyzing data distribution of the training dataset to identify a gap in the data distribution of the training dataset ([0523] – [0530]).
Consider claim 4, Sharma teaches identifying the gap in the training dataset comprises identifying recurring misidentifications by the vehicle identification model ([0201] – [0206]).
Consider claim 5, Wang teaches applying the forward diffusion to the vector includes iteratively adding noise to a noisy vector generated over a plurality of time steps ([0064] – [0065], [0074] – [0086], [0137]), and applying the reverse diffusion includes iteratively removing noise from the noisy vector over a plurality of time steps ([0071] – [0086], [0117], and [0151]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the known technique of generating condition embeddings based on the guidance prompt because such incorporation would improve the quality and accuracy of the output. [0038].
Consider claim 12, claim 12 recites a non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising memory with instructions encoded thereon ([0546] – [0547]), the instructions comprising instructions to cause one or more processors ([0546] – [0547]) to perform the method recited in claim 1. Thus, it is rejected for the same reasons.
Consider claim 13, claim 13 recites the instructions that perform the method recited in claim 2. Thus, it is rejected for the same reasons.
Consider claim 14, claim 14 recites the instructions that perform the method recited in claim 3. Thus, it is rejected for the same reasons.
Consider claim 15, claim 15 recites the instructions that perform the method recited in claim 4. Thus, it is rejected for the same reasons.
Consider claim 16, claim 16 recites the instructions that perform the method recited in claim 5. Thus, it is rejected for the same reasons.
Consider claim 20, claim 20 recites a system comprising: memory with instructions encoded thereon ([0546] – [0547]), one or more processors ([0546] – [0547]) that, when executing the instructions, are caused to perform operations recited in claim 1. Thus, it is rejected for the same reasons.
Claim(s) 9-10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sharma et al. (US 2023/0316386 A1) in view of Harris et al. (US 12406575 B1), Wang et al. (US 2025/0378619 A1), and Schulter et al. (US 2023/0281977 A1).
Consider claim 9, the combination of Sharma, Harries, and Wang teaches all the limitations in claim 1 but does not explicitly teach the condition embeddings includes a layout embedding, a mask embedding, a text embedding, a character embedding generated based on the guidance prompt.
Schulter teaches the condition embeddings includes a layout embedding, a mask embedding, a text embedding, a character embedding generated based on the guidance prompt (abstract, [0006], [0034] – [0040], [0047] – [0053]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings from Schulter into the combination of Sharma, Harris, and Wang because such incorporation would help ameliorate a danger posed by the road hazard. [0006].
Consider claim 10, Schulter teaches the condition embeddings further include an image embedding generated based on existing real license plate images (abstract, [0006], [0034] – [0040], [0047] – [0053], [0074]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings from Schulter into the combination of Sharma, Harris, and Wang because such incorporation would help ameliorate a danger posed by the road hazard. [0006].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-8, 11, and 17-19 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.
Conclusion
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/TAT C CHIO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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