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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 1-8 and 13-18 in the reply filed on 09/16/2026 is acknowledged.
Claim Interpretation
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “segmentation module” in claims 1, 3-4, 13; “image-text co-segmentation module” in claim 4; and “segmented texter” in claims 5-6, 16.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-8 and 13-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1 and 13 recite the limitation "the texts." However, the previous recitation is of a “input text.” It is unclear if “the texts” is a typo and should be “the text,” corresponding to the a “input text”, or if there are intended to be a plurality of input texts. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Claims 2-4 and 14-15 inherit the deficiency of claims 1 and 13, and so are also rejected. Appropriate correction is required.
Claims 1 and 13 recite the limitation "a segmented image" twice. It is unclear to the examiner if the second “segmented image” is the same as the first “segmented image.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Claims 2-4 and 14-15 inherit the deficiency of claims 1 and 13, and so are also rejected. Appropriate correction is required.
A broad range or limitation together with a narrow range or limitation that falls within the broad range or limitation (in the same claim) may be considered indefinite if the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. See MPEP § 2173.05(c). In the present instance, claims 5 and 16 recite the broad recitation “at least a word”, and the claim also recites “the word” which is the narrower statement of the range/limitation. The claim(s) are considered indefinite because there is a question or doubt as to whether the feature introduced by such narrower language is (a) merely exemplary of the remainder of the claim, and therefore not required, or (b) a required feature of the claims. Claims 6-8 and 17-18 inherit the deficiency of claims 5 and 16, and so are also rejected. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Independent claims 1 and 13 recite receiving data, segmenting data, and outputting a segmented image. This is collecting information, analyzing the information, and classifying information. In other words, a person can look at an image and related text, and identify the entity described by the text in the image. A person could further cut out the identified entity. Further, the judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claims disclose that the process is performed by "machine learning" used for segmentation, but it does not recite how the machine learning improves image-text segmentation in a technical way. Dependent claims 2 and 14 fail to remedy the above-noted deficiencies. Therefore, claims 1-2 and 13-14 are rejected under 35 USC 101.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claims 1, 3, 13, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Yu (‘Zero-shot Referring Image Segmentation with Global-Local Context Features’).
Consider claims 1 and 13, Yu discloses a device/method for, implementing a machine learning model (Abstract; “zero-shot referring image segmentation method by leveraging the pre-trained cross-modal knowledge from CLIP”), the device comprising:
a segmentation module, configured to receive an input image and input text (FIG. 2; “Given an image and an expression as inputs… extract a global-local context textual feature”; 3.1 Overall framework), and
output a segmented image, wherein the segmentation module at least segments the image (FIG. 2 Output Mask; 3.1 Overall Framework; 3.2 Mask-guided Global-local Visual Features; “decompose the task into two sub-tasks: mask proposal generation and masked image-text matching… unsupervised instance-level mask generation model”);
a selector, configured to select a word in the texts (FIG. 2; “computing the cosine similarity scores between all global-local context visual features and a global-local context textual feature”; 3.3. Global-local Textual Features; “To find the target noun phrase, we first find all noun phrases in the expression, and then select the target noun phrase that contains the root noun of the sentence.”); and
the segmentation module generates a segmented image corresponding to the image and the word (FIG. 2 Output Mask; Section 3).
Consider claims 3 and 15, Yu discloses the claimed invention wherein the segmentation module further segments the text, and
a segmented text is generated according to the selected word and the text (FIG. 2; 3.3. Global-local Textual Features).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 4-6, 8, and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yu as applied to claims 1, 3, 13, and 15 above, and further in view of Huang (‘Referring Image Segmentation via Cross-Modal Progressive Comprehension’).
Consider claims 5 and 16, Yu discloses a device/method for, implementing a machine learning model, the device comprising:
an image segmenter, configured to receive an image and at least a word (FIG. 2; “Given an image and an expression as inputs… extract a global-local context textual feature”; 3.1 Overall framework; 3.3. Global-local Textual Features; “To find the target noun phrase, we first find all noun phrases in the expression, and then select the target noun phrase that contains the root noun of the sentence.”), and
output a corresponding segmented image according to the image and the word (FIG. 2 Output Mask; Section 3); and
a segmented texter, configured to receive a text and at least a word (FIG. 2, 3.3; Target noun phrase extraction; “a cat is lying on the chair”, “a cat”), and
output a corresponding segmented text according to the text and the word (FIG. 2, FIG. 6, 7).
In related art, Huang further supports an image segmenter, configured to receive an image and at least a word (Huang FIG. 2; input image and text entity/attribute/relation), and
output a corresponding segmented image according to the image and the word (Huang FIG. 2 Output); and
a segmented texter, configured to receive a text and at least a word (Huang FIG. 2 text input, entity/attribute/relation; FIG. 3 cmpc module), and
output a corresponding segmented text according to the text and the word (Huang FIG. 2 text input, entity/attribute/relation; FIG. 3 cmpc module).
Yu states, “By combining features in two different context levels, our method is able to understand a comprehensive knowledge as well as a specific trait of the target object (Yu Introduction).” Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the cross-model comprehension module of Huang into the image-text segmentation method of Huang to expressly provide an image segmenter configured utilize relationship cues of the input expression to highlight the referent while suppressing other irrelevant ones (Huang Introduction).
Consider claim 4, Yu fails to specifically disclose wherein the segmentation module is an image-text co-segmentation module, which segments both the image and the texts.
In related art, Huang discloses wherein the segmentation module is an image-text co-segmentation module, which segments both the image and the texts (Huang FIGs. 2, 3).
Yu states, “By combining features in two different context levels, our method is able to understand a comprehensive knowledge as well as a specific trait of the target object (Yu Introduction).” Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the cross-model comprehension module of Huang into the image-text segmentation method of Yu to expressly provide an image segmenter configured utilize relationship/attribute/entity cues of the input expression.
Consider claims 6 and 17, Yu, as modified by Huang, discloses the claimed invention further includes a selector, configured to select, and provide the word to the image segmenter and the segmented texter (Yu FIG. 2, 3.3; Huang FIG. 2).
Consider claim 8, Yu, as modified by Huang, discloses the claimed invention wherein the word is predetermined or defined by the user (Huang Visualization of Affinity Maps).
Claims 2 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yu as applied to claims 1, 3, 13, and 15 above, and further in view of Yi (‘A Simple Framework for Text-Supervised Semantic Segmentation’).
Consider claims 2 and 14, Yu discloses the claimed invention further comprising an image encoder (Yu FIG. 2),
In related art, Yi discloses an image encoder, configured to encode the segmented image for contrastive loss (Yi FIG. 2, 4.2 Locality-Driven Alignment).
Yi is directed to a simple framework for text-supervised semantic segmentation. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the contrastive learning loss of Yi into the image-text segmentation method of Yu, to align the text and image features.
Claims 7 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yu, in further view of Huang, as applied to claims 5 and 16 above, and further in view of Yi (‘A Simple Framework for Text-Supervised Semantic Segmentation’).
Consider claims 7 and 18, Yu, as modified by Huang, discloses the claimed invention further comprises an image encoder, configured to encode the segmented image (Yu FIG. 2, Section 3; Huang FIG. 2); and
a text encoder, configured to encode the segmented text (Yu FIG. 2, Section 3; Huang FIG. 2),
In related art, Yi discloses wherein a region-word pair contrastive loss is generated according to the segmented image and the segmented text (Yi FIG. 2, 4.2 Locality-Driven Alignment).
Yi is directed to a simple framework for text-supervised semantic segmentation. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the contrastive learning loss of Yi into the image-text segmentation method of Yu, as modified by Huang, to align the text and image features.
Relevant Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Liang (‘Open-vocabulary semantic segmentation with mask-adapted clip.’)
Wu (‘Image-text co-decomposition for text-supervised semantic segmentation.’)
US 2022/0156992 A1 discloses methods for image segmentation.
US 2024/0152695 A1 discloses methods for generating graphic design variants from input text.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ASHLEY HYTREK whose telephone number is (703)756-4562. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00-5:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Steve Koziol can be reached at (408)918-7630. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ASHLEY HYTREK/Examiner, Art Unit 2665
/Stephen R Koziol/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2665
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