PassWDETAILED 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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in Japan on December 13, 2023. It is noted, however, that applicant has not filed a certified copy of the Japan 2023-210648 application as required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed December 10, 2024 fails to comply with 37 CFR 1.98(a)(3)(i) because it does not include a concise explanation of the relevance, as it is presently understood by the individual designated in 37 CFR 1.56(c) most knowledgeable about the content of the information, of each reference listed that is not in the English language. It has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered.
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.
Claims 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nitta (US 11,477,339 B2) in view of Nakamura (US 9,025,170 B2).
Regarding Claim 1, Nitta teaches an image reading apparatus (Nitta discloses an image forming apparatus including an image reading device, display device, operation device, image forming device, and control device. See Nitta, Abstract; FIG. 3) comprising:
an image reading device that reads an image of a document (Nitta discloses an image reading device that reads a source document and generates image data representing the source document image. See Nitta, FIG. 2; description of image reading device 11)
a controller that causes the image reading device to sequentially read a plurality of documents one by one (Nitta discloses a controller causing the image reading device to sequentially read plurality of source documents one by one. See Nitta, column 6, lines 44-50);
a sheet defect decider that decides whether the document that has been read has a defect in sheet shape, on a basis of a document image acquired through a reading operation by the image reading device (Nitta discloses detecting whether a source image has a missing corner and deciding whether a shortage value indicating the scale of the missing corner is equal to or larger than a threshold. See Nitta, FIGS. 5A–6C, 9–10, column 6, lines 38-43).
Nitta fails to teach the apparatus comprising a written information defect decider that decides whether information written on the document that has been read has a defect, on a basis of the document image acquired through the reading operation by the image reading device. However, in the same field of endeavor, Nakamura teaches this limitation (Nakamura discloses reading a first side of a printed material having first image data printed on the first side and second image data printed on a second side, comparing density of image data obtained by the reading unit and first image data, and determining whether the printed material includes a defect portion based on the density difference. See Nakamura, Abstract; claim 1; column 7, lines 34-56. Nakamura further teaches that the defect determination is based on image data corresponding to printed information on the sheet, including inspection of image data on the front and back sides, see Figs. 8A and 8B). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was made to incorporate Nakamura’s printed-image defect inspection into Nitta’s document-reading workflow so that the apparatus evaluates whether information written on the document image has a defect.
Further, Nita in view of Nakamura teach a decision device that decides that the document has a defect, when the sheet defect decider decides that the document has a defect in sheet shape, and the written information defect decider also decides that the information written on the document has a defect (Nitta discloses a decider controlling defect-handling based on sheet-shape defect severity. Nakamura discloses determining whether a printed material includes a defect portion based on image density differences.). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was made to combine these teachings so that a document is determined defective when both sheet-shape defect analysis and printed-image defect analysis indicate defect, thereby reducing false positive defect determinations and improving inspection accuracy.
Regarding Claim 2, Nitta in view of Nakamura further teach the image reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the decision device keeps from deciding that the document has a defect, when the sheet defect decider decides that the document has a defect in sheet shape, but the written information defect decider does not decide that the information written on the document has a defect (Nitta discloses sheet-shape defect detection based on dog-ear or missing-corner severity, see column 10, line 53 – column 11, line 7. Nakamura discloses defect detection of printed image data based on density differences between read image data and image data to be printed. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was made to configure the decision logic so that a document is not treated as defective when only a sheet-shape anomaly is detected and the printed information itself is not defective, thereby avoiding unnecessary defect decisions and reducing false positives.
Regarding Claim 3, Nitta further teaches the image reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the decision device decides whether the document has a defect, on a basis of the document image, each time the document image corresponding to one sheet of the document is acquired by the image reading device (Nitta discloses reading source documents one by one and deciding defect status based on each source image. See Nitta, FIGS. 9–10.) and
the controller causes the image reading device to suspend the reading operation of a next and subsequent documents, at a time point that the decision device has decided that the document has a defect (Nitta discloses suspending reading when the shortage value is equal to or larger than a threshold. See Nitta, FIGS. 9–10).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was made to apply the defect decision on a per-document-image basis and to suspend subsequent reading upon a defect determination, as taught by Nitta, while using Nakamura to determine whether the printed information on the document image is defective.
Regarding Claim 4, Nitta further teaches the image reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the decision device decides whether the document has a defect, on a basis of the document image, each time the document image corresponding to one sheet of the document is acquired by the image reading device (Nitta discloses document-by-document image acquisition and defect decision based on the acquired source image. See Nitta, FIGS. 9–10), and
the controller causes the image reading device to continue with the reading operation of a next and subsequent documents, at a time point that the decision device has decided that the document has a defect, and to stop the reading operation of the image reading device, after all the documents have been read (Nitta discloses continuing reading next documents and finishing after sequential reading is complete. See Nitta, FIGS. 9–11).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the invention was made to continue reading subsequent documents notwithstanding a defect decision in a sequential document-reading workflow, and to stop after all documents have been read, as taught by Nitta, while using Nakamura’s printed-image inspection to characterize written-information defects.
Regarding Claim 5, Nitta further teaches the image reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the sheet defect decider possesses a plurality of criteria different from each other, for decision whether the document has a defect in sheet shape, and decides, when one of the criteria is selected, whether the document has a defect in sheet shape, according to the selected criterion (Nitta expressly discloses a plurality of thresholds for defect evaluation, including a first threshold, second threshold, and third threshold, and changing the applicable threshold depending on the detected shortage value. See Nitta, FIGS. 9–10).
Nitta itself teaches multiple criteria for sheet-shape defect decision in the form of multiple thresholds. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine this with Nakamura’s printed-information defect inspection to provide flexible defect decision criteria for document reading.
Regarding Claim 6, Nakamura further teaches the image reading apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the written information defect decider possesses a plurality of criteria different from each other, for decision whether the information written on the document has a defect, and decides, when one of the criteria is selected, whether the information written on the document has a defect, according to the selected criterion (Nakamura discloses determining whether the printed material includes a defect portion based on density differences between image data and first image data, with thresholds that vary depending on density conditions of the second image data and density of the first image data. See Nakamura, claim 1; claims 2, 4, 5, 7, 8; FIGS. 7A–7D, 9A–10D, 12A–12C, 14, 19.Nakamura further teaches using different inspection standards / thresholds depending on paper characteristics and show-through conditions. See Nakamura, FIGS. 11, 12A–12C, 14, 19).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to use Nakamura’s density-based, threshold-dependent image inspection as the basis for a written-information defect decision and to provide multiple selectable criteria for defect determination, in combination with Nitta’s document-reading and sheet-defect workflow.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Fukube (US PGPUB 2008/0122166) teaches an image forming apparatus conveying a recording medium through a sheet conveying path may include a recording medium conveying device, and includes an edge position detector to detect a position of a side edge of a recording medium along a width direction perpendicular to a sheet travel direction of the recording medium in the sheet conveying path, and an edge position recognizer to recognize, based on detection results obtained by the edge position detector, the position of the side edge at multiple detection positions of the recording medium in the sheet travel direction of the recording medium. The multiple detection positions includes a detection position located within a dog ear region in the vicinity of either a leading edge or a trailing edge of the recording medium in the sheet travel direction (Abstract).
Yamamoto (US PGPUB 2021/0073603) teaches an image forming apparatus and image formation method that detect printing paper may skew, have dog-ear, or hole because mask position is present in part of one edge of printing paper, on corner of printing paper, or mask position is inside printing paper, respectively (Figs. 7-10B).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BENNY QUOC TIEU whose telephone number is (571)272-7490. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday.
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/BENNY Q TIEU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2682
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