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 section 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.
Claims 8-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claim 8 recites obtaining a first detection within a first sub-window at a first coordinate, obtaining a second detection within a second sub-window at a second coordinate where the first and second sub-windows share an overlapping portion, and grouping the first detection and the second detection into a single detection. These steps are a mental process, which is an abstract idea.
Claim 8 recites no additional elements that teaches significantly more or practical application.
Claims 9-13 do not overcome these deficiencies.
Claim 14 does teach a practical application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 8-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Rowley ("Neural Network-Based Face Detection”).
Regarding claim 8, Rowley teaches a method comprising obtaining a first detection within a first sub-window at a first coordinate (section 2.1, subwindows),
obtaining a second detection within a second sub-window at a second coordinate, where the first sub-window and the second sub-window share an overlapping portion (section 2.1 and 3, successive sub-windows); and
grouping the first detection and the second detection into a single detection (section 2.2.1, collapsed to a single point, centroid).
Regarding claim 9, see Rowley section 2.1 and section 4, sub windows have dimensions 20x20 and 30x30.
Regarding claim 10, see Rowley section 2.1, the filter is applied at every pixel position, if one pixel difference is less than half.
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 1-2, 4-5, 15-16, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Imamura (20080285817) in view of Rowley.
Regarding claim 1, Imamura teaches an apparatus comprising a processor (par. 37),
and a non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that when executed by the processor causes the apparatus to perform the recited operations (par. 37),
obtain a first detection within a first sub-window at a first coordinate of a scan pattern, where the scan pattern has a pre-defined number of scan locations (pars. 49-52),
obtain a second detection within a second sub-window at a second coordinate of the scan pattern, where the first sub-window and the second sub-window share an overlapping portion (par. 50 and FIG. 5),
and exit the scan pattern when a detection count threshold is met for the single detection (par. 53).
Rowley teaches a plurality of detectors, where each detector is configured to detect an object within a sub-window (section 2.2.2, multiple networks and section 2.1).
Rowley teaches grouping a first detection and a second detection obtained at nearby coordinates into a single detection (section 2.2.1, centroid),
Rowley also compares the count of detections in the neighborhood against a threshold to declare that grouped detection (section 2.2.1).
It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Imamura the plurality of detectors and the grouping of nearby overlapping detections into a single detection as taught by Rowley. The reason is to stop the detection counter from counting one face several times.
Regarding claim 2, see Imamura par. 53.
Regarding claim 4, see Imamura par. 50 and FIG. 5.
Regarding claim 5, see Imamura pars. 38-39 and see Rowley section 2.2.1 for the grouping that makes the obtained number a number of groups.
Regarding claim 15, see the rection of claim 1 and claim 8 above.
Regarding claim 16, see Rowley section 4.
Regarding claim 18, see Rowley Table 1 and section 2.2.1 detections are examined in order from those having the most votes within a small neighborhood to those having the least.
Regarding claim 20, see Imamura par. 52.
Claims 6-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Imamura in view of Rowley in further view of Haynes (20050129276).
Regarding claim 6, Haynes teaches starting a further detector outside a keep-out-region: a face-sized block corresponding to the chosen centre pixel position is blanked out, that is, omitted from the following calculations, and the candidate face position finding procedure is repeated on the rest of the image until the termination criterion is reached (par. 101), and additional faces are detected by searching for the next best response and blanking out the corresponding windows successively (par. 140).
It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Imamura the blanked-off keep-out region as taught by Haynes in order to avoid overlapping detections.
Regarding claim 7, see Haynes par. 139.
Claims 11-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rowley in view of Csefalvay (20160171331).
Regarding claim 11, Csefalvay teaches searching the first sub-window for the first detection and searching the second sub-window for the second detection concurrently (pars. 62-63 and 76, parallel sub windows).
It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Rowley the parallel evaluation of separate subwindows at separate computation units as taught by Csefalvay in order to increase efficiency.
Regarding claim 12, see Csefalvay par. 93.
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rowley in view of Csefalvay (20160171331) in further view of Imamura (20080285817).
Regarding claim 13, Rowley section 2.2.1 teaches a detection count and par. 93 of Csefalvay holds under concurrent evaluation at a third computation unit (par. 93).
Imamura teaches terminating the search when a count threshold is met (par. 53) and
It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Rowley and Csefalvay the count-based termination taught by Imamura in order to speed up the detection process.
Claims 3, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Imamura (20080285817) in view of Rowley in further view of Voigtlaender (20060109170).
Regarding claim 3, Voigtlaender teaches reducing power once a threshold count of detections has been reached (par. 5 and 18-19).
It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Imamura and Rowley the reduction of power upon reaching a useful limit of detected objects as taught by Voigtlaender in order to lower power consumption.
Regarding claim 17, see Voigtlaender pars. 5 and 19.
Regarding claim 19, see Voigtlaender par. 5.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rowley in view of Csefalvay (20160171331) in further view of Imamura (20080285817) in further view of Voigtlaender (20060109170).
Regarding claim 14, see Voigtlaender pars. 5 and 19 teaches reducing power once a limit to be regarded as useful is reached.
It would have been obvious prior to the effective filing date of the invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to include in Rowley, Csefalvay and Imamura the reduction of power upon reaching the useful limit of detected objects as taught by Voigtlaender. The reason is to save consumption.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Govil et al. (20160110603) teaches a hardware scanning window array.
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/HADI AKHAVANNIK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2676
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