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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7, 9-14, 16-21 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.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 8, 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Singh U.S. Patent/PG Publication 6204860 in view of Loop U.S. Patent/PG Publication 7564459.
Regarding claim 1 (independent):
A method to deform a plurality of points in space using a curve, the method comprising: (Singh Abstract A system that defines a wire curve deformation primitive with a free-form parametric curve associated with the closest points to the curve on a surface of a model.).
obtaining the curve and a first point on the curve (Singh C4 L55-65 Points P(u) on the curve are defined for u in the range [0,1], where P0, P1, P2 and P3 are the four control points. As an example assume that the curve is a two dimensional (2D) curve in a plane with the control points P0=(-1,1); P1=(-1,0); P2=(1,0); and P3=(1,1) which would result in a curve 12 with control points 14, 16, 20 and 18 that looks somewhat like a parabola, as shown in FIG. 2.).
determining a first side and a second side associated with the curve by: (Singh C10 L55-67 This determination can be described visually as depicted in FIG. 17. A point 212 which may be located on the same side of wire 214 (going into the page) as a holder 216 (also going into the page) forms an angle 218 with respect to a line drawn between corresponding points on the wire 214 and holder 216. If this angle 218 is greater than 90 degrees, the point 212 is not on the same side of the wire 214 as the holder 216. If the angle 218 is 90 degrees or less (as depicted in the example of FIG. 17), the point is on the same side.)
computing a tangent to the curve at the first point (Singh C6 L60-67 n the next step C'(u) is defined as the tangent vector to curve C at u, and .theta. is defined as the angle between W'(p.sub.R) and R'(p.sub.R). The step involves rotating the point resulting from the scaling operation Ps, by the modulated angle .theta..multidot.F(P,R), around the tangential axis W'(p.sub.R)xR'(p.sub.R), about point R(p.sub.R). This provides a screw-like deformation.).
determining a first vector different from the tangent to the curve (Singh C9 L45-55 The function F can be combined with other functions to assist in locator type control. In particular, directional control can be provided by modulating F with a function for an angular drop-off around an axis perpendicular to the wire. Both the directional axis and drop-off angle can be interpolated by locators.).
constructing a (Singh C9 L45-55 The function F can be combined with other functions to assist in locator type control. In particular, directional control can be provided by modulating F with a function for an angular drop-off around an axis perpendicular to the wire. Both the directional axis and drop-off angle can be interpolated by locators.).
defining the first side associated with the curve and the second side associated with the curve, wherein the first side includes a first plurality of points on one side of the plane, and wherein the second side includes a second plurality of points on another side of the plane (Singh C10 L50-60 The domain curve will define the function if cosangle >0. This selects points that lie on the same side of R as D (even though the concept of side is not well defined mathematically). This notion of same side tends to be captured by an acute angle subtended at R(p.sub.R), for a triangle with vertices at P,D(p.sub.D) and R(p.sub.R).).
defining a deformation associated with the curve and influencing the plurality of points in space, wherein a magnitude of the deformation affecting a second point among the plurality of points in space depends on whether the second point is associated with the first side or the second side associated with the curve (Singh C10 L45-50 In the example of FIG. 16c, the holder was defined to have a "one-sided" influence region affected by the wire curve. The other side is affected only by the conventional drop-off radius r. The blending function that controls the fall off of the distortion is bounded by the wire curve and the holder curve whenever the holder curve is within the influence region defined by r. Essentially, the distance between the wire curve and the holder becomes r. In general one-sided influence regions for holders are preferred but the holders can have influence on more than one side.)(Singh C11 L5-15 For points considered to be outside the domain defined by the domain curve that is, not on the same side of the curve R as the holder, the conventional drop-off radius calculation is applied. For each holder curve associated with a wire the above calculations are done separately. This approach to domain curve affected points may lead to a discontinuity around points where cosangle=0.).
and applying the deformation to the second point (Singh C2 L35-45 The process of deforming relevant parts of an object include preprocessing steps of determining which points will be influenced by the wire curve calculating an influence function for each point. As the curve is manipulated, the deformation stage processing includes scaling, rotating and translating the points to be deformed.).
Singh does not teach a plane. In a related field of endeavor, Loop teaches:
constructing a plane at the first point on the curve based on the tangent and the first vector (Loop C4 L50-60 The following descriptions take place in projective 2D space where points are represented by a homogeneous 3-tuple [x y w]; and the position of a point in the plane is [x/w y/w]. A "parametric curve" is a vector valued function of a single variable. Points on the curve are found by sampling the function at parameter values t. We write a rational parametric curve of degree n as the product C(t)=tC (3.1))(Loop C5 L25-35 That is, the set of points [x y] in the plane where c evaluates to zero. Implicit curves are useful in the techniques described herein because they allow a function which defines for a given point in image space whether the point is on the line. Additionally, if a point is not in the zero set of the equation, its sign is known to determine which side of the line the point is on. It is known (by Sederberg, 1983) that any curve which is defined parametrically by an equation)
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use a plane as taught by Loop. The rationale for doing so would have been that it combines prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results where Singh teaches a local tangent and perpendicular directional axis for directional falloff and where Loop has tangent based curve side classification, where there would be predictable results of defining a local plane boundary and applying different falloff for each side to produce a curve deformation. Therefore it would have been obvious to combine Loop with Singh to obtain the invention.
Regarding claim 8 (independent):
The claim is a parallel version of claim 1. As such it is rejected under the same teachings.
Regarding claim 15 (independent):
The claim is a parallel version of claim 1. As such it is rejected under the same teachings.
Conclusion
For the prior art referenced and the prior art considered pertinent to Applicant’s disclosure but not relied upon, see PTO-892 “Notice of References Cited”.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JASON PRINGLE-PARKER whose telephone number is (571) 272-5690 and e-mail is jason.pringle-parker@uspto.gov. The examiner can normally be reached on 8:30am-5:00pm est Monday-Friday. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, King Poon can be reached on (571) 270-0728. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JASON A PRINGLE-PARKER/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2617
