Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/995,902

SERIALISED VIDEO TRANSMISSION

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Jan 17, 2025
Examiner
ALAM, MUSHFIKH I
Art Unit
2426
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
LEICA INSTRUMENTS (SINGAPORE) PTE. LTD.
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
58%
Grant Probability
Moderate
1-2
OA Rounds
3y 9m
To Grant
96%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 58% of resolved cases
58%
Career Allow Rate
295 granted / 509 resolved
At TC average
Strong +38% interview lift
Without
With
+38.5%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 9m
Avg Prosecution
32 currently pending
Career history
541
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
3.0%
-37.0% vs TC avg
§103
68.4%
+28.4% vs TC avg
§102
13.1%
-26.9% vs TC avg
§112
4.5%
-35.5% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 509 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
DETAILED ACTION Claims 1-15 are pending. 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. Claim(s) 1-4, 9-11, 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Racicot (US 2009/0161750) in view of Harwell et al. (US 2013/0302005). Claim 1, Racicot teaches An apparatus for processing a serialised stream of video data for onwards transmission, the serialised stream of video data comprising a plurality of serially transmitted video frames from a video source, each video frame comprising a plurality of frame lines at least one frame line comprising a group of active pixels and one or more blanking pixels (fig. 1; p. 0010), the apparatus comprising: a receiver (140) configured to receive the serialised stream of video data (p. 0019-0020); a memory (i.e. RAM) configured to buffer (i.e. store video streams) the received serialised stream of video data until at least all of the active pixels of a respective frame line of pixels of a received respective video frame have been buffered (p. 0021-0028); one or more processors configured, to, for each respective group of active pixels of a respective frame line (i.e. unencoded/encoded frames), generate a respective data structure comprising at least the respective group of active of the frame line pixels and a frame line position indicator (i.e. utilized in alternating sequence of lines) assigned to that the respective group of active pixels (i.e. lines of video data streams), each respective data structure omitting at least one blanking pixel (i.e. removing blanking data) of the respective frame line (p. 0017, 0019, 0026); and a transmitter configured to intermittently onwardly transmit the generated data structures by pausing transmission after each data structure has been transmitted until a next data structure is ready for transmission. Racicot is silent regarding the specific feature of: a transmitter configured to intermittently onwardly transmit the generated data structures by pausing transmission after each data structure has been transmitted until a next data structure is ready for transmission. Harwell teaches the specific feature of: a transmitter configured to intermittently onwardly transmit the generated data structures by pausing transmission after each data structure has been transmitted until a next data structure is ready for transmission (i.e. intermittently transmitting cached content) (p. 0034). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided intermittent transmission as taught by Harwell to the system of Racicot to optimize video transfers (p. 0034). Claim 2, Racicot teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein more than one blanking pixel is discarded two or more blanking pixels are omitted from each received video frame line (i.e. removing blank data implies more than 1) (p. 0017). Claim 3, Racicot teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein no blanking pixel of the received video frame lines is included in the onwardly transmitted data structures (i.e. blanking data is removed) (p. 0017). Claim 4, Racicot is silent regarding the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the intermittently transmitted data structures have a fixed frame line length with variable durations of transmission pauses. Harwell teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the intermittently transmitted data structures have a fixed frame line length (i.e. predetermined amount of video) with variable durations of transmission pauses (i.e. based on network bandwidth) (p. 0034). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided intermittent transmission as taught by Harwell to the system of Racicot to optimize video transfers (p. 0034). Claim 9 is analyzed and interpreted as a method of claim 1. Claim 10 is analyzed and interpreted as a method of claim 2. Claim 11 is analyzed and interpreted as a method of claim 4. Claim 15 recites “A non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer program code stored thereon, the computer program code, when executed by one or more processors” to perform the steps of claim 9. Racicot inherently teaches “A non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer program code stored thereon, the computer program code, when executed by one or more processors” to perform the steps of claim 9. Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Racicot (US 2009/0161750) in view of Hundemer (US 9264760). Claim 5, Racicot is silent regarding the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the assigned frame line position indicator for each respective group of active pixels is included in the respective data structure including the respective group of active pixels. Hundemer teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the assigned frame line position indicator (i.e. frame indicators) for each respective group of active pixels (i.e. VS) is included in the respective data structure (i.e. VS table) including the respective group of active pixels (col. 11-12, lines 61-7). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided frame line indicators as taught by Hundemer to the system of Racicot to provide traverse video packages (col. 11-12, lines 61-7). Claim(s) 6-8, 12-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Racicot (US 2009/0161750) in view of Harwell et al. (US 2013/0302005), and further in view of Fudge et al. (US 2003/0016302). Claim 6, Racicot teaches A viewing apparatus comprising: a receiver (140) configured to receive a transmitted stream of serialised video data comprising a plurality of data structures, each data structure comprising a group of active pixels from a video frame line (i.e. frame lines) and a frame line position indicator (i.e. utilized in alternating sequence of lines) for the group of active pixels line (p. 0017, 0019-0020, 0026); and Racicot is silent regarding the specific features of: “receive an intermittently transmitted stream”; one or more processors configured to: for each respective data structure, generate a complete line of video data by adding one or more blanking pixels to the group of active pixels of the respective data structure until a next data structure in the serialised video data is received; and cause each complete line of video data to be output for presentation on a display at a position in a video frame indicated by the frame line position indicator for the group of active pixels of the complete line of video data. Harwell teaches the specific features of: “receive an intermittently transmitted stream” (p. 0034). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided intermittent transmission as taught by Harwell to the system of Racicot to optimize video transfers (p. 0034). Fudge teaches the specific feature of: one or more processors configured to: for each respective data structure (i.e. image data), generate a complete line of video data by adding one or more blanking pixels (i.e. adding black value) to the group of active pixels of the respective data structure until a next data structure in the serialised video data is received (i.e. held in frame buffer) (p. 0088-0089); and cause each complete line of video data to be output for presentation on a display at a position in a video frame indicated by the frame line position indicator (i.e. pixel displayed in correct order) for the group of active pixels of the complete line of video data (i.e. image data displayed for each pixel in the correct order from a frame buffer) (p. 0088-0094). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided adding blanking data as taught by Fudge to the system of Racicot to provide flexibility of formats (p. 0093). Claim 7, Racicot is silent regarding the viewing apparatus of claim 6, wherein the received intermittently transmitted stream of serialised video data is processed by the one or more processors or processing circuitry to add a variable number of blanking pixels for output as a continuous serialised variable line length video stream to the display. Harwell teaches the specific feature of: “received intermittently transmitted stream of serialised video data” (p. 0034); “a continuous serialised variable line length video stream to the display” (i.e. based on network bandwidth) (p. 0034). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided intermittent transmission as taught by Harwell to the system of Racicot to optimize video transfers (p. 0034). Fudge teaches the specific feature of: “one or more processors or processing circuitry to add a variable number of blanking pixels for output” (p. 0088-0094) . Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided adding blanking data as taught by Fudge to the system of Racicot to provide flexibility of formats (p. 0093). Claim 8, Racicot teaches the viewing apparatus of claim 6 further comprising the display (p. 0035). Claim 12 is analyzed and interpreted as a method of claim 6. Claim 13 is analyzed and interpreted as a method of claim 7. Claim(s) 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Racicot (US 2009/0161750) in view of Harwell et al. (US 2013/0302005), and further in view of Fudge et al. (US 2003/0016302), and further in view of Colenbrander (US 2015/0181084). Claim 14, Racicot is silent regarding the method of claim 12, further comprising: determining a last frame line of a frame that has been received; generating an end of frame line comprising blanking pixels as the last frame line of the frame; and outputting the received frame lines including the end of frame line of the frame as a serial data stream of pixels to the display. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided last frame blanking region as taught by Colenbrander to the system of Racicot to provide extended end frames (p. 0102). Colenbrander teaches The method of claim 12, further comprising: determining a last frame line of a frame that has been received (i.e. end of each line of the frame) (p. 0077, 0102); generating an end of frame line comprising blanking pixels as the last frame line of the frame (i.e. adding blanking region at the end of frames) (p. 0077, 0102); and outputting the received frame lines including the end of frame line of the frame as a serial data stream of pixels to the display (i.e. output video signal) (p. 0077-0079). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided last frame blanking region as taught by Colenbrander to the system of Racicot to provide extended end frames (p. 0102). Conclusion Claims 1-15 are rejected. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. US 20220353570 A1 RASOOL; MOHAMMED US 20180191996 A1 Malemezian; Bradley C. et al. US 20170289601 A1 Ganster; Christopher et al. US 20160112774 A1 e Silva; Bernardo Ferreira de Carvalho et al. US 20140325583 A1 Mukawa; Masaki et al. Inquiries Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MUSHFIKH I ALAM whose telephone number is (571)270-1710. The examiner can normally be reached 1:00PM-9:00PM. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Nasser Goodarzi can be reached at 571-272-4195. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. MUSHFIKH I. ALAM Primary Examiner Art Unit 2426 /MUSHFIKH I ALAM/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2426 12/31/2025
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Prosecution Timeline

Jan 17, 2025
Application Filed
Dec 31, 2025
Non-Final Rejection — §103
Mar 23, 2026
Applicant Interview (Telephonic)
Mar 31, 2026
Examiner Interview Summary

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
58%
Grant Probability
96%
With Interview (+38.5%)
3y 9m
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 509 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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