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 .
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.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Almaraz et al (US PG Pub. No. 2021/0073240) in view of Yu et al (Chinese Pub. No. CN 117670637 A)
With regards to claim 1, the limitations of this claim are obvious over the teachings of the prior art, as evidenced by the following references:
The Almaraz reference
Almaraz a computer-implemented method for digital watermarking of digital content for information lifecycle management (ILM), the method being executed by one or more processors at: abstract; ¶ [0033], ¶¶ [0039]-[0043] and FIG. 2; ¶ [0059]; ¶¶ [0065]-[0068]. Almaraz further disclose a set of watermark bits being representative of a digital watermark representing at least one value for execution of an ILM activity (e.g., archiving of the image and destruction of the image) at: abstract; ¶ [0033], ¶¶ [0039]-[0043] and FIG. 2; ¶ [0059]; ¶¶ [0065]-[0068]. Almaraz does not disclose watermarking the digital content in the recited manner. However, these limitations were known in the art as evidenced by the Yu reference.
The Yu reference
Yu discloses inherently discloses receiving first digital content comprising an image at p. 8 of the English translation when it discloses “pre-processing the original image” because pre-processing an image necessarily requires having received an image. See, also, p. 3 of the English translation.
Yu discloses initializing parameters (e.g., block size “N”) for the first digital content in the English translation at p. 10 (e.g., “example, the size is (640, 948). N = 2”); p. 11 at S41.
Yu discloses converting a first set of values (e.g., R, G and B channels) of the first digital content to a second set of values (e.g., Y, U and V channels), the first set of values being representative of the image in a first color space (“RGB format”) and the second set of values being representative of the image in a second color space (“YUV format”) in the English translation at p. 8. See, also, p. 3 of the English translation.
Yu discloses dividing a sub-set of values (e.g., “low frequency information matrix A”) of the second set of values into a set of blocks (e.g., “N*N partitioning matrixes” also referred to as “block matrix”) in the English translation at pp. 9-10; for example: “[P]artitioning the low-frequency information matrix A corresponding to each channel, and partitioning the image into multiple partitioning matrixes with size of N* N according to the watermark information. a partitioning matrix for embedding the watermark.” See, also, p. 3 of the English translation.
Yu discloses applying a transform (i.e., “discrete cosine transform”) to each block blocks (e.g., “N*N partitioning matrixes” also referred to as “block matrix”) in the set of blocks to provide, for each block, a frequency domain representation of at least a portion of the image in the English translation at pp. 10-11. See, also, pp. 3-4 of the English translation.
Yu discloses, for each block (e.g., “block frequency domain matrix”) in the set of blocks, embedding a sub-set of watermark bits from a set of watermark bits into the block based on the parameters in the English translation at pp. 11-12; to wit: “[O]btaining the watermark data, performing watermark embedding on the block frequency domain matrix by using the variable watermark embedding algorithm, …obtaining the watermark data, and extracting each 1 bit of watermark data from the watermark data in turn, …, and the feature values SO and S1 are updated by the following formula, and output as updated feature values SO 'and S1' of each block frequency domain matrix….” See, also, pp. 3-4 of the English translation.
Yu discloses executing an inverse transformation (i.e., “inverse discrete cosine transform DCT”) of the set of blocks (e.g., “updated block frequency domain matrix”) to provide a modified second set of values representative (e.g., “YUV format three-channel of new image”) of the image with the digital watermark in the second color space (“YUV format”) in the English translation at pp. 12-13 (“performing inverse discrete cosine transform… and splicing…to obtain a low frequency information matrix corresponding to the new YUV format three-channel… orderly carrying out inverse wavelet transformation from back to front to obtain YUV format three-channel of new image”) See, also, pp. 3-4 of the English translation.
Yu discloses converting the modified second set of values(e.g., “YUV format three-channel of new image”) to a modified first set of values representative of the image with the digital watermark in the first color space (“RGB channel”) in the English translation at pp. 13 (e.g., “[T]ransforming YUV format three-channel of new image into RGB channel to obtain watermark image.”) See, also, pp. 3-4 of the English translation.
Yu discloses providing second digital content comprising the image with the digital watermark in the English translation at p. 13; to wit: “The YUV channel is restored to the RGB channel, as shown in FIG. 7, and the watermark picture with the final restoration effect is shown.” See, also, pp. 3-4 of the English translation.
At the time of the filing of the present application, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to embed a watermark in the frequency domain in the manner taught by Yu, when using a watermark to embed information for information lifecycle management according to Almaraz. The motivation for doing so comes from Yu, which discloses, “The reason is: The method adopts the multi-domain transformation method to fully extract the essential characteristics of the image, the image attack of the attacker is hard to change these characteristics; The complete extracting method of the method uses the watermark clustering algorithm to correct the extracted watermark value on the whole, which is good for defending the attack of the whole image. In summary, the present invention provides an effective solution for the scaling attack and the rotation attack which are difficult to deal with in the image attack, more secretly embedding the image watermark and recovering the watermark from multiple image attacks, which further improves the robustness of the image watermark and has good effect in the actual performance.” (p. 17). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Yu with Almaraz to obtain the invention specified in this claim.
With regards to claim 2, Almaraz discloses storing the second digital content and the digital watermark in a datastore (e.g., “application server 205”), the second digital content being indexed to the digital watermark within the datastore at: ¶¶ [0041]-[0043]; see, also: ¶¶ [0017]-[0018]; ¶¶ [0044]-[0047]; ¶ [0059]; ¶ [0065]; ¶ [0068].
With regards to claim 3, Yu discloses the transform comprises a discrete cosine transform in the English translation at p. 3 (“S3”), p. 4 (“S32”), pp. 10-11 (“S32”). The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 4, Yu discloses processing the matrix (e.g., “matrix A”) to provide a set of matrices (e.g., “partitioning matrixes with size of N * N”) in the English translation at pp. 9-10.
Yu discloses embedding at least one watermark bit into a value of a matrix in the set of matrices in the English translation at pp. 11-12.
The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 5, Yu discloses processing the matrix to provide a set of matrices comprises processing the matrix using singular value decomposition in the English translation at p. 11 (“S4”); e.g., “S4, using the singular value decomposition SVD to extract the characteristic value of the block frequency domain matrix for the block frequency domain matrix, taking the characteristic value corresponding to the block frequency domain matrix…” The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 6, Yu discloses processing the second digital content to determine the at least one value for execution of the ILM activity and executing the ILM activity responsive to the at least one value at ¶ [0033], ¶¶ [0039]-[0043] and FIG. 2; ¶ [0059]; ¶¶ [0065]-[0068]. The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 7, Yu discloses the ILM activity comprises one of archiving of the image and destruction of the image at ¶ [0033], ¶¶ [0039]-[0043] and FIG. 2; ¶ [0059]; ¶¶ [0065]-[0068]. The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 8, Yu discloses the first color space is a RGB color space and the second color space is a YUV color space in the English translation at p. 8. See, also, p. 3 of the English translation. The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 9, Yu discloses the first set of values comprises, for each pixel in the image, a R channel value, a G channel value, and B channel value in the RGB color space and the second set of values comprises, for each pixel in the image, a Y channel value, a U channel value, and V channel value in the YUV color space in the English translation at p. 8. See, also, p. 3 of the English translation. The motivation for the combination is the same as previously presented.
With regards to claim 10, Yu discloses the digital watermark comprises one or more of a string of characters and an image of a machine-readable code in the English translation at p. 10; e.g., “The character watermark or the image watermark information can be finally encoded as a binary string represented by a plurality of binary bits, and the character watermark is, for example, encoded by UTF-8, and the three Chinese characters "blind watermark" can be represented by hexadecimal.”
With regards to claim 11, the steps stored in the computer readable medium of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 1, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 12, the steps stored in the computer readable medium of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 2, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 13, the steps stored in the computer readable medium of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 3, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 14, the steps stored in the computer readable medium of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 4, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 15, the steps stored in the computer readable medium of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 5, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 16, the steps performed by the apparatus of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 1, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 17, the steps performed by the apparatus of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 2, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 18, the steps performed by the apparatus of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 3, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 19, the steps performed by the apparatus of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 4, which recites a method performing these same steps.
With regards to claim 20, the steps performed by the apparatus of this claim are obvious over the combination of Almaraz and Yu for the same reasons as were provided in the discussion of claim 5, which recites a method performing these same steps.
Conclusion
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/DAVID F DUNPHY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2673
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