DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
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Claims 1, 14 and 20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 2 of U.S. Patent No. 9,183,668 B2 in view of U.S. Patent No. 6,091,422 A (‘422 Patent’). Please see table below.
U.S. Application No. 19/017/706
U.S. Patent No. 9,183,668 B2
1. A system for use in ray-tracing-based 3-D scene rendering, comprising:
an intersection tester operable for testing rays for intersection with one or more of
(1) primitives composing a 3-D scene and (2) elements of an acceleration structure, and
a memory, coupled for receiving indications of detected intersections between rays and respective primitives,
a processor coupled for receiving the stored indications from the memory and configured to execute shader code modules.
1. A system for 3-D graphics processing using ray tracing, comprising:
a plurality of computation units [the plurality of computation units correspond to the intersection tester and the processor],
collectively capable of performing a sequence of ray tracing operations using a set of data elements,
the ray tracing operations comprising operations to be performed during one or more of acceleration structure traversal and primitive intersection testing;
an input buffer;
(Claim 2)
wherein the ray tracing operations to be performed by the plurality of computation units further comprise shading operations defined by portions of code.
Regarding: memory coupled for receiving indications of detected intersections between rays and respective primitives, the ‘422 Patent teaches that it is known store scene data for rendering (see C6, last paragraph), and/or store “Data defining the render region” (C17, first full paragraph).
Modifying claim 2 of the issued patent, in view of the ‘422 patent, such to store detected intersections, of the issued patent, as part of data for rendering, per the ‘422 Patent, would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, motivated to have data available for rendering.
Claim 14 (method embodiment of claim 1)
Claim 2 in view of ‘422 Patent
Claim 20 (computer readable media embodiment of claim 1)
Claim 2 in view of ‘422 Patent
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-13, 15-19 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.
The closest prior art to the above claims is of record in this application and its family. However, the prior does not teach, and would not have rendered obvious, the features of Applicant’s independent claims (rejected now under nonstatutory double patenting).
That is to say, although U.S. Patent App. Pub. No. 2006/0139349 (Reshetov) teaches ray traversal with a group of geometric objects (e.g. claim 1, ray tracing against portions of a spatially ordered geometrical database) the instant reference does not teach ray tracing, or an intersection tester operable to perform ray tracing with one or more of (1) primitives composing a 3-D scene and (2) elements of an acceleration structure, as per Applicant’s independent claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US-20040101056-A1 Programmable shader-based motion compensation apparatus and method
US-20060059494-A1 Embodiments of methods, apparatuses, devices, and/or systems for load balancing two processors, such as for graphics and/or video processing, for example, are described.
US-20080043018-A1 Methods, systems, devices and computer program products operable in a computer graphics system include constructing a hierarchical ray tracing acceleration data structure comprising a tree structure, the modes of which are generated utilizing a bounding interval hierarchy based on defining an axis-aligned scene bounding box and two parallel planes to partition a set of objects in a sense into left objects and right objects, and matching split planes to object bounding boxes.
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Sarah Lhymn
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2613
/Sarah Lhymn/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2613
Prosecution Insights