Prosecution Insights
Last updated: October 04, 2026
Application No. 19/021,749

DATA GENERATION METHOD, ASSOCIATED COMPUTER PROGRAM AND COMPUTING DEVICE

Non-Final OA §101
Filed
Jan 15, 2025
Priority
Jan 19, 2024 — EU 24305123.2
Examiner
WILSON, NICHOLAS R
Art Unit
Tech Center
Assignee
Bull SAS
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
87%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
2m
Est. Remaining
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 87% — above average
87%
Career Allowance Rate
494 granted / 565 resolved
+27.4% vs TC avg
Moderate +11% lift
Without
With
+11.3%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Fast prosecutor
1y 10m
Avg Prosecution
13 currently pending
Career history
574
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
11.3%
-28.7% vs TC avg
§103
43.7%
+3.7% vs TC avg
§102
20.8%
-19.2% vs TC avg
§112
15.5%
-24.5% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 565 resolved cases

Office Action

§101
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 § 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. Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because products that do not have a physical or tangible form, such as information (often referred to as "data per se") or a computer program per se (often referred to as "software per se") when claimed as a product without any structural recitations. See MPEP 2106.03 Claim Interpretation - 35 USC § 101 The limitations “calculating, via the generative model, at least one synthetic image representative of the predetermined target situation, from an output of the control model and descriptive data relating to the predetermined target situation” are considered a practical application of creating a generative image via a control model connected with a generative model. Allowable Subject Matter Claims 1-6, 8 are allowed. Claim 7 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The closest prior art of record is Souza et al. (“Generating Human Action Videos by Coupling 3D Game Engines and Probabilistic Graphical Models”, 2020.)(Hereinafter referred to as Souza). Souza teaches A computer-implemented method for generating data, the computer-implemented method (Deep video action recognition models have been highly successful in recent years but require large quantities of manually annotated data, which are expensive and laborious to obtain. In this work, we investigate the generation of synthetic training data for video action recognition, as synthetic data have been successfully used to supervise models for a variety of other computer vision tasks. We propose an interpretable parametric generative model of human action videos that relies on procedural generation, physics models and other components of modern game engines. With this model we generate a diverse, realistic, and physically plausible dataset of human action videos, called PHAV for “Procedural Human Action Videos”. PHAV contains a total of 39,982 videos, with more than 1000 examples for each of 35 action categories. Our video generation approach is not limited to existing motion capture sequences: 14 of these 35 categories are procedurally-defined synthetic actions. In addition, each video is represented with 6 different data modalities, including RGB, optical flow and pixel-level semantic labels. These modalities are generated almost simultaneously using the Multiple Render Targets feature of modern GPUs. In order to leverage PHAV, we introduce a deep multi-task (i.e. that considers action classes from multiple datasets) representation learning architecture that is able to simultaneously learn from synthetic and real video datasets, even when their action categories differ. Our experiments on the UCF-101 and HMDB-51 benchmarks suggest that combining our large set of synthetic videos with small real-world datasets can boost recognition performance. Our approach also significantly outperforms video representations produced by fine-tuning state-of-the-art unsupervised generative models of videos. See abstract) comprising: implementing a 3D engine to produce metadata relating to a reference scene generated via said 3D engine, the reference scene being representative of a predetermined target situation (Although not an image modality, our generator also produces extended metadata for every frame. This metadata includes camera parameters, 3D and 2D bounding boxes, joint locations in screen coordinates (pose), and muscle information (including muscular strength, body limits and other physical-based annotations) for every person in a frame. See page 1519, right col.)( We propose an interpretable parametric generative model of human action videos that relies on procedural generation, physics models and other components of modern game engines. See abstract)(See figure 17, game engine); and storing, in a data set, said at least one synthetic image that is calculated (Synthetic Fully-labeled videos for Related Tasks, dataset, see figure 17), but is silent to providing, as input to a control model coupled to a generative model, at least part of the metadata produced by the 3D engine ; calculating, via the generative model, at least one synthetic image representative of the predetermined target situation, from an output of the control model and descriptive data relating to the predetermined target situation;. The prior art of record alone or in combination is silent to the limitations “providing, as input to a control model coupled to a generative model, at least part of the metadata produced by the 3D engine; calculating, via the generative model, at least one synthetic image representative of the predetermined target situation, from an output of the control model and descriptive data relating to the predetermined target situation” of claim 1 when read in light of the rest of the limitations in claim 1 and thus claim 1 is allowed. The prior art of record alone or in combination is silent to the limitations “providing, as input to a control model coupled to a generative model, at least part of the metadata produced by the 3D engine; calculating, via the generative model, at least one synthetic image representative of the predetermined target situation, from an output of the control model and descriptive data relating to the predetermined target situation” of claim 7 when read in light of the rest of the limitations in claim 7 and thus claim 7 contains allowable subject matter. The prior art of record alone or in combination is silent to the limitations “provide, as input to a control model coupled to a generative model, at least part of the metadata that is produced by the 3D engine; calculating, via the generative model, at least one synthetic image representative of the predetermined target situation, from an output of the control model and descriptive data relating to the predetermined target situation;” of claim 8 when read in light of the rest of the limitations in claim 8 and thus claim 8 is allowed. Conclusion The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure Ryland et al. (US 2024/0256866), generally refers to creating an AI data set using a 3D engine. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NICHOLAS R WILSON whose telephone number is (571)272-0936. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-5:00PM. 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, Kee Tung can be reached at (572)-272-7794. 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. /NICHOLAS R WILSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Jan 15, 2025
Application Filed
Sep 08, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §101 (current)

Precedent Cases

Applications granted by this same examiner with similar technology

Patent 12745814
Rendering a 3D Garment Preview
2y 2m to grant Granted Sep 29, 2026
Patent 12743820
VIRTUAL MASK WEARING METHOD AND APPARATUS, TERMINAL DEVICE, AND READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM
2y 3m to grant Granted Sep 22, 2026
Patent 12731327
METHOD, APPARATUS, DEVICE AND MEDIUM FOR FUR RENDERING
2y 2m to grant Granted Sep 08, 2026
Patent 12731351
SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO ASSIST A USER IN AN EXTENDED REALITY ENVIRONMENT
1y 2m to grant Granted Sep 08, 2026
Patent 12725370
INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS FOR WARNING USER OF COLLISION WITH PHYSICAL OBJECT IN CROSS REALITY (XR) EXPERIENCE, INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD, AND STORAGE MEDIUM
2y 5m to grant Granted Sep 01, 2026
Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

Strategy Recommendation AI-generated — please review before filing

Get a prosecution strategy drawn from examiner precedents, rejection analysis, and claim mapping.
Typically takes 5-10 seconds — AI-generated, attorney review required before filing

Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
87%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+11.3%)
1y 10m (~2m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 565 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allowance rate.

Sign in with your work email

Enter your email to receive a magic link. No password needed.

Personal email addresses (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) are not accepted.

Free tier: 3 strategy analyses per month