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 .
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, or 365(c) is acknowledged.
By reviewing prior-filed applications, the examiner could not find support for the claimed features related to “identifying a signal bandwidth of …” from a continuation-in-part (CIP) application (15/793,543). The effective filing date of the instant application is a filing date of its great grandparent application (16/238,189, filed on 01/02/2019).
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/16/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1-3, 5-6, 9-11, 13-14 and 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as being unpatentable over Mundt et al. (US PG Pub. 2014/0088978, referred to as Mundt) in view of Rafii et al. (US PG Pub. 2016/0196343, referred to as Rafii).
Mundt discloses a method of detecting if an audio signal was compressed by a codec, e.g., a HE-AAC codec (Mundt, [0010]). Mundt discloses determining a bandwidth / cut-off frequence of an audio signal (Mundt, [0071], [0075]). Mundt further discloses applying time/frequency analysis to determine whether a codec was used (Mundt, [0006-0007], [0041], [0068-0069]).
Rafii discloses analyzing a live audio to create spectrograms (a time-frequency representation). Rafii discloses determining a song title / artist based on the created spectrograms (Raffi, [0005], Fig. 5, a time-frequency representation / spectrogram; [0075], after recognizing the live audio, providing additional data such as song title, a download link to users).
Regarding claims 1, 9 and 17, Mundt discloses a computer implemented method / a device / computer readable medium (Mundt, [0009], [0048-0049], a computer implemented method for identifying parametric audio coding schemes for coding an audio signal), comprising:
identifying a signal bandwidth of a received first audio signal that is obtained from a second audio signal (Mundt, [0014], [0071], [0075], determining bandwidth / cut-off frequency of a received audio signal);
generating a time-frequency analysis of the first audio signal (Mundt, [0006-0007], [0041], [0068-0069], performing time/frequency analysis to identify an encoder);
based on the generated time-frequency analysis, determining a parameter of an audio compression configuration used to form the second audio signal (Mundt, [0009], [0014], identifying coding schemes / coding history of an audio signal); and
identifying a source of the second audio signal based on the identified signal bandwidth, wherein identifying the source of the second audio signal is based on the identified signal bandwidth and the determined parameter of the audio compression configuration (Mundt, [0002], audio forensics, detecting trace of an audio signal; [0008-0009], monitoring unauthorized usage of coding tool based on detected codec and bandwidth of audio signals; also see [0032], [0067]).
Mundt discloses analyzing an audio signal in a time/frequence domain to determine if an audio signal coding history and whether an audio codec (e.g., HE-AAC codec) was unauthorized used based on determined bandwidth / cut-off frequency (Mundt, [0008]). Mundt discloses determining bit rates in time/frequency domain (Mundt, [0068], [0080], table 1). Mundt discloses audio forensic detection for detecting unauthorized use of a coding tool. Mundt does not explicitly disclose: “identifying a source of an audio”.
Rafii discloses analyzing a live audio by creating spectrograms to identify source of audio and providing additional information such as song’s title and download link after recognizing the audio (Rafii, [0015-0016], Fig. 5, identifying a live audio based on spectrograms of the live audio, [0075], providing a download link).
Both Mundt and Rafii are related to identifying an audio signal. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to combine Mundt’s teaching with Rafii’s teaching to identify an audio source. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make such a modification so that a user could enjoy his favored song later by downloading the song (Rafii, [0075]).
Regarding claims 2, 10 and 18, Mundt in view of Rafii further discloses:
the received first audio signal is obtained from the second audio signal by decompressing the second audio signal (Mundt, [0006], uncompressed audio signal).
Regarding claims 3 and 11, Mundt in view of Rafii further discloses:
identifying the signal bandwidth of the received first audio signal further comprises generating at least one frequency spectrum for one or more time intervals of the received first audio signal (Mundt, [0006-0007], [0041], [0071], [0075], time/frequency analysis, spectrum analysis).
Regarding claims 5 and 13, Mundt in view of Rafii further discloses:
the set of operations further comprises identifying, from the received first audio signal, an audio coding format used to compress a third audio signal to form the second audio signal (Mundt, [0006], [0009], audio signal encoded by HE-AAC).
Regarding claims 6 and 14, Mundt in view of Rafii further discloses:
identifying the source of the second audio signal is based on the identified signal bandwidth and the identified audio coding format (Mundt, [0008], [0012], [0014], [0032], audio forensic based on bandwidth and if an codec is used).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 7-8, 12, 15-16 and 19-20 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The examiner discovered several relevant prior art references that are related to one or more concepts disclosed by the instant application. These references are included in the attached PTO-892 form for completeness of the record.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jialong He, whose telephone number is (571) 270-5359. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday – Friday, 8:00AM – 4:30PM, EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Pierre Desir can be reached on (571) 272-7799. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JIALONG HE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2659
