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 Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “imaging system” in claims 11.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-2,3-8,10-12,14-18,20-21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Montero et al (US 20250166311 A1)
Regarding claim 1, Montero discloses a method ([0062] systems and methods for providing a virtual walkthrough interface) comprising:
receiving a plurality of images ([0062] systems and methods can include obtaining images of an environment);
processing the images to generate a radiance field model ([0062] A neural radiance field model can be trained to generate view synthesis renderings of the environment based on the images.);
transforming the radiance field model into an image sequence in a compressed format ([0235] can process the image data to generate an encoded image data output (e.g., an encoded and/or compressed representation of the image data, etc.));
and rendering the compressed image sequence on a display device ([0087] video generation and display system 200 is similar to virtual walkthrough video generation system 10 of FIG. 1 except that video generation and display system 200 further includes rendering stitching and multi-directional rendering.).
Regarding claim 2, Montero discloses wherein the compressed format further comprises a layered depth image with a plurality of layers ([0130] he neural radiance field models disclosed herein can include two types of multilayer perceptrons (MLP).).
Regarding claim 4, Montero discloses wherein the transforming further comprises using an error- correcting code to represent 12 bits of accuracy in one or more inverse depth maps associated with the images ([0298] the number of photons hitting a pixel on the camera sensor can be converted to an electrical charge, which can be recorded as a high bit-depth digital signal (e.g., 10 to 14 bits).)
Regarding claim 5, Montero discloses wherein the transforming further comprises storing two 8-bit values in different regions of a container image or video associated with the images, which can be reassembled into a 12-bit value ([0301] In addition to gamma compression, tone-mapping algorithms can be used to better preserve contrast in high dynamic range scenes (where the bright regions are several orders of magnitude brighter than the darkest) when the image is quantized to 8 bits.)
Regarding claim 6, Montero discloses wherein the images are associated with a three-dimensional (3D) video stream, and wherein the compressed image sequence is a compressed 3D video stream ([0170] the 3D scene of the location obtained from 3D scene imagery may be a 3D scene which corresponds to, or is roughly associated with, the conditions of the request (e.g., a 3D scene of the restaurant at 6 pm on a Friday, a 3D scene of the restaurant at night or under similar lighting conditions which are expected at a similar time of day, etc.).)
Regarding claim 7, Montero discloses herein the transforming further comprises:
for each pixel in each image, determining a corresponding ray direction of a ray associated with the pixel;
ray marching the ray direction by sampling the radiance field model; and
volumetrically blending one or more sampled colors from the sampling to obtain a final representation of the pixel.
Regarding claim 8, Montero discloses wherein the compressed format uses one or more alpha channels associated with the compressed format to represent a pass-through video, and wherein the video is superimposed on top of a rendition of a real world around a user ([0225] a camera of a smartphone may be utilized to capture image data descriptive of the environment, and/or an overlay application of the user computing device 104 can be utilized to track and/or process the data being provided to the user.)
Regarding claim 10, Montero discloses further comprising parallelizing any combination of portions of the processing and the transforming to run on separate computing systems ([00221] one or more machine-learned models 140 can be included in or otherwise stored and implemented by the server computing system 130 that communicates with the user computing system 102 according to a client-server relationship)
Regarding claim 11, Montero discloses an apparatus ([0062] systems and methods for providing a virtual walkthrough interface) comprising:
an imaging system configured to generate a plurality of images ([0062] systems and methods can include obtaining images of an environment);;
a computing system configured to:
process the images to generate a radiance field model ([0062] A neural radiance field model can be trained to generate view synthesis renderings of the environment based on the images.);;
transform the radiance field model into an image sequence in a compressed format to generate a compressed image sequence ([0235] can process the image data to generate an encoded image data output (e.g., an encoded and/or compressed representation of the image data, etc.));; and
preparing the compressed image sequence for rendering ([0235] machine-learned model(s) can process the image data to generate an output); and
a display device configured to:
render the compressed image sequence ([0087] video generation and display system 200 is similar to virtual walkthrough video generation system 10 of FIG. 1 except that video generation and display system 200 further includes rendering stitching and multi-directional rendering.).
Regarding claim 12, Montero discloses wherein the compressed format further comprises a layered depth image with a plurality of layers ([0130] he neural radiance field models disclosed herein can include two types of multilayer perceptrons (MLP).).
Regarding claim 14, Montero discloses wherein the transforming further comprises using an error- correcting code to represent 12 bits of accuracy in one or more inverse depth maps associated with the images ([0298] the number of photons hitting a pixel on the camera sensor can be converted to an electrical charge, which can be recorded as a high bit-depth digital signal (e.g., 10 to 14 bits).)
Regarding claim 15, Montero discloses wherein the transforming further comprises storing two 8-bit values in different regions of a container image or video associated with the images, which can be reassembled into a 12-bit value ([0301] In addition to gamma compression, tone-mapping algorithms can be used to better preserve contrast in high dynamic range scenes (where the bright regions are several orders of magnitude brighter than the darkest) when the image is quantized to 8 bits.)
Regarding claim 16, Montero discloses wherein the images are associated with a three-dimensional (3D) video stream, and wherein the compressed image sequence is a compressed 3D video stream ([0170] the 3D scene of the location obtained from 3D scene imagery may be a 3D scene which corresponds to, or is roughly associated with, the conditions of the request (e.g., a 3D scene of the restaurant at 6 pm on a Friday, a 3D scene of the restaurant at night or under similar lighting conditions which are expected at a similar time of day, etc.).)
Regarding claim 17, Montero discloses herein the transforming further comprises:
for each pixel in each image, determining a corresponding ray direction of a ray associated with the pixel;
ray marching the ray direction by sampling the radiance field model; and
volumetrically blending one or more sampled colors from the sampling to obtain a final representation of the pixel.
Regarding claim 18, Montero discloses wherein the compressed format uses one or more alpha channels associated with the compressed format to represent a pass-through video, and wherein the video is superimposed on top of a rendition of a real world around a user ([0225] a camera of a smartphone may be utilized to capture image data descriptive of the environment, and/or an overlay application of the user computing device 104 can be utilized to track and/or process the data being provided to the user.)
Regarding claim 20, Montero discloses further comprising parallelizing any combination of portions of the processing and the transforming to run on separate computing systems ([00221] one or more machine-learned models 140 can be included in or otherwise stored and implemented by the server computing system 130 that communicates with the user computing system 102 according to a client-server relationship)
Regarding claim 21, Montero discloses receiving a radiance field associated with an image sequence, the radiance field further including a plurality of layers ([0062] systems and methods can include obtaining images of an environment);
for each layer, defining an upper bound and a lower bound ([0102] one or more view directions with the one or more neural radiance field models to generate one or more predicted color values and one or more predicted depth values.);
limiting one or more contributions to volumetric rendering to radiance samples from the image sequence that are within a range defined by the upper bound and the lower bound ([0128] the neural radiance field model may generate an integrated positional encoding of the volume covered by each conical frustum);
generating a sequence of modified alpha values associated with the image sequence based on the limiting ([0225] a camera of a smartphone may be utilized to capture image data descriptive of the environment, and/or an overlay application of the user computing device 104 can be utilized to track and/or process the data being provided to the user.); and
constructing a layered depth image (LDI) comprising a color, an alpha channel and an inverse depth, based on the modified alpha values ([0103] system can process the plurality of images with a segmentation model to generate a plurality of segmented images.).
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, 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) 3, 9, 13, 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Montero et al (US 20250166311 A1) as applied to claim 1 and 11 above, and further in view of McEwen et al (US 20200134779 A1)
Regarding claim 3, Montero is silent to wherein the transforming includes rendering the images in an inflated equiangular projection
McEwen discloses wherein the transforming includes rendering the images in an inflated equiangular projection ([0025] if the asset is stored in the common equirectangular format then a standard equiangular or cylindrical projection may be used)
Montero and McEwen are combinable because they are from the same field of invention.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify virtual walkthrough interface of Montero to include wherein the transforming includes rendering the images in an inflated equiangular projection as described by McEwen.
The motivation for doing so would have to significantly reduces cyber motion sickness by eliminating visual-vestibular conflict by supporting 6 DOF motion for immersive content viewed through VR headsets (McEwen, [0012]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Montero and McEwen to obtain the invention as specified in claim 3.
Regarding claim 9, Montero is silent to w wherein the rendering is a 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) virtual reality (VR) rendering configured to mitigate motion sickness due to motion of a user's head
McEwen discloses wherein the rendering is a 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) virtual reality (VR) rendering configured to mitigate motion sickness due to motion of a user's head ([0027] The portion of content is manipulated in accordance with the methods described above to provide 6 DOF in immersive content. [0026] effect of motion provided by synthesization or reprojection of the portion of the scene has the effect of reducing cyber motion sickness and enhancing user experience)
Montero and McEwen are combinable because they are from the same field of invention.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify virtual walkthrough interface of Montero to include wherein the rendering is a 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) virtual reality (VR) rendering configured to mitigate motion sickness due to motion of a user's head as described by McEwen.
The motivation for doing so would have to significantly reduces cyber motion sickness by eliminating visual-vestibular conflict by supporting 6 DOF motion for immersive content viewed through VR headsets (McEwen, [0012]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Montero and McEwen to obtain the invention as specified in claim 9.
Regarding claim 13, Montero is silent to wherein the transforming includes rendering the images in an inflated equiangular projection
McEwen discloses wherein the transforming includes rendering the images in an inflated equiangular projection ([0025] if the asset is stored in the common equirectangular format then a standard equiangular or cylindrical projection may be used)
Montero and McEwen are combinable because they are from the same field of invention.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify virtual walkthrough interface of Montero to include wherein the transforming includes rendering the images in an inflated equiangular projection as described by McEwen.
The motivation for doing so would have to significantly reduces cyber motion sickness by eliminating visual-vestibular conflict by supporting 6 DOF motion for immersive content viewed through VR headsets (McEwen, [0012]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Montero and McEwen to obtain the invention as specified in claim 13.
Regarding claim 19, Montero is silent to w wherein the rendering is a 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) virtual reality (VR) rendering configured to mitigate motion sickness due to motion of a user's head
McEwen discloses wherein the rendering is a 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) virtual reality (VR) rendering configured to mitigate motion sickness due to motion of a user's head ([0027] The portion of content is manipulated in accordance with the methods described above to provide 6 DOF in immersive content. [0026] effect of motion provided by synthesization or reprojection of the portion of the scene has the effect of reducing cyber motion sickness and enhancing user experience)
Montero and McEwen are combinable because they are from the same field of invention.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify virtual walkthrough interface of Montero to include wherein the rendering is a 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) virtual reality (VR) rendering configured to mitigate motion sickness due to motion of a user's head as described by McEwen.
The motivation for doing so would have to significantly reduces cyber motion sickness by eliminating visual-vestibular conflict by supporting 6 DOF motion for immersive content viewed through VR headsets (McEwen, [0012]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Montero and McEwen to obtain the invention as specified in claim 19.
Conclusion
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/SHIVANG I PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615
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