DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
2. The Action is responsive to Applicant’s amendment, filed on April 1, 2026.
3. It is acknowledged that as a result of the amendment, Claims 1, 12, 17 and 20 have been amended. Claim 19 has been cancelled.
4. Claims 1-18 and 20 are pending.
Response to Arguments
5. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-18 and 20 have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection necessitated by Applicant’s amendment of the claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
6. The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior office action. In view of the amendments to the claims, the Examiner withdraws all pending rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Double Patenting
7. 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. See 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); and, 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) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent is shown to be commonly owned with this application. See 37 CFR 1.130(b).
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 USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
Claim 1-18 and 20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of US 12,298,985 Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because claims 1-18 and 20 of the instant application substantially recite the limitations of claims 1-20 of the cited US 12,298,985 for generating hexadecimal trees to compare files. The claim merely omits certain bolded limitations as shown in comparison table below, and replace them with .
Claim 1 (instant application)
Claim 1 (US 12,298,985)
1. A computing system comprising:
one or more processors; one or more non-transitory computer readable media that collectively store instructions that,
when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing system to perform operations, the operations comprising:
obtaining, a data encoding, wherein the data encoding comprises an encoding of a query image, wherein the query image comprises one or more image features;
generating one or more query image labels based on processing the query image with an image annotator to identify one or more query image labels, wherein the one or more query image labels label one or more objects in the query image
and one or more classes of objects in the images;
determining with a recognition engine one or more entities associated with the one or more query image labels,
wherein the one or more entities comprise specific instances of the one or more classes of objects; determining a plurality of candidate search queries based at least in part on the one or more entities; wherein determining the plurality of candidate search queries based at least in part on the one or more entities comprises determining the plurality of candidate search queries with a knowledge engine, wherein the knowledge engine is configured to identify candidate search queries that are associated with the one or more entity in a language that matches a user language;
determining a context associated with the query image; determining a representative search query of the plurality of candidate search queries based at least in part on the context associated the query image;
obtaining a search results page associated with the representative search query; and
providing the search results page for display.
1. A computing system comprising: one or more processors; one or more non-transitory computer readable media that collectively store instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the computing system to perform operations, the operations comprising:
obtaining, a data encoding, wherein the data encoding comprises an encoding of a query image, wherein the query image comprises one or more image features; processing the query image with an image annotator to identify one or more query image labels, wherein the one or more query image labels label one or more objects in the query image and wherein the one or more query image labels comprise coarse grained image labels, wherein the coarse grained image labels label one or more classes of objects;
determining one or more entities associated with the one or more query image labels,
wherein the one or more entities comprise specific instances of the one or more classes of objects;
determining a plurality of candidate search queries based at least in part on the one or more entities;
determining a context associated with the query image; determining a representative search query of the plurality of candidate search queries based at least in part on the context associated the query image;
obtaining a search results page associated with the representative search query; and providing the search results page for display.
Table 1
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art of data processing at the time the invention was made to modify the invention as claimed in the instance application by substituting and wherein the one or more query image labels comprise coarse grained image labels, wherein the coarse grained image labels label, and the adding of wherein determining the plurality of candidate search queries based at least in part on the one or more entities comprises determining the plurality of candidate search queries with a knowledge engine, wherein the knowledge engine is configured to identify candidate search queries that are associated with the one or more entity in a language that matches a user language; since an omission and addition of a cited limitation would have not changed the process according to which the method and system as claimed.
Therefore, the use of having a description of the labeling of the query image as coarse grained would be an obvious variation in the art for the purpose of achieving the same end results having a more specific and detail image and would not interfere with the functionality of the steps previously claimed and would perform the same function.
The dependent claims 2-11, 13-16, 18, and 20 are rejected for fully incorporating the errors of their respective base claims by dependency.
Allowable Subject Matter
8. Claims 1-18 and 20 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the double patenting rejection, set forth in this Office action.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: The present invention relates to Mapping Images to Search Queries. The closest prior art Rosenberg et al. (US 9,053,115) is directed to generating, in the data processing system, a feature distance being a distance from corresponding query image feature scores; training, in the data processing system, an image similarity model based on the similarity feedback data and the feature distances, the image similarity model being trained to identify one or more candidate images that are visually similar to the query image based on image feature scores of the one or more candidate images; generating a visual similarity score for a candidate image. Sharifi (US 2015/0052121), also is directed to indicating that the entity that is associated with the one or more query terms of the search query is associated with a media item that has been indicated as consumed by the user in the media consumption database; determining that the entity that is associated with the one or more query terms of the search query is identified, in the media consumption database that identifies one or more media items that have been indicated as consumed by the user.
However, Ranade and San Andres either singularly or in combination, fail to anticipate or render obvious the recited features “a cluster including a plurality of nodes, including a source node, a primary group of one or more nodes, and a secondary group of one or more nodes, wherein the primary group does not include the source node, and wherein the secondary group does not include the source node”.
Conclusion
9. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Biggerstaff; Ted James (US-8713515-B1) relates to (Note, "tags" is an overloaded term. In this context, it serves to indicate a property list whereas in the context of the type constructors of FIGS. 1a-c, it indicates a C programming language like tag name for an extended specification.) A tags property list may be useful to define a domain specific role.
Wang; Jingdong US-20140250109-A1, relates to the image retrieval module 412 and image ranking module 414 determine an initial ranked set of M images by matching query terms with textual information associated with the respective images.
Leffingwell; Dean US-20080147588-A1, relates to a punctuation symbol, a HyperText-Markup-Language tag, and a number; for each sequence of tokens during a first analysis phase.
Yang; Linjun US-20110176724-A1, relates to The training data may include data such as, a set of text queries (e.g. training queries), a set of images corresponding to the training queries that include textual and visual features (e.g. training images), and relevance labels provided by human oracles.
10. THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
11. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGELICA RUIZ whose telephone number is (571)270-3158. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
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, Boris Gorney can be reached at (571) 270-5626. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ANGELICA RUIZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2154 June 25, 2026
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