DETAILED ACTION
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 6/17/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant's election with traverse of the invention of Group I in the reply filed on 4/13/2026 is acknowledged. The traversal is on the ground(s) that the pending claims are not directed to genuinely distinct inventions that would give rise to any meaningful additional search and/or examination burden. This is not found persuasive because while specific barcode construction would necessarily create minimum requirements for decoding, how those requirements are met are not necessarily accomplished in one way. Since decoding can be solved differently, a search burden exists.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
Claims 8-16 and 18 withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b), as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Applicant timely traversed the restriction (election) requirement in the reply filed on 4/13/2026.
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.
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 16 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 the method may be performed by the instructions and the instructions may consist only of transient signals, which are not tangible and non-statutory.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 3 recites the limitation "the image sensor". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential structural cooperative relationships of elements, such omission amounting to a gap between the necessary structural connections. See MPEP § 2172.01. The omitted structural cooperative relationships are: antecedent basis for the image sensor itself and therefore its structural cooperative relationship to any other structure.
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, 4 and 16-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Reed et al. (US 20220036495 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Reed discloses (Fig. 14) a systems and methods for the application of adaptive video watermarks comprising:
at the sender device,
accessing the data to be transmitted (¶87 - watermark data 1403 is received by the error correction coding 1404);
encoding respective parts of the data to be transmitted as respective 2D barcodes (¶87 - The error correction coding 1404 includes error correction codes into the data representing the video data and/or the watermark);
sequentially displaying the 2D barcodes on a display (¶34; ¶86);
wherein the encoding comprises:
adding temporal error correction code to the series of 2D barcodes (¶53 - an error correction watermark may be inserted into one or more video frames of a set of video frames) to enable the receiver device to perform temporal error correction (¶57).
Regarding claim 2, Reed discloses the method of claim 1 above and further discloses generating the 2D barcodes in a format having at least two color channels, wherein in the encoding, the data is divided over the at least two color channels so as to include a first amount of data in a first color channel of the display data and a second amount of data in a second color channel of the display data, wherein the first amount differs from the second amount (¶45, ¶58).
Regarding claim 4, Reed discloses the method of claim 2 above and further discloses wherein the at least two color channels comprise a red channel, a green channel and a blue channel, wherein the method comprises encoding a larger amount of data in the green channel than in the red channel and/or encoding a larger amount of data in the green channel than in the blue channel and/or encoding a larger amount of data in the red channel than in the blue channel (¶58).
Regarding claim 16, Reed discloses wherein the computer-readable medium comprises data representing instructions arranged to cause a processor system to perform steps of the method according to claim 1 (¶105-¶106).
Regarding claim 17, Reed discloses:
a data storage interface to a data storage (¶105-¶106);
a display output to a display (¶32; ¶34);
a processor subsystem (¶105) configured to:
via the data storage interface, access data in the data storage to be transmitted to the receiver device (¶87 - watermark data 1403 is received by the error correction coding 1404);
encode respective parts of the data to be transmitted to generate respective 2D barcodes (¶87 - The error correction coding 1404 includes error correction codes into the data representing the video data and/or the watermark);
via the display output, sequentially display the 2D barcodes on the display; wherein the processor subsystem is configured to encode respective parts of the data to be transmitted (¶34; ¶86) by:
adding temporal error correction code to the series of 2D barcodes (¶53 - an error correction watermark may be inserted into one or more video frames of a set of video frames), to enable the receiver device to perform temporal error correction (¶57).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7 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 following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Claim 5 contains allowable subject matter, however Claim 5 is dependent on claim 2 or 3 and claim 3 is rejected. Therefore, Claim 5 is objectionable if the limitations when Claim 5 depended only on Claim 3, but would be allowable if Claim 5 depends only on Claim 2. The cited prior art of record does not teach, fairly suggests or make obvious a computer-implemented method for unidirectional transfer of data from a sender device to a receiver device, wherein the method comprises, at the sender device, - accessing the data to be transmitted; - encoding respective parts of the data to be transmitted as respective 2D barcodes; - sequentially displaying the 2D barcodes on a display; - generating the 2D barcodes in a format having at least two color channels, wherein in the encoding, the data is divided over the at least two color channels so as to include a first amount of data in a first color channel of the display data and a second amount of data in a second color channel of the display data, wherein the first amount differs from the second amount; wherein the encoding comprises: - adding temporal error correction code to the series of 2D barcodes to enable the receiver device to perform temporal error correction, wherein a respective 2D barcode comprises a payload part containing encoded parts of the data to be transmitted and a non-payload part comprising one or more spatial markers, wherein a spatial resolution of the payload part in the first color channel is different from the spatial resolution of the payload part in the second color channel so as to carry different amounts of data (claims 1, 2 & 5).
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
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/TOAN C LY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2876
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