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 .
Response to Amendment
This is in response to applicant's amendment which was filed on 3/23/2026 has been entered. Claim 14 has been amended. No claims have been cancelled. No claims have been added. Claims 1-20 are still pending in this application, with claims 1, 7, 14, 20 being independent. Claims 1-13 and 20 remain withdrawn from consideration.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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) 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Govindaraju (US 11792570) hereinafter as Govi in view of Jensen (EP 3598777).
Regarding claim 14, Govi teaches a device, comprising: two or more microphones configured to generate audio signals (Govi figure 4, microphones 112); neural network circuitry configured to implement one or more neural network layers configured to: receive multiple audio signals originating from the two or more microphones (Govi figure 9 and Col 24 lines 1-13, “the FBF component 930 may correspond to any component configured to generate directional signals, including traditional beamformer components, neural networks”); and implement one or more neural network layers trained to generate, based on processing together the multiple audio signals (Govi figure 9, FBF 930a+930b receives multiple inputs), an audio signal having a spatial focusing pattern defining weights as a function of angle relative to a wearer of the device (Govi figure 4 and Col 5 lines 53-67, “device 110 may perform a first beamforming operation to divide input audio data into 36 different portions, with each portion associated with a specific direction (e.g., 10 degrees out of 360 degrees) relative to the device 110. At a second time, however, the device 110 may perform a second beamforming operation to divide input audio data into 6 different portions, with each portion associated with a specific direction (e.g., 60 degrees out of 360 degrees) relative to the device 110” and Col 6 lines 50-58, “Thus, the parallel ARA processing may improve the audio quality of the output audio data by enabling the device 110 to select and/or give more weight to the second output audio signals when wind noise is present, whereas the device 110 may select and/or give more weight to the first output audio signals when wind noise is not present, although the disclosure is not limited thereto”) (Govi figures 12a-c, Col 32, lines 20-30, “For example, beam sections 2/3 may be given the first weight value (e.g., 3 dB), beam sections 1/4/5/8 may be given the second weight value (e.g., 2 dB), and beam sections 6/7 may be given the third weight value (e.g., 0 dB). These example weight values prioritize a front of the device 110 that is associated with beam sections 2/3, giving beam sections 2/3 an advantage of 1 dB over beam sections 1/4/5/8 and an advantage of 3 dB over beam sections 6/7 (e.g., the weighted SNR values for beam sections 6/7 need to be 3 dB higher than the weighted SNR values for beam sections 2/3 in order to be selected”); the one or more neural network layers are trained to generate: the audio signal having the spatial focusing pattern (Govi figure 9 and Col 24 lines 1-13 “the FBF component 930 may correspond to any component configured to generate directional signals, including traditional beamformer components, neural networks (e.g., a deep neural network (DNN))”); (Govi figures 4-5 and Col 12 line 63-Col 13 line 6, “After identifying the look-direction associated with speech, the device 110 may use a FBF unit or other such component to isolate audio coming from the look-direction…device 110 may boost audio coming from direction 7, thus increasing the amplitude of audio data corresponding to speech” and Col 14 lines 40-45 “Each filter block 512 is also associated with a particular microphone. Each filter block is configured to either boost (e.g., increase) or dampen (e.g., decrease) its respective incoming audio signal by the respective beamformer filter coefficient h depending on the configuration of the FBF unit. Each resulting filtered audio signal y 513 will be the audio signal x 411 weighted by the beamformer filter coefficient h of the filter block 512”); and the target spatial region has a size approximately equal to 10 degrees, approximately equal to 150 degrees, or between 10 and 150 degrees (Govi figures 12A-12C), however does not explicitly teach the device is an ear-worn device, wherein the two or more microphones are spaced apart by a distance between 5 and 12 mm.
Jensen teaches the device is an ear-worn device (Jensen ¶0079, “hearing device”), wherein the two or more microphones are spaced apart by a distance between 5 and 12 mm (Jensen ¶0079, The two microphones are distanced…e.g…10 mm), and the target spatial region has a size approximately equal to 10 degrees, approximately equal to 150 degrees, or between 10 and 150 degrees (Jensen figure 6, 360 degrees divided by 16 portions).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Jensen to improve the known device of Govi to achieve the predictable result of a more accurate and sensitive representation of the sensed sound (Jensen ¶0082 “more lobes of high sensitivity and/or more minima in its angular sensitivity”).
Claim(s) 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Govindaraju (US 11792570) hereinafter as Govi in view of Jensen (EP 3598777) in further view of Pedersen (US 2024/0414483).
Regarding claim 15, Govi in view of Rasmussen does not explicitly teach wherein at least one of the multiple audio signals has a front-facing beamformed directional pattern and at least one of the multiple audio signals has a back-facing beamformed directional pattern.
Pedersen teaches wherein at least one of the multiple audio signals has a front-facing beamformed directional pattern and at least one of the multiple audio signals has a back-facing beamformed directional pattern (Pedersen ¶0446).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Pedersen to improve the known ear-worn device of Govi in view of Jensen to achieve the predictable result of improved target SNR at the target location (Pedersen ¶0023).
Claim(s) 16-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Govindaraju (US 11792570) hereinafter as Govi in view of Jensen (EP 3598777) in further view of Pedersen (US 2024/0414483) in further view of Chen (US 2010/0123785).
Regarding claim 16, Govi in view of Jensen in further view of Pedersen teach a spatial focusing pattern used by the mask in implementing the spatial focusing (Pedersen ¶0043-0044), however does not explicitly teach communication circuitry configured to receive, from a processing device, an indication of a user selection of a spatial focusing pattern used by the mask in implementing the spatial focusing.
Chen teaches communication circuitry configured to receive, from a processing device, an indication of a user selection of a spatial focusing pattern used by the mask in implementing the spatial focusing (Chen ¶0020, “The GUI 20 further receives a selection 18 of at least one of the plurality of audio sources from a user. The GUI 20 provides the selection to the signal processor 24 for aiming the audio beamforming toward the selected audio source 30 as suggested by the dashed line”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Chen to improve the known device of Govi in view of Jensen in further view of Pedersen to achieve the predictable result of user controllable audio reproduction.
Regarding claim 17, Govi in view of Jensen in further view of Pedersen in further view Chen teaches the processing device in communication with the ear-worn device and configured to receive the user selection of the spatial focusing pattern, wherein the processing device is further configured to: display a graphical user interface including multiple options for different spatial focusing patterns; and receive the user selection of the spatial focusing pattern (Chen ¶0020, “The GUI 20 further receives a selection 18 of at least one of the plurality of audio sources from a user. The GUI 20 provides the selection to the signal processor 24 for aiming the audio beamforming toward the selected audio source 30 as suggested by the dashed line”).
Regarding claim 18, Govi in view of Jensen in further view of Pedersen in further view Chen teaches wherein the multiple options comprise exactly two options, exactly three options (Chen figure 1), or exactly four options.
Claim(s) 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Govindaraju (US 11792570) hereinafter as Govi in view of Jensen (EP 3598777) in further view of Woodruff (US 2019/0208317).
Regarding claim 19, Govi in view of Jensen does not explicitly teach wherein the spatial focusing pattern comprises weights that jump or transition, as a function of direction-of-arrival, from: an amount equal to or approximately equal to 1; to an amount equal to or approximately equal to 0.
Woodruff teaches wherein the spatial focusing pattern comprises weights that jump or transition, as a function of direction-of-arrival, from: an amount equal to or approximately equal to 1; to an amount equal to or approximately equal to 0 (Woodruff ¶0017, “a value of zero of the masking function mutes a portion of the audio signal at a corresponding time-frequency point”) as a function of direction-of-arrival (Woodruff figure 2 steps 230, 235 and 240).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the known technique of Woodruff to improve the known device of Govi in view of Jensen to achieve the predictable result of reproducing audio with emphasis on the desired audio and filtering out unwanted audio.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 3/23/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant argues on pages 12-13 of remarks that it is not obvious to combine references Jensen with Govi to teach “the device is an ear-worn device, wherein the two or more microphones are spaced apart by a distance between 5 and 12 mm” because there was no reasonable expectation of success since the beamforming performance depends on microphone spacing, and the smaller microphone spacing of Jensen in comparison to Govi would not reproduce the same beams. Examiner respectfully disagrees. The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981). Jensen is not required to produce the same beam for the device to show reasonable expectation of success, because the claimed invention does not need to be bodily incorporated with Govi. The reference Jensen teaches the target spatial region has a size approximately equal to 10 degrees, approximately equal to 150 degrees, or between 10 and 150 degrees (Jensen figure 6, 360 degrees divided by 16 portions), so even if the beams of Govi were modified by the beams of Jensen due to the microphones distance being altered, Jensen still teaches the claimed target spatial region since Jensen’s beams (Jensen figure 6, 360/16=22.5 degrees) are between 10 and 150 degrees. Jensen is also capable to determine speech within a beam which is analogous to the speech processing of Govi. Therefore, it would have been obvious to modify Govi with the microphones and beams of Jensen to teach the device is an ear-worn device (Jensen ¶0079, “hearing device”), wherein the two or more microphones are spaced apart by a distance between 5 and 12 mm (Jensen ¶0079, The two microphones are distanced…e.g…10 mm), and the target spatial region has a size approximately equal to 10 degrees, approximately equal to 150 degrees, or between 10 and 150 degrees (Jensen figure 6, 360 degrees divided by 16 portions). The arguments are not persuasive and the claims stand rejected.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
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/NORMAN YU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693
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