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 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 (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 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) 1, 2, 12, 13, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Osterhout et al. (US 2012/0194418, hereinafter Osterhout) in view of Huang (US 2014/0092276, hereinafter Huang).
Re claim 12, Osterhout discloses, a device comprising: a frame (804); a camera mounted on the frame and configured to capture and process image data according to camera settings comprising a plurality of image capture parameters that includes a value for digital photo capture by the camera (fig 8f); and a camera controller incorporated in the frame and configured to perform operations comprising: processing the image (par [0283]).
Osterhout fails to explicitly disclose limitations which are disclosed by Huang as follows: configured to capture and process image data according to camera settings comprising a plurality of image capture parameters that includes a white balance value for digital photo capture by the camera (S202-S206, pars [0015], [0017], and [0019]-[0021]); and a camera controller configured to perform operations comprising: processing the image data to determine an image colorization metric for one or more images represented by the image data (S202-S206, pars [0015], [0017], and [0019]-[0021]); based at least in part on the determined image colorization metric, performing automated camera settings adjustment comprising automatic adjustment of the white balance value, such that the camera is configured for photo capture according to adjusted camera settings comprising an adjusted white balance value (S208-S210, pars [0023]-[0024]); and thereafter capturing photographic image data via the camera using the adjusted camera settings (Abstract).
One of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would have been motivated to combine configured to capture and process image data according to camera settings comprising a plurality of image capture parameters that includes a white balance value for digital photo capture by the camera; and a camera controller configured to perform operations comprising: processing the image data to determine an image colorization metric for one or more images represented by the image data; based at least in part on the determined image colorization metric, performing automated camera settings adjustment comprising automatic adjustment of the white balance value, such that the camera is configured for photo capture according to adjusted camera settings comprising an adjusted white balance value; and thereafter capturing photographic image data via the camera using the adjusted camera settings of Huang with the device of Osterhout in order to improve the quality of the captured image.
Re claim 13, the combination of Osterhout and Huang discloses the limitations of claim 12 including wherein the camera controller is configured such that the processing of the image data includes determining, for one or more images represented by the image data, at least one further image metric in addition to the image colorization metric (Huang pars [0017]-[0018]).
Claims 1, 2, and 20 are rejected for the reasons stated in claims 12, 13, and 12, respectively. The method steps and medium as claimed would have been obvious and expected by the device of Osterhout and Huang.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-11 and 14-19 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. Minakuti et al. (US 2003/0076424, hereinafter Miakuti) discloses, “colorimeter obtains a color component value in the direction of a subject and transmits the value to the digital camera. The color component value received by the digital camera is stored in an internal RAM. When the color component value is stored in the RAM at the time of image capturing, the digital camera performs white balance correction on captured image data on the basis of the color component value. Thus, white balance correction can be performed on the image data with high precision” (Abstract).
Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOEL W FOSSELMAN whose telephone number is (571)270-3728. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 - 5:00 M-F.
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/JOEL W FOSSELMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2639
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