DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1 – 11, which are currently pending, are fully considered below.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted September 18, 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 § 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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Liang Yin et al. (EP 3822824, published May 19, 2021).
With respect to claim 1, Yin teaches:
a feature information extractor configured to extract feature information of each multimedia data from a plurality of multimedia data (see paragraphs [0014], [0015], and [0021], where a feature may be extracted for multimedia data);
a quantization processor configured to quantize the extracted feature information and store the quantized feature information in a feature information database (see paragraph [0015], where the feature is quantized);
a clustering processor configured to cluster a set of target multimedia data by using the stored feature information, calculate a centroid of each cluster, and store the centroids in a cluster database (see paragraph [0018], where clustering is performed on the feature information);
a cluster searcher configured to compare a quantized value of the feature information extracted from a search input with the centroids in the cluster database, select one or more similar clusters based on the comparison, and designate multimedia data within the selected clusters as search candidates (see paragraphs [0031] and [0032], for comparing using cluster centers); and
a search result provider configured to compare the feature information of the multimedia data within the selected clusters with the feature information of the search input and provide a final search result based on the comparison (see paragraph [0032], for top N results).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 – 8 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.
Claims 9 – 11 are allowed over the prior art of record.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter of claim 9:
The prior art of record does not explicitly disclose extracting a feature vector from multimedia data using a CNN-based algorithm; generating quantized feature information by applying an n-bit quantization method to the extracted feature vector; quantizing a feature vector extracted from a scarch input and comparing the quantized input value with centroids in a cluster database to select c similar clusters as search candidates; and performing a first similarity verification by comparing the quantized feature information of the multimedia data in the selected clusters with the quantized feature information of the search input and filtering the candidate clusters based on the verification result as claimed.
Conclusion/Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDRIA Y BROMELL whose telephone number is (571)270-3034. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-4.
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, Ajay Bhatia can be reached at 571-272-3906. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/ALEXANDRIA Y BROMELL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2156 June 13, 2026
Prosecution Insights