MAGNA ELECTRONICS INC.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardJan 1, 20212019005615 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 1, 2021) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/573,307 12/17/2014 Nikhil Gupta MAG04 -P2424-423804 5366 153508 7590 01/01/2021 HONIGMAN LLP/MAGNA 650 TRADE CENTRE WAY SUITE 200 KALAMAZOO, MI 49002-0402 EXAMINER NGUYEN, KATHLEEN V ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2486 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/01/2021 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): asytsma@honigman.com patent@honigman.com tflory@honigman.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte NIKHIL GUPTA Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 Technology Center 2400 Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, ADAM J. PYONIN, and PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s rejection. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 Herein, “Appellant” refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Magna Electronics Inc. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction The Application is directed to a vehicle vision system “to determine the presence and/or approach of a cross traffic object that may cross the forward or rearward path of travel of the equipped vehicle.” Spec. ¶ 15. Claims 1–20 are pending; claims 1, 12, and 18 are independent. Appeal Br. 29–35. Claim 1 is reproduced below for reference (emphasis added): 1. A vision system of a vehicle, said vision system comprising (¶ [0014]; Figure 1)[2]: a camera disposed at a vehicle and having a field of view exterior of the vehicle; wherein said camera has a wide angle lens with more optical distortion at side regions of the field of view than at a center region of the field of view; wherein said camera is operable to capture frames of image data; an image processor operable to process image data captured by said camera; wherein said image processor, responsive to image processing of a frame of captured image data, determines gradient information of the frame of captured image data, and wherein the determined gradient information comprises information indicative of intensity gradients present in the scene viewed by said camera; wherein said image processor, responsive at least in part to the determined gradient information, determines edges of intensity gradients at one of the side regions of the field of view where the captured image data has more optical distortion and lower resolution and less pixel motion as compared to the center region of the field of view; 2 We note “[r]eference characters corresponding to elements recited in the detailed description and the drawings may be used,” but “the presence or absence of such reference characters does not affect the scope of a claim.” MPEP § 608.01(m). Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 3 wherein said vision system, responsive to determined edges of intensity gradients, determines presence of a potential cross traffic object at the side region of the field of view where the captured image data has more optical distortion and lower resolution and less pixel motion as compared to the center region of the field of view; wherein said image processor processes multiple frames of captured image data to determine movement of an upper portion of a determined edge of an intensity gradient of the determined potential cross traffic object and a lower portion of the determined edge of the intensity gradient of the determined potential cross traffic object at the side region of the field of view where the captured image data more optical distortion and lower resolution and less pixel motion as compared to the center region; and wherein said vision system, responsive to said image processor processing multiple frames of captured image data and determining movement of the upper portion of the determined edge of the intensity gradient of the determined potential cross traffic object relative to the lower portion of the determined edge of the intensity gradient of the determined potential cross traffic object at the side region of the field of view where the captured image data has more optical distortion and lower resolution and less pixel motion as compared to the center region, determines if the detected potential cross traffic object is a three dimensional cross traffic object that is moving toward the center region of the field of view and toward a predicted path of the vehicle. Appeal Br. 29, 30. References and Rejections Claims 1–6, 8–10, 12–16, 18, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta (WO 2012/145819 A1; published Nov. 1, 2012) and Zhang (US 2015/0042799 A1; published Feb. 12, 2015). Final Act. 7. Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 4 Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta, Zhang, and Lewin (US 2007/0177011 A1; published Aug. 2, 2007). Final Act. 27. Claims 11, 17, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Gupta, Zhang, and Pawlicki (US 2010/0002081 A1, published Jan. 7, 2010). Final Act. 28. ANALYSIS Appellant argues the Examiner’s rejection is in error, because “Gupta does not disclose or suggest processing higher distortion, lower resolution image data to . . . detect potential cross traffic objects at the side region of the field of view where the captured image data has more optical distortion,” as claimed. Appeal Br. 16, 17. Appellant contends, “instead Gupta teaches opposite to that by teaching that the distortion of the fish-eye lens needs to be corrected before any processing to detect objects or distances or the like.” Id. at 17 (emphasis omitted). The Examiner finds the “claims . . . do not [re]cite that distortion correction cannot be performed,” as the disputed limitation “does not imply that the side regions always have to have more optical distortion and lower resolution, and does not mean that no other processing can be performed.” Ans. 5 (emphasis added). The Examiner finds, therefore, the disputed limitations are met by Gupta’s teachings of “gradient information of image objects are used to detect objects[,] and objects’ contours or edges can be extracted,” after performing “distortion correction [in] the captured image from the fish-eye lens in order to process regions in the images that have distortion due to the wide . . . lens.” Id. at 4, 5. Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 5 Claim 1 recites the image processor “processes multiple frames of captured image data to determine movement of an . . . edge of an intensity gradient of the determined potential cross traffic object,” wherein the determined potential cross traffic object is “at the side region of the field of view where the captured image data more optical distortion and lower resolution and less pixel motion as compared to the center region.” We find the Examiner’s construction of this limitation to be in error. The correct inquiry in giving a claim term its broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification is not whether the specification proscribes or precludes some broad reading of the claim term adopted by the examiner. And it is not simply an interpretation that is not inconsistent with the specification. It is an interpretation that corresponds with what and how the inventor describes [the] invention in the specification, i.e., an interpretation that is consistent with the specification. In re Smith Int’l, Inc., 871 F.3d 1375, 1382–83 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (quotations and emphasis omitted). Appellant’s Specification explains that vehicles require “fish-eye optics” to image across a wide area, but these optics can make it “difficult to achieve the required performance accuracy required without significant processing power needed to process higher resolution images.” Spec. ¶¶ 16, 19. The invention uses “[g]radients [which] basically provide a sparse representation of the image and thus require only a very limited dataset to be stored and/or processed,” to determine objects in “the high angular field of view (FOV) areas, where there is the highest distortion and lowest resolution, and where there is very little pixel motion.” Id. ¶¶ 26, 24. Appellant’s disclosure further provides “images showing how an object or person is detected using vertical gradient detection,” by depicting identified objects in warped fish-eye images. Id. ¶ 11; Figs. 3, 4. Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 6 We disagree with the Examiner’s construction of the claim, that “[t]he claimed limitation just cites detect gradient and detect movements of potential cross traffic object[s] . . . and does not explicitly disclose specifically how to do that[3] [or] that distortion correction cannot be performed.” Ans. 5. As described above, Appellant’s disclosure describes identifying objects in a distorted, low resolution image by determining gradients from optically distorted data. See Figs. 3, 4. We are persuaded by Appellant that, consistent with the Specification, claim 1 requires the object to be determined in a distorted side region of the image. See Appeal Br. 17; Reply Br. 3, 4. In contrast with the broadest reasonable construction of claim 1, Gupta teaches that “[b]efore the physical distance of the pixel locations can be estimated . . . , the fish-eye distortion of the lens needs to be corrected.” Gupta ¶ 78; see also Gupta Fig. 12, ¶ 16. This distortion correction occurs prior to determining “distance and trajectory.” Gupta ¶ 78. Thus, we find Gupta does not teach or suggest the recited “determin[ing] movement of . . . the determined edge of the intensity gradient of the determined potential cross traffic object at the side region of the field of view where the captured image data more optical distortion and lower resolution and less pixel motion.” See Appeal Br. 17. The Examiner does not rely on Zhang for these limitations. See Ans. 6, 7. Accordingly, we find the combination of Gupta and Zhang does not teach or suggest all limitations of claim 1. 3 We note the issue of whether the Specification provides sufficient written description support for the claim limitations is not before us, as there are no pending rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 112. See MPEP § 1213.02 (“The Board’s primary role is to review the adverse decision as presented by the Examiner, and not to conduct its own separate examination of the claims.”). Appeal 2019-005615 Application 14/573,307 7 We do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1, independent claims 12 and 18 which recite similar limitations, or the claims dependent thereon. DECISION SUMMARY Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–6, 8–10, 12–16, 18, 19 103 Gupta, Zhang 1–6, 8–10, 12–16, 18, 19 7 103 Gupta, Zhang, Lewin 7 11, 17, 20 103 Gupta, Zhang, Pawlicki 11, 17, 20 Overall Outcome 1–20 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation