14252661 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Feb. 13, 2020)

AVIGILON FORTRESS CORPORATION

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardFeb 13, 2020

14252661 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Feb. 13, 2020)

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. 14/252,661 04/14/2014 Tae Eun Choe OV-113 2146 74712 7590 02/13/2020 Muir Patent Law, PLLC P.O. Box 1213 9913 Georgetown Pike, Suite 200 Great Falls, VA 22066 EXAMINER WILSON, KIMBERLY LOVEL ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2167 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/13/2020 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): eofficeaction@appcoll.com pto@muirpatentlaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte TAE EUN CHOE, HONGLI DENG, MUN WAI LEE, and FENG GUO Appeal 2019-001074 Application 14/252,661 Technology Center 2100 Before JAMESON LEE, JONI Y. CHANG, and JUSTIN T. ARBES, Administrative Patent Judges. LEE, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision to finally reject claims 1–19 and 21–26, all of the claims pending in this Application. Claim 20 has been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Avigilon Fortress Corporation. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2019-001074 Application 14/252,661 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The invention generally pertains to video searching, including a method, device, and system for performing video searching, as well as a computer readable storage medium containing a program which, when executed, performs video searching. Spec. ¶¶ 6–33. The Specification describes that a recorded video scene may be analyzed semantically to detect objects, actions, events, and groups of events. Id. ¶ 68. For example, activities in a video scene may be classified into four categories: (1) basic action, (2) action, (3) event, and grouped event. Id. ¶ 69. A basic action can be, for example, walk, run, stop, turn, sit, bend, lift hands, etc., and an action may involve an agent interacting with an object, such as carry a box, open a door, disembark from a car, etc. Id. An event may be multiple agents interacting with multiple objects, and a grouped event may include a plurality of events occurring concurrently or sequentially. Id. According to the Specification, videos are analyzed to determine scene elements, to recognize actions, and to extract contextual information, such as time and location, in order to detect events, and the various elements, actions, and events can be modeled using a relational graph. Id. ¶ 71. Figure 2 of the Specification is reproduced below: Appeal 2019-001074 Application 14/252,661 3 Figure 2 shows an exemplary graphical representation of a video scene including the loading of a vehicle. Id. ¶ 72. The Specification describes that objects, activities, and spatial and temporal relationships are represented by a parsed graph after parsing grammar of complex events. Id. ¶ 76. Appeal 2019-001074 Application 14/252,661 4 Figure 3 of the Specification is reproduced below: Figure 3 illustrates an exemplary parsed graph of a pickup event, where a vehicle appears in the scene and stops, a human approaches the vehicle and disappears, and then the vehicle leaves the scene. Id. ¶ 78. The Specification describes that in conventional systems, a set of stored subgraphs would need to be compared with a set of subgraphs extracted from a group event of interest, and a set of subgraphs including p subgraphs is referred to as having p variables and being p-dimensional. Id. ¶ 84. The invention here, according to the Specification, performs “dimension reduction.” Id. ¶ 85. The Specification defines “dimension reduction” as follows: “Dimension reduction can be described as converting a first set of p variables to a second set of k variables, where k and p are Appeal 2019-001074 Application 14/252,661 5 integers and k