Thales Holdings UK Plc

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 18, 2022

2020005597 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 18, 2022)

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. 15/173,081 06/03/2016 Paul Gosling 4590-1133 1475 33308 7590 03/18/2022 HAUPTMAN HAM, LLP 2318 Mill Road Suite 1400 ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314 EXAMINER HESS, MICHAEL J ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2481 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/18/2022 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): docketing@ipfirm.com pair_lhhb@firsttofile.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte PAUL GOSLING and STEPHEN SYKES Appeal 2020-005597 Application 15/173,081 Technology Center 2400 Before BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, AMBER L. HAGY, and MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-13, 15, 17, and 19-22, which are all of the claims pending in the application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 “Appellant” refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies Thales Holdings UK PLC as the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2020-005597 Application 15/173,081 2 TECHNOLOGY The application relates to compressing video data having a region of interest as the camera is moving. See Spec. 1:1-16, 2:22-3:10. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced below with certain limitations at issue emphasized: 1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising a control program configured to cause, when executed by a device suitable for compressing image data relating to images taken in low light conditions, the device to execute: receiving image data comprising one or more images recorded by a camera; receiving attitude data indicating the attitude of the camera when each of the one or more images was recorded; in each of the one or more images, defining a region of interest bounded by a boundary, the boundary of the region of interest being based on the attitude data for the respective image and defining a section of the image within the region of interest and a section of the image outside the region of interest, the boundary of the region of interest being defined in a reference coordinate system on a two dimensional manifold which is carried by the reference coordinate system, wherein an origin of the reference coordinate system is centered on the optical center of the camera, wherein the two dimensional manifold is a sphere whose center is located at the origin of the reference coordinate system, and wherein, in the reference coordinate system, the boundary of the region of interest is defined using a series of points located on the surface of the sphere; and compressing each of the one or more images, wherein the compression ratio applied to the section of the image outside the Appeal 2020-005597 Application 15/173,081 3 region of interest is higher than that applied to the section of the image within the region of interest, wherein defining the region of interest in each of the one or more images comprises transforming the boundary of the region of interest defined in the reference coordinate system into the boundary of the region of interest within the respective image based on the attitude data for the image to compensate for any change in camera attitude. REFERENCES The Examiner relies on the following references as prior art: Name Number Date Bronder US 2015/0235432 A1 Aug. 20, 2015 Lalonde US 2013/0222589 A1 Aug. 29, 2013 Liu US 2016/0165233 A1 June 9, 2016 Puig Scale Space for Central Catadioptric Systems: Towards a Generic Camera Feature Extractor, 2011 IEEE Int’l Conf. on Comp. Vision 1599 2011 Zhang US 2016/0212405 A1 July 21, 2016 REJECTION The Examiner rejects claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-13, 15, 17, and 19-22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over Zhang, Liu, Bronder, Lalonde, and Puig. Final Act. 3-13. ANALYSIS Claim 1 recites “the boundary of the region of interest being defined in a reference coordinate system on a two dimensional manifold . . . wherein the two dimensional manifold is a sphere.” Claim 1 further recites “transforming the boundary of the region of interest defined in the reference coordinate system into the boundary of the region of interest within the respective image based on the attitude data for the image to compensate for Appeal 2020-005597 Application 15/173,081 4 any change in camera attitude.” Independent claim 12 recites commensurate limitations. Appellant argues that “[t]he present application uses a spherical model to describe the region of interest” and “does not demand a spherical model to describe a camera.” Appeal Br. 20. According to Appellant, claim 1 requires that “the boundary of the region of interest is defined on the sphere and transformed into the boundary of the region of interest within the respective image based on the attitude data of the camera.” Id. at 21. Appellant contends this is different than the “bounding box” relied on by the Examiner. Id. Appellant further argues that “the transformation described in Lalonde is performed on the image itself” and “there is no disclosure in Lalonde of a transformation of a boundary of a region of interest.” Id. at 18. We agree with the Examiner that many of the features of claim 1 individually are taught by the prior art. E.g., Ans. 29; Non-Final Act. 4-6. For example, Lalonde teaches correcting lens distortion in an image, including converting between different planes to do so. Lalonde ¶¶ 40-66. Puig further teaches a sphere camera model. Puig 1600, Fig. 1. Liu teaches a region of interest moving. Liu ¶ 225. Bronder teaches tracking a region of interest using inertial sensors on a camera. Bronder ¶ 7. And Zhang teaches using different coding settings for regions-of-interest (ROI) versus regions- of-non-interest (RONI), such as “applying lossless coding tools to regions like ROI and lossy coding tools to other regions like RONI.” Zhang ¶ 74. Nevertheless, even if a bounding box teaches or suggests a boundary, the Examiner has not yet shown how the cited art teaches or suggests such a boundary defined on a sphere, let alone transforming that boundary from a sphere to the final image. Instead, the prior art cited by the Examiner Appeal 2020-005597 Application 15/173,081 5 appears to discuss only regions of interest (and hence boundaries) in the final image (e.g., Zhang ¶ 74) or transformations of entire images without boundaries for regions of interest (e.g., Lalonde ¶ 40). Further, the Examiner expressly states that “one has to remember there is no boundary of interest on the sphere because there is no sphere.” Ans. 29. This conflicts with claim 1, which requires defining the boundary on a sphere. Even if a person of ordinary skill in the art could define such a boundary on a sphere, the Examiner has not yet shown why a person of ordinary skill would have done so. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1 and 12, and their dependent claims 2, 6, 9, 13, 17, and 20-22, which Appellant argues are patentable for similar reasons. See Appeal Br. 30; 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv). OUTCOME The following table summarizes the outcome of the rejection: Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-13, 15, 17, 19-22 103 Zhang, Liu, Bronder, Lalonde, Puig 1, 2, 4, 6, 8-13, 15, 17, 19-22 REVERSED