Obviousness

Obviousness Analysis of US 10,403,051 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

This analysis evaluates whether the invention claimed in US Patent 10,403,051 would have been obvious to a Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (PHOSITA) at the time of the invention's earliest priority date, April 8, 2011.

A PHOSITA in this context would be an individual with a degree in computer science or a related field and practical experience in computer vision, mobile application development, and the principles of augmented reality systems.

The central inventive concept of US 10,403,051 is the use of "interference" among elements in a scene to determine the presence, enhancement, or suppression of augmented reality (AR) objects. The patent argues that prior art focused on context-based filtering but failed to appreciate this interplay. However, an analysis of the prior art cited within the patent itself suggests that this concept is an obvious extension of existing techniques.

Analysis of Independent Claim 1

Claim 1 describes a method for an AR hosting platform to:

1. Obtain a digital representation of a scene from a mobile device.
2. Recognize a target object within the scene.
3. Determine a context related to the scene and the object.
4. Identify a set of relevant AR objects from available AR objects with respect to the context.
5. Base this identification on a "derived interference among elements" of the scene.
6. Configure the mobile device to interact with the relevant AR objects "according to the derived interference."

An obviousness rejection of Claim 1 can be formulated by combining the teachings of U.S. Patent Application Publication 2009/0167787 to Bathiche et al. (hereinafter "Bathiche") and U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0257252 to Dougherty et al. (hereinafter "Dougherty").

• What Dougherty Discloses: Dougherty teaches a cloud-based AR system where a mobile device captures an image of its surroundings, sends it to a server, and the server provides overlay information pertinent to the user's environment. This directly teaches the foundational steps of Claim 1: a hosting platform obtaining scene data from a mobile device, recognizing objects, and providing relevant AR objects based on context. (US 10,403,051, Background).

• What Bathiche Discloses: Bathiche builds upon the concept of contextual AR by introducing more sophisticated ways to manage the AR content presented to the user. As acknowledged in the '051 patent's background section, Bathiche discloses that "virtual data can be filtered, ranked, modified, or ignored based on a context." (US 10,403,051, Background). The concept of ranking and modifying virtual data based on context inherently implies a system of weighting different factors. A high rank or positive modification would enhance an object's presence, while a low rank, negative modification, or filtering would suppress or ignore it.

• Motivation to Combine and Obviousness of "Interference":
  A PHOSITA, starting with Dougherty's basic contextual AR system, would be motivated to improve the user experience by managing the potential for information overload—a problem explicitly mentioned in the background of the '051 patent. Bathiche provides a direct solution: implementing a system to filter, rank, and modify the AR data.

  The key step is whether the concept of "interference" in the '051 patent is a non-obvious leap from the "filtering, ranking, [and] modifying" taught by Bathiche. It would have been obvious to a PHOSITA that:

  1. "Ranking" and "modifying" data based on context requires a set of rules or an algorithm that weighs various elements.
  2. Some elements in the scene (e.g., user identity, presence of other users, specific objects) would positively influence the rank or display of an AR object, while others would negatively influence it.
  3. The term "interference" is merely a new label for this known concept of applying positive and negative weights to determine a final presentation outcome. The patent itself defines this concept using the metaphor of physical wave interference, describing "constructive interference" as enhancing presence and "destructive interference" as suppressing it (US 10,403,051, Col. 10, lines 52-61). This is a direct parallel to the positive and negative modifications taught by Bathiche.

  Therefore, a PHOSITA would have found it obvious to combine Dougherty's AR architecture with Bathiche's advanced contextual filtering/ranking system. This combination would result in a platform that analyzes scene elements, assigns weights (i.e., derives an "interference"), and presents AR objects with an enhanced or suppressed presence based on the calculated outcome, thus rendering the limitations of Claim 1 obvious.

Analysis of Independent Claim 14

Claim 14 recites an AR hosting platform (an apparatus) comprising a processor and memory configured to execute the method of Claim 1. Specifically, it claims an "object recognition engine" that performs the steps of recognizing objects, determining context, and identifying relevant AR objects based on derived interference.

The obviousness argument for Claim 1 applies directly to Claim 14. An apparatus claim is obvious if the prior art would have rendered the method performed by the apparatus obvious. The combination of Dougherty and Bathiche teaches a server-based system (a platform with a processor and memory) that would be configured with software (an "engine") to perform contextual analysis and sophisticated filtering/ranking of AR objects. A PHOSITA would have found it obvious to implement the combined method on a standard server architecture as described by Dougherty, which is functionally identical to the platform described in Claim 14. Therefore, Claim 14 would have been obvious over the combination of Dougherty and Bathiche.