Obviousness

An obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 for U.S. Patent 10,430,015 requires assessing whether the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art would have been obvious to a Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (PHOSITA) at the time the invention was made. For this technology, a PHOSITA would be a computer scientist or software engineer with experience in image processing, database management, and information retrieval systems, particularly concerning geographic and web-based data.

The core elements of the independent claims (1, 9, and 15) are:

1. A search query with a start and end point for a "virtual tour."
2. Collecting images from different users/sources within the tour's spatial boundary into a non-ordered collection.
3. Selecting a subset of these images based on user-specified criteria, including "image density" (e.g., images per unit of time/distance) and other filters.
4. Ordering the subset based on spatial and/or temporal metadata to create a sequence.
5. Displaying the ordered sequence to the user.

Several combinations of the prior art cited in the patent itself would render these claims obvious.

Primary Obviousness Combination: US20110196897A1 (Koch) in view of US20100251101A1 (Haussecker)

This combination presents a strong argument for the obviousness of the claimed invention.

1. US20110196897A1 ("Koch") as the Primary Reference:
   Koch, titled "System and method for generating a virtual tour on a display device," provides the foundational framework for the invention. It explicitly discloses generating a virtual tour between geographic locations. This teaching anticipates the core concept of receiving a query with a start point and an end point to define a route or boundary (Element 1) and displaying a sequence of images corresponding to that route (Element 5). Koch's system is designed to create a "virtual tour," which inherently involves ordering images along a path (Element 4).

2. US20100251101A1 ("Haussecker") as the Secondary Reference:
   Koch may not explicitly detail the collection of images from disparate public sources or the use of specific user-defined filters like "image density." This is where Haussecker becomes relevant. Haussecker, titled "Capture and Display of Digital Images Based on Related Metadata," teaches systems for displaying images based on their associated metadata, which can include time, location, and user-provided tags. This directly addresses the filtering and selection aspects of the '015 patent.

Motivation to Combine:

A PHOSITA starting with Koch's virtual tour system would recognize its primary limitation: the quality and completeness of the tour are entirely dependent on the available image set. A natural and obvious improvement would be to enhance the user's control over the tour's content.

• Problem/Motivation: A user of Koch's system might find the tour too sparse or too cluttered. To solve this predictable problem, the PHOSITA would be motivated to implement filters to manage the visual information presented.
• Obvious Solution: Haussecker provides the solution by teaching the use of metadata to filter and manage image displays. It would have been obvious to apply Haussecker's metadata-based filtering concepts to Koch's virtual tour system. This would allow a user to specify criteria such as the number of images per minute or mile (i.e., "user specified image density criteria" as claimed in Claim 1) or to filter images based on user profiles (e.g., "likes and dislikes" as claimed in Claim 6).

Therefore, combining Koch's virtual tour generation with Haussecker's metadata-based display and filtering would lead directly to the invention claimed in US 10,430,015. The combination is a predictable merging of known technologies to improve user experience, with a reasonable expectation of success.

Secondary Obviousness Combination: US9025810B1 (Google) in view of US20060155684A1 (Microsoft)

This combination argues that the invention is an obvious evolution of existing geo-referenced image viewing and web search technologies.

1. US9025810B1 ("Google") as the Primary Reference:
   The Google patent, "Interactive geo-referenced source imagery viewing system and method," discloses a system for viewing imagery tied to geographic locations. This reference inherently teaches defining a boundary via start and end points (Element 1) and ordering/displaying images based on their spatial location (Elements 4 and 5). The system is designed to handle large collections of geo-tagged images.

2. US20060155684A1 ("Microsoft") as the Secondary Reference:
   The Google reference may not explicitly focus on aggregating a non-ordered collection of images from different public users as a distinct preliminary step. The Microsoft reference, "Systems and methods to present web image search results for effective image browsing," addresses this directly. It teaches systems for crawling and indexing images from across the public web, which by definition come from a multitude of different users and sources, and presenting them in response to a query.

Motivation to Combine:

A PHOSITA working with the geo-referenced viewing system taught by Google would seek to populate it with the most comprehensive dataset available to create a compelling user experience.

• Problem/Motivation: The utility of Google's system is directly proportional to the volume and diversity of images it can display. To create a rich virtual tour of a popular route, relying on a single source of imagery would be insufficient.
• Obvious Solution: The PHOSITA would be motivated to integrate a large-scale image aggregation method. Microsoft's web image search technology provides a well-understood blueprint for collecting images from countless different users across the internet (Element 2). It would have been obvious to use such a system as the data source for Google's geo-viewing system. Furthermore, managing the resulting massive, non-ordered collection would necessitate user-controlled filters, such as image density and user preferences (Element 3), which are common features in information retrieval systems like Microsoft's to avoid overwhelming the user.

Combining Google's geo-referenced display with Microsoft's web-scale image collection and filtering techniques would have yielded the system and method claimed in US 10,430,015. This represents an obvious step of combining a front-end display technology with a back-end data aggregation technology to achieve a more powerful and useful product.