PTAB

IPR2018-01803

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd v. FotoNation Ltd

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petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Real-time face tracking and cropping of digital images.
  • Brief Description: The ’897 patent describes methods for real-time face tracking in a digital image acquisition device. The technology involves acquiring a preview image stream, tracking a face within that stream, and using the tracking information to adjust acquisition parameters for capturing an improved main image.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Lao and Lee - Claim 1 is obvious over Lao in view of Lee.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lao (Application # 2004/0208114) and Lee (Korean Application # 10-2004-0042501).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Lao taught a method of acquiring an improved main image by detecting a face in a preceding preview image and adjusting image capture parameters accordingly. Lao disclosed processing successive images, which Petitioner contended amounted to tracking a face. To the extent it did not, Lee explicitly taught a "process of tracking faces" from frame to frame by predicting the face location in a subsequent image based on its location in previous images.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Lee’s face tracking method with Lao’s image acquisition process to improve performance. Tracking a face across a preview stream, as taught by Lee, would improve the accuracy of setting the face area in Lao's system, leading to more optimal image pickup parameters and reducing the chance of errors from a single-image analysis. This combination would create a faster, more accurate, and more user-friendly process by minimizing the need for manual user correction of the detected face area.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have expected success in this combination, as it involved applying a known tracking technique (Lee) to a known image acquisition system (Lao) to achieve the predictable result of improved face detection accuracy and stability.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Lao, Lee, and Fujii - Claim 4 is obvious over Lao in view of Lee and Fujii.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lao (Application # 2004/0208114), Lee (Korean Application # 10-2004-0042501), and Fujii (Patent 6,853,401).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground builds upon the Lao and Lee combination from Ground 1 to address the limitation of claim 4, which requires the preview and main acquired images to have "different resolutions." While the primary combination of Lao and Lee distinguished between preview and main images, it did not explicitly teach using different resolutions. Fujii, which relates to digital cameras, disclosed capturing high-resolution main images (e.g., 1600x1200 pixels) while displaying lower-resolution preview images (e.g., 400x300 pixels) on an LCD screen by thinning the image data.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to incorporate Fujii’s use of different resolutions into the Lao/Lee system for the well-known purpose of efficiency. Using a lower-resolution preview image allows for faster processing and display on a device's viewfinder, conserving computational resources and providing a smoother user experience, while still allowing for the capture of a high-resolution main image. This was a common and desirable design choice in digital imaging.
    • Expectation of Success: The modification would have been a straightforward implementation of a known technique for a predictable benefit, as Fujii detailed how to generate a low-resolution preview from a higher-resolution image sensor.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Lao, Shakhnarovich, and Jones - Claim 5 is obvious over Lao in view of Shakhnarovich and Jones.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Lao (Application # 2004/0208114), Shakhnarovich (a 2002 IEEE publication), and Jones (Patent 7,099,510).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground challenged claim 5, which recites tracking faces by calculating "integral images" and "applying different subsets of face detection windows." Petitioner argued Lao provided the foundational system for face detection and image acquisition. Shakhnarovich, which was cited by Lao, taught a framework for real-time face detection that used the Viola-Jones algorithm. This algorithm accelerates computation by using an "integral image" representation. Jones provided the definitive disclosure of the Viola-Jones algorithm, teaching the use of a cascade of classifiers that apply face detection windows to sub-regions of an integral image to identify candidate face regions of different sizes and locations.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to implement the fast and efficient Viola-Jones algorithm, as detailed in Shakhnarovich and Jones, into Lao’s system to improve its face detection speed and enable real-time performance. The motivation was particularly strong given that Lao itself cited Shakhnarovich, directing a POSITA to its teachings for face detection. The combination aimed to achieve the benefit of "accelerated" computation as explicitly described in the secondary references.
    • Expectation of Success: Success was predictable, as this involved incorporating a well-known, foundational face detection algorithm (Viola-Jones) into a standard digital imaging system to achieve the algorithm's known benefits of speed and efficiency.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted an additional obviousness challenge against claim 14, building on the Lao, Shakhnarovich, and Jones combination by adding the teachings of Lee. This ground argued that a POSITA would have been motivated to add Lee's method of predicting a face's future location based on its track history to further improve the efficiency and accuracy of the Viola-Jones-based tracking system.

4. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1, 4, 5, and 14 of the ’897 patent as unpatentable.