DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Examiner’s Note
The instant application has a lengthy prosecution history and the examiner encourages the applicant to have an interview (telephonic or personal) with the examiner prior to filing a response to the instant office action. Also, prior to the interview the examiner encourages the applicant to present multiple possible claim amendments, so as to enable the examiner to identify claim amendments that will advance prosecution in a meaningful manner.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions. A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 12/08/2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments/Amendments
Presented arguments have been fully considered, but are rendered moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection necessitated by amendment(s) initiated by the applicant(s).
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged. Applicant has not complied with one or more conditions for receiving the benefit of an earlier filing date under 35 U.S.C. 120 as follows:
The later-filed application must be an application for a patent for an invention which is also disclosed in the prior application (the parent or original nonprovisional application or provisional application). The disclosure of the invention in the parent application and in the later-filed application must be sufficient to comply with the requirements of 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, except for the best mode requirement. See Transco Products, Inc. v. Performance Contracting, Inc., 38 F.3d 551, 32 USPQ2d 1077 (Fed. Cir. 1994)
The disclosure of the prior-filed application, Application No. 16/461,830, fails to provide adequate support or enablement in the manner provided by 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, first paragraph for one or more claims of this application. Claims 1-30 are rejected below for introducing materials that were not part of the original disclosure. Accordingly, claim 16-30 are not entitled to the benefit of the prior application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 31 and 36-38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. Applicant has not pointed out where the new (or amended) claim is supported, nor does there appear to be a written description of the claim limitation ‘determining whether to split a current block into a plurality of partition blocks or not; in response to a determination that the current block being split into the plurality of partition blocks splitting the current block the plurality of partitions blocks, wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that an inverse transform is independently performed on each of the partition blocks, wherein a prediction unit for performing intra prediction is formed by merging two or more transform units, and wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type’ (claim 31), ‘wherein in response to the current block being split into two partition blocks, a transform skip flag indicating whether an inverse-transform is skipped or not is not transmitted through the bitstream regardless of a size of two partition blocks, and skipping the inverse-transform are not allowed for the two partition blocks’ (claim 36), ‘A method of encoding a video, the method comprising: splitting a current block into a plurality of partition blocks; and encoding a flag indicating whether a current block is split into the plurality of partition blocks or not wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that a transform is independently performed on each of the partition blocks, wherein a prediction unit for performing intra prediction is formed by merging two or more transform units, and wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type’ (claim 37), ‘encoding a flag indicating whether a current block is split into the plurality of partition blocks or not, wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that a transform is independently performed on each of the partition blocks, wherein a prediction unit for performing intra prediction is formed by merging two or more transform units, and wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type’ (claim 38) in the application as filed.
Applicant provided ¶0105, ¶0245, ¶0248 and ¶0287 of the U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20210195189 as written description support for amended claim 31. Nowhere in any of the presented ¶’s is described the embodiments recited in any of amended claims 31, 36, 37 and 38.
Claims 31 and 36 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claims 31 recites the limitation “determining whether to split a current block into a plurality of partition blocks or not; in response to a determination that the current block being split into the plurality of partition blocks splitting the current block the plurality of partitions blocks” in lines 2-4. It is not clear how this step should be interpreted. More specifically, it seems that “in response to a determination that the current block being split into the plurality of partition blocks” suggests that the block is already split; yet, the following portion of the claim recites “splitting the current block the plurality of partitions blocks”. This seems to further suggest that the “current block” that is already split into “a plurality of partitions blocks” is to be split again into “a plurality of partitions blocks”. For examination purposes, the limitation “determining whether to split a current block into a plurality of partition blocks or not; in response to a determination that the current block being split into the plurality of partition blocks splitting the current block the plurality of partitions blocks” will be interpreted as “determining whether to split a current block into a plurality of partition blocks or not; in response to determining to split a current block into a plurality of partition blocks, splitting the current block the plurality of partitions blocks”.
Claims 31 recites “wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that an inverse transform is independently performed on each of the partition block”; and claims 37 and 38 recite “wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that a transform is independently performed on each of the partition blocks”. The term “independently performed” in claims 31 and 37-38 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “independently” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. The claims recite and “inverse transform”/“transform” operation on “each of the partition block” wherein the “inverse transform”/“transform” operation is independent without specifying what the operation is independent from. The Examiner did not find adequate description on the “independence” (absolute or relative) of an “transform”/ “inverse transform” operation in the original disclosure. Therefore, the independence performance of the “transform”/ “inverse transform” is indefinite.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 31 and 37-38 are rejected under AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over by Liwei Guo et al. [US 20130070848 A1] in view of Oscar Chi Lim Au et al. [US 20130251028 A1] further in view of Alexey Konstantinovich Filippov et al. [US 20180262777 A1].
Regarding claim 37, Liwei teaches:
31. (Currently Amended) A method of decoding a video (i.e. A video coder, such as a video encoder or a video decoder- Abstract), the method comprising:
determining whether to split a current block (i.e. Coding Unit- Abstract) into a plurality of partition blocks or not; in response to a determination that the current block being split into the plurality of partition blocks (i.e. one or more transform unit) splitting the current block the plurality of partitions blocks (i.e. The SDIP syntax element at least partially defines a mode by which the CU is partitioned into a set of one or more transform units- Abstract),
wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that an inverse transform (i.e. Video decoder 30 may perform inverse transforms on the transform coefficient blocks to reconstruct residual video blocks that correspond to the TUs of the current CU- ¶0076) is independently (i.e. non-overlapping blocks- ¶0067) performed on each of the partition blocks (i.e. Each of the TUs may correspond to a different residual video block. The residual video blocks that correspond to the TUs may be non-overlapping blocks of residual samples within the residual video block that corresponds to the current CU- ¶0067).
However, Liwei does not teach explicitly:
wherein a prediction unit for performing intra prediction is formed by merging two or more transform units.
In the same field of endeavor, Oscar teaches:
wherein a prediction unit for performing intra prediction is formed by merging two or more transform units (i.e. But all TUs within a PU share the same intra prediction mode. After intra prediction, transform is performed at TU level with the transform size equal to the TU size- ¶0034).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Liwei with the teachings of Oscar to improve coding efficiency (Oscar- ¶0033)
However, Liwei does not teach explicitly:
wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type.
In the same field of endeavor, Alexey teaches:
wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type (i.e. After the start 401 of the method, the emtCuFlag is parsed 402 from the input bitstream. The value of the emtCuFlag is then checked 403. If this emtCuFlag is false, a first transform type. e.g. DCT-II, is applied at the CU or PU level. i.e. the inverse transform means 211 applies an inverse transform according to this first transform type for each TU of the CU or PU comprising the emtCuFlag. This first transform type is e.g. a default transform type- ¶0116).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Liwei and Oscar with the teachings of Alexey to improve the use of quantized transform coefficients in the encoding and decoding (Alexey- ¶0029).
Regarding claim 37, Liwei teaches:
37. (Currently Amended) A method of encoding a video (i.e. A video coder, such as a video encoder or a video decoder- Abstract), the method comprising:
splitting a current block into a plurality of partition blocks (i.e. Furthermore, as part of performing an encoding operation on the current CU, video encoder 20 may partition the current CU into one or more transform units (TUs). Each of the TUs may correspond to a different residual video block. The residual video blocks that correspond to the TUs may be non-overlapping blocks of residual samples within the residual video block that corresponds to the current CU- ¶0067); and encoding a flag indicating whether a current block is split into the plurality of partition blocks or not (i.e. The video coder then entropy codes a short distance intra-prediction (SDIP) syntax element of a coding unit (CU) using the identified entropy coding context.. The SDIP syntax element at least partially defines a mode by which the CU is partitioned into a set of one or more transform units- Abstract);
wherein each of the plurality of partition blocks is set as a transform unit such that a transform (i.e. Video coder 20 may apply one or more transforms to residual video blocks that correspond to the TUs to generate transform coefficient blocks (i.e., blocks of transform coefficients) that correspond to the TUs. Conceptually, a transform coefficient block may be a two-dimensional (2D) matrix of transform coefficients- ¶0068) is independently (i.e. non-overlapping blocks- ¶0067) performed on each of the partition blocks (i.e. Each of the TUs may correspond to a different residual video block. The residual video blocks that correspond to the TUs may be non-overlapping blocks of residual samples within the residual video block that corresponds to the current CU- ¶0067).
In the same field of endeavor, Oscar teaches:
wherein a prediction unit for performing intra prediction is formed by merging two or more transform units (i.e. But all TUs within a PU share the same intra prediction mode. After intra prediction, transform is performed at TU level with the transform size equal to the TU size- ¶0034).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Liwei with the teachings of Oscar to improve coding efficiency (Oscar- ¶0033)
However, Liwei does not teach explicitly:
wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type.
In the same field of endeavor, Alexey teaches:
wherein transform units that form a single prediction unit have the same transform type (i.e. After the start 401 of the method, the emtCuFlag is parsed 402 from the input bitstream. The value of the emtCuFlag is then checked 403. If this emtCuFlag is false, a first transform type. e.g. DCT-II, is applied at the CU or PU level. i.e. the inverse transform means 211 applies an inverse transform according to this first transform type for each TU of the CU or PU comprising the emtCuFlag. This first transform type is e.g. a default transform type- ¶0116).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Liwei and Oscar with the teachings of Alexey to improve the use of quantized transform coefficients in the encoding and decoding (Alexey- ¶0029).
Regarding claim 38, apparatus claim 38 is drawn to the apparatus using/performing the same method as claimed in claim 37. Therefore, apparatus claim 38 corresponds to method claim 37, and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used above.
Claim 36 is rejected under AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over by Liwei Guo et al. [US 20130070848 A1] in view of Oscar Chi Lim Au et al. [US 20130251028 A1] further in view of Alexey Konstantinovich Filippov et al. [US 20180262777 A1] and even further in view of An Jicheng et al. [US 20150110180 A1].
Regarding claim 36, Liwei, Oscar and Alexey teach all the limitations of claim 31.
However, Liwei, Oscar and Alexey do not teach explicitly:
wherein in response to the current block being split into two partition blocks, a transform skip flag indicating whether an inverse-transform is skipped or not is not transmitted through the bitstream regardless of a size of two partition blocks, and skipping the inverse-transform are not allowed for the two partition blocks.
In the same field of endeavor, An teaches:
wherein in response to the current block being split into two partition blocks, a transform skip flag indicating whether an inverse-transform is skipped or not is not transmitted through the bitstream regardless of a size of two partition blocks, and skipping the inverse-transform are not allowed for the two partition blocks (i.e. Each PU may be partitioned into one or more smaller blocks (i.e., PUs), such as 2N×2N, 2N×N, N×2N and N×N. Asymmetric partition for prediction units is also allowed. Residues are formed for each PU after applying Inter or Intra prediction. Furthermore, residues are partitioned into transform units (TUs) and two-dimensional transform is applied to the residue data to convert the spatial data into transform coefficients for compact data representation. The adaptive Inter/Intra prediction shown in FIGS. 1A-B has been widely used in various coding standards. As mentioned above, the residues from the adaptive Inter/Intra prediction are further processed by a two-dimensional transform to exploit the remaining redundancy within the residues. Nevertheless, for some residue data, the two-dimensional transform may not help to improve compression efficiency. An Intra transform skipping scheme is disclosed by Lan et al. for a 4×4 transform unit (“Intra transform skipping”, Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) of ITU-T SG 16 WP 3 and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11, 9th Meeting: Geneva, CH, 27 Apr.-7 May 2012, Document: JCTVC-I0408). The transform Skip mode for a 4×4 Intra TU by Lan et al. uses the same Intra prediction to form Intra prediction residues. When the transform Skip mode is selected for an underlying block (i.e., 4×4 TU), two-dimensional transform is skipped (i.e., bypassed) for the underlying block on the encoder side- ¶0007… In another embodiment, the transform Skip mode is constrained in order to reduce complexity as well as to save some bits. For example, the transform Skip mode is enabled only when the PU and TU are the same. In this case, the PU and TU are associated with the same video data. This is also equivalent to the PU and TU having the same size. Other conditions for enabling transform Skip mode include the case that the TU size is 4×4 and the case that the partition mode is Intra N×N. A flag to signal the transform Skip mode is transmitted only when the transform Skip mode is enabled. The flag can be incorporated in the sequence level (e.g., Sequence Parameter Set, SPS), the picture level (e.g., Picture Parameter Set, PPS) or the slice level of the bitstream- ¶0025).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Liwei, Oscar and Alexey with the teachings of An to reduce complexity as well as to save some bits (An- ¶0025).
Conclusion
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CLIFFORD HILAIRE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2488
/CLIFFORD HILAIRE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2488