DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is a response to an RCE filed on 07/23/2025, in which claims 1, 6, 17-18, 20-21, 23-24, 32, and 37-40 are pending and ready for examination. This action is made Final because the amended claims are not patentable distinct from the previously rejected claims and could be rejected by the same art used to reject the previously presented claims.
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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in this application and a copy has been placed of record in the file.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 01/31/2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1, 6, 17-18, 20-21, 23-24, 32, and 37-40 have been considered but are not persuasive.
In regards to claims 1 and 5 applicant argues that Nguyen fails to disclose or suggest the limitation of “a binary codeword generated from a fixed Rice parameter associated with a transform residual coding process” as recited by claims 1 and 6.
However, examiner respectfully disagrees. On page 7-9 of the Remarks dated 07/23/2025, Applicant argues that Nguyen discloses the derivation of the Rice parameter, and on page 9, third paragraph of the remarks it is mentioned that Nguyen teaches away from a “fixed Rice parameter”. However, a review of the specification of the current application shows that the claimed invention also teaches the derivation of the Rice parameter. For example, Fig. 6 and 7, and paragraph 77-80 of the publication of the current application talks about the Rice parameter derivation process and how to reduce the complexity of the Rice parameter derivation. Thus, the process disclosed by Nguyen not only does not teach away from the claimed invention, but in fact is very similar to the process disclosed in the specification of the current application. Furthermore, as mentioned in paragraph 72 of Nguyen, a Rice parameter “k” is determined, and as mentioned in paragraph 117, for the evaluation value used to determine the context model of Rice parameter, f3 and the threshold set n={0,5,19} is used, and in a different configuration the threshold set n={3, 9, 21} is used, but in both cases the maximum Rice parameter is three. Thus, in both cases a fixed input value for Rice parameter is used. In addition, paragraph 125 and 136 mentions that non adaptive context modeling with fixed probability distribution may be used for Rice parameter derivation. Thus, the argued limitation has been fully disclosed by Nguyen and the claims remain rejected.
Claims 1, 6, 17-18, 20-21, 23-24, 32, and 37-40 remain rejected since the system disclosed by the applicant is taught by the prior arts.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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 18, 20, 38, and 39 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite in that it fails to point out what is included or excluded by the claim language. This claim is an omnibus type claim, because the terms “abs_remainder” in claims 18 and 38, and “dec_abs_level” in claims 20 and 39 has not been defined in the claims and does not indicate what these terms are referring to. Appropriate correction or clarification is required for claims 18, 20, 38, and 39.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 6, 17-18, 20-21, 23-24, 32, and 37-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Nguyen (US 2014/0362925 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Nguyen discloses: A method comprising:
determining a binary codeword (see paragraph 96, Rice parameter that controls the binarization of transform coefficients) generated from a fixed Rice parameter associated with a transform residual coding process (see paragraph 95 and 117) applied during coding of a block of picture information (see paragraph 93); and
decoding the block of picture information based on the binary codeword (see paragraph 93 and 96).
Regarding claim 6, claim 6 is drawn to an apparatus having limitations similar to the method claimed in claim 1 treated in the above rejections. Therefore, apparatus claim 6 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of anticipation as used above.
Regarding claim 17, Nguyen discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the fixed Rice parameter is set to 1 (see Nguyen, paragraph 229).
Regarding claim 18, Nguyen discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein decoding the block of picture information based on the binary codeword further comprises determining a value for abs_remainder (see Nguyen, paragraph 221).
Regarding claim 20, Nguyen discloses: The method of claim 18, wherein decoding the block of picture information based on the binary codeword further comprises determining a value for dec_abs_level (see Nguyen, paragraph 197-198).
Regarding claim 21, Nguyen discloses: The method of claim 1, further comprising:
performing transform skip residual coding for a second transform block using a second fixed Rice parameter (see Nguyen, paragraph 227 and Table 2),
wherein the fixed Rice parameter is set to a first value and the second fixed Rice parameter is set to a second value (see Nguyen, paragraph 228).
Regarding claim 23, Nguyen discloses: The method of claim 21, wherein the first value and second value are set to the same fixed value (see Nguyen, paragraph 197 and 228, Rice parameter set equal to 0).
Regarding claim 24, Nguyen discloses: The method of claim 21, wherein the first value and the second value are set to different fixed values (see Nguyen, paragraph 125 and 198 and 228).
Regarding claim 32, Nguyen discloses: A non-transitory computer readable medium storing executable program instructions to cause a computer executing the instructions to perform a method according to any of claim 5 (see Nguyen, paragraph 234).
Regarding claims 37-40, claims 37-40 are drawn to an apparatus having limitations similar to the method claimed in claims 17, 18, 20, and 21 treated in the above rejections. Therefore, apparatus claim 37-40 corresponds to method claims 17, 18, 20, and 21 and are rejected for the same reasons of anticipation as used above.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARYAM A NASRI whose telephone number is (571)270-7158. The examiner can normally be reached 10:00-8:00 M-T.
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/MARYAM A NASRI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2483