DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to a RCE application filed on September 29, 2025 and wherein claims 1, 25 amended and claims 18-19, 24, 27 previously cancelled.
In virtue of this communication, claims 1-17, 20-23, 25-26 are currently pending in this Office Action.
With respect to the rejection of claims 1-17, 20-23, 25-26 under 35 USC §112(b), as set forth in the previous Office Action, the claim amendment, and argument, see paragraph 2 of page 8 in Remarks filed on September 29, 2025, 2025, have been fully considered and the argument is persuasive. Therefore, the rejection of claims 1-17, 20-23, 25-26 under 35 USC § 112(b), as set forth in the previous Office Action, has been withdrawn. Note: It is identified that applicant amendment claim list submitted on September 29, 2025 appears to be not based on the claim list submitted on May 7, 2025. In order to expedite the prosecution, the following office action would be based on the claim list submitted on September 29, 2025.
The Office appreciates the explanation of the amendment and analyses of the prior arts, and however, although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993) and MPEP 2145.
Claim Rejection – 35 USC §101
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code with respect to claim 26 not included in this action can be found in a prior Office Action mailed on February 13, 2025
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation 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.
Claims 1-17, 20-23, 25-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a), as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claims contain 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(s) or joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Claim 1 amended to “wherein each of the plurality of processing strategies identifies an order in which the parameters will be calculated and quantized” which is not supported in the application specification and wherein the application specification merely disclosed “each of the plurality of processing strategies may comprise a respective first indication that is indicative of an ordering or a sequence related to the calculation and quantization of individual parameters” and by such “order or sequence”, “the individual parameters are calculated and quantized (para 100 of PGPub 20230343346 A1)”, which has no support to “identifies an order” and wherein the “processing strategy” as disclosed merely carries information “indicative of an order”, and there is no disclosure for “processing strategy” to perform amendment function “identify” at all. Claims 2-17, 20-23 are rejected due to the dependencies to claim 1.
Claims 25-26 are rejected for the at least similar reasons described in claim 1 above because claims 25-26 recited similar deficient features as recited in claim 1.
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.
Claims 1, 25-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thumpudi et al. (US 20120035941 A1, hereinafter Thumpudi) and in view of reference Dolby(“Dolby VRStreamaudio profile candidate -Description of Bitstream, Decoder, and Renderer plus informative Encoder Description, 3GPP, S4-180806, Rome Italy, 9-13, July 2018, pp.50).
Claim 1: Thumpudi teaches a method of frame-wise encoding metadata (title and abstract, ln 1-18, method steps implemented by an audio encoder in fig. 6, para 361) for an input signal (input audio samples 605 in fig. 6), comprising, for each frame, iteratively performing the steps of (quantization loop through iteration, para 24, 144):
determining a processing strategy from a plurality of processing strategies for calculating and quantizing the parameters in the metadata (choosing a quantization step size and the step size changed from one iteration to the next, para 24 and for the quantization by multichannel inputs with channel-specific quantization factors, para 65, the quantization by using multiple quantization matrices, para 66 and the quantization by using temporal prediction, para 67, etc. and the parameters in the metadata include frequency coefficients of audio signal from frequency transformer 110, upon uneven split of the audio samples in time domain, para 16, i.e., interrelated frequency coefficients inherently);
calculating and quantizing the parameters based on the determined processing strategy to obtain quantized parameters (through Channel weighter 644, M/C transformer 650 and quantizer 660 in fig. 6, para 144-146 by using selected quantization strategy); and
encoding the quantized parameters (through step entropy encoder 670, para 145-146). and wherein the processing strategy is determined based on at least one bitrate threshold (a given bitrate, e.g., bitrate in table 1, para 8, less than a bitrate 1411200 bits/s in table 1).
However, Thumpudi does not explicitly teach wherein each of the plurality of processing strategies identifies an order in which the parameters will be calculated and quantized.
Dolby teaches an analogous field of endeavor by disclosing a method (title and coder in fig. 1, p.7) and wherein parameters in metadata are disclosed (limited number of EVS codec downmix channels, including parameters W(1), X’(1), Y’(1), etc., in the configuration information field in table 6.4.b), and a plurality of processing strategies is disclosed (recorded bits of configuration information field placed into encoded superframe indicated in table 6.4.b, e.g., FT-1,1 for configuration parameter of EVS FT for first frame of 1st dmx channel, etc. identified by six bits start from RES bit of MSB bit in table 6.4.a) and each of the plurality of processing strategies (defined by number of metadata coding bands BND, Metadata type indication MDT, metadata coding configuration MDC, etc., in the first 23 MSB bits in table 6.4.b) identifies an order (e.g., FT-2,1 corresponding to the configuration information of “EVT FT for first frame of 2nd dmx channel” etc., in table 6.4.b) by which the parameters will be calculated and quantized (the implementation of quantizing the coded downmix channels is either from MSB or from LSB to LSB or to MSB in sequence, e.g., according to a sequence of W(1), X’(1), Y’(1) …, Z’(2) if from MSB to LSB, and vise verse) for benefits of defining coefficient quantization and coding scheme in the communication so that devices can communicate each other with the same standard (communication standards, well-known in the art).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have applied wherein each of the plurality of processing strategies identifies the order in which the parameters will be calculated and quantized, as taught by Dolby, to the processing strategies in the method of frame-wise encoding metadata, as taught by Thumpudi, for the benefits discussed above.
Claim 25 has been analyzed and rejected according to claim 1 above and the combination of Thumpudi and Dolby further teaches an apparatus (Thumpudi, an audio encoder in fig. 6 and Dolby, audio encoding and decoding system in fig. 1, p.7) comprising a processor (Thumpudi, processing unit 510, para 120) and a memory (ROM, EEPROm, flash memory, etc., para 120) storing instructions (storing ecomputer-executable instructions, para 120) and executed by the processor to implement the method of claim 1 (the processor executing the instructions stored in the memory, para 120).
Claim 26 has been analyzed and rejected according to claims 1, 25 above.
Examiner Comments
Claim 1, 25, 26 broadly recited “input signal”. As disclosed by the application specification, the “input signal” is nothing more than audio signal such as Ambisonic in B-format W, Y, Z, X (fig. 1, para 65), or immersive voice and audio IVAS (para 42) and therefore, the “input signal” would not be interpreted to other types of signals beyond the audio signals, and the other types of signals can be image signal, video signal, RF signal, optic signal, etc. in order to precisely and accurately claim the invented subject matters, therefore, it is further recommended to use accurate claim language such as --input audio signal--, or similar.
Claims 1, 25-26, and dependent claims 2-17, 20-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a), which would not place claim in condition for allowance, and therefore, at this point, a prior art rejection for the dependent claims 2-17, 20-23 would not be considered proper, as it would have to be based on mere assumptions and considerable speculation about the scope of the claims that have been identified as no support as set forth in the office action above, see MPEP 2173.06 and a further prior art search has been performed by the examiner, and PTO-892 form has been updated accordingly.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on September 29, 2025, 2025 have been fully considered and but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection necessitated by the applicant amendment, e.g., amendment claim 1.
With respect to amendment feature by adding feature “identifies …”, Applicant challenged prior art “Dolby” and argued “the MSB and LSB of the bit-field implies an ordering of bits, not parameters represented by the bits … none of the bits described in Tables 6.4.a or 6.4.b disclose an order in which the parameters will be calculated and quantized” and “the 6-bit fields have nothing to do with the order of calculation and quantization of parameters. Therese 6-bit fields represent frame type FT or coding mode. See Dolby, section 6.4.7, where it is states that the EVS FT-x,y field represents the EVS frame type applied for coding of the yth frame of the xth downmix channel signal, where x=1…NCH and y=1, 2. It is defined in 3GPP TS 26.445, A2.2.1”, as asserted in the paragraph of page 8 and paragraphs 1-2 of page 9 in Remarks filed on September 29, 2025.
In response to the argument above, the Office respectfully disagrees because
(1) claim 1 broadly recited “the parameters will be calculated and quantized (may not be calculated and quantized at this point of “identifies an order”), with no specification of what “parameters” is, and thus, Dolby clearly teaches “parameters” by Dolby’s (W(1), X’(1), …, Z’(2) as B-format Ambisonics coefficients, p.7, session “c”, 4xEVS encoder encodes WX’Y’Z’)” and those parameters are to be quantized and then encoded according to an order specified in Dolby’s table 6.4.a and 6.4.b, e.g., from MSB to LSB, the quantizing order is from parameter W(1), then X’(1), …, Z’(2) when the table is implemented. Indeed, six bits self in table 6.4.a and 6.4.b are not “parameters”, the bits in table 6.4.a and 6.4.b are an order based MSB-LSB for encoding and quantizing different parameters W(1), X’(1), Y’(1), Z’(1), W(2) …, for 4 EVS coded downmix channels to be quantized iteratively until all parameters are quantized from W(1) to Z(2), and in an order indicated by each of “six bits” field from MSB to LSB in the tables, and but applicant is in silence.
(2). Indeed, EVS FT-x,y represents EVS frame type which is b-format ambisonics with parameters WXYZ, and however, the FT-x,y filled with the same type of frame contents as B-format Ambisonic parameters, at location of yth frame of xth downmix channel signal, and tabled sequence from MSB to LSB, i.e., from W(1) to Z(2) is the sequence of the order of the quantization implementation by computer instructions (e.g., increasing the number represented by that 3-bit element by 1, etc., session 6.4.1, p.27), but applicant is also in silence.
(3) the MSB and LSB of the bit field does not only imply an ordering of bits, but also representing different parameters to be implemented in the order from MSB to LSB (see session 6.4.1, p.27, increasing the number represented by that 3-bit element by 1, etc.), but applicant is also in silence.
Therefore, based on the analyses and evidences above, the prior art rejection of independent claims 1, 25-26 maintained. For the at least similar reasons above, the prior art rejection of dependent claims 2-17, 20-23 also maintained.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LESHUI ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-5589. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 6:30amp-4:00pm EST.
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/LESHUI ZHANG/
Primary Examiner,
Art Unit 2695