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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 13-16 and 21-22 are pending. Claims 1-12 and 17-20 have been cancelled. Claims 21-22 are newly added.
Priority
Acknowledgement is made of Applicant’s claim of priority from U.S. Provisional Application No. 63/321,208, filed March 18, 2022.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see p. 4-5, filed October 7, 2025, with respect to the 35 USC 103 rejection of claim 13 have been fully considered but are moot because of the new grounds of rejection presented in the sections below. Applicant argues that the Mulqueen reference does not teach “where the level of detail is chosen depending on an operating parameter of a rendering device”. However, the newly presented Jones reference is relied upon to teach this limitation, as described below. Therefore, the 35 USC 103 rejection of claim 13 is upheld.
Applicant’s arguments, see p. 5-7, filed October 7, 2025, with respect to the 35 USC 103 rejection of claim 16 have been fully considered but are moot because of the new grounds of rejection presented in the sections below. Applicant argues that the Zhang reference does not teach “wherein the scalability information is transmitted as an extension to an atlas sequence parameter set raw byte sequence payload”. However, the newly presented Sejin Oh reference is relied upon to teach this limitation, as described below. Therefore, the 35 USC 103 rejection of claim 16 is upheld.
Applicant’s arguments, see p. 7, filed October 7, 2025, with respect to the 35 USC 103 rejections have been fully considered but are not persuasive. Applicant argues that because the prior art does not disclose or suggest every limitation of the claims, one skilled in the art would not be motivated to combine the references to arrive at Applicant’s claimed invention. However, as described in the arguments above and the 35 USC 103 rejections below, each and every limitation of the claims is taught by a prior art reference and motivations to combine the references are presented that render Applicant’s invention obvious. For example, one having ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the newly presented Jones reference with the Zhang and Kathariya references because doing so would allow for rendering an image at a specific level of detail, as recognized by Jones. Therefore, the 35 USC 103 rejection of the claims is upheld, and consequently, THIS ACTION IS FINAL.
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, 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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 13-14 and 21-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al. (US 2023/0107834 A1, with priority to U.S. Provisional Application Nos. 63/252,084 and 63/252,063, filed Oct. 4, 2021, which provide sufficient detail for the subject matter used herein) in view of Kathariya et al. (US 2021/0392335 A1) further in view of Jones et al. (US 2020/0082629 A1).
Regarding claim 13, Zhang teaches an apparatus comprising:
at least one processor (Zhang, Para. [0119], processing circuitry, such as one or more processors); and
at least one non-transitory memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor (Zhang, Para. [0119], implemented as software or firmware including instructions stored in a non-volatile (or non-transitory) computer-readable storage medium), cause the apparatus at least to:
determine scalability information, (Zhang, Para. [0162], different sampling rates can be applied on different portions of the map); and
transmit the scalability information to a decoder (Zhang, Para. [0114], the arithmetic coding module is configured to receive the occupancy codes, the candidate indices, the quantized residuals, and other information, and perform entropy encoding to further compress the received values or information. As a result, a compressed bitstream carrying the compressed information can be generated. The bitstream may be transmitted, or otherwise provided, to a decoder that decodes the compressed bitstream);
wherein the sampling rate is configured to be used with the decoder to subsample a geometry component of a patch of the three-dimensional object at occupied positions (Zhang, Para. [0126], a mesh of an object is formed by connected triangles, and the mesh can be partitioned into patches, each patch is a subset of the connected triangles. Para. [0179], a sampling position is inside a triangle defined by three vertices of the mesh, thus the sampling position is an occupied sampling position. Para. [0180], a 2D atlas can be divided into multiple regions, such as slices or tiles or patches, and the multiple regions can have respective sampling rates. For example, a mesh is formed of connected triangles, the mesh can be partitioned into several patches, and each patch includes a subset of the whole mesh. Different sampling rates can be applied to the respective patches for example by the adaptive sampling module);
wherein the at least one sampling rate defines a level of detail at which the geometry component is subsampled (Zhang, Para. [0162], different sampling rates can be applied on different portions of the map. In some examples, some rows of pixels have less information to be preserved, then larger sampling rates can be applied along these rows, resulting a smaller number of sample rows to be coded. In some examples, some columns of pixels have less information to be preserved, then larger sampling rates can be applied along these columns, resulting a smaller number of sample columns to be coded. For other regions, smaller sampling rates are applied to keep the loss of information minimum after the sampling),
wherein the scalability information is configured to be used with the decoder to reconstruct a mesh at different operating points to approximate a shape of the three-dimensional object (Zhang, Para. [0156], the decoded maps and the decoded auxiliary data are provided to mesh reconstruction module. The mesh reconstruction module generates the reconstructed mesh based on the decoded maps and the decoded auxiliary data).
Although Zhang teaches an LOD-based order indicated by the LOD information from the LD generation module (Zhang, Para. [0111]), Zhang does not explicitly teach “the scalability information comprising a number of at least one layer of a three-dimensional object” and “where the level of detail increases as fewer occupied positions are subsampled”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Kathariya teaches an original point cloud may be regrouped into multiple LoD (Level of Detail) layers (Kathariya, Para. [0008]). An LoD layer count L is computed if the sampling rate k is varied, i.e., chosen to be a different value (Kathariya, Para. [0061]). Kathariya further teaches a point closest to the median is selected as a subsampled point among the k candidate local points, to be included in a lower level (i.e., decreased) LoD layer, e.g., LOD2 shown in FIG. 1. This process is repeated until a number of points included the lower level LoD layer reaches a maximum value. Unselected points are included in an upper level LoD layer, e.g., LOD1 shown in FIG. 1 (Kathariya, Para. [0060]; Fig. 1).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the apparatus of Zhang with the teachings of Kathariya by including scalability information including an LoD layer count (i.e., a number of at least one layer) and a sampling rate and including the LoD is upper level (i.e., level of detail increase) as fewer points are sampled. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for decoding a three-dimensional point cloud, as recognized by Kathariya.
Although Zhang in view of Kathariya teaches a level of detail (Kathariya Para. [0060]-[0061]), they do not explicitly teach “where the level of detail is chosen depending on an operating parameter of a rendering device”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Jones teaches an image of at least a portion of an occluded object may be rendered at any level of detail or with any perspective or viewing parameters depending on the embodiment. Image rendering and/or viewing parameters may be received from the user or from an entity that is not the user and the parameters may be stored within the hybrid-reality system. In some embodiments, the image is rendered with a perspective based on a user position with respect to the real-world object or with a perspective based on parameters stored within the hybrid-reality system (i.e., level of detail is based on operating parameter of rendering device) (Jones, Para. [0113]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the apparatus of Zhang in view of Kathariya with the teachings of Jones by including that the level of detail for rendering an image is based on a parameter stored in the system (i.e., operating parameter of rendering device). One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for rendering an image at a specific level of detail, as recognized by Jones. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Regarding claim 14, Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches the apparatus of claim 13, and further teaches wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to:
transmit adaptive sampling signaling comprising a flag indicating whether adaptive sampling is enabled (Zhang, Para. [0198], a control flag can be signaled to indicate if the adaptive sampling method is applied or not at different levels in the bitstream);
wherein the adaptive sampling signaling is configured to be used with the decoder to add a delta to the at least one sampling rate, in response to the adaptive sampling being enabled (Zhang, Para. [0200], a base sampling rate can be signaled regardless of whether the adaptive sampling is enabled or not. When the adaptive sampling is enabled, the base sampling rate can be used as a predictor, and each region can signal the difference from the base sampling rate (i.e., add a delta) to indicate the actual sampling rate of the region).
Regarding claim 21, Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches the apparatus of claim 13, and further teaches wherein the level of detail is chosen depending on a viewer distance (Jones, Para. [0113], in some embodiments, the image is rendered with a perspective based on a user position with respect to the real-world object (i.e., level of detail is chosen depending on a viewer distance) or with a perspective based on parameters stored within the hybrid-reality system).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Zhang, Kathariya and Jones references presented in the rejection of Claim 13, apply to Claim 21 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the apparatus recited in Claim 21 is met by Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones.
Regarding claim 22, Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches the apparatus of claim 13, and further teaches wherein the scalability information is transmitted as an extension to a patch data unit (Zhang, Para. [0146], the bitstream can be transmitted form the mesh encoder to the mesh decoder (i.e., patch data unit) via any suitable communication network).
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al. (US 2023/0107834 A1, with priority to U.S. Provisional Application Nos. 63/252,084 and 63/252,063, filed Oct. 4, 2021, which provide sufficient detail for the subject matter used herein) in view of Kathariya et al. (US 2021/0392335 A1) further in view of Jones et al. (US 2020/0082629 A1), as applied to claims 13-14 and 21-22 above, and further in view of Jiang et al. (US 2014/0334717 A1).
Regarding claim 15, Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches the apparatus of claim 13, as described above.
Although Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches transmitting a bitstream from a mesh encoder to a mesh decoder (Zhang, Para. [0146]), they do not explicitly teach “wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: transmit signaling indicating that the patch should be discarded at the at least one layer”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Jiang teaches setting a “remove” flag to 1 (i.e., the patch is tagged as to be removed) (Jiang, Para. [0062]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the apparatus of Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones with the teachings of Jiang by including setting a remove flag (i.e., transmit signaling) that indicates the patch is to be removed. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for generating a bitstream representing a 3D model that indicates patches that should be removed, as recognized by Jiang. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al. (US 2023/0107834 A1, with priority to U.S. Provisional Application Nos. 63/252,084 and 63/252,063, filed Oct. 4, 2021, which provide sufficient detail for the subject matter used herein) in view of Kathariya et al. (US 2021/0392335 A1) further in view of Jones et al. (US 2020/0082629 A1), as applied to claims 13-14 and 21-22 above, and further in view of Sejin Oh (US 2022/0060529 A1, filed April 12, 2021).
Regarding claim 16, Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches the apparatus of claim 13, as described above.
Although Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones teaches transmitting a bitstream from a mesh encoder to a mesh decoder (Zhang, Para. [0146]), they do not explicitly teach “the scalability information is transmitted as an extension to an atlas sequence parameter set raw byte sequence payload”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Oh teaches a raw byte sequence payload (RBSP) carrying atlas data. The i-th byte of the RBSP carries one of an atlas sequence parameter set (ASPS), an atlas frame parameter set (AFPS), atlas tile group information, and an SEI message (Oh, Para. [0613]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the apparatus of Zhang in view of Kathariya further in view of Jones with the teachings of Oh by including the scalability information is transmitted as an extension to an atlas sequence parameter set raw byte sequence payload. One having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for transmitting a large number of points in 3-D space, as recognized by Oh. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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.
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/Emma Rose Goebel/Examiner, Art Unit 2662
/AMANDEEP SAINI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2662