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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
This Office Action is in response to the correspondence on 06/17/2026. Applicant’s argument, filed on 06/17/2026 has been entered and carefully considered. Claims 1-3, 8-14, and 22-32 are pending.
The application is a 371 application filed on 09/18/2023 claiming priority to PCT/EP2022/056699 03/15/2022. Claimed foreign priority date for application EP 21305329.1 03/18/2021. The certified copy has been filed on 09/18/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
This information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/17/2026. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 06/17/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments in the 06/17/2026 Remarks have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to the combination of reference being used in the current rejection.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Joan (Film Grain Technology, Specifications for H.264 | MPEG-4 AVC Bitstream RDD 5-2006”, March 06, 2006) in view of Gomila et al. (US 20080152250 A1), hereinafter Gomila.
Regarding claim 1, Joan discloses a method comprising (Scope 1.1.1): receiving film grain information that comprises at least one parameter that specifies an attribute of a film grain associated with an image block (Section 1.4), applying a core transform defined in the standardized video codec to a block of random values, the core transform being one of discrete cosine transform II (DCT-II), discrete cosine transform VIII (DCT-VIII), or discrete sine transform VII (DST-VII) to afford a transformed block of random values (Section 2, a DCT-II transform); and applying a respective inverse core transform to the filtered transformed block of random values, thereby generating a block of pixels with film grain pattern for the image block, wherein the core transform and inverse core transform are reused from standardized encoder and decoder transform implementations of the standardized video codec (Section 2, ho to create a film grain block).
Joan discloses all the elements of claim 1 but Joan does not appear to explicitly disclose in the cited section the film grain information being included in a Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) message of a video bitstream conforming to a standardized video codec; filtering the transformed block of random values using the at least one film grain attribute parameter.
However, Gomila from the same or similar endeavor teaches the film grain information being included in a Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) message of a video bitstream conforming to a standardized video codec ([0022]); filtering the transformed block of random values using the at least one film grain attribute parameter ([0020], [0036]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Joan to incorporate the teachings of Gomila to reduce complexity and improve processing resources (Gomila, [0012]). Similar reasoning/motivation of modification can be applied/extended to the other related/dependent claims.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 2-3, 8-14, and 23-31 objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. Examiner requests to keep the scope of the independent claims similar to advance the prosecution.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MOHAMMAD J RAHMAN whose telephone number is (571)270-7190. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, David Czekaj can be reached at (571) 272-7327. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Mohammad J Rahman/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
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