DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to U.S. Patent Application No.: 18/287,602 filed on 11/18/2025 with effective filing date 4/21/2021. Claims 51-53, & 55-71 are pending.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
2. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 1/23/2026 has been entered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Claim(s) 51 & 67-71 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lee et al. US 2023/0262253 A1 in view of Zhang et al. US 2021/0211716 A1 and Park et al. US 2022/0078440.
Per claims 51 & 69-70, Lee et al. discloses a method for video processing, comprising:
obtaining, during a conversion between a target video unit in a target picture of a video and a bitstream of the video (para: 119, e.g. a prediction encoding mode for a current block may be determined on the basis of a reference picture index. In an example, when a reference picture index indicates a current picture, a prediction encoding mode for a current block may be determined as current picture referencing).
Lee et al. fails to explicitly disclose the remaining claim limitations.
Zhang et al. however teaches second coding data of the target video unit based on first coding data of the target video and a refinement process, the first coding data being coded by a target coding mode (para: 17 & 800, e.g. at operation 2102, determining, for a conversion between a current block of a video and a bitstream representation of the video, whether an index of a bi-prediction with coding unit level weight (BCW) coding mode is derived based on a rule with respect to a position of the current block. In the BCW coding mode, a weight set including multiple weights is used to generate bi-prediction values of the current block); and performing the conversion based on the second coding data (para: 800, e.g. at operation 2104, performing the conversion based on the determining).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Zhang et al., it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Lee et al. and Zhang et al. in order to indicate information about the bi-prediction coding technique is signaled in the bitstream in case the bi-prediction coding technique is applicable.
Lee et al. and Zhang et al. fails to explicitly teach the remaining claim limitation.
Park et al. however in the same field of endeavor teaches wherein the refinement process is based on delta information of the target video unit indicated in the bitstream, and the delta information (para: 233, e.g. In determining refinement of the motion information in the DMVR and the BDOF, whether the refinement is performed by considering an adjacent pixel (adjacent sample) and in this case, when a distance between the adjacent pixel and the base MV is far, the value of the distance index also increases) comprises at least one of the following: at least one intra mode delta value (para: 403-404, e.g. the application conditions of the BDOF may include a condition in which a prediction mode (CIIP mode) in which an inter prediction and an intra prediction are combined is not applied to the current block; the application conditions of the BDOF may include a condition in which a first picture order count (POC) difference between the current picture and the L0 reference picture and a second POC difference between the current picture and the L1 reference picture are the same).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Park et al., it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Lee et al., Zhang et al. and Park et al. in order to improve the image coding efficiency and a condition for determining whether to apply a bi-directional optical flow (BDOF), and reduces the computational complexity through efficient inter prediction.
Per claim 52, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 51, wherein the first coding data comprises at least one of the following: a prediction mode of the target video unit, prediction directions of the target video unit, the first coding data comprises motion information of the target video unit (para: 793, e.g. whether the bi-prediction coding technique is applicable is associated with a prediction direction, the prediction direction further associated with a uni-prediction coding technique, and wherein the prediction direction is signaled in the bitstream based on the size of the block), wherein the first coding data comprises motion information of a reference picture list for the target video unit, and the reference picture list comprises a reference picture list L0 or a reference picture list L1, prediction samples of the target video unit, or reconstruction samples of the target video unit (para: 797, e.g. a merge candidate is considered as a uni-prediction candidate referring to a first reference list in a uni-prediction coding technique in case (1) the merge candidate is coded using the bi-prediction coding technique and (2) bi-prediction is not applicable to the block according to the size of the block. In some embodiments, the first reference list comprises a reference list 0 or a reference list 1 of the uni-prediction coding technique).
Per claim 67, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 51, wherein the first coding data comprises motion information of the target video unit obtained from an encoder of the video processing, or the first coding data is derived or decoded from motion information of the target video unit (para: 782, e.g. for a conversion between a current block of a video and a bitstream representation of the video using an affine coding tool, that a first motion vector of a sub-block of the current block and a second motion vector that is a representative motion vector).
Per claim 68, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 51, wherein the conversion comprises decoding the target picture from the bitstream of the video, or encoding the target picture into the bitstream of the video (para: 613, e.g. video compression algorithms may be applied during conversion from pixel representation of a video to a corresponding bitstream representation or vice versa).
Per claim 71, Zhang et al. further teaches the method of claim 51, further comprising: storing the bitstream in a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium (para: 611).
Response to Arguments
6. Applicant's arguments filed on 7/10/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
7. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 51-53, & 55-71 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Allowable Subject Matter
8. Claims 53, & 55-66 are 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.
Conclusion
9. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Xiu et al. US 2021/0409750 A1, e.g. methods of constraining and adjusting the applications of Combined Inter- and Intra-Prediction (CIIP) mode employed in video coding standards, such as the now-current Versatile Video Coding (VVC), are performed at a computing device. In one method, the computing device determines whether to apply decoder-side motion vector refinement (DMVR) and bidirectional optical flow (BDOF) on a bi-prediction block. In another method, the computing device determines whether each CU among the neighboring CUs of the current CU is respectively CIIP-coded, and employing a unified criterion that does not depend upon a determination whether the current CU is intra- or CIIP-coded in the course of using the intra-mode of the neighboring CIIP-coded CU in the formation of the Most Probable Mode (MPM) candidate list for the current CU.
Li et al. US 10,375,413 B2, e.g. an example device for decoding video data includes a processor configured to decode first and second reference pictures, wherein the first reference picture and the second reference picture are either both to be displayed before or after the current picture, determine a first motion vector (MV.sub.0) from a current block of the current picture to a first reference block of the first reference picture, determine a second motion vector (MV.sub.1) from the current block to a second reference block of the second reference picture, determine a first temporal distance (TD.sub.0) from the current picture to the first reference picture, determine a second temporal distance (TD.sub.1) from the current picture to the second reference picture, and decode the current block according to bi-directional optical flow (BIO) using MV.sub.0, MV.sub.1, TD.sub.0, and TD.sub.1.
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/Irfan Habib/Examiner, Art Unit 2485