DETAILED ACTION
1. Applicant’s amendment filed on June 24, 2026 in which claims 1, 9, 17 were amended, has been fully considered and entered, but the arguments are moot in view of new grounds of rejection.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
2. In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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. Claims 1-5, 7, 9-13, 15, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Le Scouarnec et al. (US Patent Application Publication 2023/0254533) in view of Guetz et al. (US Patent no. 6091777), and Ryu et al. (US Patent Application Publication no. 2006/0233235), and further in view of Hinz et al. (US Patent no. 10,212,420).
Regarding claims 1 and 9, Scouarnec discloses an electronic device comprising: one or more processors (See Scouarnec [0013]); and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions that, upon execution of the instructions by the one or more processors, are to cause a content provider in a network (See Scouarnec [0001], [0029]-[0030]) to: identify a request by a client over the network for content (See Scouarnec [0020], [0043]), identify a network bandwidth (See Scouarnec [0044]); and transmit, based on the network bandwidth, (1) a base layer of the content without an enhanced layer of the content, or (2) the base layer of the content and the enhanced layer of the content (See Scouarnec [0009], [0013] and [0091]).
It is noted that Scouarnec is silent about wherein the base layer renditions are continuously pulled as claimed in the newly amended claim.
However, Guetz et al. teaches wherein the base layer renditions are continuously pulled (See Guetz col. 5, lines 37-57, and col. 18, lines 28-45).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying Scouarnec to incorporate Guetz’s teachings wherein the base layer renditions are continuously pulled. The motivation for performing such a modification in Scouarnec is to allow each client to use the base layer to receive a coarse version of the image and more details can be fetched by using more details available in successive subbands as taught by Guetz (See Guetz col. 9, lines 18-25).
It is also noted that the combination of Le Scouarnec and Guetz is silent about wherein the base layer is encoded with anchor frames inserted at equal intervals to segment a Group of Pictures (GOP) into sub-GOPs to enable switching between the base layer and the enhanced layer.
However, Ryu teaches wherein the base layer is encoded with anchor frames inserted at equal intervals to segment a Group of Pictures (GOP) into sub-GOPs to enable switching between the base layer and the enhanced layer (See Ryu [0036] “intra refresh operation is performed every 3 frames”, [0037] “A total number of bits in a GOP is 28. Therefore, in the present invention, the size in bits of an I frame, which is a first frame of a GOP, is about 5.5, while, in the prior art, the size in bits of an I frame is 8.” , [0046] and channel switching in [0003]).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying the combination of Le Scouarnec and Guetz to incorporate Ryu’s teachings wherein the base layer is encoded with anchor frames inserted at equal intervals to segment a Group of Pictures (GOP) into sub-GOPs to enable switching between the base layer and the enhanced layer. The motivation for performing such a modification in the combination of Le Scouarnec and Guetz is to minimize the random access delay and to regulate the bit rate as taught by Ryu (See Ryu [0018]).
It is finally noted that claim the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz, and Ryu is silent about the newly added limitations “wherein frames in the enhanced layer are coded with a spatial dependency on corresponding frames in the base layer having a same timestamp”.
However, Hinz teaches “wherein frames in the enhanced layer are coded with a spatial dependency on corresponding frames in the base layer having a same timestamp” (See Hinz col. 6, lines 18-26, col. 12, lines 1-6 “According to the example illustrated in FIG. 5, the coding/decoding order traverses pictures 22a and 22b in a manner so that the base layer picture 22a of a certain time stamp/instance is traversed prior to the enhancement layer picture 22b of the same time stamp of the enhancement layer signal” and col. 86, lines 40-45).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz and Ryu to incorporate Hinz’s teachings wherein frames in the enhanced layer are coded with a spatial dependency on corresponding frames in the base layer having a same timestamp. The motivation for performing such a modification in the above combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz and Ryu is to define an availability of between portions of base and enhancement layer signals neighboring each other, in a spatial, temporal and/or inter-layer sense, so that, at the time of coding/decoding a current portion of the enhancement layer, the available portions for that current enhancement layer portion are defined via the coding/decoding order as taught by Hinz (See Hinz col. 12, lines 13-19).
As per claim 17, Scouarnec discloses one or more non-transitory computer-readable media comprising instructions that, upon execution of the instructions by one or more processors, are to cause a content provider in a network (See Scouarnec [0137] and [0029]) to:identify a request by a client over the network for content (See Scouarnec [0020], [0043]); identify a network bandwidth (See Scouarnec [0044]); and transmit, based on the network bandwidth, (1) a base layer of the content without an enhanced layer of the content, or (2) the base layer of the content and the enhanced layer of the content (See Scouarnec [0009], [0013] and [0091]).
It is noted that Scouarnec is silent about wherein the base layer renditions are continuously pulled as claimed in the newly amended claim.
However, Guetz et al. teaches wherein the base layer renditions are continuously pulled (See Guetz col. 5, lines 37-57, and col. 18, lines 28-45).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying Scouarnec to incorporate Guetz’s teachings wherein the base layer renditions are continuously pulled. The motivation for performing such a modification in Scouarnec is to allow each client to use the base layer to receive a coarse version of the image and more details can be fetched by using more details available in successive subbands as taught by Guetz (See Guetz col. 9, lines 18-25).
It is also noted that the combination of Le Scouarnec and Guetz is silent about wherein the base layer is encoded with anchor frames inserted at equal intervals to segment a Group of Pictures (GOP) into sub-GOPs to enable switching between the base layer and the enhanced layer.
However, Ryu teaches wherein the base layer is encoded with anchor frames inserted at equal intervals to segment a Group of Pictures (GOP) into sub-GOPs to enable switching between the base layer and the enhanced layer (See Ryu [0036] “intra refresh operation is performed every 3 frames”, [0037] “A total number of bits in a GOP is 28. Therefore, in the present invention, the size in bits of an I frame, which is a first frame of a GOP, is about 5.5, while, in the prior art, the size in bits of an I frame is 8.”, [0046] and channel switching in [0003]).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying the combination of Le Scouarnec and Guetz to incorporate Ryu’s teachings wherein the base layer is encoded with anchor frames inserted at equal intervals to segment a Group of Pictures (GOP) into sub-GOPs to enable switching between the base layer and the enhanced layer. The motivation for performing such a modification in the combination of Le Scouarnec and Guetz is to minimize the random access delay and to regulate the bit rate as taught by Ryu (See Ryu [0018]).
It is finally noted that claim the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz, and Ryu is silent about the newly added limitations “wherein frames in the enhanced layer are coded with a spatial dependency on corresponding frames in the base layer having a same timestamp”.
However, Hinz teaches “wherein frames in the enhanced layer are coded with a spatial dependency on corresponding frames in the base layer having a same timestamp” (See Hinz col. 6, lines 18-26, col. 12, lines 1-6 “According to the example illustrated in FIG. 5, the coding/decoding order traverses pictures 22a and 22b in a manner so that the base layer picture 22a of a certain time stamp/instance is traversed prior to the enhancement layer picture 22b of the same time stamp of the enhancement layer signal” and col. 86, lines 40-45).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz and Ryu to incorporate Hinz’s teachings wherein frames in the enhanced layer are coded with a spatial dependency on corresponding frames in the base layer having a same timestamp. The motivation for performing such a modification in the above combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz and Ryu is to define an availability of between portions of base and enhancement layer signals neighboring each other, in a spatial, temporal and/or inter-layer sense, so that, at the time of coding/decoding a current portion of the enhancement layer, the available portions for that current enhancement layer portion are defined via the coding/decoding order as taught by Hinz (See Hinz col. 12, lines 13-19).
As per claims 2 and 10, the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz further discloses wherein the content is encoded in accordance with scalable video coding (SVC) (See Scouarnec [0039]).
As per claims 3 and 11, the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz further teaches providing anchor frame in the SVC is considered as an inherent feature of the bitstream which is constructed with a sequence of IBBPBB, IBBPBB, IBBPBB where the I is the intraframe or the anchor frame as disclosed in Scouarnec [0136] or [0133].
As per claims 4-5 and 12-13, the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz further teaches wherein the content is transmitted based on hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming, and wherein the HTTP ABR protocol includes support for one or both of layered renditions and layered representation. (See Scouarnec [0034]).
As per claims 7, 15 and 19, the combination of Le Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz wherein if the base layer and the enhanced layer are transmitted, the base layer and enhanced layer are transmitted in concurrent communication channels (See Scouarnec [0056]).
5. Claims 6, 8, 14, 16, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Le Scouarnec et al. (US Patent Application Publication 2023/0254533) in view of Guetz et al. (US Patent no. 6091777), Ryu et al. (US Patent Application Publication no. 2006/0233235) and Hinz et al. (US Patent no. 10,212,420) as applied to claims 1, 9 and 17 above, and further in view of Lu et al. (US Patent no. 9,306,708).
Regarding claims 6, 8, 14, 16, 18 and 20, it is noted that although the combination of Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz provides bitrates to the layers (See Scouarnec [0091]), it is silent about specifically indicating wherein the enhanced layer of the content has a bit rate that is higher than that of the base layer of content, and wherein the enhanced layer is one of a plurality of enhanced layers that have respective bit rates that are higher than a bit rate of the base layer.
However, Lu teaches wherein the enhanced layer of the content has a bit rate that is higher than that of the base layer of content, and wherein the enhanced layer is one of a plurality of enhanced layers that have respective bit rates that are higher than a bit rate of the base layer (See Lu col. 10, lines 37-67 and col. 11, lines 1-2).
Therefore, it is considered obvious that one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, would recognize the advantage of modifying the combination of Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz to incorporate Lu’s teachings wherein the enhanced layer of the content has a bit rate that is higher than that of the base layer of content, and wherein the enhanced layer is one of a plurality of enhanced layers that have respective bit rates that are higher than a bit rate of the base layer. The motivation for performing such a modification in the proposed combination of Scouarnec, Guetz, Ryu and Hinz is to perform the proper assignment of the layers based on the priority level at the receiving end.
6. Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GIMS S PHILIPPE whose telephone number is (571)272-7336. The examiner can normally be reached Maxi Flex.
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/GIMS S PHILIPPE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2424
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