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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in China on 11/19/2022. It is noted, however, that applicant has not filed a certified copy of the Chinese application as required by 37 CFR 1.55. An attempt to electronically retrieve the application failed on 04/29/2024.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 09/15/2023 and 03/08/2024 is/are being considered by the examiner.
The information disclosure statement filed 02/10/2025 fails to comply with 37 CFR 1.98(a)(1), which requires the following: (1) a list of all patents, publications, applications, or other information submitted for consideration by the Office; (2) U.S. patents and U.S. patent application publications listed in a section separately from citations of other documents; (3) the application number of the application in which the information disclosure statement is being submitted on each page of the list; (4) a column that provides a blank space next to each document to be considered, for the examiner’s initials; and (5) a heading that clearly indicates that the list is an information disclosure statement. The information disclosure statement has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered.
The information disclosure statement filed 02/10/2025 fails to comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.98(a)(4) because it lacks the appropriate size fee assertion. It has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered as to the merits.
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claim(s) as a whole is/are drawn to a computer readable medium (CRM) which, under broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI), covers a signal per se unless otherwise defined in the application to exclude ineligible signal embodiments. When looking to the Specification of the published application, paragraph [0164] gives a list of potential CRM. This language expresses conditional, hypothetical, and/or possible situations and therefore is not considered to definitively limit the CRM. In addition, non-statutory embodiments are not explicitly excluded in the application. Therefore, the claim(s) as a whole, given BRI and in light of the Specification, has/have embodiments that are drawn to a signal per se and is/are ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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(s) 1, 19, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ge et al, U.S. Publication No. 2024/0422324 in view of Xu et al, U.S. Publication No. 2021/0035268.
Regarding claim 1, Ge teaches a method performed by an electronic apparatus, comprising:
determining a local frame sequence from a video (see Ge paragraph [0094]);
obtaining a feature map sequence of the local frame sequence by encoding the local frame sequence (see Figure 6, s602 and paragraph [0004], “An encoder side separately extracts a feature of a current frame and a feature of a reference frame”);
determining a feature flow sequence of the local frame sequence based on the feature map sequence of the local frame sequence (see Figure 6, s603 and Figure 8, “feature domain optical flow estimation”);
obtaining an updated feature map sequence of the local frame sequence, by performing, based on the feature flow sequence, feature fusion between adjacent feature maps in the feature map sequence (see Figure 8, “fusion” and paragraph [0218]); and
obtaining a processed local frame sequence, by decoding the updated feature map sequence of the local frame sequence (see paragraph [0004], “A decoder side decodes the feature domain residual bitstream, to obtain a decoded feature domain residual; obtains a reconstructed feature of the current frame based on the decoded feature domain residual and the predicted feature of the current frame”).
Ge does not expressively teach
determining [the] feature flow sequence of the local frame sequence based on a mask image sequence regarding an object to be removed, the mask image sequence being corresponding to the feature map sequence.
However, Xu in a similar invention in the same field of endeavor teaches a method of determining a feature flow sequence of a local frame sequence of a video (see Xu Figure 2, s102 and paragraph [0036]) as taught in Ge further comprising
determining [the] feature flow sequence of the local frame sequence based on a mask image sequence (see Figure 2, s101 and s103) regarding an object to be removed (see paragraph [0003] which indicates that “image repair” refers to removing a watermark and paragraph [0009] which indicates that the mask indicates an area to be repaired).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention would have found it obvious to combine the teaching of determining a feature flow sequence based on a mask image sequence as taught in Xu with the method of determining feature flow sequence based on a feature map sequence as taught in Ge, the motivation to allow watermarks and other unwanted artifacts to be removed from videos thereby increasing viewing quality.
Ge in view of Xu teaches the mask image sequence being corresponding to the feature map sequence (see Xu Figure 2, s101 as combined with Ge Figure 6, s602 and s603).
Regarding claim 19, Ge in view of Xu teaches the method of claim 1, and further teaches an electronic apparatus, comprising:
a processor; and a memory storing computer executable instructions, wherein the computer executable instructions, when being executed by the processor, cause the at least one processor to perform the method according to claim 1 (see Ge paragraph [0037]).
Claim 20 recites similar limitations as claim 19, and is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ge et al, U.S. Publication No. 2024/0422324 in view of Xu et al, U.S. Publication No. 2021/0035268 and Rao et al, U.S. Publication No. 2022/0222469.
Regarding claim 2, Ge in view of Xu teaches all the limitations of claim 1, but does not expressively teach wherein the determining the local frame sequence from the video comprises: splitting, based on scene information, the video to obtain a video sequence; and obtaining the local frame sequence, by selecting, based on a predetermined stride, a predetermined number of consecutive image frames from the video sequence as the local frame sequence, and wherein the predetermined stride is less than or equal to the predetermined number.
However, Rao in a similar invention in the same field of endeavor teaches a method for determining a local frame sequence of a video for analysis (see Rao paragraph [0051]) as taught in Ge in view of Xu wherein the determining the local frame sequence from the video comprises:
splitting, based on scene information, the video to obtain a video sequence; and obtaining the local frame sequence, by selecting, based on a predetermined stride, a predetermined number of consecutive image frames from the video sequence as the local frame sequence, and wherein the predetermined stride is less than or equal to the predetermined number (see paragraph [0051]).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention would have found it obvious as a matter of simple substitution to replace the dividing method of Ge in view of Xu with that of Rao to yield the predictable results of successfully separating and analyzing video clips.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-18 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CASEY L KRETZER whose telephone number is (571)272-5639. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00-7:00 PM Pacific Time.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, David Payne can be reached at (571)272-3024. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CASEY L KRETZER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2635