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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-5 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. Specifically, see the citation of the Hajizadeh et al. and Jain references in the rejections that follow.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Hajizadeh et al.
Regarding claim 1, Hajizadeh et al. (“Predictive compression of animated 3D models by optimized weighted blending of key-frames”, copy provided, see PTO-892) discloses:
A decoding method for decoding a dynamic mesh, performed by a dynamic mesh decoding apparatus, the decoding method comprising:
acquiring a bitstream (page 559, “2. Proposed Method”, animated mesh sequence);
separating the bitstream into a first bitstream, in which a preset key frame among a plurality of frames representing the dynamic mesh code is encoded (pages 559-561, key frames are extracted), and a second bitstream, in which one of the plurality of frames other than the preset key frame is encoded (pages 561-565, the non-key frames are synthesized by predicting vertex locations; see also page 559 regarding non-key frames being encoded as blending weights and residual errors); and
decoding the bitstream (page 566, inverse operations of the encoder are performed by the decoder)
wherein, based on the bitstream being the first bitstream, decoding the bitstream includes
reconstructing a mesh of the preset key frame by decoding the first bitstream yielding a reconstructed key frame (page 566, key frames are extracted/reconstructed and linearly combined),
wherein, based on the bitstream being the second bitstream, decoding the bitstream includes
deriving motion data of a current frame by decoding the second bitstream (page 566, vertex locations for non-keyframes are determined; see page 561 re: approximation of non-keyframes in an animated sequence with minimized residual error), and
reconstructing a mesh of the current frame by applying the motion data to an immediately previous frame among previously reconstructed frames, and wherein the previously reconstructed frames include the reconstructed key frame (page 564-565, approximation of animated sequence by m key-frames and their corresponding weights for n non-key frames as described; page 566 regarding reconstructing the animated mesh sequence)
Regarding claim 2, Hajizadeh additionally discloses:
wherein deriving the motion data includes:
deriving the motion data for each vertex of the mesh of the current frame (pages 559, 561, 566, vertices in the mesh are derived)
Regarding claim 3, Hajizadeh additionally discloses:
wherein deriving the motion data includes: deriving at least one piece of motion data for one face of the mesh of the current frame (page 566, vertex locations for non-keyframes are determined; see page 561 re: approximation of non-keyframes in an animated sequence with minimized residual error; see also page 556, meshes include multiple faces, deriving the motion to perform the reconstruction of the mesh implies the reconstruction of at least a face of the mesh)
Regarding claim 4, Hajizadeh additionally discloses:
wherein deriving the motion data includes: deriving a three-dimensional motion vector as the motion data (page 560, time varying geometry represented as a 3D vector)
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(s) 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hajizadeh et al. in view of Jain (“Efficient Inference on Video, In Real-Time and At Scale”, copy attached, see PTO-892).
Regarding claim 5, Hajizadeh discloses the method of the parent claim (claim 4).
As previously noted, Hajizadeh discloses:
decoding the second bitstream using a decoding method corresponding to an encoding method used in a dynamic mesh encoding apparatus (page 566, inverse operations of the encoder are performed by the decoder)
Hajizadeh does not explicitly disclose:
Wherein a motion map is derived;
Up-sampling the restored motion map; and
converting the up-sampled motion map into a motion vector.
Jain (“Efficient Inference on Video, In Real-Time and At Scale”, copy attached, see PTO-892) discloses:
wherein deriving of the motion data includes:
deriving a motion map by decoding the second bitstream using a decoding method corresponding to an encoding method used in a dynamic mesh encoding apparatus (pages 7-8, maps);
up-sampling the restored motion map (page 7, the map is upsampled); and
converting the up-sampled motion map into a motion vector (page 8, a block motion vector map is formed)
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the system of Jain with the system of Hajizadeh such that the system would have been configured to derive the motion map, up-sample the restored motion map, and convert the up-sampled motion map into a motion vector as described in Jain. The suggestion/motivation would have been in order to implement a system in which “a large fraction of video frames [can] be inferred accurately and efficiently” (page 5 of the Jain reference).
Conclusion
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN R WALLACE whose telephone number is (571)270-1577. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday from 8:30-5 PM.
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/JOHN R WALLACE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2682