DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to communication filed on 11/25/2025. Terminal Disclaimer has been filed and approved. Claims 1 and 18 have been amended. Claims 1-20 are pending on this application.
Response to Arguments
2. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 11 and 18 “header for a groups” 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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
3. 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.
4. Claims 1-4, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Feldmeier U.S. patent No. 5,583,859.
Regarding claim 1. Fig. 5. of Feldmeier discloses a method of data compression (Col. 9 lines 43-47 discloses “encoding/decoding”) comprising: encoding (Col. 9 lines 43-47) a group of data items (data items of Chunk 65) by: generating header data (72; Col. 5 lines 57-58 ) comprising a single (single header 72; Col. 32-34) indication of a body portion size (SIZE) for a plurality of body portions (62-1…62-7) wherein the body portion size (Size; Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit e.g. 1 byte) is b bits and b>0 (Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit e.g. 1 byte); and generating a body data field for the group 70), wherein the body data field (70) is generated from a plurality of body portions (62-1…62-7), each body portion (each 62-1…62-7) comprising b bits (Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit 1 byte)) and each of the body portions (each 62-1…62-7) corresponding to a data item (data item of 65) in the group (Chunk 65).
Regarding claim 2. The method according to claim 1, Fig. 5 further discloses wherein the header data (72) comprises h bits (bits of 72) and wherein the method (Fig. 5) further comprises encoding (Col. 9 lines 43-47) groups of data items (data item of chunk 65).
Regarding claim 3. The method according to claim 2, Fig. 5 further discloses wherein h (bits of 72) is fixed (bits of 72 is fixed) for all groups (Chunk 65) and b (Col. 3 lines 63-65 discloses “i.e number of bits in the basic data unit”) is not fixed between groups (Col. 4 lines 6-7 discloses “Chunks are the basis of a flexible and efficient system for fragmentation”).
Regarding claim 4. The method according to claim 2, Fig. 8 further comprising storing (70) one or more encoded data blocks (220) comprising the header data (230) and the body data fields, (242, 244) wherein said storing one or more encoded data blocks (220) comprises: storing a body data block (200) comprising body data fields (242, 244) for a plurality of groups (200) ; and storing a header data block (230) comprising header data (230) for the plurality of groups (200).
Regarding claim 18. Fig. 5. of Feldmeier discloses data compression apparatus compression (Col. 9 lines 43-47 discloses encoding/decoding) comprising: an encoding module (Col. 9 lines 43-47) configured to encode a group of data items (data items of Chunk 65) by generating header data (72; Col. 5 lines 57-58) comprising a single (single header 72; Col. 32-34) indication of a body portion size (SIZE; Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit e.g. 1 byte), wherein the body portion size (SIZE; Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit e.g. 1 byte) is b bits and b>0 (Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit e.g. 1 byte); and a module (70) configured to generate a body data field (62) for the group (Chunk), wherein the body data field (62) is generated from a plurality of body portions (62-1…62-7) , each body portion (each 62-1…62-7) comprising b bits (Col. 5 lines 43 discloses size of the basic data unit e.g. 1 byte)) and each of the body portions (each 62-1….62-7) corresponding to a data item in the group (data item of Chunk 65).
Regarding claim 19. Fig. 2 of Feldmeier further discloses a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (16) having stored thereon computer readable instructions (instruction of 16) that, when executed at a computer system (16), cause the computer system (16) to perform the method of claim 1 (Fig. 5).
Regarding claim 20. Fig. 2 of Feldmeier further discloses a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (16) having stored thereon computer readable instructions (instruction of 16) that, when executed at a computer system (16), cause the computer system (16) to perform the method of claim 3 (Fig. 5).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5. 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.
6. Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Feldmeier applied to claim 1 above in view of Chen et al. Pub. No. 2019/0115933.
Feldmeier applied to claim 1 above does not disclose wherein the data items comprise weights for a neural network.
Fig. 3A of Chen et al. disclose a compression of the data items (X) comprise weights for a neural network (X).
Feldmeier and Chen et al. are common subject matter of compression of data; therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of claimed invention to one ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains to incorporate Chen et al. into Feldmeier for the purpose providing an artificial neural network (ANN) is based on a collection of connected neurons as suggested by paragraph 0003 of Chen et al.
7. Claims 14 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over AGARWAL ANIL K WO 99/04340 in view of Feldmeier U.S. patent No. 5,583,859
Regarding claim 14. Fig. 1b and Fig. 2 of AGARWAL ANIL K WO discloses a method of data decompression (130, 135, 140) comprising: for an encoded group of data items (data items of interleave Frames 200): reading header data (230) for a frame ( interleaved frame 200) , wherein the header data (230) for a frame of data items (data of interleave frame 200) comprises a b-bit body portion size (bit size of 244), for the group of data items (interleave frames 200), wherein b is fixed (fixed bit size of 244) within a group (interleave frame); determining the bit size b of the body portion (size of 244), for the group of data items (200) from the header data 230); reading a body data field (220) based on the determined body portion size (size of 240) , with one body portion (Frame#) of the data items in the group (200) ; and decoding (130, 135, 140) the body data field (220) to generate decoded data items (140) , wherein each of the decoded data (each of 140) items comprises n bits (bits of 240) , where n
≥
b (bits of 244).
However, AGARWAL ANIL K WO discloses the header data (230) for a frame instead for a group as claimed.
Fig. 5 of Feldmeier discloses a single header data (72; Col. 5 lines 57-58) for a for a group of data items (data items of Chunk 65; Col. 5 lines 31-35).
AGARWAL ANIL K WO and Feldmeier are common subject matter of Header for encoding and decoding; therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of claimed invention to one ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains to incorporate header of Feldmeier into header of AGARWAL ANIL K WO for the purpose of providing ability to process data without intermediate buffering for reordering or reassembly improves protocol processing performance. Chunks are the basis of a flexible and efficient system for fragmentation. Chunks allow fragmentation, reassembly and the combining of an arbitrary number of chunks into a packet for efficient bandwidth utilization (Col. 4 lines 4-10 of Feldmeier).
Regarding claim 15. AGARWAL ANIL K WO and Feldmeier applied to claim 14, Fig. 2 AGARWAL ANIL K WO further comprising encoding groups of data items (200), wherein the header data 230) comprises h bits (2 octets) and h is fixed (fixed of 2 octets) for all groups (modified by Feldmeier applied to claim 14 above) and b (242) is not fixed between groups (modified by Feldmeier applied to claim 14 above).
Allowable Subject Matter
8. Claim 5-6 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. Prior art does not teach: wherein said generating a body data field for the group comprises interleaving bits from the body portions corresponding to data items in the group, and wherein interleaving bits from the body portions corresponding to data items in the group comprises:(a) inserting a first bit from each of the body portions into the body data field;(b) inserting a next bit from each of the body portions into the body data field; and(c) repeating (b) until all bits from each of the body portions have been inserted into the body data field.
9. Claim 7-10 and 12 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. Prior art does not teach: wherein encoding groups of data items comprises, for each of the groups; receiving the group of data items; identifying a body portion size, b, by locating a bit position of a most significant leading one across all the data items in the group; generating the header data comprising a bit sequence encoding the body portion size; and generating a body portion comprising b-bits for each of the data items in the group by removing none, one or more leading zeros from each data item.
10. Claim 13 is 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. Prior art does not teach: wherein the data items have a distribution centred substantially on zero and the method further comprises, prior to encoding a group of data items, pre-processing the data items in the group by converting all data items having a negative value to positive values and interleaving the converted data items with data items having a positive value, or wherein the data items have a distribution centred on a non-zero value and the method further comprises, prior to encoding a group of data items, pre-processing the data items in the group by shifting all data items such that the shifted distribution is centred substantially on zero and then converting all shifted data items having a negative value to positive values and interleaving the converted shifted data items with shifted data items having a positive value.
11. Claim 16-17 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. Prior art does not teach: wherein the body data field comprises a plurality of concatenated sections, each of the sections comprising one bit from each body portion, and wherein decoding the body data field comprises: starting with an initial set of data items comprising only zeros, one for each data item in the group, reading sections of the body data field and for each section of the body data field, overwriting one of the zeros for each of the data items with a bit value from the section of the body data field to generate the decoded data items; or generating a body data mask comprising ones in bit positions corresponding to the determined body portion size, reading sections of the body data field and for each section of the body data field, combining one of the bits in the body data mask for each of the data items with a bit value from the section of body data field.
Contact Information
12. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Linh Van Nguyen whose telephone number is (571) 272-1810. The examiner can normally be reached from 8:30 – 5:00 Monday-Friday.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Mr. Dameon E. Levi can be reached at (571) 272-2105. The fax phone numbers for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned are (571-273-8300) for regular communications and (571-273-8300) for After Final communications.
01/05/2026
/LINH V NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2845