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 Amendment
The office action is in response to Applicant’s amendment filed 01/23/2026 which has been entered and made of record. Claims 1, 3, 7-9, 11, 15-17 and 19 have been amended. Claims 6, 14 and 20 have been canceled. Claims 21-23 have been newly added. Claims 1-5, 7-13, 15-19 and 21-23 are pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 01/23/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered, but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues Mammou and Kim, taken individually or in combination, do not teach the newly amended independent claims. Mammou’s adaptive subdivision operates per patch, which is different from subdividing per sub-volume; Kim’s adaptive octree, for partitioning cells, is not related to a base mesh and subdividing portions of the base mesh.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. First, Mammou teaches the subdivision information in paragraph [0599], it clearly indicates the subdivision information also includes bounding box information of the patch, this implies the volume information of the patch;
Second, Kim’s adaptive octree for partitioning cells is based on vertices of a 3D mesh model, the sub cell of the octree represents a sub volume, and all the vertices in the sub volume forms a sub mesh. In paragraph [0022-0023], Kim teaches the initial bounding box including all vertices, with the connectivity data for a 3D mesh. The initial bounding box represents the initial volume, the 3D mesh represents the based mesh. The base mesh is included in the initial bounding box. In Figure 2 and paragraph [0024], Kim teaches “Referring to FIG. 2, for example, vertices 10 included in the geometry data may be input in step 100, and a bounding box 11 may be generated in step 110. It is preferred that the bounding box 11 is formed in a size capable of including all vertices 10 included in the geometry data.”. Furthermore, Kim’s method is based on a 3D mesh model, paragraph [0049] “FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating a method for decoding 3D data expressed by a mesh model according to an embodiment of the present invention.”.
Finally, Mammou and Kim are in the same field of endeavor, namely data encoding and decoding. Kim’s teaching of adaptive octree based on bounding box improves efficiency and reliability. Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Kim with the subdivision method of Mammou to achieve efficiency and reliability.
Conclusions: The rejections set in the previous Office Action are shown to have been proper, and the claims are rejected below. New citations and parenthetical remarks can be considered new grounds of rejection and such new grounds of rejection are necessitated by the Applicant's amendments to the claims. Therefore, the present Office Action is made final.
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) 1-3, 5, 7-11, 13, 15-19 and 21-23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mammou et al. (US 20230290063 A1), hereinafter as Mammou, in view of Kim et al. (US 20090202160 A1), hereinafter as Kim.
Regarding claim 1, Mammou teaches A method comprising (Mammou paragraph [0003] “Disclosed herein are methods and apparatuses for image/video-based compression static and dynamic meshes.”): receiving, from a bitstream, subdivision information …… (Mammou paragraph [0324] “Mesh sub-bitstream 3202 contains data to generate base meshes to be fed to the mesh subdivision/mesh normalization process 3210.”); subdividing the base mesh according to the subdivision information (Mammou paragraph [0289] “the mesh subbitstream 3203 can be decoded by the mesh subbitstream decoder 3209 into a base mesh, which can be normalized via the mesh subdivision/mesh normalization process 3210.”), wherein a surface of each base sub-mesh of the base sub-meshes is subdivided based on a subdivision parameter, in the subdivision information, corresponding to the sub-volume containing the base sub-mesh (Mammou teaches a metadata with subdivision scheme and iteration count as the subdivision parameter, further teaches the bounding box as the sub volume information, paragraph [0600] “Metadata metadata(i) describing various information about the mesh structure. For example, this could include patch/patch group information, subdivision scheme, subdivision iteration count, bounding box, tiles, etc.”); decoding, from the bitstream, displacements for respective vertices of the subdivided based mesh (Mammou paragraph [0076] “Depending on the application and the targeted bitrate/visual quality, the encoder could optionally encode a set of displacement vectors associated with the subdivided mesh vertices, referred to as displacement field d(i).” and paragraph [0289] “The geometry subbitstream 3204 can be decoded by the video decoder 3211 into geometry images. The geometry images can be normalized via the displacement decoder/geometry normalization process 3212, resulting in displacement values”); and reconstructing the mesh based on applying the displacements to the respective vertices of the subdivided base mesh (Mammou Figure 5, and paragraph [0599-0608] “FIG. 5, discussed above, shows the interactions between: (1) the adaptive tessellation post-processor module 503, (2) the decoder 502, and (3) application modules 501. More specifically, the adaptive tessellation module 503 can take as inputs:…… A decoded base mesh m′(i), which may (but need not) have per vertex/face/edge attributes describing saliency and importance/priority information; A set of displacements d′(i) associated with the subdivided mesh vertices…… The tessellation module 503 can take advantage of the subdivision structure described above, together with information provided by the decoder 502 and/or the application 501 to generate the mesh M″(i) to be used for rendering or for processing by the application 501.”).
Mammou fails to teach ……indicating sub-volumes of a volume containing a base mesh of a mesh, wherein each sub-volume of the sub-volumes contains a respective base sub-mesh of base sub-meshes together forming the base mesh…… Kim teaches ……indicating sub-volumes of a volume containing a base mesh of a mesh (Kim teaches an adaptive octree as the sub-volume of a volume, paragraph [0024-0025] “FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a bounding box according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 2, for example, vertices 10 included in the geometry data may be input in step 100, and a bounding box 11 may be generated in step 110. It is preferred that the bounding box 11 is formed in a size capable of including all vertices 10 included in the geometry data……in step 120, an octree is generated by dividing the bounding box 11 into eight partitions of equal size. In addition, in step 120, the octree generation is preferably repeated until each divided partition includes only one or no vertex, thereby forming an adaptive octree.”) wherein each sub-volume of the sub-volumes contains a respective base sub-mesh of base sub-meshes together forming the base mesh…… (Kim teaches an adaptive octree based on a 3D base mesh model including all vertices, paragraph [0049-0056] “FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating a method for decoding 3D data expressed by a mesh model according to an embodiment of the present invention……In step 320, an adaptive octree of the bounding box is restored based on information on the adaptive octree inserted in a coding process……In step 330, vertices included in geometry data are restored from coding information on divided cells in the octree……In step 350, it is determined if all divided cells have been decoded. Step 330 is again performed on cells for which decoding has not been completed, and the decoding process is terminated when decoding all cells has been completed.” And paragraph [0022-0023] “in step 100, geometry data may be extracted from a data file in a wrl format, which includes information on the geometry data and connectivity data included in 3D data expressed by a mesh model, and then is then input. In step 110, a bounding box is generated, which is capable of including all vertices included in the geometry data, which has been input in step 100.”).
Mammou and Kim are in the same field of endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of data encoding and decoding. Kim teaches a method of using adaptive octree to encode and decode 3D mesh data to achieve efficiency and reliability (Kim paragraph [0007] “provides a coding method for efficiently reducing the size of 3D data, and a decoding method for reliably decoding the reduced size coded data.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Kim with the method of Mammou to achieve efficiency and reliability.
Regarding claim 2, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, and further teach wherein the subdivision parameter indicates: a subdivision level of a subdivision scheme; or a number of iterations of the subdivision scheme (Mammou paragraph [0070] “The subdivided curve can be automatically generated by the decoder once the base/decimated curve is decoded (i.e., there may be no need for any information other than the subdivision scheme type and subdivision iteration count to be encoded/transmitted)”).
Regarding claim 3, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, and further teach wherein the subdivision parameter indicates the subdivision scheme as one of a plurality of subdivision schemes (Mammou paragraph [0077] “Various subdivision schemes could be used in conjunction with the techniques herein. Suitable subdivision schemes may include, but are not limited to, those described in Reference [A4]. One possible solution is a mid-point subdivision scheme”).
Regarding claim 5, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, and further teach further comprising: decoding, from the bitstream, information indicating vertices and triangles of the base mesh (Mammou teaches 5 vertex and 4 triangle faces formed by the 5 vertex in Figure 40 and paragraph [0571-0574] “The positions of the mesh is reconstructed by adding the i-th displacement in the area corresponding to the current patch data unit in the displacement video to the i-th vertex in the subpart associated with the current patch data unit in the resampled base mesh…… To illustrate this, FIG. 40 provides an example of vertex indices in a subpart associated with a patch. Looking at the example of FIG. 40, if a patch (mesh_intra_patch_data_unit[0]) has subpart id 0, then triangle faces with fi(facegroupId) 0 are associated with this patch, which are f 1/2/4, f 2/4/5 and f 0/1/2.”).
Regarding claim 7, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, and further teach wherein the displacements comprise a displacement vector for each vertex of the vertices of the subdivided base mesh (Mammou paragraph [0068-0071] “a displacement vector can be computed for each vertex of the subdivided mesh 603 (illustrated by the arrows in the displaced polyline 604 of FIG. 6)…… The displaced curve can be generated by decoding the displacement vectors associated with the subdivided curve vertices.”), and wherein applying the displacements comprises adding the displacement vector to a respective vertex of the vertices (Mammou paragraph [0571] “The positions of the mesh is reconstructed by adding the i-th displacement in the area corresponding to the current patch data unit in the displacement video to the i-th vertex in the subpart associated with the current patch data unit in the resampled base mesh.”).
Regarding claim 8, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, and further teach wherein the determining the displacements comprises: decoding, from the bitstream, wavelet coefficients representing the displacements (Mammou paragraph [0106-0107] “The displacement sub-stream can be decoded by a video/image decoder 1804 corresponding to the video/image encoder used to encode the sub-stream….. The decoded displacement d″(i) can then generated by applying the inverse wavelet transform 1807 to the unquantized wavelet coefficients.”); performing inverse quantization of the wavelet coefficients (Mammou paragraph [0106] “The generated image/video can then un-packed 1805 and inverse quantization 1806 can be applied to the wavelet coefficients that result from the unpacking.”); and performing inverse wavelet transform of the inverse-quantized wavelet coefficients to determine the displacements (Mammou paragraph [0107] “The decoded displacement d″(i) can then generated by applying the inverse wavelet transform 1807 to the unquantized wavelet coefficients.”).
Regarding claim 9, it recites similar limitations of claim 1 but in a decoder form. The rationale of claim 1 rejection is applied to reject claim 9. In addition, Mammou teaches A decoder comprising: one or more processors; and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the decoder to (Mammou Figure 32, “FIG. 32 illustrates a v-mesh decoder framework block diagram” and paragraph [0643] “The processor core complex 4308 is operably coupled with local memory 4310 and the main memory storage device 4312. Thus, the processor core complex 4308 may execute instructions stored in local memory 4310 or the main memory storage device 4312 to perform operations”):
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 has similar limitations as claim 2, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 2.
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 has similar limitations as claim 3, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 3.
Regarding claim 13, claim 13 has similar limitations as claim 5, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 5.
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 has similar limitations as claim 7, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 7.
Regarding claim 16, claim 16 has similar limitations as claim 8, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 8.
Regarding claim 17, it recites similar limitations of claim 1 but in a non-transitory computer-readable medium form. The rationale of claim 1 rejection is applied to reject claim 17. In addition, Mammou teaches A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a decoder, cause the decoder to (Mammou paragraph [0642] “The electronic device 4300 includes the electronic display 4302, one or more input devices 4304, one or more input/output (I/O) ports 4306, a processor core complex 4308 having one or more processing circuitry(s) or processing circuitry cores, local memory 4310, a main memory storage device 4312, a network interface 4314, and a power source 4316 (e.g., power supply). The various components described in FIG. 43 may include hardware elements (e.g., circuitry), software elements (e.g., a tangible, non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable instructions), or a combination of both hardware and software elements.”):
Regarding claim 18, claim 18 has similar limitations as claim 2, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 2.
Regarding claim 19, claim 19 has similar limitations as claim 3, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 3.
Regarding claim 21, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, and further teach wherein the subdivision information comprises a respective subdivision parameter for the each sub-volume of the sub-volumes (Mammou teaches using different subdivision methods for each part, Kim teaches the sub-volumes, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Kim with the method of Mammou, Mammou Figure 35 and paragraph [0546] “Based on patch information associated with areas in the mesh, different subdivision methods may be applied…… in example 3500, which only changes subdivision iteration counts for each of the three parts (e.g., left part 3501, right part 3502, and head part 3503)”).
Mammou and Kim are in the same field of endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of data encoding and decoding. Kim teaches a method of using adaptive octree to encode and decode 3D mesh data to achieve efficiency and reliability (Kim paragraph [0007] “provides a coding method for efficiently reducing the size of 3D data, and a decoding method for reliably decoding the reduced size coded data.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Kim with the method of Mammou to achieve efficiency and reliability.
Regarding claim 22, claim 22 has similar limitations as claim 21, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 21.
Regarding claim 23, claim 23 has similar limitations as claim 21, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 21.
Claim(s) 4 and 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mammou et al. (US 20230290063 A1), hereinafter as Mammou, in view of Kim et al. (US 20090202160 A1), hereinafter as Kim, further in view of Hur et al. (US 20210407142 A1), hereinafter as Hur.
Regarding claim 4, Mammou in view of Kim teach The method of claim 1, but fail to teach wherein the subdivision information indicates the volume being partitioned into non-overlapping sub-volumes, and wherein the sub-volumes are determined based on the non-overlapping sub-volumes. Hur teaches wherein the subdivision information indicates the volume being partitioned into non-overlapping sub-volumes, and wherein the sub-volumes are determined based on the non-overlapping sub-volumes (Hur teaches using an adjusted virtual position for octree division to achieve non-overlapping blocks, preventing overlapping blocks, and further teaches signaling the region overlapping processing. Figure 19, Paragraph [0395-0400] “the octree constructor according to the embodiments, may configure all blocks belonging to a slice based on one octree……after the secondary quantization, there may be a region where block-1 and block-2 overlap each other. The figure shows a process of processing bounding box-1 corresponding to block-1 and bounding box-2 corresponding to block-2 by a virtual position adjuster and an octree constructor of the octree generator. After the virtual position readjustment, the position of block-2 overlapping with a partial area of the block-1 (bounding box 1) is adjusted to a new virtual bounding box. In this method, the position of the block may be adjusted and an octree may be constructed based on the adjusted virtual position. When the points are divided into blocks, occupancy bits may be formed after processing the region overlap. The region overlap processing method may be signaled and transmitted to the decoder”).
Mammou, Kim and Hur are in the same field of endeavor, namely computer graphics, especially in the field of data encoding and decoding. Hur teaches a method of using virtual positions for octree overlapping subblocks to prevent data loss or deterioration of data quality (Hur paragraph [0403] “The method/device according to the embodiments may prevent data loss or deterioration of the quality of point cloud content by preventing overlapping regions from occurring due to a change in regions that may occur in quantizing a plurality of blocks/bounding boxes.”). Therefore, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Hur with the method of Mammou and Kim to prevent data loss or deterioration of data quality.
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 has similar limitations as claim 4, therefore it is rejected under the same rationale as claim 4.
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 XIAOMING WEI whose telephone number is (571)272-3831. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00-5:00.
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/XIAOMING WEI/ Examiner, Art Unit 2611 /KEE M TUNG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2611