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, see Remarks at page 13, filed 23 February 2026, with respect to the effective filing date afforded to the claims based on the provisional priority application have been fully considered but are not persuasive. Applicant argues the amended claims are more in line with the priority application. Examiner respectfully disagrees. The priority application is two and a half pages long, about half of which is background, and offers very little detail beyond showing the architecture of the channel split and its key features described at a high level. The claims include subject matter that goes beyond what is explicitly or implicitly provided by the priority application. For example, the independent claims recite “at least one channel of the at least one of the feature maps is shared in common both by the first receptive field of the first of the n pieces and also by the second receptive field of the second of the n pieces”. However, the provisional application, at best, shows an example where one of the channels of a feature map is shared by all of the receptive fields. Therefore, the effective filing date of the pending claims remains as 25 August 2023.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks at page 13, filed 23 February 2026, with respect to the objection to the drawings have been fully considered but are not persuasive. The replacement sheet identifies Figures 4A and 4B as “related art”. The customary label is “Prior Art”. The phrase “related art” could be interpreted differently. The term “related” does not clearly indicate that the respective figures depict prior art. Rather, the term “related” leaves open the interpretation that what is depicted is similar or related to the claimed invention but does not necessarily constitute or qualify as prior art. Therefore, the objection maintained.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks at page 13, filed 23 February 2026, with respect to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) have been fully considered and are persuasive. The rejections have been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks at page 13-15, filed 23 February 2026, with respect to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered but are moot, as they pertain to art that is no longer applied to reject the independent claims under either 35 U.S.C. 102 or 35 U.S.C. 103.
Priority
Applicant claims the benefit of the earlier filing date of provisional application no. 63/435,510 filed 27 December 2022. However, the pending claims are not fully supported by the provisional application. Since there is insufficient evidence that Applicant had possession of the claimed inventions of claims 1-20 at the time of filing the provisional application, claims 1-20 are considered effectively filed on 25 August 2023, when the non-provisional application was filed.
Drawings
Figures 4A and 4B should be designated by a legend such as --Prior Art-- because only that which is old is illustrated. See MPEP § 608.02(g).
Corrected drawings in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. The replacement sheet(s) should be labeled “Replacement Sheet” in the page header (as per 37 CFR 1.84(c)) so as not to obstruct any portion of the drawing figures. If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Objections
Claims 2, 10, and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities: “shared in common each of the first receptive field, the second receptive field...” should be changed to “shared in common by each of the first receptive field, the second receptive field...” for clarity. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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.
Claims 1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by A Lightweight Local-Global Attention Network for Single Image Super-Resolution (copy provided by Applicant) to Song et al. (hereinafter “Song”).
Regarding claim 1, Song teaches a method for neural network based image compression, the method being executed by at least one processor, the method comprising:
obtaining feature maps from a neural network transforming an image (Song, section 3.1, “set of feature maps denoted by F0”), at least one of the feature maps represents a plurality of channels arranged in rows and columns of the at least one of the feature maps (Feature maps are generated with 3x3 convolution applied to the input image, which generates a matrix of rows and columns (windows). See Song at section 3.1 and Figure 1(a)); and
channel-wise splitting the at least one of the feature maps into n pieces of which (Song, section 4.3, “In our LGAN, channels are split into 3 parts to execute 3 different attention operations (i.e., WA, SWA, LRA).”):
a first of the n pieces represents a first receptive field covering at least part of each of two of the rows of the at least one of the feature maps (Self attention in the Long-Range attention operation executes self-attention for each pixel in a feature map in the same row, i.e., a first piece, using horizontal reshaping and executes self-attention for each pixel in the feature map in the same column, i.e., a second piece, using vertical reshaping. See Song at Fig. 5), a second of the n pieces represents a second receptive field covering at least part of each of two of the columns of the at least one of the feature maps (Row self-attention in LRA. See Song at Fig. 5), and
at least one channel of the at least one of the feature maps is shared in common both by the first receptive field of the first of the n pieces and also by the second receptive field of the second of the n pieces (Song - The row and column receptive fields are applied to the same channel.).
Regarding claim 4, Song teaches the method of claim 1, wherein n of the n pieces is an integer having a value equal to or less than a number of channels of the at least one of the feature maps (n = 2 for the row and column receptive fields of the LRA branch. There are 60 total channels, so each branch operates on 20 channels. See Song at sections 3.3 and 4.1.)
Regarding claim 6, Song teaches the method of claim 1, wherein channel-wise splitting the at least one of the feature maps is based on an order of each of channels of the at least one of the feature maps (The channels are deterministically split into the three different branches. See Song at Figure 2 and section 3.3.).
Regarding claim 8, Song teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the shape of the first receptive field is pre-defined for the first receptive field, and the shape of the second receptive field is pre-defined for the second receptive field (LRA pre-defines row and column shapes. See Song at Figure 5).
Claims 9, 12 and 14 substantially correspond to claims 1, 4 and 6 by reciting an apparatus for neural network based image compression, the apparatus comprising (Song, Abstract, “LGAN is demonstrated by extensive experimental results.”): at least one memory (A memory is implied by executed program code.) configured to store computer program code (Song, Abstract, “source code”); and at least one processor (A processor is implied by executed program code.) configured to read the computer program code and operate as instructed by the computer program code to implement the same steps recited in claims 1, 4 and 6.
Claims 15, 18 and 20 substantially correspond to claims 1, 4 and 6 by reciting a non-transitory computer-readable medium (Song, Abstract, “LGAN is demonstrated by extensive experimental results.”; A memory is implied by executed program code.) storing instructions (Song, Abstract, “source code”) that, when executed by at least one processor (A processor is implied by executed program code.) of an apparatus for neural network based image compression, cause the at least one processor to implement the same steps recited in claims 1, 4 and 6.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 3, 5, 11, 13, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Song in view of Low Complexity Single Image Super-Resolution with Channel Splitting and Fusion Network )copy provided by Applicant) to Zou et al. (hereinafter “Zou”).
Regarding claim 3, Song teaches the method of claim 1, wherein each of the n pieces comprises a same number of channels (Song - The LRA is one channel), but does not teach that which is explicitly taught by Zou.
Zou teaches different number of channels (Zhou, section 2.2, “we adopt an asymmetrical channel split”).
Song discloses splitting channels into multiple groups that are processed by different attention mechanisms based on variance. Thus, Song shows that it was known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to performing grouping input features into three channels to apply different attention operations, which is analogous to the claimed invention in that it is pertinent to the problem being solved by the claimed invention, improving feature representation. Zou discloses an asymmetrical channel split between different processing branches. Thus, Zhang shows that it was known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to randomly select channels, which is analogous to the claimed invention in that it is pertinent to the problem being solved by the claimed invention, improving feature representation.
A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the asymmetrical channel allocation disclosed by Zou with the channel-wise splitting disclosed by Song, to thereby allocate channels asymmetrically resulting in a different number of channels for at least one of the attention operations to account for channel variances. Based on the foregoing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have made such modification according to known methods to yield the predictable results to have the benefit of improving feature representation.
Regarding claim 5, Song teaches the method of claim 1, but does not teach that which is explicitly taught by Zou.
Zou teaches wherein channel-wise splitting the at least one of the feature maps is based on grouping channels of the at least one of the feature maps based on variances of each of the channels (Zou, section 2.2, “Since the information extracted from LR images contains various information, the variance of channel features cannot be neglected. To make a distinction between different channel features, we adopt an asymmetric channel split to divide the feature into two parts”).
The rationale for obviousness is the same as provided for claim 3.
Claims 11 and 13 substantially corresponds to claims 3 and 5 by reciting an apparatus for neural network based image compression, the apparatus comprising (Song, Abstract, “LGAN is demonstrated by extensive experimental results.”): at least one memory (A memory is implied by executed program code.) configured to store computer program code (Song, Abstract, “source code”); and at least one processor (A processor is implied by executed program code.) configured to read the computer program code and operate as instructed by the computer program code to implement the same steps recited in claims 3 and 5.
The rationale for obviousness is the same as provided for claim 3.
Claims 17 and 19 substantially correspond to claims 3 and 5 by reciting a non-transitory computer-readable medium (Song, Abstract, “LGAN is demonstrated by extensive experimental results.”; A memory is implied by executed program code.) storing instructions (Song, Abstract, “source code”) that, when executed by at least one processor (A processor is implied by executed program code.) of an apparatus for neural network based image compression, cause the at least one processor to implement the same steps recited in claims 3 and 5.
The rationale for obviousness is the same as provided for claim 3.
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Song in view of Shufflenet: An Extremely Efficient Convolutional Neural Network for Mobile Devices to Zhang et al. (hereinafter “Zhang”).
Regarding claim 7, Song teaches the method of claim 1, but does not teach that which is explicitly taught by Zhang.
Zhang teaches channel-wise splitting the at least one of the feature maps is based on randomly selecting channels of the at least one of the feature maps (See Zhang at Figure 1, “Channel Shuffle”; pg. 2, “random channel shuffle”).
Song discloses splitting channels into multiple groups that are processed by different attention mechanisms. Thus, Song shows that it was known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to performing grouping input features into three channels to apply different attention operations, which is analogous to the claimed invention in that it is pertinent to the problem being solved by the claimed invention, improving feature representation. Zhang discloses ShuffleNet that assigns input features to three groups and then randomly shuffles the channels within the groups. Thus, Zhang shows that it was known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to randomly select channels, which is analogous to the claimed invention in that it is pertinent to the problem being solved by the claimed invention, improving feature representation.
A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the random shuffling disclosed by Zhang with the channel-wise splitting disclosed by Song, to thereby randomly select channels for each of the attention operations. Based on the foregoing, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have made such modification according to known methods to yield the predictable results to have the benefit of improving feature representation.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 10 and 16 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, and to obviate the objection for minor informalities.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new grounds 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 RYAN P POTTS whose telephone number is (571)272-6351. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 9am-5pm EST.
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/RYAN P POTTS/Examiner, Art Unit 2672
/SUMATI LEFKOWITZ/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2672
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