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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 03/16/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The Amendment filed 03/16/2026 has been entered. No claim has been added or cancelled. Claims 1, 5-7, 11, 15-17, and 20 have been amended. Claims 1-20 remain pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see page 8, filed 03/16/2026, with respect to the 102 rejection have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 102 rejection has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 8-10, filed 03/16/2026, with respect to the 103 rejections have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of a newly found reference.
Examiner concurs the previously presented reference fail to disclose or suggest the amended claim language defining vertices. However, the Tourapis reference added to the rejection below discloses or suggests the amended claim language in form of submeshes of a bash mesh, each submesh contains more than 2 vertices. Therefore, the claims are now rejected over the combination of Xu, Tourapis, and Xu.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 04/03/2026 was considered by the examiner.
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.
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.
Claims 1-4, 11-14, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hur et al. US 2022/0084164 A1, hereafter Hur, in view of Tourapis et al. “Base mesh data substream format for VDMC”, hereafter Tourapis, further in view of Xu et al. “[V-DMC][EE4.4 related][new] On improving motion vector coding by integrating duplicated vertices in reference frames”, hereafter Xu.
Regarding claim 1, Hur discloses a method for video decoding (point cloud data reception method) [title], the method performed by at least one processor (processors) [0187] and comprising:
obtaining, from a bitstream, a mesh representing an encoded volumetric data of at least one three-dimensional (3D) visual content (received the bitstream containing the point cloud video data; point cloud decompressing coding include G-PCC coding; 3D space…a Ply (Polygon File formal or the Stanford Triangle Format) file) [0078; 0079; 0089];
partitioning a plurality of vertices of the mesh (restore position of points…rendering point cloud data restored based on the positions and attribute values of the points) [claim 12]
decoding the encoded volumetric data by predicting the vertices based on a prediction mode (obtaining a prediction mode of a point to be decoded) [claim 12].
However, Hur fails to explicitly disclose partitioning a plurality of vertices of the mesh into a plurality of groups, each group comprising K number of vertices, wherein K is a positive integer greater than 2 each of the vertices being different from and corresponding to one or more motion vectors; and decoding the encoded volumetric data by predicting the vertices in each group of the plurality of groups based on a prediction mode associated with the each group.
Tourapis, in an analogous environment, discloses partitioning a plurality of vertices of the mesh into a plurality of groups, each group comprising K number of vertices, wherein K is a positive integer greater than 2 (segment a mesh into multiple smaller partitions, referred to in this document as submeshes (Figure 5) [page 4].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the submesh method, as disclosed by Tourpais, with the invention disclosed by Hur, the motivation being help partial decoding and spatial random access [page 4].
Further Xu, in an analogous environment, discloses each of the vertices being different from and corresponding to one or more motion vectors (integrate the k-th pair…of duplicated vertices into one single vertex Ak (called as integrated vertex) and update the connectivity in the decoded base mesh of reference frame; total number of extra MVs in the integrated vertices…shall be in the range of 1 to 22; decoding process…step 2: integrate the duplicated vertices) [section 3; section 3.2; section 3.3]; and
decoding the encoded volumetric data by predicting the vertices in each group of the plurality of groups based on a prediction mode associated with the each group (these operations are conducted in the reference frames and is decoupled from the inter-frames…because of the integration of duplicated vertices, we further update the 1-to-1 mapping between the inter-frame and its reference frame; decoding process…intra-frame process has the following two steps…inter-frame process is to decode all the MVs and reconstruct vertex positions) [section 3.3].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the integration method, as disclosed by Xu, with the invention disclosed by Hur and Tourpais, the motivation being reducing bits [section 1].
Regarding claim 2, Hur, Tourpais, and Xu address all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Tourapis further discloses determining, based on a syntax obtained from the bitstream (1.3. Base mesh frame parameter set RBSP syntax) [page 9], whether to partition vertices of the mesh into a plurality of groups, wherein the syntax is of a basemesh inter submesh data unit syntax (the base mesh frame parameter set has the frame level information such as number of submeshes in the frame) [page 9].
Regarding claim 3, Hur, Tourpais, and Xu address all of the features with respect to claim 2 as outlined above.
Tourapis further discloses the each group consists of the same number of vertices (segmentation of a mesh into two submeshes) [Figure 5], and wherein the basemesh inter submesh data unit syntax is obtained with the encoded volumetric data and indicates K (the base mesh frame parameter set has the frame level information such as number of submeshes in the frame) [page 9].
Regarding claim 4, Hur, Tourpais, and Xu address all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Tourpais further discloses K is 16 (see vertices of submeshes in the segmentation of a mesh into two submeshes) [Figure 5].
Examiner notes it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art for the submeshes to contain 16 vertices since it has been held that discovering an optimum value of a result effective variable involves only routine skill in the art, see MPEP 2144.05(II)(B).
Regarding claims 11-14, claims 11-14 are drawn to an apparatus adapted to implement the method of claims 1-4, and are therefore rejected in the same manner as above. However, the claims also recite a memory, which Hur also teaches (memory) [0604].
Regarding claim 20, non-transitory computer readable medium claim 20 is drawn to the instructions corresponding to the method of claim 1. Therefore, non-transitory computer readable medium claim 20 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of unpatentability as used above.
Claims 5 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hur, Tourapis, Xu, further in view of Yang et al. “Compression of 3-D Triangle Mesh Sequences Based on Vertex-Wise Motion Vector Prediction”, hereafter Yang.
Regarding claim 5, Hur, Tourpais, and Xu address all of the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Tourapis further discloses determining, based on a syntax obtained from the bitstream, a prediction mode for predicting vertices of a respective group in the plurality of groups (1.4.2. submesh header syntax), 1.4.3 submesh data unit) [pages 11 and 12].
However, the combination fails to explicitly disclose wherein the prediction mode being a first value indicating that the vertices of the respective group are to be predicted based on a motion vector of the one or more motion vectors, and wherein the prediction mode being a second value indicating that the vertices of the respective group are to be predicted based on an estimation residue.
Yang, in an analogous environment, discloses wherein the prediction mode being a first value indicating that the vertices of the respective group are to be predicted based on a motion vector of the one or more motion vectors, and wherein the prediction mode being a second value indicating that the vertices of the respective group are to be predicted based on an estimation residue (instead of applying a single prediction mode to a whole sequence, we divide the object in a sequence into several blocks, consisting of a pre-specified number of vertices. Then, we choose the optimal prediction mode in the rate-distortion sense…the encoder searches the optimal prediction mode that minimizes the functional J. The mode index is transmitted as side information) [section II.A.].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use rate-distortion for prediction choice, as disclosed by Yang, with the invention disclosed by Hur and Tourpais and Xu, the motivation being coding gain [section IV].
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 are drawn to an apparatus adapted to implement the method of claim 5, and are therefore rejected in the same manner as above. However, the claims also recite a memory, which Hur also teaches (memory) [0604].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-10 and 16-19 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Amjoun et al. “Encoding Animated Meshes in Local Coordinates” discloses dynamic mesh compression.
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STEFAN GADOMSKI
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2485
/STEFAN GADOMSKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2485
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