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 .
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.
Claims 18 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nystad, in view of Theoharatos et al. (Compressed Domain Image Indexing and Retrieval Based on the Minimal Spanning Tree; IEEE; 2005), referred herein as Theoharatos.
Regarding claim 18, Nystad teaches a method comprising: for each macroblock of at least some macroblocks of at least one computer graphics texture, computing plural endpoint colors corresponding to endpoints of the macroblock (paragraphs 138 and 142; paragraphs 158 and 159; paragraph 237; endpoint colors are computed for each block);
executing at least A Nystad, paragraph 129; paragraphs 142 and 144; paragraph 149; paragraph 169; for each macroblock, endpoint colors are represented for portions of the blocks as an expression that combines the endpoint colors, an encoding process is applied, and the results represent the portions; note that “B” is not required by the claim).
Nystad does not teach that A comprises applying forward Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT).
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Theoharatos teaches a method comprising computing endpoint colors for at least portions of each macroblock of a plurality of macroblocks (Intro section 1, paragraph beginning “In this work…”; section 2.2, the first two paragraphs), and further comprising applying forward Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to the colors and using the result to represent the portions (section 2.1 and figure 1).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the DCT processing of Theoharatos with the encoding and compression of Nystad because this helps increase the compression effects to reduce bandwidth and storage requirements without sacrificing quality, thereby enhancing both performance and image quality (see, for example, Theoharatos, section 5, the first paragraph).
Regarding claim 19, Nystad in view of Morita teaches the method of Claim 18, comprising executing A (please refer to the rejection of claim 18, above, which addresses step A; this claim is similarly rejected).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-8 and 21-29 are allowed. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 1, the prior art teaches computing endpoint colors of macroblocks, computing means and differences, compression, and other claim features. In the context of claim 1 as a whole, however, the prior art does not appear to teach a system configured to compute plural endpoint colors corresponding to endpoints of a macroblock, the plural endpoint colors comprising a first endpoint color and a second endpoint color, compute a mean of the plural endpoint colors, compute a difference between the first endpoint color and the second endpoint color to determine a projection vector for the macroblock, the projection vector comprising the mean and the difference, compress the mean and the difference, compute per-pixel distances along the projection vector for the macroblock, and use the mean, the difference, and the per-pixel distance to represent the macroblock for texture compression. The subject matter of claim 1 is therefore allowable.
Regarding independent claim 24, the limitations of these claims substantially correspond to the limitations of claim 1; thus they are allowed for reasons similar to those discussed above.
The remaining dependent claims depend directly or indirectly from allowable independent claims, and are therefore also allowable.
Claim 20 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. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claim 20, this claim incorporates similar allowable subject matter as claim 1, and thus comprises allowable subject matter for the reasons discussed above with respect to claim 1. (It is noted that rewriting this claim in independent form, or incorporating claim 20 into claim 18, would require amending the “and/or” language used in claim 18 to be amended such that “B” is no longer optional).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the 102 and 103 rejections have been fully considered, but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection and allowable subject matter presented above.
It is noted, however, that as previous discussed, regarding Applicant’s argument that claim 18 includes similar features as claim 1, claim 18 recites an important distinction from claim 1, where it leaves method A and method B in the alternative. Accordingly, none of the mean, difference, projection vector, or distance limitations are required by claim 18. Thus, claims 18 and 19 remain rejected.
Conclusion
The following prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Oldcorn (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0081357); Image analysis for image compression suitability and real-time selection.
Keramidas (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0025098); Methods for fixed rate block based compression of image data.
Wihlidal (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0051285); Texture compression.
Marcelino (Lost block reconstruction in depth maps using color image contours; Picture Coding Symposium); 2012/
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 DAVID T WELCH whose telephone number is (571)270-5364. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday, 8:30-5:30 EST, and alternate Fridays, 9:00-2:30 EST.
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DAVID T. WELCH
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2613
/DAVID T WELCH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2613
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