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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claim 20 is withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected Group II, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 11/6/2025.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed 3/4/2025 fails to comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.98(a)(4) because it lacks the appropriate size fee assertion. It has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered as to the merits. Note that the size fee assertion went into effect for IDSes filed on or after 1/19/2025.
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3, 8-13, 18 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102a2 as being anticipated by US 2024/0096050 to Ouyang, hereinafter referred to as “Ouyang.”
With regard to claim 1, Ouyang discloses in Figs. 1A and 1B a method comprising: projecting one or more lighting components onto pixel locations of a rendered image in a first image format [0036]-[0037], the projected one or more lighting components being set off from pixel location centers in the first image format according to associated jitter vectors (“jitter” [0034]); for at least one of the one or more lighting components, denoising projected lighting components in the rendered image to provide a denoised image in the first image format [0027], wherein the denoising projected lighting components preserves the associated jitter vectors (see Figs 2A-2D and [0034]) ; and transforming the denoised image to a processed image in a second image format ([0032], “upscaling”), the processed image to be transformed by application of upsampling (see “upscaler”, middle of [0032]) or temporal anti-aliasing, or a combination thereof, using the associated jitter vectors, the second image format having a spatial resolution at least as high as the first image format (see “upscaled to one or more higher output resolutions” [0032]).
With regard to claim 2, Ouyang discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising combining the processed image with a warped history image in the second image format to provide an output image [(see bottom portion of [0032] “can be warped”).
With regard to claim 3, Ouyang discloses the method of claim 2, wherein combining the processed image with the warped history image comprises combining the processed image with the warped history image based on neural network blending coefficient prediction [0033] and [0046].
With regard to claim 8, Ouyang discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising executing a neural network to provide parameters to affect denoising of the projected lighting components and to affect the transforming of the of the denoised image (see “deep learning model” [0054]).
With regard to claim 9, Ouyang discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the one or more lighting components comprise one or more of specular lighting, diffuse lighting, and albedo ( see “specular” [0030] and [0037]).
With regard to claim 10, Ouyang discloses the method of claim 1, wherein transforming the denoised image to a processed image in a second image format using the associated jitter vectors comprises transforming the one or more lighting components of the denoised image separately [0037].
The rejection of claim 1 is applied, mutatis mutandis, to similar claim 11.
The rejection of claim 2 is applied, mutatis mutandis, to similar claim 12.
The rejection of claim 3 is applied, mutatis mutandis, to similar claim 13.
The rejection of claim 8 is applied, mutatis mutandis, to similar claim 18.
The rejection of claim 9 is applied, mutatis mutandis, to similar claim 19.
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.
Claims 4, 7, 14, 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ouyang in view of WO 2020186765 A1, hereinafter referred to as “WO’765.” The examiner notes that all references to WO’765 are in relation to the supplied English translation.
With regard to claims 4 and 7, Ouyang discloses denoising of a rendered image where fine details are preserved. However, Ouyang fails to disclose using trilinear filtering to perform denoising on at least one of the projected one or more lighting components (or separately thereon, cl. 7).
On the other hand, WO’765 sets forth on the bottom of page 11 to the top of page 12 the use of a trilinear sampler 806 that is used to produce a denoised image frame 809.
Considering both Ouyang and WO’765 produce denoised images (Ouyang discloses in the last five lines of paragraph [0054] that “any appropriate denoising algorithm, deep learning model, or process can be used” and WO’765 uses trilinear filtering for denoising) it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have used the trilinear filtering employed by WO’765 as the denoising means used by Ouyang. Doing so would provide an output image denoised by a trilinear filter that reduces pixel noise and any resolution sampling artifacts efficiently and accurately.
The rejection of claim 4 and claim 7 is applied, mutatis mutandis, to similar claims 14 and 17.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 6, 15, 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID OMETZ whose telephone number is (571)272-7593. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 8am-4pm.
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DAVID OMETZ
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2672
/DAVID OMETZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2672