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 14 - 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vladimir (US 20190342378 A1: Made of reference in IDS) in view of DJURDJEVIC (US-20160165226-A1) In further view of Xu (US-20220159254-A1) and Heindel (US-20200036989-A1).
Regarding Claim 14, Vladmir teaches In a computer system, a method of processing an overlay over a video region to generate a screen image, the method comprising: constructing a screen image that includes a video region (Para 126 and 135: discloses constructing a composited screen image (window 400) that includes one or more video streams (video region) along with other graphical elements); drawing an overlay in the video region (Para.132 and fig 4: Discloses overlaying UI controls (406) on a displayed window that includes video and video 404 on the display screen), the overlay comprising an element that at least partially occludes the display pattern (Para. 132 and fig.4: discloses because video 404 and controls 406 are rendered over the video region, they inherently occlude the underlying content which is whatever is being displayed behind it.); encoding the screen image, thereby producing encoded data for the screen image ( Para 130: and para 207: teaches capturing and transmitting screen/ video content, which inherently requires encoding into transmissible data streams), wherein the encoding the screen image is preceded by chroma subsampling; and sending encoded data for a video and the encoded data for the screen image to a client computing device for reconstruction of the screen image ( Para.127, 129-130 and 135: discloses transmitting screen content (including video and graphics) to a client computing device for rendering), generation of an output overlay image by processing the screen image, and rendering of the output overlay image on top of the video in the video region ( Vladmir discloses generating a composited display (output image) via display composition module, wherein overlay elements (e.g. controls 406 and video stream 422) are rendered on top of video streams as shown in figs 5 and 7.).
Vladmir fails to teach drawing a display pattern of alternating 2x2 pixel blocks of contrasting colors in the video region and further fails to teach wherein the encoding the screen image is preceded by chroma subsampling.
DJURDJEVIC teaches drawing a display pattern of alternating pixel blocks of contrasting colors in the video region (Para 27, 44-45: teaches alternating dark/light blocks and fig 3a-3b teaches a checkerboard style display pattern. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have modified the system of Vladimir to incorporate teachings of DJURDJEVIC. DJURDJEVIC teaches Displaying alternating pixel blocks of contrasting color for improved visual detection and alignment . This combination would allow enhance visual detection of displayed content)
Vladmir in view of DJURDJEVIC fails to mention 2x2 pixel blocks. Xu teaches 2x2 pixel blocks( Xu para 176-177 discloses chroma blocks in a 2x2 structure. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have modified the system of Vladimir in view of DJURDJEVIC to incorporate teachings of Xu. Xu teaches representing image data using 2x2 pixel block structures, which are commonly used in black-based image processing and encoding.).
Vladmir in view of DJURDJEVIC and in further view of Xu fail to teach wherein the encoding the screen image is preceded by chroma subsampling. Heindel teaches wherein the encoding the screen image is preceded by chroma subsampling (Abstract: discloses a technique of performing chroma subsampling then applying video compression. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have modified the system of Vladimir in view of DJURDJEVIC and in further view of Xu to incorporate teachings of Heindel. Heindel teaches a technique of performing chroma subsampling prior to encoding to improve compression efficiency . This combination would improve the encoding performance of Vladmir system in video transmissions).
Regarding claim 15, Vladimir in view of DJURDJEVIC and in further view of Xu and Heindel teaches the method of claim 14, wherein the display pattern of alternating 2x2 pixel[[s]] blocks of contrasting colors is a checkerboard pattern (DJURDJEVIC, Para.44 – 45 and fig.3a-3b: discloses alternating dark/light pixel blocks and a checkerboard-style pattern).
Regarding claim 16, Vladimir in view of DJURDJEVIC and in further view of Xu and Heindel teaches the method of claim 14, wherein encoding the screen image comprises encoding the screen image in an Advanced Video Coding (AVC) 4:2:0 mode (Xu: Para.91: In HEVC-SCC-, the palette mode is also enabled for 4:2:2, 4:2:0 and monochrome chroma formats” Xu describes encoding an image in 4:2:0 mode by disclosing chroma locks using 4:2:0 subsampling for video encoding. It would have been obvious to encode the screen image using industry standard AVC 4:2:0 mode, as Xu teaches encoding with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling and AVC is a well-known, widely adopted video codec using this mode.) .
Regarding claim 17, Vladimir in view of DJURDJEVIC and in further view of Xu and Heindel teaches the method of claim 14, wherein the drawing of the display pattern of alternating 2x2 pixel blocks in the video region is performed by: a multimedia redirection (MMR) browser extension executing on a virtual machine hosted by a server system; or a screen remoting service executing on the virtual machine hosted by the server system or executing on the server system (Vladimir: fig.3 and para.43-46: describes a composited display and a display composition module 33d in the client device 304, but all server side processing and remote functionality are in the virtual desktop server 302) .
Regarding claim 18, Vladimir in view of DJURDJEVIC and in further view of Xu and Heindel teaches the method of claim 14, wherein the element that at least partially occludes the display pattern comprises a semi-transparent video control element or a semi-transparent filter (Vladimir. Para. 115 and 126: describe Ui elements and control buttons that can be overlays with its transparency set.).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-13 and 19-20 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
None of the prior art teaches such limitations in independent claims 1: “generating an output overlay image by processing the screen image, the processing comprising: selectively blending a first group of the pixels of the video region with neighboring pixels; assigning display pattern colors to a second group of the pixels of the video region, respectively, based on color bias; detecting background pixels among the pixels of the video region; detecting opaque foreground pixels among the pixels of the video region; and detecting semi-transparent foreground pixels among the pixels of the video region.” The same allowable subject matter is also recited in dependent claim 20.
None of the prior art teaches such limitations in independent claim 19: reconstructing the screen image, including decoding the encoded data for the screen image and performing chroma up sampling operations on the screen image.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/29/2025, with respect to the rejection(s) of claims 14 and 16-19 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground of rejection is made in view of Vladimir, DJURDJEVIC, Xu, and Heindel as fully explained above. Applicant Argues that the prior art does not teach display pattern of alternating 2x2 pixel blocks of contrasting color . Djurdjevic teaches displaying alternating pixel blocks of contrasting colors, including checkerboard style patterns ( see para 27, 44-45 and figs 3a-3b. Additionally Xu teaches representing image data using 2x2 pixel block structures (see para 176-177). Applicant argues about the limitation of chroma subsampling prior to encoding. Heindel explicitly teaches the technique of performing chroma subsampling followed by video compression (see abstract).
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
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/LATRELL ANTHONY CREARY/Examiner, Art Unit 2613
/XIAO M WU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2613