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 Amendment
Applicant's response to the last Office Action, filed on 2/27/2026 has been entered and made of record.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1, 12, 14, and 15 have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
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 1-10, 12-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 2021/0217203) in view of Eckart et al. (US 2019/0319851).
Regarding claim 1, Kim teaches a method, comprising:
receiving an input three-dimensional (3D) point cloud, wherein the input 3D point cloud includes a spatial distribution of points located at a plurality of spatial locations in a represented 3D space (see figure 5A, Kim discusses processing an input 3D point cloud that includes spatial information);
generating a plurality of patches from the input 3D point cloud, wherein each patch in the plurality of patches includes pre-reshaped patch data of one or more patch data types, wherein the pre-reshaped patch data indicates at least in part a target visual property and is derived at least in part from visual properties of a subset of the points in the input 3D point cloud (see figure 5A, para. 0444, Kim discusses segmenting the point cloud into multiple patches that permit one to efficiently project the 3D space data of the point cloud onto 2D planes; see figure 5A, para. 0041, 0417, Kim discusses processing patches of the point cloud and generating visual properties);
performing encoder-side reshaping on the pre-reshaped patch data included in the plurality of patches to generate reshaped patch data of the one or more patch data types for the plurality of patches (see figure 5A, para. 0417, Kim discusses different down scalers for downscaling patch data),
encoding the reshaped patch data of the one or more data types, in place of the prereshaped patch data of the one or more data types, for the plurality of patches into a 3D video signal (see figure 5A, para. 0417, Kim discusses video encoding the downscaled patch data), wherein the 3D video signal causes a recipient device of the 3D video signal to generate a reconstructed 3D point cloud that approximates the input 3D point cloud (see figure 5A, para. 0417, Kim discusses generating a compressed point cloud video signal).
Kim teaches a point cloud transfer algorithm that allows the attribute values for a reconstructed point cloud to be selected such that distortion between the original point cloud and a reconstructed version of the original point cloud is minimized (see para. 0718).
Kim does not expressly disclose wherein the encoder-side reshaping includes applying a mapping of pre-reshaped codewords in a pre-reshaped patch into reshaped codewords to minimize perceptual errors in a reshaped patch corresponding to the pre-reshaped patch;
However, Eckart teaches wherein the encoder-side reshaping includes applying a mapping of pre-reshaped codewords in a pre-reshaped patch into reshaped codewords to minimize perceptual errors in a reshaped patch corresponding to the pre-reshaped patch (see para. 0118, 0126, Eckart discusses minimizing a difference between a reference point cloud and transformed version of the point cloud, see para. 0039-0041, 0110-0113, 0126, Eckart discusses point clouds can be represented as vectors in bit format or distribution functions. The Examiner suggests the Applicant further define the term codewords).
Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 1. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
The determination of obviousness is predicated upon the following: One skilled in the art would have been motivated to modify Kim in this manner in order to improve 3D point cloud encoding compression by implementing a B-spine basis function that provides an efficient way to represent smooth data with a much smaller set of coefficients, therefore leading to reduced storage and faster processing performance. Furthermore, the prior art collectively includes each element claimed (though not all in the same reference), and one of ordinary skill in the art could have combined the elements in this manner explained using known engineering design, interface and/or programming techniques, without changing a fundamental operating principle of Kim, while the teaching of Eckart continues to perform the same function as originally taught prior to being combined, in order to produce the repeatable and predictable result of calculating a B-spine basis function to reduce storage and increase processing speed of point cloud compression by replacing high-dimensional data with smaller array of B-spline coefficients drastically reducing storage requirements. The Kim and Eckart systems perform point cloud encoding, therefore one of ordinary skill in the art would have reasonable expectation of success in the combination. It is for at least the aforementioned reasons that the examiner has reached a conclusion of obviousness with respect to the claim in question.
Regarding claim 2, Kim teaches wherein the reshaped patch data of the one or more patch data types for the plurality of patches are generated from the pre-reshaped patch data based on a plurality of reshaping functions (see figure 5A, para. 0444, Kim discusses segmenting the point cloud into multiple patches that permit one to efficiently project the 3D space data of the point cloud onto 2D planes; see figure 5A, para. 0417, 0444, Kim discusses multiple down scaling functions performed on point cloud data).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 2. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 2. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 3, Kim teaches wherein the plurality of reshaping functions comprises a first reshaping function for reshaping a first patch in the plurality of patches, wherein the plurality of reshaping functions comprises a second different reshaping function for reshaping a second patch in the plurality of patches (see figure 5A, para. 0417, 0444, Kim discusses multiple down scaling functions performed on point cloud data).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 3. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 3. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 4, Kim teaches wherein the first reshaping function for reshaping the first patch is specified by a first reshaping metadata portion, wherein the second reshaping function for reshaping the second patch is specified by a second different reshaping metadata portion, wherein both the first reshaping metadata portion and the second reshaping metadata portion are encoded in the 3D video signal (see figure 5A, para. 0417, 0444, Kim discusses multiple down scaling functions performed on point cloud data).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 4. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 4. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 5, Kim teaches wherein the 3D video signal is further encoded with reshaping metadata that enables the recipient device to perform inverse reshaping on the reshaped patch data decoded from the 3D video signal (see figure 5A, figure 5B, para. 0418, Kim discusses different down scalers for downscaling patch data; see figure 2D, figure 5B, Kim discusses the decompression variant that up scales the image based on data in the compressed point cloud information).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 5. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 5. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 6, Kim teaches wherein the plurality of reshaping functions comprises a specific reshaping function for reshaping a specific patch in the plurality of patches, wherein the specific reshaping function is determined based at least in part on noise levels computed from patch data portions in the specific patch (see figure 5B, para. 0411, Kim discusses signal to noise ratio is used as a metric to assess the quality of the point cloud).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 6. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 6. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 7, Kim teaches further comprising: determining a subset of two or more patches among the plurality of patches (see figure 5A, figure 5B);
generating two or more pre-adjusted reshaping functions for the two or more patches, wherein each of the two or more pre-adjusted reshaping functions corresponds to a respective patch of the two or more patches (see figure 5A, para. 0418-0419, 0422, 0435, 0454, Kim discusses scaling and downscaling patches);
assigning two or more weighting factors to the two or more patches, wherein each of the two or more weighting factors is assigned to a respective patch of the two or more patches and are set based on one or more importance selection factors such as size, location, depth, texture, or level of occupancy of each of the two or more patches (see figure 5A, figure 5B, para. 0418-0419, 0422, 0435, 0454, Kim discusses scaling video based on occupancy, geometry, and attribute);
using the two or more weighting factors to adjust the two or more pre-adjusted reshaping functions into two or more reshaping functions that are included in the plurality of reshaping functions (see figure 5A, figure 5B, para. 0427, Kim discusses scaling factors to adjust image data).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 7. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 7. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 8, Kim teaches wherein the one or more patch data types comprises at least one of: an occupancy patch data type, a geometry patch data type, or an attribute patch data type (see figure 5B, para. 0010, 0126-0127, Kim discusses patch information comprising occupancy, geometry, and attribute information).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 8. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 8. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 9, Kim teaches wherein the pre-reshaped patch data of the one or more patch data types for the plurality of patches is encoded in one or more video frames of the 3D video signal according to a predetermined layout of an atlas for the plurality of patches, wherein atlas information specifying the predetermined layout of the atlas is encoded in the 3D video signal according to a 3D video coding specification (see para. 0511, Kim discusses auxiliary information indicating characteristics of the respective patches in the 3D representation. The auxiliary information may be communicated using the V-PCC (Video-Point Cloud Compression) atlas tile group data unit type or may be communicated using the atlas sub bitstream of a V-PCC bitstream).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 9. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 9. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Regarding claim 10, Kim teaches wherein the plurality of patches includes projected patches, wherein the projected patches are generated by applying one or more 2D projections to the input 3D point cloud (see para. 0444, Kim discusses process segments a point cloud frame into multiple 2D projected images/videos).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 10. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 10. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Claim 12 is rejected as applied to claim 1 as pertaining to an obvious decoding variant of the encoding method in claim 1 (see figure 2D, figure 5B, Kim discusses the decompression variant. The Examiner notes that claim 12 was not further amended and therefore a broader decoding variant of claim 1).
Regarding claim 13, Kim teaches further comprising rendering a display image derived from the reconstructed 3D point cloud on an image display (see para. 0767, Kim discusses a display output device for reconstructed 3D point cloud output).
The same motivation of claim 1 is applied to claim 13. Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim with Eckart to derive at the invention of claim 13. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
Claim 14 is rejected as applied to claim 1 as pertaining to a corresponding apparatus.
Claim 15 is rejected as applied to claim 1 as pertaining to a corresponding non-transitory computer readable medium.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 2021/0217203) in view of Eckart et al. (US 2019/0319851) in view of Chou et al. (US 10,262,451).
Regarding claim 11, Kim and Eckart do not expressly wherein the encoder-side reshaping on the pre-reshaped patch data included in the plurality of patches is performed based on a plurality of patch-based reshaping functions, wherein the plurality of patch-based reshaping functions comprises at least one patch-based reshaping function relating to one of: a three-dimensional lookup table (3DLUT), a cross-color channel predictor, or a predictor with B-Spline functions as basis functions. However, Chou teaches wherein the encoder-side reshaping on the pre-reshaped patch data included in the plurality of patches is performed based on a plurality of patch-based reshaping functions, wherein the plurality of patch-based reshaping functions comprises at least one patch-based reshaping function relating to one of: a three-dimensional lookup table (3DLUT), a cross-color channel predictor, or a predictor with B-Spline functions as basis functions (see col. 7 lines 30-44, col. 19 lines 13-20, Chou discusses implementing a B-spline wavelet basis function for image transformation).
Motivation to combine may be gleaned from the prior art considered. It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the invention of Kim and Eckart with Chou to derive at the invention of claim 11. The result would have been expected, routine, and predictable in order to perform 3D point cloud encoding/compression.
The determination of obviousness is predicated upon the following: One skilled in the art would have been motivated to modify Kim and Eckart in this manner in order to improve 3D point cloud encoding compression by implementing a B-spine basis function that provides an efficient way to represent smooth data with a much smaller set of coefficients, therefore leading to reduced storage and faster processing performance. Furthermore, the prior art collectively includes each element claimed (though not all in the same reference), and one of ordinary skill in the art could have combined the elements in this manner explained using known engineering design, interface and/or programming techniques, without changing a fundamental operating principle of Kim and Eckart, while the teaching of Chou continues to perform the same function as originally taught prior to being combined, in order to produce the repeatable and predictable result of calculating a B-spine basis function to reduce storage and increase processing speed of point cloud compression by replacing high-dimensional data with smaller array of B-spline coefficients drastically reducing storage requirements. The Kim, Eckart, and Chou systems perform point cloud encoding, therefore one of ordinary skill in the art would have reasonable expectation of success in the combination. It is for at least the aforementioned reasons that the examiner has reached a conclusion of obviousness with respect to the claim in question.
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 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNY A CESE whose telephone number is (571) 270-1896. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday – Friday, 9am – 4pm.
If attempts to reach the primary examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Gregory Morse can be reached on (571) 272-3838. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8300.
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/Kenny A Cese/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2663
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