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 .
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.
Claims 1-3, 8, 9, 15-17 and 22-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi (US Pub. 2013/0117796) in view of S et al. (US Pub. 2021/0135944) and further in view of Wu et al. (US Pub. 2021/0326145).
Regarding claims 1, 15 and 24, Qi teaches a method for data transmission, wherein the method is applied at a server, and the method comprises: obtaining media data to be sent to a terminal device (see “Source Data” 430 in Figure 4); determining at least two physical transmission paths from the server to the terminal device (see “Channel A” 450, “Channel B” 470 and “Channel C” 480 in Figure 4); and transmitting the media data to the terminal device on the at least two physical transmission paths (see step 502 and step 504 in Figure 5), wherein media data transmitted on each of the physical transmission paths is part or all of the media data (see “Key Frames” 460 and “Encoded Data” 440 (includes Key Frames 460) in Figure 4). Qi, however, does not teach the multipath method applied at a cloud server. S teaches the multipath method applied at a cloud server (“The first device 10 may be alternatively a cloud device that supports a multipath transmission protocol, for example, a cloud server” in [0113], see also Figure 1A). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qi to have the multipath method applied at a cloud server as taught by S in order to enable a plurality of applications belonging to different companies to run on one application server [0113]. Qi in view of S, however, does not teach media data is rendered game screen data generated by the cloud server based on game instructions received from the terminal device. Wu teaches media data is rendered game screen data generated by the cloud server (“the cloud server sends the encoded game screens to a game player in the management client in the form of a video stream. The game player decodes the game screens and displays the game screens” in [0120]) based on game instructions received from the terminal device (“receive an operation instruction of the user in the game player … and send the operation instruction to … a cloud server” in [0117]). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qi in view of S to have media data is rendered game screen data generated by the cloud server based on game instructions received from the terminal device as taught by Wu in order to start the cloud game [0120].
Regarding claims 2 and 16, Qi teaches transmitting the media data the terminal device on the at least two physical transmission paths comprises: determining respective media data to be transmitted corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths according to the media data (see “Key Frames” 460 and “Encoded Data” 440 (includes Key Frames 460) in Figure 4); encoding the media data to be transmitted corresponding to each of the physical transmission paths to obtain the encoded data corresponding to the physical transmission path (see “Encoder” 410 in Figure 4); and transmitting the respective encoded data on the at least two physical transmission paths to the terminal device (see step 502 and step 504 in Figure 5, see also “Key Frames” 460 on Channel B 470 and Channel C 480 and “Encoded Data” 440 on Channel A 450 in Figure 4).
Regarding claims 3 and 17, Qi teaches the media data comprises a plurality of image frames (“compressed video data” in [0027]), and wherein determining respective media data to be transmitted corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths according to the media data comprises: determining respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames (see “Key Frames” 460 on Channel B 470 and Channel C 480 and “Encoded Data” 440 on Channel A 450 in Figure 4).
Regarding claims 8 and 22, Qi teaches the at least two physical transmission paths comprise a first and a second physical transmission paths, and wherein determining respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames comprises: determining all image frames in the plurality of image frames as the image frames corresponding to the first physical transmission path (see “Encoded Data” 440 (includes Key Frames 460) on Channel A 450 in Figure 4); and determining a part of the image frames in the plurality of image frames as the image frames corresponding to the second physical transmission path (see “Key Frames” 460 on Channel B 470 and Channel C 480 in Figure 4).
Regarding claims 9 and 23, Qi teaches determining respective media data to be transmitted corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths according to the media data comprises: determining the media data as the media data to be transmitted corresponding to each of the physical transmission paths (“The video data stream may include video frame data including key frames” in [0040], see also “Key Frames” 460 on Channel B 470 and Channel C 480 and “Encoded Data” 440 on Channel A 450 in Figure 4).
Claims 4, 5, 18 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi in view of S et al. and Wu et al. and further in view of Asif et al. (US Pub. 2018/0288451).
Regarding claims 4 and 18, Qi in view of S and Wu teaches the limitations in claims 3 and 17 as shown above. Qi in view of S and Wu, however, does not teach a number of the at least two physical transmission paths is K, and, for the i-th physical transmission path where i is an integer less than or equal to K, determining the image frame corresponding to the i-th physical transmission path comprises: determining that the image frames corresponding to the first physical transmission path comprise the i-th, (i+K)-th, (i+2*K)-th . . . , and (i+n*K)-th image frames from the plurality of image frames, wherein n is the maximum value satisfying i+n*K≤L, and L is a number of the plurality of image frames. Asif teaches a number of the at least two physical transmission paths is K, and, for the i-th physical transmission path where i is an integer less than or equal to K, determining the image frame corresponding to the i-th physical transmission path comprises: determining that the image frames corresponding to the first physical transmission path comprise the i-th, (i+K)-th, (i+2*K)-th . . . , and (i+n*K)-th image frames from the plurality of image frames, wherein n is the maximum value satisfying i+n*K≤L, and L is a number of the plurality of image frames (see the temporal round-robin splitting of the video stream in Figure 5, K corresponds to 4, see Q1 where i corresponds to 1, frames comprise 1, 5 and 9 correspond to 1, 1+4, 1+2*4, and L corresponds to 12 (see video stream 502 in Figure 5)). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qi in view of S and Wu to have a number of the at least two physical transmission paths is K, and, for the i-th physical transmission path where i is an integer less than or equal to K, determining the image frame corresponding to the i-th physical transmission path comprises: determining that the image frames corresponding to the first physical transmission path comprise the i-th, (i+K)-th, (i+2*K)-th . . . , and (i+n*K)-th image frames from the plurality of image frames, wherein n is the maximum value satisfying i+n*K≤L, and L is a number of the plurality of image frames as taught by Asif in order to be able to provide a low quality version of the video stream without being merged with any of the other sub-streams [0046].
Regarding claims 5 and 19, Qi teaches the encoded data corresponding to each of the physical transmission paths comprises a key frame (see “Frame 1” 300 in Figure 3) and a non-key frame (see “Frame 2” 301, “Frame 3” 302 … “Frame 7” 306 in Figure 3), and positions of the key frames in the encoded data corresponding to different physical transmission paths are different (Since the data on Channel B and C is key frames only and the data on Channel A is entire data including both the key frames and non-key frames in Figure 4, the positions of the key frames in the data corresponding to the different channels are different.).
Claims 6, 7, 20 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi in view of S et al. and Wu et al. and further in view of Fonseca De Oliveira et al. (US Pub. 2020/0112472).
Regarding claims 6 and 20, Qi in view of S and Wu teaches the limitations in claims 3 and 17 as shown above. Qi in view of S and Wu, however does not teach determining respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames comprises: determining network quality corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths; and determining the respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames based on the network quality corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths. Fonseca De Oliveira teaches determining respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames comprises: determining network quality corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths (“monitors the current condition of each path through the received paths' metrics (205)” in [0099]); and determining the respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames based on the network quality corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths (“splits the video traffic in order to cope with the conditions of the associated heterogeneous paths and executes the network load balancing algorithm. It receives the paths' metrics (205) as an input and this information is used to estimate the capacity of each path to deliver video data to the receiver” in [0101]). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qi in view of S and Wu to have determining respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames comprises: determining network quality corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths; and determining the respective image frames corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths from the plurality of image frames based on the network quality corresponding to the at least two physical transmission paths. as taught by Fonseca De Oliveira in order to avoid either congestion or underutilization of network resources [0099].
Regarding claims 7 and 21, Fonseca De Oliveira teaches the at least two physical transmission paths comprise a first and a second physical transmission paths; if the network quality corresponding to the first physical transmission path is better than the network quality corresponding to the second physical transmission path, a number of the image frames corresponding to the first physical transmission path is greater than a number of the image frames corresponding to the second physical transmission path (“the path's metrics goodput and average one-way delay are considered to estimate paths' capacity. Therefore, a higher rate is assigned to the path with higher goodput and lower average one-way delay” in [0102]).
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CLEMENCE S HAN whose telephone number is (571)272-3158. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8AM-5PM EST.
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/CLEMENCE S HAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2414
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