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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d).
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 10/31/2025 and 4/18/2024 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements have been considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claim 9 is directed to "A computer-readable storage medium, storing a computer program…" which encompasses non-statutory embodiments such as signals and carrier waves. As noted in MPEP 2106.03(II):
For example, the BRI of machine readable media can encompass non-statutory transitory forms of signal transmission, such as a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se. See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 84 USPQ2d 1495 (Fed. Cir. 2007). When the BRI encompasses transitory forms of signal transmission, a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 as failing to claim statutory subject matter would be appropriate. Thus, a claim to a computer readable medium that can be a compact disc or a carrier wave covers a non-statutory embodiment and therefore should be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. See, e.g., Mentor Graphics v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d at 1294-95, 112 USPQ2d at 1134 (claims to a “machine-readable medium” were non-statutory, because their scope encompassed both statutory random-access memory and non-statutory carrier waves).[emphasis added]
There is no language in claim 9 (such as the modifier “non-transitory”) to preclude a transitory interpretation while the specification at [0106] fails to explicitly define and limit the BRI of the claimed “computer-readable storage medium” to statutory embodiments only.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102a1 as being anticipated by CN101321241A, hereinafter referred to as “CN’241.” Note that all references/citations to CN’241 below are based upon the supplied English translation of CN’241.
As per claim 1, CN’241 discloses a video processing method, comprising: acquiring a to-be-erased region comprising a to-be-erased object in each target video frame of a to-be-processed video (page 2, “Summary of the invention,” Step 1); acquiring, for a single target video frame, from another target video frame other than the target video frame, a target region that corresponds to a to-be-erased region of the target video frame and does not comprise the to-be-erased object (page 2, steps 2 and 3); filling pixels of the target region into the to-be-erased region of the target video frame, to erase the to-be-erased region of the target video frame (page 2, step 3, and also page 2, third to last paragraph); and in response to an unerased region existing in the to-be-erased region of the target video frame, predicting pixels of the unerased region according to the target video frame, and filling the unerased region according to the predicted pixels to erase the unerased region (page 2, step 4, and also page 2, penultimate paragraph).
As per claim 2, CN’241 discloses the method according to claim 1, wherein predicting pixels of the unerased region according to the target video frame comprises: predicting the pixels of the unerased region based on a region that is adjacent to the unerased region in the target video frame (page 2, penultimate paragraph - “the image can be repaired according to the position mark of the image defect and the known pixel value around the defect image”).
As per claim 5, CN’241 discloses the method according to claim 1, wherein acquiring a to-be-erased region comprising a to-be-erased object in each target video frame of a to-be-processed video comprises: acquiring a candidate region comprising a to-be-erased object in a target video frame of the to-be-processed video; and determining, based on the candidate region, the to-be-erased region comprising the to-be- erased object in each target video frame of the to-be-processed video (page 2, steps 1-3).
As per claim 6, CN’241 discloses the method according to claim 5, wherein acquiring a candidate region comprising a to-be-erased object in a target video frame of the to-be-processed video comprises: acquiring a candidate region in a target video frame in response to a region selection operation for a to-be-erased object in the target video frame of the to-be-processed video (page 2, step 1 - the user marks a rectangle bounding box of the to-be-erased object); or comprises: performing target detection on the to-be-processed video to acquire a to-be-erased object; and determining a region comprising the to-be-erased object in a target video frame of the to- be-processed video as the candidate region (page 2, steps 2 and 3 - the to-be-erased object is tracked in subsequent frames and erased accordingly).
Claims 8, 9, 11, 14, and 15 are rejected for reasoning, mutatis mutandis, as that of claims 1, 2, 5, and 6 above. Furthermore, the claimed processor, program, and memory would all be inherent in the computer and optical flow program taught by CN’
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.
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 3, 4, 12, 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CN’241 in view of US 2021/0374904 to Liao et al.
CN’241 discloses a video processing method that erases a determined object by tracking the optical flow of the object frame-by-frame and replacing the object with background pixels. However, CN’241 fails to disclose predicting the pixels of the unerased region according to the target video frame, a target video frame adjacent to the target video frame, and a target video frame that has been erased before the target video frame via a pre-trained video erasure model to predict the pixels of the unerased region.
However, Liao et al discloses, in the same field of endeavor, a video processing method of erasing targeted objects in a video frame by looking to neighboring frames in order to best determine the colors of the pixels being replaced via a trained machine learning model, see [0036] and [0062] of Liao et al.
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have looked to neighboring frames of the video in order to determine the colors of the background pixels as taught by Liao et al instead of looking to surrounding pixels near the to-be-erased object in the same frame as taught by CN’241 since looking to neighboring frames would have provided an enhanced background that features improved texturing and less distortion, see Liao et al at [0005].
Claims 12 and 13 are rejected for reasoning, mutatis mutandis, as that of claims 3 and 4 above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The cited prior art sets forth the general state of the art in video processing that erases targeted portions of the video frames by removing the targeted pixels and replacing them with background pixels.
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DAVID OMETZ
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2672
/DAVID OMETZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2672