DETAILED ACTION
Election/Restriction
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I: Claims 1-7 (and the corresponding apparatus claim 14-20) in the reply filed on July 20, 2026 is acknowledged.
Claims 8-13 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on July 20, 2026.
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 Status
This action is in response to the application filed on March 14, 2024. Claims 1-7 and 14-20 are pending and have been examined.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged that application claims priority to foreign application with application number CN202111080645.7 dated September 15, 2021. Copies of certified papers required by 37 CFR 1.55 have been received. Priority is acknowledged under 35 USC 119(e) and 37 CFR 1.78.
Receipt is acknowledged that application is a continuation of National Stage application of PCT/CN2022/104317 with a priority date of July 07, 2022. Priority is acknowledged under 35 USC 119(e) and 37 CFR 1.78.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on January 23, 2025, January 23, 2025, March 28, 2025, and August 06, 2025 are 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(s) 1-7 and 14-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Regarding claims 1 and 14 these claims recite the following limitations which are found to be abstract ideas not reciting a practical application or significantly more, with claim 1 being exemplary:
segmenting the image frame into a plurality of segmentation regions in a target segmentation manner (abstract idea as a mental process as a human is capable of segmenting an image into a plurality of regions in a target segmentation manner),
and determining a correspondence between the plurality of segmentation regions and the at least one metadata information unit (abstract idea as a mental process as a human is capable of determining a correspondence between a plurality of segmentation regions and metadata information);
determining, based on a plurality of pixels comprised in a preset region selected for the ith pixel, at least one related segmentation region to which the plurality of pixels belong, and determining, based on the correspondence, a related metadata information unit corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region (abstract idea as a mental process as a human is capable of determining based on a plurality of pixels of in a preset region at least one related segmentation region to which all the plurality of pixels belong and determine based on the correspondence related metadata information);
obtaining, based on the related metadata information unit, a tone mapping subvalue corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region (mathematical concepts, mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations),
and allocating a corresponding weighting factor to each of the at least one related segmentation region (mathematical concepts, mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations);
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application for the following reasons. Claims 1 and 14 all recite the additional element of “obtaining a tone mapping value of the ithpixel based on the tone mapping subvalue corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region and the weighting factor, and performing tone mapping on the ith pixel based on the tone mapping value, wherein i is any positive integer from 1 to N, and N is a quantity of pixels comprised in the to-be-displayed image frame,” however, this limitation also recites an abstract idea as mathematical concepts, mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations.
Claim 14 further recites the additional element of “a display end device, comprising: a memory and a processor coupled to each other, wherein the processor invokes program code stored in the memory to perform.” While this limitation includes additional elements of a display end device comprising a memory and a processor they are not sufficient to recite a practical application of the abstract ideas recited in Claim 14 as they amount to mere generic computer elements and thus amount to no more than a recitation of the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) or are no more than the mere instructions to implement an abstract idea or other exception on a computer. See MPEP 2106.05(f).
Further, the claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because when considered separately and in combination, the above recited additional elements from claim 14 do not add significantly more (also known as an “inventive concept”) to the exception. Rather, the additional elements disclosed above perform well-understood, routine, conventional computer functions.
Therefore, independent claims 1 and 14 are directed towards an abstract idea without a practical application or significantly more.
Regarding claims 5-7 and 18-20 the limitations are merely directed towards insignificant pre/post-solution extra activity that nonetheless do not integrate the abstract idea recited from claim 1 into a practical application.
Regarding claims 2-4 and 15-17 the limitations are merely directed towards mathematical concepts, mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations that nonetheless do not integrate the abstract idea recited from claim 1 into a practical application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1-4, 7, 14-17, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Najaf-Zadeh et al, US 20170161881.
Regarding claim 1, Najaf-Zadeh teaches
A tone mapping method, comprising (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0002], “a method and apparatus for view-dependent tone mapping of virtual reality images”):
obtaining an image frame to be displayed (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0053], “Image 400 has a high dynamic range between dark regions, e.g., segment 402, and light regions, e.g., segment 404. In order to display image 400 on a device, such as HMD 300, the image 400 may need to be down converted to match the properties of the device”)
and metadata that comprises at least one metadata information unit (see Najaf-Zadeh, Fig. 4 and Paragraph [0055], “Image segmentation module 502 provides segmentation metadata to a multiplexer 504”);
segmenting the image frame into a plurality of segmentation regions in a target segmentation manner (see Najaf-Zadeh, Fig. 5 and Paragraph [0054], “a 360° image is provided to an image segmentation module 502. Image segmentation module 502 divides the image into a plurality of segments. The size of each segment may be fixed as shown in FIG. 4 or the image segmentation module 502 may segment the image according to intelligent segmenting”),
and determining a correspondence between the plurality of segmentation regions and the at least one metadata information unit (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0056], “The segmented image is provided to a tone mapping parameter computation module 508 that determines a tone mapping function for each segment as shown in FIG. 4. The tone mapping function applied to each segment is based on the peak luminance of the segment. The tone mapping parameter computation module 08 provides the tone mapping function as metadata to multiplexer 504”);
and for an ith pixel in the image frame, performing following operations (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0072], “P.sub.ik is the i-th HDR pixel in segment k, Ω( ) is the tone mapping function (represented by a set of parameters)”):
determining, based on a plurality of pixels comprised in a preset region selected for the ith pixel, at least one related segmentation region to which the plurality of pixels belong, and determining, based on the correspondence, a related metadata information unit corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0054], “if there is sky region that covers the whole of the top view, one could create a single segment for the whole of sky region and use a single HDR metadata for the whole region instead of using multiple HDR metadata if the region were uniformly divided,” the sky region contains a plurality of pixels comprised in a preset region);
obtaining, based on the related metadata information unit, a tone mapping subvalue corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region (see Paragraph [0053], “As shown in FIG. 4, each segment 402, 404, and 406 has a specific tone mapping function assigned thereto that may be used to down convert the image”),
and allocating a corresponding weighting factor to each of the at least one related segmentation region (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0065], “w is the temporal smoothing weight in the range [0,1]. The temporal smoothing weight may determine the amount of smoothing of segmental peak luminance in time. The larger the value of w, the less flickering in the output video at the cost of less locality of adaptive tone mapping”);
and obtaining a tone mapping value of the ith pixel based on the tone mapping subvalue corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region and the weighting factor, and performing tone mapping on the ith pixel based on the tone mapping value, wherein i is any positive integer from 1 to N, and N is a quantity of pixels comprised in the to-be-displayed image frame (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0072], “tone mapping design and image segmentation can be combined. In doing so, joint optimization is performed to find the optimal segmentation and corresponding tone mapping parameters according to Equation 3 as follows:
Σ.sub.k=1.sup.NΣ.sub.i=1.sup.Kd(P.sub.ik, Ω(P.sub.ik)) (Eq. 3)
where N is the number of segments, K is the number of pixels in segment K, d( ) is the distortion function measuring the difference between HDR and SDR pixels, P.sub.ik is the i-th HDR pixel in segment k, Ω( ) is the tone mapping function (represented by a set of parameters),” K is the number of pixels in a segment which is considered to be N a quantity of pixels comprised in the to-be-displayed image frame).
Regarding claim 2, Najaf-Zadeh teaches the method according to claim 1,
wherein the allocating a corresponding weighting factor to each of the at least one related segmentation region comprises one or a combination of following manners (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0065], “w is the temporal smoothing weight in the range [0,1]”):
determining a quantity of pixels belonging to the preset region in each of the at least one related segmentation region and a total quantity of pixels corresponding to the preset region; and for a first of the at least one related segmentation region, allocating a corresponding first weighting factor to the first related segmentation region based on a quantity of pixels belonging to the preset region in the first related segmentation region and the total quantity of pixels (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0067], “When the user's viewport overlaps more than one segment, the peak luminance in the viewport may be calculated through weighted averaging the segmental peak luminance in the segments overlapping the viewport according to Equation 2 as follows
Lvp=.Math.i=1Ns.Math.c(i)Nvp.Math.Lst,i(Eq..Math.2)
where L.sub.vp is the peak luminance in the user's viewport, N.sub.s is the number of segments, c(i) is the number of pixels in the overlapping part of the viewport and segment i, L.sub.st,i is the temprospatially smoothed segmental peak luminance in segment i, and N.sub.vp is the number of pixels in the viewport”);
Regarding claim 3, Najaf-Zadeh teaches the method according to claim 2, wherein the metadata further comprises one or a combination of following information:
a first weighted strength value used to adjust the first weighting factor based on a pixel quantity distribution status of the image frame (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0066], “To reduce the impact of a few very bright pixels, segmental peak luminance in each segment is calculated based on the p-percentile maxRGB in each segment wherein p % of the maxRGB values of the pixels in the segment will be less than the segmental peak luminance. In the proposed embodiment, may be set to 99%”);
Regarding claim 4, Najaf-Zadeh teaches the method according to claim 1,
wherein obtaining the tone mapping subvalue corresponding to each of the at least one related segmentation region comprises: obtaining, based on a tone mapping curve, a tone mapping subvalue corresponding to the ith pixel in the related segmentation region, wherein the related metadata information unit comprises a parameter of the tone mapping curve (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0056], “The segmented image is provided to a tone mapping parameter computation module 508 that determines a tone mapping function for each segment as shown in FIG. 4. The tone mapping function applied to each segment is based on the peak luminance of the segment. The tone mapping parameter computation module 08 provides the tone mapping function as metadata to multiplexer 504”).
Regarding claim 7, Najaf-Zadeh teaches the method according to claim 1,
wherein the determining a correspondence between the plurality of segmentation regions and the at least one metadata information unit comprises (see correspondence mapping in claim 1):
traversing the plurality of segmentation regions based on a target scanning sequence (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0038], “The controller/processor 225 can move data into or out of the memory 230 as required by an executing process,” traversing data is considered to be preset as an operating system has a standard way of reading data)
and a segmentation region identifier, to determine a metadata information unit corresponding to each segmentation region, wherein the metadata information unit comprises the corresponding segmentation region identifier (see Paragraph [0062], “an overlapping region list is determined based on the segments that overlap the bounding box 902 using the segmentation metadata. The overlapping region list is then used to derive the tone mapping function that would be applied to the viewport,” the bounding boxes are considered to be segmentation region identifiers),
and the target scanning sequence is a preset scanning sequence or a scanning sequence that is indicated in the metadata (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0038], “The controller/processor 225 can move data into or out of the memory 230 as required by an executing process”).
As per claim 14, Claim 14 claims a display end device, comprising: a memory and a processor coupled to each other, wherein the processor invokes program code stored in the memory to perform: the same limitations as Claim 1. Therefore, the rejection and rationale are analogous to that made in Claim 1.
Najaf-Zadeh further teaches, a display end device, comprising: a memory and a processor coupled to each other, wherein the processor invokes program code stored in the memory to perform in Paragraph [0043], “processing circuitry 315 … a display 355, and a memory 360. The memory 360 includes a basic operating system (OS) program 361 and one or more applications 362.”
As per claim 15, Claim 15 claims the same limitations as Claim 2 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore, the rejection and rationale is analogous to that made in Claim 2.
As per claim 16, Claim 16 claims the same limitations as Claim 3 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore, the rejection and rationale is analogous to that made in Claim 3.
As per claim 17, Claim 17 claims the same limitations as Claim 4 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore, the rejection and rationale is analogous to that made in Claim 4.
As per claim 20, Claim 20 claims the same limitations as Claim 7 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore, the rejection and rationale is analogous to that made in Claim 7.
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.
Claim(s) 5-6 and 18-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Najaf-Zadeh et al, US 20170161881 in view of Park et al, US 20180139429.
Regarding claim 5, Najaf-Zadeh further teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein the preset region selected for the ith pixel is:
a region that is selected by using the ith pixel as a center (see Najaf-Zadeh, Paragraph [0054], “The size of each segment may be fixed as shown in FIG. 4”);
Najaf-Zadeh does not expressively teach
a region that is selected that is of a preset shape in a preset size
However, Park in a similar invention in the same field of endeavor teaches
a region that is selected that is of a preset shape in a preset size (see Park, Paragraph [0201] “the luminance characteristics obtainer 230 may set a region with a preset size and a preset shape based on a p.sup.th pixel in an f.sup.th frame. The size and the shape of the region may be determined based on a size of a frame and positions of a foreground and a background. For example, the luminance characteristics obtainer 230 may change the size and the shape of the region to a square shape, a rectangular shape, or a circular shape. A central pixel of a maximum luminance region may vary according to the size and the shape of the region”);
The combination of Najaf-Zadeh and Park are analogous art because they are both in the same field of endeavor of tone mapping. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to set a region with a preset size and shape as taught in the method of Park in the method of Najaf-Zadeh as considering luminance characteristics of an image helps a tone mapped image to more effectively maintain the intention of an original image (Park, Paragraph [0006]).
Regarding claim 6, Najaf-Zadeh further teaches the method according to claim 1,
wherein the determining a correspondence between the plurality of segmentation regions and the at least one metadata information unit comprises (see correspondence mapping in claim 1):
Najaf-Zadeh does not expressively teach
for any segmentation region, selecting a pixel at a preset location from the segmentation region, and obtaining coordinate information of the pixel at the preset location; determining, based on the coordinate information, a metadata information unit corresponding to the segmentation region; and establishing a correspondence between the segmentation region and the corresponding metadata information unit; or for any metadata information unit, determining, based on one or more pieces of coordinate information comprised in the metadata information unit, at least one segmentation region corresponding to the one or more pieces of coordinate information; and establishing a correspondence between the metadata information unit and the corresponding at least one segmentation region.
However, Park in a similar invention in the same field of endeavor teaches
for any segmentation region, selecting a pixel at a preset location from the segmentation region, and obtaining coordinate information of the pixel at the preset location; determining, based on the coordinate information, a metadata information unit corresponding to the segmentation region; and establishing a correspondence between the segmentation region and the corresponding metadata information unit (see Park, Paragraph [0212], “The luminance characteristics obtainer 230 may select pixels located at preset coordinates from among the pixels included in the current scene. Also, the luminance characteristics obtainer 230 may select some pixels from among the pixels included in the current scene, based on a size of a frame, positions of a foreground and a background, etc,” Park teaches selecting a pixels located at preset coordinates; Najaf-Zadeh teaches in claim 1 a metadata information unit corresponding to the segmentation region; and establishing a correspondence between the segmentation region and the corresponding metadata information unit);
The combination of Najaf-Zadeh and Park are analogous art because they are both in the same field of endeavor of tone mapping. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to select pixels located at preset coordinates from among pixels included in the current scene and based on size of a frame as taught in the method of Park in the method of Najaf-Zadeh as considering luminance characteristics of an image helps a tone mapped image to more effectively maintain the intention of an original image (Park, Paragraph [0006]).
As per claim 18, Claim 18 claims the same limitations as Claim 5 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore, the rejection and rationale is analogous to that made in Claim 5.
As per claim 19, Claim 19 claims the same limitations as Claim 6 and is dependent on a similarly rejected independent claim. Therefore, the rejection and rationale is analogous to that made in Claim 6.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DOMINIQUE JAMES whose telephone number is (703)756-1655. The examiner can normally be reached 9:00 am - 6:00 pm EST.
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/DOMINIQUE JAMES/Examiner, Art Unit 2666
/MING Y HON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2666
