DETAILED ACTION
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements submitted on 05/15/2024, 10/25/24 and 10/15/2025 have been considered by the Examiner and made of record in the application file.
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 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.
Claim(s) 1, 14-16 and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Xu (“Deep Flow-Guided Video Inpainting”)
Regarding claims 1 and 16, Xu discloses a method performed by an electronic apparatus, the method comprising:
[claim 16: at least one processor; and at least one memory storing computer executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor configured to: (section 3)]
extracting at least one key frame and at least one non-key frame from a video; (section 4, “Data Preparation and Evaluation Metric”: Xu operates on a video sequence and picks a frame in the sequence for image inpainting, while also referencing the rest of the sequence for propagation.)
inpainting the at least one key frame based on at least one mask corresponding to the at least one key frame; and (abstract: “guide the propagation of pixels to fill up the missing regions in the video”; sections 3.1-3.3 and 4: Xu describes video inpainting where a mask is given to indicate the missing or removed region (foreground object removal setting). Xu further states that when some missing regions cannot be filled by flow propagation, they pick a frame and apply an image inpainting technique to complete it.)
inpainting the at least one non-key frame based on the at least one inpainted key frame. (sections 3.1-3.3 and 4: After inpainting the selected frame, Xu states the “inpainting result is then propagated to the entire video sequence based on the estimated optical flow.” Other frames are filled using the inpainted result from the selected frame.)
Regarding claims 14 and 19, Xu discloses the claimed invention wherein the inpainting the at least one non-key frame based on the at least one inpainted key frame comprises inpainting each of the at least one non-key frame by: obtaining at least one aligned first key frame by aligning at least one first key frame related to a current non-key frame to the current non-key frame; and inpainting the current non-key frame based on the at least one aligned first key frame. (Xu: sections 3.1-3.3 and 4)
Regarding claim 15, Xu discloses the claimed invention wherein the obtaining the at least one aligned first key frame comprises: for each first key frame, obtaining the one aligned first key frame based on motion vector information of the current non-key frame relative to the one first key frame, to obtain one aligned first key frame. (Xu: sections 3.1-3.3 and 4)
Regarding claim 20, Xu discloses the claimed invention wherein non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform the method according to claim 1. (section 3)
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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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 2-4, 6 and 17-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xu in view of Luo (US 2025/0056001 A1).
Regarding claims 2 and 17, Xu discloses the claimed invention except for wherein the extracting the at least one key frame and the at least one non-key frame from the video comprises extracting the at least one key frame and the at least one non-key frame from the video based on decoding information of the video.
In related art, Luo discloses extracting the at least one key frame and the at least one non-key frame from the video comprises extracting the at least one key frame and the at least one non-key frame (extracting a key point from a to-be-processed video frame and a previous video frame respectively to obtain first position information and second position information) from the video based on decoding (video decoding) information of the video. (abstract, paragraphs 15, 97, 143-149 and 208)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Luo into the teachings of Xu so that a high-quality video can be restored as much as possible based on a video with a low byte stream.
Regarding claim 3, Xu, as modified by Luo, discloses the claimed invention wherein the extracting the at least one key frame from the video based on the decoding information of the video comprises: extracting at least one frame from the video based on the decoding information of the video; and identifying the at least one key frame from the extracted frame based on a predetermined frame interval. (abstract, paragraphs 15, 97, 143-149 and 208)
Regarding claims 4, 6 and 18, Xu discloses the claimed invention wherein the inpainting the at least one key frame based on the at least one mask corresponding to the at least one key frame comprises inpainting each group of a plurality of groups of key frames by: extracting a feature of a group of key frames, among the plurality of groups, to be inpainted; (Xu: sections 3.1-3.3 and 4) processing the extracted feature based on at least one of a first feature related to all of the plurality of groups of inpainted key frames or a second feature related to a previous group of inpainted key frames and updating the second feature based on the processed feature (claim 6); (Xu: sections 3.1-3.3 and 4) but fails to disclose decoding the group of key frames based on the processed feature.
In related art, Luo discloses decoding the group of key frames based on the processed feature. (Luo: abstract, paragraphs 15, 97, 143-149 and 208).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Luo into the teachings of Xu so that a high-quality video can be restored as much as possible based on a video with a low byte stream.
Claim 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xu in view of Luo and in further view of Yu (“Generative Image Inpainting with Contextual Attention”).
Regarding claim 5, Xu, as modified by Luo, fails to specifically disclose extracting a third feature from the processed feature based on semantic correlation; fusing the third feature with the first feature; and storing a fusion result as an updated first feature.
In related art, Yu discloses extracting a third feature from the processed feature based on semantic correlation; fusing the third feature with the first feature; and storing a fusion result as an updated first feature. (sections 1, 4.1 and 4.2)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Yu into the teachings of Xu and Luo to effectively borrow or copy feature information from known background patches to generate missing patches.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-13 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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/BOBBAK SAFAIPOUR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2665