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
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 1-2, 3, 7, 13, 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076).
Regarding claim 1, Oh et al. (hereinafter Oh) discloses a method (Oh, [0021], “A method of encoding three-dimensional (3D) data”) comprising:
at an electronic device having a processor (Oh, [0033], “the three-dimensional data transmission apparatus 110 according to an embodiment may include a processor 111”):
encoding 2D images into a specialized format for transmission or storage (Oh, [0057], “encoding three-dimensional data may include encoding the generated geometry 2D image information, color 2D image information, and geometry 2D image information (440) and transmitting the encoded information”. In addition, in paragraph [0067], “A bitstream multiplexing block may generate and output a bitstream based on the geometry image, the texture image, the occupancy map, and the auxiliary information”);
Oh discloses obtaining two-dimensional (2D) data sets corresponding to different attributes of three-dimensional (3D) content (Oh, [0057], “generating, based on the packed patches, geometry 2D image information, color 2D image information, and an occupancy map having occupancy information indicating the position of a meaningful point in the geometry 2D image information, with respect to geometry information”); Oh is silent with respect to “generating a single 2D image by combining the 2D data sets”;
Takada et al. (hereinafter Takada) discloses obtaining two-dimensional (2D) data sets corresponding to different attributes of three-dimensional (3D) content (Takada, [0050], “FIG. 3 is a diagram for describing 3D data, an occupancy map, a geometry image (location information), an attribute image. The point cloud and mesh constituting the 3D data are divided into multiple portions (regions) by the 3D data coding apparatus 11”. The occupancy map, geometry image and attribute image are considered 2d data sets corresponding to different attributes of 3D content), each of the 2D data sets providing attribute values for locations within a common 2D coordinate system that associates the attribute values for the different attributes with respective portions of the 3D content (Takada, [0050], “The occupancy map is an image depicting a valid region (region in which a point cloud or a mesh is present) of each patch as a 2D binary image (e.g., a valid region is represented as 1, and invalid region is represented as 0) (FIG. 3(b))…The geometry image is an image indicating a depth value (distance) relative to the projection plane of each patch (FIG. 3(c))…The attribute image is an image that indicates an attribute of the point (e.g., an RGB color)”. Each patch is projected onto a 2D plane and all the images are aligned to a shared 2D coordinate system that associates the attribute values for the different attributes with respective portions of the 3D content);
generating a single 2D image by combining the 2D data sets, wherein the attribute values corresponding to the different attributes are combined within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”. The two-dimensional image is considered a single 2D image); and
coding the single 2D image (Takada, [0033], “A data structure of the coding stream Te generated by the 3D data coding apparatus 11”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to transmit Oh’s encoded data using Takada’s merging multiple 2D datasets into a single 2D image of the 3D content. The motivation for doing so would have been allowing the information to be transmitted more efficiently.
Regarding claim 2, Oh discloses a texture image (Oh, [0021], “generating a geometry image indicating position information of points, a texture image indicating color information of the points”).
Regarding claim 3, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses the 2D data sets are aligned with respect to x,y data set coordinates corresponding to related portions of the 3D content (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”. Multiple 2D images are aligned together in a single coordinate system (x,y) for merging).
Regarding claim 7, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image is optimized to maximize correlations between similar attribute characteristics of the different attributes (Takada, [0050], “FIG. 3 is a diagram for describing 3D data, an occupancy map, a geometry image (location information), an attribute image…the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”. All three images correspond to the same spatial region and have aligned pixel structure, the attribute information across the different images becomes highly correlated).
Regarding claim 13, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image is optimized to separate attributes of the different attributes into random access regions (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”. Each image is mapped to a corresponding region, and because each region can be accessed independently, the regions function as random access regions).
Regarding claim 19, Oh discloses an electronic device (Oh, [0056], “an electronic device”) comprising:
a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Oh, [0108], ““non-transitory” merely means that the storage medium does not contain signals and are tangible, but do not distinguish data being semi-permanently or temporarily stored in the storage medium”);
one or more processors coupled to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprises program instructions that, when executed on the one or more processors, cause the electronic device to perform operations (Oh, [0024], “the functional blocks of the present disclosure may be implemented by one or more microprocessors, or by circuit configurations for a predetermined function”. In addition, in paragraph [0107], “a storage medium and performing operations according to the disclosed embodiments according to the called instructions, may include a terminal device and a remote control device according to the disclosed embodiments”).
The limitations recite in claim 19 are similar in scope to the method recited in claim 1 and therefore are rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 20, Oh discloses a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing program instructions executable via one or more processors to perform operations (Oh, [0024], “the functional blocks of the present disclosure may be implemented by one or more microprocessors, or by circuit configurations for a predetermined function”. In addition, in paragraph [0108], ““non-transitory” merely means that the storage medium does not contain signals and are tangible, but do not distinguish data being semi-permanently or temporarily stored in the storage medium”).
The limitations recite in claim 20 are similar in scope to the method recited in claim 1 and therefore are rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 4-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Xu et al. (US 11,924,434).
Regarding claim 4, Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “concatenating the different attributes horizontally, vertically, or with respect to a 2D grid”;
Xu et al. (hereinafter Xu) discloses concatenating attributes with respect to a 2D grid (Xu, col 6. 36-40, “the patch packing module (308) is configured to map the extracted patches onto a 2 dimensional (2D) grid while minimize the unused space and guarantee that every M×M (e.g., 16×16) block of the grid is associated with a unique patch”. In addition, in col 17. 64-67, “The map (920) can be geometry map with geometry information, or can be texture map with color, textile, or other attribute information, or can be occupancy map with occupancy information”. The grid defines the order and layout of all concatenation of all patches and their attributes).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the concept of Xu’s extracted patches together with its associated attribute information on a 2D grid to generate the combined 2D image of Oh as modified by Takada. The motivation for doing so would have been optimizing data for efficient compression.
Regarding claim 5, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses each group of common values of the attribute values associated with a same attribute type is stored as a separate sub-image of the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”. Each image corresponds to a sub-image and the values for each attribute type are kept together).
Regarding claim 6, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses each group of common values of the attribute values associated with a same attribute type is stored within a color plane of a sub-image of the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “The attribute image is an image that indicates an attribute of the point (e.g., an RGB color)”).
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Joshi et al. (US 2021/0409768).
Regarding claim 8, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”);
Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “store similar attribute characteristics of the different attributes within a same tile”;
Joshi et al. (hereinafter Joshi) discloses store similar attribute characteristics of different attributes within a same tile (Joshi, [0154], “The first condition specifies that for each tile in the atlas frame, there is a corresponding video tile for each of the video frames present (attributes, geometry, and occupancy) such that the video tile, when scaled to the nominal format (such as the resolution of the atlas frame), represents exactly the same area on the atlas as the corresponding atlas tile”. The geometry, occupancy and attribute data share similar characteristics, and are stored together within the same tile region).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the concept of Joshi’s storing data with similar characteristics of different attributes into a single tile to store the 2D image of Oh as modified by Takada. The motivation for doing so would have been optimizing storage and reducing transfer expenses.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Tsang et al. (US 2011/0228365).
Regarding claim 9, Oh discloses the 3D content (Oh, [0021], “encoding three-dimensional (3D) data”); Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”);
Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “apply down-sampling with respect to an impact to a visual quality metric”;
Tsang et al. (hereinafter Tsang) discloses apply down-sampling with respect to an impact to a visual quality metric (Tseng, [0067], “The source images are down-sampled based on Eq. (4) or (5) with a factor M=16 before binarization. The factor is selected as it results in good visual quality for all the reconstructed images”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the concept of Tsang’s using down-sampling with an adjustable factor to control visual quality to generate Oh as modified by Takada’s 2D combined image. The motivation for doing so would have been enabling adaptive compression.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Nadir et al. (US 2023/0351563).
Regarding claim 10, Oh discloses the 3D content (Oh, [0021], “encoding three-dimensional (3D) data”); Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”);
Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “apply filtering with respect to an impact to a visual quality metric”;
Nadir et al. (hereinafter Nadir) discloses apply filtering with respect to an impact to a visual quality metric (Nadir, [0064], “adaptive noise filtering of the process 200, the output image 255 exhibits reduced read noise in its dark regions without compromising quality in its bright regions. Thus, for instance, edge content and texture content can be preserved in the bright regions”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the concept of Nadir’s adaptive noise filtering to generate Oh as modified by Takada’s 2D combined image. The motivation for doing so would have been enabling adaptive compression.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Nalci et al. (US 2021/0176468).
Regarding claim 11, Oh discloses the 3D content (Oh, [0021], “encoding three-dimensional (3D) data”); Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”);
Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “apply quantization with respect to an impact to a visual quality metric”;
Nalci et al. discloses apply quantization with respect to an impact to a visual quality metric (Nalci, [0088], “The QP regulates the amount of spatial detail that is preserved…larger quantization via larger QP values also reduces the visual statistical quality of the compressed images”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the concept of Nalci’s adjustable quantization parameter to generate Oh as modified by Takada’s 2D combined image. The motivation for doing so would have been enabling adaptive compression.
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Kavallierou et al. (US 2023/0015019).
Regarding claim 12, Oh discloses the 3D content (Oh, [0021], “encoding three-dimensional (3D) data”); Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses placement of each 2D data set, of the 2D data sets, within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”);
Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “enable spatial scalability and view-dependent rendering”;
Kavallierou et al. (hereinafter Kavallierou) discloses enable spatial scalability and view-dependent rendering (Kavallierou, [0108], “within the rendered view of the virtual environment outside the field of view of the first user, an object or event identified as being of interest within the environment, at a higher resolution than the second resolution, the remainder of the rendered view of the virtual environment outside the field of view of the first user remaining at the second resolution”. Dynamically selects different resolution for different region is considered spatial scalability. In addition, an object of interest inside user’s field of view is rendered at high resolution. Everything else including areas outside the field of view is rendered at lower resolution is considered view-dependent).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the concept of Kavallierou’s dynamically selects different resolution for different region and an object of interest inside user’s field of view is rendered at high resolution and areas outside the field of view is rendered at lower resolution to generate Oh as modified by Takada’s 2D combined image. The motivation for doing so would have been enabling selection of the optimal resolution based on available resource while enhancing quality without increasing overall data size.
Claims 14-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oh et al. (US 2022/0084254) in view of Takada et al. (US 2024/0107076), as applied to claim 1, in further view of Mittal (US 11,450,104).
Regarding claim 14, Oh discloses the 3D content (Oh, [0021], “encoding three-dimensional (3D) data”); Oh as modified by Takada does not expressly disclose “generating an additional 2D data set describing a partition of a scene, into objects”;
Mittal discloses generating an additional 2D data set describing a partition of a scene, into objects (Mittal, col 3. 1-4, “The segmentation map (sometimes called a “segmentation mask”) is a pixel-wise map that denotes whether each pixel corresponds to “objectionable” or “non-objectionable” (e.g., in a simple binary example by encoding each pixel with a binary label value such as “1” indicating non-objectionable and a “0” indicating objectionable)”. The segmentation mask is considered as 2D data set and partitions a scene into objects).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to define Oh as modified by Takada’s 3D content using a segmentation mask taught by Mittal for identifying different objects. The motivation for doing so would have been enabling the generation of pixel-precise boundaries for every identified object.
Regarding claim 15, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses combined within the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”);
Oh as modified by Takada and Mittal with the same motivation from claim 14 discloses the additional 2D data set (Mittal, col 3. 1-4, “The segmentation map (sometimes called a “segmentation mask”) is a pixel-wise map that denotes whether each pixel corresponds to “objectionable” or “non-objectionable” (e.g., in a simple binary example by encoding each pixel with a binary label value such as “1” indicating non-objectionable and a “0” indicating objectionable)”).
Regarding claim 16, Oh as modified by Takada with the same motivation from claim 1 discloses the single 2D image (Takada, [0050], “the occupancy map image, geometry image, attribute image, and atlas information may be obtained by mapping (combining), onto a two-dimensional image, partial images (patches) from different projection planes”).
Oh as modified by Takada and Mittal with the same motivation from claim 14 discloses the additional 2D dataset is independent (Mittal, col 3. 1-4, “The segmentation map (sometimes called a “segmentation mask”) is a pixel-wise map that denotes whether each pixel corresponds to “objectionable” or “non-objectionable” (e.g., in a simple binary example by encoding each pixel with a binary label value such as “1” indicating non-objectionable and a “0” indicating objectionable)”. Since the claim does not clearly define the term independent. The segmentation mask can be interpreted as a 2D dataset is independent).
Regarding claim 17, Oh discloses padding to fill background pixels within the 2D data sets with respect to providing encoding efficiency functionality (Oh, [0063], “An image padding block may perform image padding of filling information about an empty portion in the texture image and the geometry image. The image padding block may perform dilation on the texture image and the geometry image by removing discontinuity between patches to improve compression performance”).
Oh as modified by Takada and Mittal with the same motivation from claim 14 discloses the additional 2D data set (Mittal, col 3. 1-4, “The segmentation map (sometimes called a “segmentation mask”) is a pixel-wise map that denotes whether each pixel corresponds to “objectionable” or “non-objectionable” (e.g., in a simple binary example by encoding each pixel with a binary label value such as “1” indicating non-objectionable and a “0” indicating objectionable)”).
Regarding claim 18, Oh as modified by Takada and Mittal with the same motivation from claim 14 discloses a mask component (Mittal, col 3. 1-4, “The segmentation map (sometimes called a “segmentation mask”) is a pixel-wise map that denotes whether each pixel corresponds to “objectionable” or “non-objectionable” (e.g., in a simple binary example by encoding each pixel with a binary label value such as “1” indicating non-objectionable and a “0” indicating objectionable)”).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KYLE ZHAI whose telephone number is (571)270-3740. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM.
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/KYLE ZHAI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611