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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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, 9-10, 12-13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US Pub. 2009/0210239 A1) in view of Koppens et al. (US Patent 10,141,004 B2).
Regarding Claims 1, 13 and 20, Yoon teaches a first device (see Fig.1 (110) and paragraph [0030], encoding device), comprising:
a processing system that includes processor circuitry and memory circuitry that stores code (see Fig.1 (110) and paragraph [0109]), the processing system configured to cause the first device to:
input a first media stream into a frequency domain converter based at least in part on a first sample rate of the first media stream (see Fig.1 (111), Fig.7, paragraph [0031], paragraph [0048] and paragraph [0108], encoding process for the first object signal with a specific sampling frequency, and using “EVR” or Envelope Following Response encoding for transforming and encoding the first object signal in the frequency domain);
input a second media stream into the frequency domain converter based at least in part on a second sample rate of the second media stream that is different from the first sample rate of the first media stream (see Fig.1 (111), Fig.7, paragraph [0031], paragraph [0048] and paragraph [0108], encoding process for the second object signal with a different sampling frequency from the first object, and using “EVR” or Envelope Following Response encoding for transforming and encoding the second object signal in the frequency domain);
mix a first output from the first frequency domain converter with a second output from the second frequency domain converter to obtained a mixed frequency domain output (see Fig.1 (111), Fig.7, paragraph [0031] and paragraph [0047], encoding the mixed object signals);
encode the mixed frequency domain output to obtain a mixed media stream (see Fig.1 (111), Fig.7, paragraph [0031] and paragraph [0047], generating an encoded bitstream containing mixed object signals);
and transmit the mixed media stream comprising the first media stream and the second media stream to a second device (see Fig.1 (110,120) and paragraph [0032], transmitting the encoded bitstream to the decoding device).
Yoon fails to teach using a second frequency domain converter for the second media stream, and transmitting the encoded mixed media stream from a first wireless device to a second wireless device.
Koppens, however, teaches using two separate frequency domain converters at a first device to transform two different types of audio input into the frequency domain (see Fig.3 (21,22) and Col.25, Line 45-56), and generating an encoded bitstream with the output of the frequency domain converters for transmission to a second device (see Fig.3 (27,30,40) and Col.27, Line 18-38), wherein the first device and the second device could be wireless mobile devices (see Fig.3 (20,40) and Col.13, Line 25-33).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure Yoon first device with a first and second frequency domain converters, and transmitting the encoded mixed media stream from the first device to a second wireless device. The motivation would be to use two separate frequency domain converters to transform the first input media stream and the second input media stream into the frequency domain, and to transmit the encoded mixed stream from a first wireless device to a second wireless device for rendering or audio playback.
Regarding Claim 9, Koppens further teaches jointly encode the first output from the first frequency domain converter and the second output from the second frequency domain converter to obtain the mixed media stream (see Fig.1 (21,22,27) and Col.25, Line 50-56, generating the encoded bitstream with the outputs of the QMF frequency domain converters).
Regarding Claim 10, Yoon teaches using a first frequency domain converter (see Fig.1 (111), paragraph [0031] and paragraph [0048], using “EVR” or Envelope Following Response encoding for transforming and encoding the object signals in the frequency domain) and transform coding the object signals with modified discrete cosine transform (see paragraph [0066])., but fails to teach using a second frequency domain converter.
Koppens, however, teaches using a first and second frequency domain converters to transform two different types of audio input into the frequency domain (see Fig.3 (21,22) and Col.25, Line 45-56).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure Yoon first device with a first and second frequency domain converters that are modified discrete transforms. The motivation would be to use two particular frequency domain converters to transform the first input media stream and the second input media stream into the frequency domain.
Regarding Claim 12, the rationale provided for the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated herein. Additional object signal N can be transformed and added to the encoded mixed media stream.
Claims 2 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US Pub. 2009/0210239 A1) in view of Koppens et al. (US Patent 10,141,004 B2), and in further view of Fuchs et al. (US Patent 9,892,735 B2).
Regarding Claim 2, Yoon and Koppens teach the first device of Claim 1 but fail to teach wherein the first device is configured to input the mixed media stream to a pre-emphasis filter prior to encoding and transmitting the mixed media stream.
Fuchs, however, teaches inputting an inbound audio signal into a pre-emphasis filter to generate linear prediction based spectral envelope information prior to encoding the audio signal (see Fig.12a and Col.12, Line 51 – Col.13, Line 7).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure the first device to input the mixed media stream to a pre-emphasis filter prior to encoding and transmitting the mixed media stream. The motivation would be to generate the linear prediction encoding information before transmitting the mixed media stream.
Claims 3-4, 6-8, 15-16 and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US Pub. 2009/0210239 A1) in view of Koppens et al. (US Patent 10,141,004 B2), and in further view of Gurijala et al. (US Patent 10,043,527 B1).
Regarding Claims 3 and 15, Yoon and Koppens teach the first device of Claim 1 but fail to teach wherein the first device is configured to drop a subset of frequency bins of a first set of frequency bins for the first output based at least in part on a quantity of frequency bins in a second set of frequency bins for the second output.
Gurijala, however, teaches mapping an audio signal to equally spaced frequency bins according to a protocol bandwidth (see Col.15, Line 24-34).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure the first device to drop a subset of frequency bins of a first set of frequency bins for the first output based at least in part on a quantity of frequency bins in a second set of frequency bins for the second output. The motivation would be to mapped the mixed media stream to a number of frequency bins based on the frequency bandwidth requirement of the transmission channel.
Regarding Claims 4 and 16, the rationale provided for the rejection of Claims 3 and 4 is incorporated herein.
Regarding Claims 6 and 18, Yoon and Koppens teach the first device of Claim 1 but fail to teach wherein the first device is configured to select a first quantity of frequency bins for the mixed media stream based at least in part on a first radio bearer for the mixed media stream, wherein the first output of the first frequency domain converter and the second output of the second frequency domain converter correspond to the first quantity of frequency bins.
Gurijala, however, teaches mapping an audio signal to equally spaced frequency bins according to a protocol bandwidth (see Col.15, Line 24-34).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure the first device to select a first quantity of frequency bins for the mixed media stream based at least in part on a first radio bearer for the mixed media stream, wherein the first output of the first frequency domain converter and the second output of the second frequency domain converter correspond to the first quantity of frequency bins. The motivation would be to mapped the mixed media stream to a number of frequency bins based on the frequency bandwidth requirement of the transmission channel.
Regarding Claims 7 and 19, Gurijala further teaches wherein the first quantity of frequency bins is selected based at least in part on a trigger to change from a second quantity of frequency bins to the first quantity of frequency bins (see Col.15, Line 4-30, frame reversal process wherein the number of frequency bins used is based on the protocol bandwidth).
Regarding Claim 8, Gurijala further teaches changing the partitioning of frequency bins into sub-bands based at least in part on the trigger (see Col.15, Line 4-23, frame reversal process and subband filtering).
Claims 5 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US Pub. 2009/0210239 A1) in view of Koppens et al. (US Patent 10,141,004 B2), and in further view of Nagel et al. (US Patent 9,697,838 B2).
Regarding Claims 5 and 17, Yoon and Koppens teach the first device of Claim 1 but fail to teach wherein the first device is configured to pad the second output from the second frequency domain converter prior to mixing the first output and the second output based at least in part on a frequency bandwidth of a channel for transmission of the mixed media stream.
Nagel, however, teaches applying zero padding to an input signal to format or adapt the input signal to a dimension of a time domain converter (see Fig.3B (424) and Col.15, Line 39-47).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure the first device to pad the second output from the second frequency domain converter prior to mixing the first output and the second output based at least in part on a frequency bandwidth of a channel for transmission of the mixed media stream. The motivation would be to adapt or format the mixed media stream to a dimension of a time domain converter at a second device.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US Pub. 2009/0210239 A1) in view of Koppens et al. (US Patent 10,141,004 B2), and in further view of Wells-Rutherford et al. (US Patent 11,477,327 B2).
Regarding Claim 11, Yoon and Koppens teach the device of Claim 1 but fails to teach wherein the first device is configured to obtain an echo canceler output associated with the first sample rate or the second sample rate based at least in part on mixing the first output of the first frequency domain converter and the second output of the second frequency domain converter.
Wells-Rutherford, however, teaches configuring a device with an acoustic echo canceller to generate an echo-cancelled mixed audio signal (see Fig.1 (112) and Col.3, Line 26-53).
It would have been obvious for one skilled in the art, before the effective filing date of the application, to configure the first device to obtain an echo canceler output associated with the first sample rate or the second sample rate based at least in part on mixing the first output of the first frequency domain converter and the second output of the second frequency domain converter. The motivation would be to generate an echo-cancelled mixed media stream.
Conclusion
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/VU B HANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2654