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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Species I: Fig. 6 (Claims 1-16) in the reply filed on 26 December 2025 is acknowledged.
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Chen et al. (US 20220329823 A1).
Re claim 1, Chen discloses a method implemented in a video encoder or a video decoder, the method comprising:
determining a control point motion vector (CPMV) candidate for a current sub-block in a current frame according to an affine mode (Chen: Fig. 15, step 402);
determining a current template associated with the current sub-block in the current frame (Chen: Fig. 15, step 406);
retrieving a reference template generated by an affine motion vector field within a search area in a reference frame (Chen: Fig. 15, step 408);
computing a difference between the reference template and the current template based on an optimization measurement (Chen: paragraph [0100], motion vector difference (MVD));
iterating the retrieving and computing the difference for a different reference template within the search area until a refinement CPMV is found to minimize the difference according to the optimization measurement (Chen: paragraph [0100]); and
applying motion compensation to the current sub-block using the refinement CPMV to encode or decode the current sub-block (Chen: Fig. 15, step 410).
Re claim 2, Chen discloses that the optimization measurement comprises a sum of absolute differences (SAD) measurement or a sum of squared differences (SSD) measurement (Chen: paragraphs [0066] and [0178]).
Re claim 3, Chen discloses that the search area in the reference frame comprises a [−8, +8]-pel range of the reference frame (Chen: Fig. 5).
Re claim 4, Chen discloses that the affine mode comprises an affine inter mode or an affine merge mode (Chen: paragraph [0069], For uni-directional or bi-directional inter-prediction, for example, video encoder 200 may encode motion vectors using advanced motion vector prediction (AMVP) or merge mode. Video encoder 200 may use similar modes to encode motion vectors for affine motion compensation mode.).
Re claim 5, Chen discloses that the current template associated with the current sub-block comprises a template including neighboring pixels above and/or at a left side of the current sub-block (Chen: Fig. 9A).
Re claim 6, Chen discloses
wherein the CPMV candidate is a first CPMV candidate (Chen: paragraph [0128], initial CPMV search point), and
the method further comprises:
determining a second CPMV candidate for the current sub-block according to the affine mode (Chen: paragraph [0129], multiple delta motion vectors);
retrieving a second reference template generated by the affine motion vector field within the search area in the reference frame (Chen: paragraphs [0132]-[0134], respective template matching costs);
computing a difference between the second reference template and the current template based on the optimization measurement (Chen: paragraph [0147[);
iterating the retrieving and computing the difference for a different reference template within the search area until a second refinement CPMV is found to minimize the difference according to the optimization measurement (Chen: paragraph [0130]); and
applying motion compensation to the current sub-block using the second refinement CPMV to encode or decode the current sub-block (Chen: paragraph [0165], If the template matching cost of applying the additional AffTM process is less than the cost of regular template matching, the CPMVs of the AffTM process are used for affine motion compensation for the current block instead of the translational motion model from the original template matching process).
Re claim 7, Chen discloses that the first refinement CPMV or the second refinement CPMV is a CPMV of the current sub-block based on a 4-parameter affine model or a 6-parameter affine model (Chen: paragraph [0128], 4 or 6 parameter models).
Claim 8 recites the corresponding apparatus to implement the method of claim 1. Therefore, arguments analogous to those presented for claim 1 are applicable to claim 8. Accordingly, claim 8 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 1 above.
Re claim 9, Chen discloses that the optimization measurement comprises a sum of absolute differences (SAD) measurement or a sum of squared differences (SSD) measurement (Chen: paragraphs [0066] and [0178]); and
the search area in the reference frame comprises a [−8, +8]-pel range of the reference frame (Chen: Fig. 5).
Claim 10 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 4 above.
Claim 11 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 5 above.
Claim 12 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 6 above.
Claim 13 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 7 above.
Re claim 14, Chen discloses that
the affine mode comprises an affine inter mode (Chen: paragraphs [0155]-[0156]), and
the one or more electronic devices or processors are configured to perform motion compensation based on the CPMV for the current sub-block without a motion vector difference (MVD) being transferred from a video encoder (Chen: paragraph [0160], video encoder 200 and video decoder 300 may be configured to first apply high frequency removal to the CPMVs of Lx depending on the ph_mvd_l1_zero_flag flag (which indicates MVD of L1 CPMVs are always zero and may be named differently across video coding standards)).
Re claim 15, Chen discloses that the affine mode comprises the affine inter mode, and the CPMV of the current sub-block is based on a 6-parameter affine model (Chen: paragraph [0128], 4 or 6 parameter models).
Re claim 16, Chen discloses that the one or more electronic devices or processors are configured to: receive additional side information from a video encoder for motion compensation by the video decoder (Chen: paragraphs [0199]-[0200]).
Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHRISTOPHER G FINDLEY whose telephone number is (571)270-1199. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM.
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/CHRISTOPHER G FINDLEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2482