DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on July 7, 2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The 35 U.S.C. §112(a) rejection to claims 1-15 has been withdrawn in view of current amendments.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed July 7, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The Applicant argues Zhao fails to teach or suggest the limitations of claim 1. The Examiner does agree with said argument. However, the Applicant also argues US Pub. No. 2021/0306443 (hereinafter “Wenger”) fails to teach or suggest a P bit indicating whether the FU is a last FU of a last VCL NAL unit of the current picture. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. In paragraph 46 Wenger teaches about a bit that may be indicative of the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, if the fragment is the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, the bit may be set to 1, otherwise to 0.
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) 1, 3-6, 8-11, 13-14, and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao et al. (“RTP Payload Format for Versatile Video Coding (VCC)”, draft-ietf-avtcore-rtp-vvc-10, July 9, 2021) in view of Wenger et al. (US 2021/0306443) further in view of Lim et al. (US 2022/0239933).
Regarding claim 1 Zhao discloses a method comprising:
obtaining one or more fragmentation units (FUs) from an image signal (when a NAL unit is fragmented and conveyed within Fragmentation Units (FUs), it is referred to as a fragmented NAL unit – (p.27, section 4.3.3);
extracting one or more bytes of a network abstraction layer (NAL) unit for a current picture from the one or more FUs (when an RTP packet carries an FU, all RTP packets from the first FU (with the S field equal to 1) of the fragmented NAL unit up to the last FU (with the E field equal to 1) of the fragmented NAL unit are collected – p.33, 4th paragraph); and
decoding the current picture based on the extracted NAL unit (decoding – p.34, 3rd paragraph),
wherein each FU of the one or more FUs includes first header information in an FU header of the FU, the first header information being a P bit (P bit in the FU header shown in Fig. 10).
However, fails to explicitly mention a video coding layer (VCL) NAL unit; wherein the P bit indicates whether the FU is a last FU of a last video coding layer (VCL) NAL unit of the current picture, wherein, based on the P bit having a value equal to 1, the P bit indicates that a last byte if an FU payload of the FU is a last byte of the last VCL NAL unit of the current picture, wherein, based on the P bit having a value equal to 0, the P bit indicates that the FU payload is not a last fragment of the last VCL NAL unit of the current picture, and wherein the current picture includes at least one non-VCL NAL unit following the last VCL NAL unit.
In his disclosure Wenger teaches a video coding layer (VCL) NAL unit (Figure 7 shows a VCL NAL unit header with two FU structures);
wherein the P bit indicates whether the FU is a last FU of a last video coding layer (VCL) NAL unit of the current picture (Wenger teaches a bit that may be indicative of the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, if the fragment is the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, the bit may be set to 1 – [0046]),
wherein, based on the P bit having a value equal to 1, the P bit indicates that a last byte of an FU payload of the FU is a last byte of the last VCL NAL unit of the current picture, wherein, based on the P bit having a value equal to 0, the P bit indicates that the FU payload is not a last fragment of the last VCL NAL unit of the current picture (Wenger teaches a bit that may be indicative of the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, if the fragment is the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, the bit may be set to 1, otherwise to 0 – [0046]).
It would have been obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the teachings of Wenger into the teachings of Zhao because such incorporation improves the coding efficiency by identifying the last packet of a given coded picture (par. 37).
However, fails to explicitly disclose wherein the current picture includes at least one non-VCL NAL unit following the last VCL NAL unit.
In his disclosure Lim teaches the current picture includes at least one non-VCL NAL unit following the last VCL NAL unit (non-VCL NAL units such as Suffix SEI may be signaled after the last VCL NAL unit – [0261]).
It would have been obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the teachings of Wenger into the teachings of Lim into the teachings of Zhao because such incorporation yields the predictable result of improving the compression efficiency (par. 20).
Regarding claim 3 Zhao discloses the method of claim 1. However, fails to explicitly disclose the P bit has the value equal to 0 based on the FU including a byte of the at least one non-VCL NAL unit.
In his disclosure Wenger teaches the P bit has the value equal to 0 based on the FU including a byte of the at least one non-VCL NAL unit (Wenger teaches a bit that may be indicative of the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, if the fragment is the last fragment of the last NAL unit in decoding order of a coded picture, the bit may be set to 1, otherwise to 0 – [0046]).
It would have been obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the teachings of Wenger into the teachings of Zhao because such incorporation improves the coding efficiency by identifying the last packet of a given coded picture (par. 37).
Regarding claim 4 Zhao discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the first header information is kept constant for all FUs for the current picture, regardless of whether a FU for the at least one non-VCL NAL unit is lost (certain non-VCL NAL units can often be aggregated with VCL NAL units – p.32, section 5. Packetization Rules; if an FU is lost and the receiver is known to be prepared to handle incomplete NAL units, then the following g=fragmentation units are not discarded – p.29).
Regarding claim 5 Zhao discloses the method of claim 1, wherein all FUs following a lost FU are removed from the NAL unit, based on at least one FU of the NAL unit for the current picture being lost (MANES can remove those FUs where the leading FUs belonging to the same NAL unit have been lost – p.63, section 10. Congestion Control, 4th paragraph).
In regard to claim 6, any decoder technology except the parsing/entropy decoding that is present in a decoder also necessarily needs to be present, in substantially identical form in a corresponding encoder. The description of encoder technologies can be abbreviated as they are the inverse of the comprehensively described decoder technologies. Claim 6 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 1.
Claim 8 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 3.
Claim 9 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 4.
Claim 10 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 5.
Claim 11 corresponds to the apparatus performing the method of claim 1. Therefore, claim 11 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 1.
Claim 13 corresponds to the apparatus performing the method of claim 3. Therefore, claim 13 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 3.
Claim 14 corresponds to the apparatus performing the method of claim 4. Therefore, claim 14 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 4.
Claim 15 corresponds to the apparatus performing the method of claim 5. Therefore, claim 15 is being rejected on the same basis as claim 5.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARIA E VAZQUEZ COLON whose telephone number is (571)270-1103. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30 AM-3:30 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, CHRISTOPHER S KELLEY can be reached at (571)272-7331. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MARIA E VAZQUEZ COLON/Examiner, Art Unit 2482
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