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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1 have been considered but are moot because they related to newly amended limitations for which a new rejection based on Park and Xu is provided below.
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 (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 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, 5-7, 9, 12-18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Park et al (2021/0037238) in view of Xu et al (2020/0007888)
In regard to claim 1 Park discloses a video signal decoding device (Park Fig. 2 comprising a processor (Park par. 296) , wherein the processor is configured to:
obtain a first motion information list including a first plurality of motion information related to a current block (Park Fig. 21 note normal candidate list shown in Fig. 21 comprising plural pieces of information);
obtain a first modified information list including a first modified plurality of motion information, wherein the first modified plurality of motion information is obtained by modifying the first plurality of motion information based on a first plurality of costs related to the first plurality of motion information (Park Fig. 21 and pars 214-215 note refining one or more of the merge candidates by determining cost values for corrected merge candidates to generate a refined candidate list, note that ATMVP and ATMVP-EXT candidates are not refined in this step);
obtain a second motion information list by reordering the first modified plurality of motion information (Park Fig. 21 and par. 215 note reordering the refined candidate list to generate a second, reordered, candidate list labeled ‘Re-ordered candidate list’);
obtain a second modified information list including a second modified plurality of motion information wherein the second modified plurality of motion information is obtained by modifying the reordered first modified plurality of motion information (Park Fig. 20 and pars 211-213 note determining whether each candidate in the reordered has already been refined (step S2010) and if not modifying information from the reordered first modified list to obtain a second modified information list (step S2030), note the ATMVP and ATMVP-ext candidates in par. 214 as examples of motion information in the second motion information list, or reordered first modified list, that are refined to in a second modification step)
predict the current block based on a second plurality of cost related to the second modified plurality of motion information (Park pars. 204-205 note selecting the smallest SAD value as refined, or corrected, motion information, further note Fig. 20 and pars 211-213 performing motion compensation to predict the current block with the refined motion information).
Park discloses obtaining first and second modified motion information using a DMVR process (Park pars 211-215). It is noted that Park does not disclose details regarding the search area for obtaining modified motion information. However, Xu discloses that a search area for a DMVR process is determined based on a size of the current block (Xu par. 108).
It is therefore considered obvious that one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention would recognize the advantage of incorporating adaptive search ranges as taught by Xu in the DVMR motion information refinement process of Park in order to reduce memory access as suggested by Xu (Xu par. 108).
In regard to claim 2 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Park further discloses that
each of the first plurality of costs is a value related to a similarity between reference blocks corresponding to each of the first modified plurality of motion information (Park pars 214-215 note refining one or more candidates from the normal candidate list using DMVR, further note Fig. 18 and pars 204-205 DMVR determines cost values based on similarities, or SAD values, based on the refined, or corrected motion information, which provides the minimum SAD),
wherein each of the second plurality of costs is a value related to a similarity between reference blocks corresponding to each of the second modified plurality of motion information (Park Fig. 20 pars 211-213 note refining one or more unrefined candidates from the reordered candidate list using DMVR, further note Fig. 18 and pars 204-205 DMVR determines cost values based on similarities, or SAD values, based on the refined, or corrected motion information, which provides the minimum SAD).
In regard to claim 3 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Park further discloses that the second motion information list is sorted in an ascending order of cost values corresponding to the second modified plurality of motion information (Park par. 100 note reordering candidates in order from small to large, or ascending, cost).
In regard to claim 5 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Park further discloses that the current block is predicted based on motion information corresponding to a minimum cost among the second plurality of costs (Park note Fig. 20 and pars 211-213 performing motion compensation to predict the current block with the refined motion information, further note par. 85 selecting the candidate having the ‘best’ [smallest cost] from candidate blocks in the refined candidate list).
In regard to claim 6 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Park further discloses that each of the first plurality of motion information is included in different pictures, wherein each of the reordered first modified plurality of motion information is included in different pictures (Park Fig. 17 note the candidate list comprises motion vector information that relates blocks in a current image to blocks in first and/or second reference pictures, and hence the motion information are included in different pictures, in this case the reference pictures).
In regard to claim 7 refer to the statements made the rejection of claim 1 above. Park further discloses that the first modified plurality of information and the second modified plurality of information are modified based on at least one of motion vector difference (MVD), template matching (TM), bilateral matching (BM), merge mode with MVD (MMVD), merge mode with (MMVD)- based TM, optical flow-based TM, and multi-pass decoder-side motion vector refinement (DMVR) (Park Fig. 4 and pars 97-102 for template matching, Fig. 17 and pars 200-203 for bilateral matching, and Fig. 18 and pars 204-205 for DMVR).
In regard to claim 9 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Park further discloses that blocks corresponding to each of the first plurality of motion information are blocks located within a first search space (Park Fig. 21 and pars 214-215 note DMVR applied to candidates A1, B1, B0, A0 and Combined Bi-pred which includes a distinct DVMR search area corresponding to the motion vector of each predictor),
wherein blocks corresponding to each of the reordered first modified plurality of motion information are blocks located within a second search space (Park Fig. 20 and pars 211-213 note DVMR performed on candidates not previously refined, like the ATMVP and ATMVP-Ext candidates of Fig. 21 which include a distinct DVMR search area corresponding to the motion vector of each of the ATMVP and ATMVP-Ext predictors),
wherein the first and second search spaces are different from each other (Park Pars 211-215 note each candidate will have a distinct DVMR search area corresponding to its own motion vector)..
Claims 12-18 and 20 recite a video signal encoding device and a method for obtaining a bitstream comprising a processor which implements processing steps corresponding to those described in claims 1-3, 5-7 and 9 above. Refer to the statements made in regard to claims 1-3, 5-7 and 9 for the rejection of claims 12-17 which will not be repeated here for brevity. In particular regard to claim 12 Park further discloses an encoding device (Park Fig. 1).
In regard to claim 20 Park further discloses a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a bitstream (Park par. 298 note various computer readable recording media which may store a bitstream).
Claim(s) 11 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Park in view of Xu and Lin et al (2022/0150507).
In regard to claims 11 and 19 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claims 1 and 12 above. Park discloses applying a DVMR process (Park Fig. 18 and pars 204-205). It is noted that Park does not disclose details of DMVR calculations. However, Lin discloses that DMVR includes sequentially calculating cost values for one or more pieces of motion information (Lin Figs. 9-11 par 24 note sequentially computing SAD values of a first position followed by four neighboring positions). Lin further discloses a cost value smaller than pre-configured first value is obtained while the first plurality of costs are being sequentially calculated, costs of remaining pieces of corrected motion information are not calculated (Lin par. 24 note if the SAD of a center position is the smallest sad after a first calculation DMVR terminates and a SAD of an additional position is not calculated, further note Park Fig. 21 and pars 214-215 a first DMVR process is applied to some candidates during a refinement process) and
when a cost value smaller than a pre-configured second value is obtained while the second plurality of costs are being sequentially calculated costs of remaining of modified motion information are not calculated (Lin par. 24 note if the SAD of a center position is the smallest sad after a first calculation DMVR terminates and a SAD of an additional position is not calculated, further note Park Fig. 20 and pars 211-215 a second DMVR process is applied to the remaining candidates during a second refinement process).
It is therefore considered obvious that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the advantage of incorporating the sequential DMVR calculations of Lin in the invention of Park in view of Xu in order to gain the advantage of fast searching as suggested by Lin (Lin par. 24). Further note that in combination with Park first cost values are sequentially calculated for the first pieces of corrected motion information during the first DMVR refinement process of Fig. 21 for some candidates and second cost values are sequentially calculated for the second pieces of corrected motion information during the second DMVR refinement process of Fig. 20 for the remaining candidates)
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JEREMIAH CHARLES HALLENBECK-HUBER whose telephone number is (571)272-5248. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
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/JEREMIAH C HALLENBECK-HUBER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2481
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