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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant's election with traverse of claims 1-11 and 13 in the reply filed on 12/29/2025 is acknowledged. The traversal is on the ground(s) that the amendment to claims 12 and 14 to include the feature “wherein temporal scalability information of a tile track in the G-PCC file is not included in the G-PCC file” establishes a corresponding technical feature between the groups. Applicant argues that Group II’s omission of this information is technically related to Group I’s derivation of that information.
This is not found persuasive because the special technical feature of Group I remains the specific method and device for reception, which involves obtaining a G-PCC file and determining whether temporal scalability information of a tile track is present. The special technical feature of Group II remains the specific method and device for transmission, which involves determining whether temporal scalability is applied to a G-PCC file. The addition of a negative limitation to Group II (stating what the G-PCC file does not include) does not introduce the positive special technical features of Group I into Group II. Group II still lacks the steps of obtaining a file, determining if the scalability information is present, and deriving it based on a tile base track. Conversely, Group I lacks the steps of determining if temporal scalability is applied and generating the file based on that application.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
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 1-11 & 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chou et al., hereinafter referred to as Chou (US 2017/0347122 A1) in view of Cava (US 2022/0264177 A1).
As per claim 1, Chou discloses a method performed by a reception device of point cloud data (Chou: Abstract.), the method comprising:
obtaining a geometry-based point cloud compression (G-PCC) file including the point cloud data (Chou: Para. [0009] [0081]-[0082] disclose obtaining compressed bitstream files containing geometry point cloud data separated into partitions.);
determining whether temporal scalability information of a tile track (partition) in the G-PCC file is present (Chou: Paras. [0007], [0082], [0283] disclose determining parameters and information for partitions [tile tracks] based on spatial regions and temporal layers [temporal scalability information] of the bitstream.); and
However, Chou does not explicitly disclose deriving the temporal scalability information of the tile track, based on the temporal scalability information of the tile track not being present, wherein the temporal scalability information of the tile track is derived based on temporal scalability information of a tile base track in the G-PCC file.
Further, Cava is in the same field of endeavor and teaches deriving the temporal scalability information (elements/attributes) of the tile track (patch), based on the temporal scalability information of the tile track not being present (patches provide new information to a client without including all the previously sent information based on identified elements/attributes), wherein the temporal scalability information of the tile track is derived based on temporal scalability information of a tile base track (in-memory media presentation description 208) in the G-PCC file (Cava: Paras. [0034], [0045], [0062] disclose omitting redundant information in partitioned tracks/patches and deriving the missing hierarchical information by copying or taking the value from the base/ in-memory media presentation description 208 in the media presentation description (MPD) [G-PCC file].).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, and having the teachings of Chou and Cava before him or her, to modify the scalable point cloud decoding method of Chou to include the deriving based on tile track not being present feature as described in Cava. The motivation for doing so would have been to improve optimization of memory usage, reduced bandwidth and processing time by providing a configuration that facilitates efficient communication between transmitting and receiving devices.
As per claim 2, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the temporal scalability information of the tile track comprises one or more of number information specifying the number of temporal levels in the tile track or identification information specifying identifiers of the temporal levels (Chou: Para. [0286] discloses “FIG. 26 shows separation of the time series (2610) of point cloud frames into three temporal layers (2620, 2630, 2640) … separating the frames into temporal layers” [temporal scalability information that inherently requires identifying the number of temporal levels/layers and their identifiers to perform the separation and decoding].).
As per claim 3, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 2, wherein the number information is derived to be the same value as the number of temporal levels in the tile base track, and wherein the number of temporal levels in the tile base track is included in the temporal scalability information of the tile base track (Cava: Para. [0062] discloses “Any attributes that exist in both the in-memory media presentation description 208 and the patch take the value of the patch element” [deriving the missing attributes (number information) to be the exact same value as the base/in-memory element].).
As per claim 4, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 2, wherein the identification information is derived to be the same value as the identifiers of the temporal levels in the tile base track, and wherein the identifiers of the temporal levels in the tile base track are included in the temporal scalability information of the tile base track (Cava: Para. [0062] discloses “client 104 recursively walks the elements in the patch structure, matching elements in the patch to elements in the in-memory media presentation description 208 using defined identifying attributes … child nodes are recursively merged” [matching and deriving identification information to be the same as the base track identifiers].).
As per claim 5, Chou-Cava disclose the method of 1, wherein further based on temporal scalability being applied to the G-PCC file, the temporal scalability information of the tile track is derived based on the temporal scalability information of the tile base track (Chou: Para. [0088] discloses “different point cloud frames organized in temporal layers (temporal resolution scalability) … For decoding, a decoder can select all of the partitions or a subset of the partitions” [the derivation and decoding is based on temporal scalability actually being applied/organized in the file].).
As per claim 6, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 5, wherein based on the number of temporal levels in the tile base track being plural, the temporal scalability is applied to the G-PCC file (Chou: Para. [0286] discloses “FIG. 26 shows separation of the time series (2610) of point cloud frames into three temporal layers” [temporal scalability is applied when the number of temporal levels is plural (e.g., three)].).
As per claim 7, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 5, wherein based on the number of temporal level track in the tile base track being plural, the temporal scalability is applied to the G-PCC file (Chou: Para. [0286] discloses “FIG. 26 shows separation of the time series (2610) of point cloud frames into three temporal layers” [applying temporal scalability based on plural temporal tracks/layers].).
As per claim 8, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 1, wherein based on the temporal scalability being applied to the G-PCC file, the temporal scalability information of the tile base track is present in the tile base track (Chou: Para. [0291] discloses “When temporal scalability is used in conjunction with another form of scalability, managing reference frame dependencies can become more complicated” and Cava: Para. [0046] discloses “Server 102 provides an update for client 104 of segment information that is not already known. Status information is used to keep track of what information each different client 104 has received.” [the combination teaches that when scalability is applied, the base information/status must be present in the base track/memory to resolve dependencies].).
As per claim 9, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 8, wherein further based on one or more tile tracks being present in the G-PCC file, the temporal scalability information of the tile base track is present in the tile base track (Chou: Para. [0299] discloses “The remaining transform coefficients of the 'pruned' sub-trees are assigned to one of the other partitions (2732, 2733), depending on the spatial region” and Cava: Para. [0045] discloses “Continually extending the timelines of in-memory media presentation description 208 via patches” [the combination teaches that when additional spatial partitions/tile tracks are present, the base temporal information is maintained in the base/in-memory representation]).
As per claim 10, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 8, wherein based on multiple tile base tracks being present, the temporal scalability information of the tile base track is present in all of the multiple tile base tracks (Cava: Para. [0068] discloses “A Period is an element that contains multiple AdaptationSets and defines the portion of the media timeline … An AdaptationSet is an element that represents a sin- gular elementary stream type … that may have multiple representations” [when multiple base tracks/adaptation sets are present, the temporal timeline information must be established and present for the periods]).
As per claim 11, Chou-Cava disclose the method of claim 1, wherein based on the number of temporal levels included in the tile track being less than the number of temporal levels included in the tile base track, the temporal scalability information of the tile track is included in the G-PCC file (Chou: Para. [0348] discloses “For inter-frame compression, when performing motion compensation for at least some blocks of a frame relative to a reference frame, reference frame dependencies are constrained to be within the same layer or lower layer among the multiple temporal layers” [including temporal scalability information/constraints when dealing with subsets or lower numbers of temporal levels to resolve dependencies].).
As per claim 13, Chou discloses a reception device of point cloud data (Chou: Abstract.), comprising:
a memory (Chou: Para. [0040] discloses a memory.); and
at least one processor, wherein the at least one processor is configured to (Chou: Para. [0040] discloses at least one processor, wherein the at least one processor is configured to:):
obtain a geometry-based point cloud compression (G-PCC) file including the point cloud data (Chou: Para. [0009] [0081]-[0082] disclose obtain compressed bitstream files containing geometry point cloud data separated into partitions.);
determine whether temporal scalability information of a tile track in the G-PCC file is present (Chou: Paras. [0007], [0082], [0283] disclose determining parameters and information for partitions [tile tracks] based on spatial regions and temporal layers [temporal scalability information] of the bitstream.); and
However, Chou does not explicitly disclose derive the temporal scalability information of the tile track based on temporal scalability information of a tile base track in the G-PCC file, based on the temporal scalability information of the tile track not being present.
Further, Cava is in the same field of endeavor and teaches derive the temporal scalability information (elements/attributes) of the tile track (patch), based on temporal scalability information of a tile base track (in-memory media presentation description 208) in the G-PCC file (MPD), based on the temporal scalability information of the tile track not being present (Cava: Paras. [0034], [0045], [0062] disclose omitting redundant information in partitioned tracks/patches and deriving the missing hierarchical information by copying or taking the value from the base/ in-memory media presentation description 208 in the media presentation description (MPD) [G-PCC file].).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, and having the teachings of Chou and Cava before him or her, to modify the scalable point cloud decoding method of Chou to include the deriving based on tile track not being present feature as described in Cava. The motivation for doing so would have been to improve optimization of memory usage, reduced bandwidth and processing time by providing a configuration that facilitates efficient communication between transmitting and receiving devices.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure and can be viewed in the list of references.
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/PEET DHILLON/Primary Examiner
Art Unit: 2488
Date: 03-22-2026
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