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 .
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, 14 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Burns (US 2020/0218713) in view of Angquist et al. (US 2019/0104259) in view of Pasha et al. (US 2020/0110838) in view of Li et al. (CN106815238A).
Regarding claim 1, Burns discloses an encoding method (Burns, [0063], “A Live Buffer object may be an object or record type or schema identifier followed by a series of packed fields. The number of fields in the Live Buffer and the method of encoding them is identified by the Object's schema”) comprising:
obtain a dynamic attribute data block (Burns, [0055], “As a Live Buffer system may utilize a stream to serialize values of a field across a list of included records, all the values for that field for each record may be encoded in the same manner in the same stream. This feature allows variable length encoding mechanisms to be used for values in a particular stream”. Variable length encoding allows the serialized buffer to change dynamically depending on which attributes exist);
Burns does not expressly disclose “obtaining animation data corresponding to an animation element from an animation project file;”;
Angquist et al. (hereinafter Angquist) discloses animation data (Angquist, [0029], “Video lane 107 includes video clips, such as video clip 111”. Video frames represent the visual output of animation element);
obtaining animation data corresponding to an animation element from an animation project file (Angquist, [0030], “In FIG. 1, a user is working on a media project and has placed caption and subtitle objects 110a, 110b, in timeline 104 in a desired sequence”. In addition, in paragraph [0052], “a user can set the sequence attributes (e.g., project name, starting timecode, video format, resolution and rate, number of audio channels, etc.) when creating a project in timeline 104. Primary collection object 901 includes collection ID identifying the collection, total range, a trimmed range and a media component array that, in this example, includes media clips 902, 903, 904 (also referred to as media clips 1-3). Media clips 902, 903, 904 are media objects that store data and links for various types of content, including video and audio data”. Rendered video frames that depict the visual appearance of animation element within an animation project file).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify serialization and serialization of records in Burns to include the video editing of Angquist. The motivation for doing so would have been efficiently manage, store, access video editing data in a structured manner.
Burns as modified by Angquist does not expressly disclose “when one or more attributes of the animation element exist in a predefined attribute structure table”;
Pasha et al. (hereinafter Pasha) discloses when one or more attributes exist in a predefined attribute structure table (Pasha, [0027], “the privileges module 132 verifies that Source1, Source2, and Source3, respectively, are entitled to make changes to data tables of the database 111, and determines that the schema is in sync with the schema of the data table; the keys used to identify attributes are the same as the set list of predefined keys”. The schema corresponds to a predefined attribute structure table, as it defines a set of attributes for the data table. Each attribute is associated with a predefined identifier (key), and the system recognizes only attributes that match one of the predefined keys).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify data structure of Burns using the concept of Pasha’s the schema is determined to be in sync with a data table by recognizing attributes that match a predefined set of keys. The motivation for doing so would have been reducing errors in managing structured records.
Burns as modified by Angquist and Pasha does not expressly disclose “generating an attribute structure table by sequentially storing attribute flag information corresponding to each of the one or more attributes and sequentially storing, after the attribute flag information, corresponding attribute content for each of the one or more attributes”;
Li et al. (hereinafter Li) discloses generating a structure table by sequentially storing flag information (Li, Figs 1 and 3) and sequentially storing, after the flag information corresponding content (Li, Figs 1 and 3).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify data structure of Burns using the concept of Li’s sequentially stores flag information followed by the corresponding attribute content. The motivation for doing so would have been improving reliability and performance of data processing.
Regarding claim 14, Burns discloses a data encoding apparatus (Burns, [0063], “A Live Buffer object may be an object or record type or schema identifier followed by a series of packed fields. The number of fields in the Live Buffer and the method of encoding them is identified by the Object's schema”. In addition, in paragraph [0110], “apparatus, system or device”).
processor circuitry (Burns, [0111], “A “processor” includes any, hardware system, mechanism or component that processes data, signals or other information”).
The remaining limitations recite in claim 14 are similar in scope to the method recited in claim 1 and therefore are rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 20, Burns discloses a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer-readable instructions thereon, which, when executed by processing circuitry, cause the processing circuitry to perform an encoding method (Burns, [0110], “The computer readable medium can be, by way of example only but not by limitation, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, system, device, propagation medium, or computer memory. Such computer-readable medium shall generally be machine readable and include software programming or code that can be human readable (e.g., source code) or machine readable (e.g., object code)…one or more non-transitory computer readable media storing computer instructions translatable by one or more processors in a computing environment”. In addition, in paragraph [0063], “A Live Buffer object may be an object or record type or schema identifier followed by a series of packed fields. The number of fields in the Live Buffer and the method of encoding them is identified by the Object's schema”).
The limitations recite in claim 20 are similar in scope to the method recited in claim 1 and therefore are rejected under the same rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-13 and 15-19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KYLE ZHAI whose telephone number is (571)270-3740. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ke Xiao can be reached at (571) 272 - 7776. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KYLE ZHAI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611