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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claims 1, 8 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Ilola (WO2023/041,838).
Referring to claims 1, 8 and 15, Ilola discloses a video processing method performed by a computer device (para.0005, computer), the method comprising:
obtaining a bone rotation-translation matrix (fig. 2a, information/occupancy/geometry/attributes; para.0073, vector, vertices and edges; para.0083, mesh attributes) of an object (para.0073, object) in a first video frame (para.0070, video) of a target video (fig. 2a, volumetric capture), the object comprising M vertices and N bones (para.0073, vertices and edges), N and M being both positive integers;
predicting (fig. 9, predicted subsequent volumetric media frame; para.0084, inter-prediction) positions of the M vertices in a second video frame of the target video subsequent to the first video frame by using a bone weight matrix of the object (fig. 9, vertex/vertices) and the bone rotation-translation matrix (fig. 9, mesh attributes; fig. 3, block-to-patch mapping), to obtain predicted positions of the M vertices;
alternatively updating the bone weight matrix and the bone rotation-translation matrix (fig. 7, encoding vertex and mesh attributes into bitstream) based on a difference (fig. 7, identified difference between frames 706) between real positions of the M vertices in the second video frame and predicted positions of the M vertices, to obtain a target bone weight matrix (fig. 9, decoded vertices); and
restoring the target video based on the target bone weight matrix and the bone rotation-translation matrix of the object in the target video (fig. 2b, 3D reconstruction; fig. 9, render the mesh into a reconstructed media frame).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7, 9-14 and 16-20 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The further steps of weight matrix and the bone rotation-translation matrix operations as required in dependent claims 2-7, 9-14 and 16-20. Ilola discloses a reconstruction of video with the same frame prediction steps, but none of the prior art on record discloses the same matrix operations at the same level of details. The claim term “bone rotation and translation matrix” is interpreted and understood as a single matrix. Although the claim is based on abstract idea of mathematical operations on video frames, independent claims appear to have practical applications in video reconstructions.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to examiner Cheng-Yuan Tseng whose telephone number is (571)272-9772, and fax number is (571)273-9772. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday from 09:00 to 17:30 Eastern Time. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alicia Harrington can be reached on (571)272-2330. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571)273-8300. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at (866)217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call (800)786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or (571)272-1000.
/CHENG YUAN TSENG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2615
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