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 .
Note: Preliminary amendment filed 08/08/2024 has been received and considered.
Claims 1-4 and 6-7 have been amended and claim 5 has been canceled.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-4 and 6-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by the document submitted by the Applicant (Distribution Data Reduction Using Fixed Single-Plane Stereoscopic Data in Volumetric Video Distribution, hereinafter referred to as Zhao).
Regarding claim 1, Zhao discloses a distribution control device comprising:
a processor (the system shown in Fig. 4); and
a memory storing program instructions (the system shown in Fig. 4) that cause the processor to:
create, for each of a plurality of virtual viewpoints arranged for an object represented by 3D data constituting 3D video content, one-sided 3D data in which an amount of data of a portion of the object that cannot be visually recognized from the virtual viewpoint is reduced (creating single-sided 3D data from each specified virtual viewpoint, wherein the part that is not included in the field of view is not used in the rendering, i.e. back side; see at least sections 3.1-3.3); and
distribute data including a mesh and a texture as one- sided 3D data of one virtual viewpoint among the one-sided 3D data for each of the virtual viewpoints to a terminal of a user according to a viewing angle of the user in a virtual space where the object is arranged (transmitting the single-sided 3D data of the selected virtual viewpoint from the content server to the client; see at least section 3.3, wherein the format of the volumetric video includes mesh and texture; see at least Fig. 1 and the introduction ).
Regarding claim 2, Zhao discloses the distribution control device according to claim 1, wherein the program instructions cause the processor to create one-sided 3D data in which the amount of data of a portion that cannot be visually recognized from the virtual viewpoint is reduced by performing geometry simplification processing on a polygon mesh representing the portion (geometry Decimation on the mesh; see at least section 3.2, wherein the mesh is polygon mesh; see at least the Introduction).
Regarding claim 3, Zhao discloses the distribution control device according to claim 1, wherein the portion that cannot be visually recognized from the virtual viewpoint is a portion corresponding to a back surface of the object when the object is viewed from the virtual viewpoint (the back side; see at least section 3.2).
Regarding claim 4, Zhao discloses a terminal comprising:
a processor (the system shown in Fig. 4); and
a memory storing program instructions (the system shown in Fig. 4) that cause the processor to:
acquire data including a mesh and a texture as one-sided 3D data from a server that controls distribution based on information specifying a relationship between a viewing angle and the one-sided 3D data (creating single-sided 3D data from each specified virtual viewpoint, wherein the part that is not included in the field of view is not used in the rendering, i.e. back side transmitting the single-sided 3D data of the selected virtual viewpoint from the content server to the client, wherein the format of the volumetric video includes mesh and texture; see at least Fig. 1 and sections 3.1-3.3); and
render the texture on the mesh to reproduce a video (see at least Fig. 1 and sections 3.1-3.3).
Claims 6 and 7 rejected on the same grounds as claim 1.
Conclusion
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/YASSIN ALATA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2426
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