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
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 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.
Claim(s) 1, 5, 8, 11-12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Wu et al. US 2021/0227243.
In regard to claim 12, it is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored therein a bitstream generated by acts. Significantly, the claimed non-transitory computer readable medium is NOT implementing any actual method; no instructions/steps are being executed. Instead, the claimed storage medium merely stores the data output from and/or generated by a series of acts. In other words, these claims are directed to a mere machine-readable medium storing data content (a bitstream generated by a method).
Applicant therefore seeks to patent the storage of a bitstream in the abstract. In other words, the claim seeks to patent the content of the information (bitstream comprising video information) and not the process itself. Moreover, this stored bitstream does not impose any definitive physical organization on the data as there is no functional relationship between the bitstream and the storage medium. In conclusion, the identified claim and any claims depending therefrom are directed to mere data content (bitstream generated by a series of acts) stored as a bitstream on a computer-readable storage medium. Under MPEP 2111.05(III), such claims are merely machine-readable media. Furthermore, the Examiner found and continues to find that there is no disclosed or claimed functional relationship between the stored data and medium. Instead, the medium is merely a support or carrier for the data being stored. Therefore, the data stored and the way such data is generated should not be given patentable weight. See MPEP 2111.05 applying In re Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579, 1583-84, 32 USPQ2d 1031, 1035 (Fed. Cir. 1994) and In re Ngai, 367 F.3d 1336, 70 USPQ2d 1862 (Fed. Cir. 2004). As such, this claim is subject to a prior art rejection based on any non-transitory computer readable medium known before the earliest effective filing date of the present application. Therefore, the claim is anticipated by
Wu, which discloses
a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored therein a bitstream comprising video information generated by acts (Fig. 1: computer readable medium 110)
Claim 1. And under similar/complementary rationale 11. 12. An image decoding method, comprising: determining an interpolation filter of a current block based on a candidate list, the candidate list including a plurality of interpolation filter candidates pre-defined in a decoding apparatus (0236; 0249); generating a prediction sample of the current block based on the interpolation filter of the current block (Fig. 11B: S1108); and reconstructing the current block based on the prediction sample of the current block (Fig. 11B: S1109).
Claim 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the candidate list includes at least one of a DCT- based interpolation filter, a Gaussian interpolation filter, or a sharpening interpolation filter, wherein the DCT-based interpolation filter includes at least one of a 8-tap first DCT- based interpolation filter or a 12-tap second DCT-based interpolation filter, and wherein the Gaussian interpolation filter includes at least one of a 8-tap first Gaussian interpolation filter or a 12-tap second Gaussian interpolation filter (0224; 0251; 0272).
Claim 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the candidate list is determined as one of a plurality of candidate lists pre-defined in the decoding apparatus (0249).
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 2-4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu in view of Park et al. US 2021/0037239
Claim 2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the interpolation filter comprises, wherein the values are calculated based on a template region of the current block and a template region of a reference block (0311), and wherein the reference block includes at least one of a reference block in an LO direction or a reference block in an L1 direction (0249).
Wu does not explicitly disclose the following, however Park teaches calculating SAD values corresponding to the plurality of interpolation filter candidates respectively (0119-28)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill before the effective filing date to modify the reference(s) as above in order to let the accuracy of the motion information may be predicted based on the adjacent region similarity between the current block and the reference block (Park 0120)
Claim 3. The method of claim 2, and wherein the index information indicates one of the plurality of interpolation filter candidates belonging to the reordered candidate list (0032; 0039)
Wu does not explicitly disclose the following, however Park teaches wherein a reordered candidate list is generated by reordering the interpolation filter candidates in an ascending order of the SAD values, wherein the interpolation filter of the current block is determined from the reordered candidate list based on index information signaled from a bitstream, and wherein the index information indicates one of the plurality of interpolation filter candidates belonging to the reordered candidate list. (0119-28; Fig. 11; 0167-9)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill before the effective filing date to modify the reference(s) as above in order to let the accuracy of the motion information may be predicted based on the adjacent region similarity between the current block and the reference block (Park 0120)
Claim 4. The method of claim 2, wherein the SAD values are calculated for a reference picture list 0 and a reference picture list 1, respectively (0227; 0249).
Claim(s) 6-7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu in view of Ye et al. US 2009/0257502
Claim 6. The method of claim 1,
Wu does not explicitly disclose the following, however Ye teaches wherein determining the interpolation filter of the current block based on the candidate list is performed based on first flag information indicating whether an adaptive interpolation filter technique is used for the current block (0180-1; claims 6-7).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill before the effective filing date to modify the reference(s) as above in order to defines whether the first interpolation filter or the second interpolation filter should be used by a decoder (Ye 0181)
Claim 7. The method of claim 6, information indicating whether the adaptive filter technique is allowed in a video sequence including the current block, a quantization parameter of the current block, a size of the current block, or an inter prediction mode of the current block (0202).
Wu does not explicitly disclose the following, however Ye teaches wherein the first flag information is determined based on at least one of second flag information indicating whether the adaptive filter technique is allowed (0180-1; claims 6-7).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill before the effective filing date to modify the reference(s) as above in order to defines whether the first interpolation filter or the second interpolation filter should be used by a decoder (Ye 0181)
Claim(s) 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu in view of Kim US 2021/0006778
Claim 9. The method of claim 1,
Wu does not explicitly disclose the following, however Kim teaches wherein an interpolation filter for a chroma component of the current block is determined independently from an interpolation filter for a luma component of the current block (0228-0238).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill before the effective filing date to modify the reference(s) as above in order to the reference pixel filter unit reduces the remaining degradation in the encoding/decoding process, filtering may be performed for reference pixels, for the purpose of increasing prediction accuracy (Kim 0230)
Claim(s) 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu in view of Liu et al. US 2022/0014734
Claim 10. The method of claim 1,
Wu does not explicitly disclose the following, however Liu teaches wherein the candidate list is reconfigured based on an interpolation filter used in at least one of a picture, a slice or a block decoded before the current block (0205-6).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill before the effective filing date to modify the reference(s) as above in order to wherein the HMVP candidate is derived by inheriting one entry from the HMVP table including corresponding interpolation filter information associated with the one entry (Liu 0206)
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSEPH W BECKER whose telephone number is (571)270-7301. The examiner can normally be reached flexible usually 10-6.
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/JOSEPH W BECKER/Examiner, Art Unit 2483
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