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 20 is cancelled.
Claim 1-19 and 21-22 are pending.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 3, 5-16, and 18-19 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.
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 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, 4, and 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Laitinen et al. (US #2021/0219084).
Regarding Claim 1, Laitinen discloses an apparatus (title, abstract, Figs. 1-14) comprising
at least one processor (Laitinen Fig. 14; ¶0102); and
at least one memory (Laitinen Fig. 14; ¶0102) storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to at least:
obtain a bitstream comprising encoded spatial metadata and encoded transport audio signals (Laitinen Fig. 1: 107 potential transmission; Fig. 2: 211 retrieve/receive …);
decode transport audio signals from the bitstream encoded transport audio signals (Laitinen Fig. 2: 213 decode/extract from encoded transport audio signals …);
decode spatial metadata from the bitstream encoded spatial metadata (Laitinen Fig. 2: 213 decode/extract … metadata with coherence parameters …);
generate an encoding metric (Laitinen ¶0084 discloses a practical spatial audio encoder that would optimize transmission of the inter-channel relations of a loudspeaker mix would not transmit the whole covariance matrix of a loudspeaker mix, but provide a set of upmixing parameters to recover a surround sound signal at the decoder side that has a substantially similar covariance matrix than the original surround signal had. Solutions such as these have been employed. ¶0090 discloses it is shown how to estimate and describe these three cases using only 2 parameters for each time-frequency interval [additionally to the already existing direction and direct-to-total ratio parameters]. ... similar spatial quality for the reproduced output can be obtained as by reproducing the spatial sound with the information contained by the whole covariance matrix. For further additional parameters, being in addition to the classical spatial metadata parameters [the classical parameters are listed, for example in ¶0002]. ¶0082 discloses audio signal relationship parameters could be estimated also from "3D" loudspeaker configurations); and
generate spatial audio signals from the transport audio signals based on the encoding metric and the spatial metadata (Laitinen Fig. 1: 110 multi-channel loudspeaker signals; Fig. 2: 215 multi-channel audio signals; ¶0102 discloses the system 100 'synthesis' part 131 shows a synthesis processor 109 configured to receive the transport signals 104 and the metadata 106 and re-creates the multichannel loudspeaker signals 110 [or alternatively, any suitable output format such as binaural or Ambisonics signals, depending on the use case] and based on the transport signals 104 and the metadata 106).
Method Claim 22 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in Claim 1.
Regarding Claim 4, Laitinen discloses the apparatus as claimed in claim 1,
wherein the apparatus is caused to generate spatial audio signals from the transport audio signals based on the encoding metric and the spatial metadata by positioning a directional sound to a direction determined by the spatial metadata, and wherein a width of the directional sound is based on the encoding metric (Laitinen Fig. 2: 215 multi-channel audio signals; ¶0069 discloses improved perceived quality of the loudspeaker surround mixes by analysis of inter-channel coherence information of the loudspeaker signals in frequency bands including the orientation and the width [extent] information of the inter-channel coherence area or group of channels/loudspeakers. ¶0070 discloses additionally, the examples show a spatial coherence parameter(s) being conveyed along with the spatial parameter(s) [i.e., direction and energy ratio], where the orientation and width/extent is provided to the encoding efficiently using an 'orientation code' and in some embodiments an 'orientation code' and 'circular sector code'. These codes may in some embodiments both consume 4 bits per each directional parameter; [direction and width of the "beam" are known to be related to the quality of the sound field]).
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 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.
Claims 17, and 21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Laitinen et al. (US #2021/0219084) in view of Bruhn et al. (US #2021/0375297).
Regarding Claim 17, Laitinen discloses the apparatus as claimed in claim 1, but may not explicitly disclose wherein the apparatus is caused to generate the encoding metric by generating the encoding metric based on a quality of representation of the spatial metadata.
However, Bruhn (title, abstract, Figs. 1-6) teaches wherein the apparatus is caused to generate the encoding metric by generating the encoding metric based on a quality of representation of the spatial metadata (Bruhn ¶0102 discloses the detailed allocation of the coefficients for SPAR metadata is shown table 10 [matrix of object position; HOA SPAR reconstruction matrix; SPAR matrix]. Table 10 shows the order of the bits as they are inserted within a frame. Note that the most significant bit (MSB) of each parameter is always inserted first. As each field is dynamically quantized, the bit allocation is variable. ¶0159 discloses the header field 401 may comprise a size indicator for the size of the metadata field 403, wherein the size indicator may exhibit a different resolution for different size ranges of the size of the metadata field 403. As a result of this, the size of the metadata filed 403 may be signaled in a bit-rate efficient manner).
Laitinen and Bruhn are analogous art as they pertain to communicating with multimedia devices. Therefore it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention was made to modify providing spatial audio reproduction (as taught by Laitinen) to proposing the use of quantization resolution as an encoding metric (as taught by Bruhn, ¶0123) to address the technical problem of transmitting and/or storing immersive audio [IA] signals, with high perceptual quality in a bandwidth efficient manner and providing an efficient bitstream which is indicative of an IA signal (Bruhn, ¶0006).
Regarding Claim 21, Laitinen discloses the apparatus as claimed in claim 1, but may not explicitly disclose wherein the apparatus is caused to generate the encoding metric by generating the encoding metric based on at least one of: a quantization resolution of the spatial metadata;
However, Bruhn (title, abstract, Figs. 1-6) teaches wherein the apparatus is caused to generate the encoding metric by generating the encoding metric based on at least one of:
a quantization resolution of the spatial metadata (Bruhn ¶0102 discloses on the other hand, providing a direct signaling element for the indication of the actually used number of bits [or bytes] in a superframe 400 would require a relatively large number of signaling bits. ¶0146 discloses the resolution and/or step size of the size indicator may be dependent on the statistical size distribution of the [entropy encoded] metadata. By providing a size indicator with varying resolution, the bit rate efficiency for signaling the size of the metadata field 403 may be improved);
Laitinen and Bruhn are analogous art as they pertain to communicating with multimedia devices. Therefore it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention was made to modify providing spatial audio reproduction (as taught by Laitinen) to proposing the use of quantization resolution as an encoding metric (as taught by Bruhn, ¶0123) to address the technical problem of transmitting and/or storing immersive audio [IA] signals, with high perceptual quality in a bandwidth efficient manner and providing an efficient bitstream which is indicative of an IA signal (Bruhn, ¶0006).
Conclusion
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/YOGESHKUMAR PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2691