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 § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-11 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1 and 23 recites “the second number of bits is larger than a bit capacity for compression associated with the image processor”, its unclear how a bit capacity of a compressed image is larger than the uncompressed image, when the only reason for compressing an image is to reduce the bit capacity. Therefore, the claim is indefinite.
Claims 2-11 depend on claim 1 and therefore, are rejected too.
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.
Claims 1-6, 8-16 and 18-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rasche (US 8,666,186) in view of Alakuijala et al (US Pub. 2021/0084339, this reference has a publication date 8/22/2019 for its Priority/Family document WO 2019/161303).
With respect to claim 1 as best understood, Rasche discloses A computer-implemented image compression method, (see Abstract) comprising:
receiving, in a frame buffer of a computing device, an image [captured by an image capturing device of the computing device], wherein the image comprises a first number of bits, (see figure 7 memory, col. 5, lines 5-10 wherein …video camera…; and col. 3, line 60-61, wherein …HDR image…);
applying, based on the first number of bits, a linear transform to the received image, wherein the linear transform comprises: (i) a color transform, and (ii) a discrete cosine transform (DCT), to generate a frequency spectrum comprising one or more frequency components, (see figure 1, numerical 120, 130);
quantizing respective amplitudes of the one or more frequency components, wherein a number of quantization steps to be applied is configured to reduce error in the one or more frequency components, (see figure 1, numerical 140; and see col. 7, lines 25-30, wherein …In one exemplary embodiment, the error tolerance is chosen as a user-specifiable parameter. It may represent the amount of error that can be tolerated in the most sensitive frequency component, e.g., the DC frequency component); and
generating, by an image processor and based on the quantizing, a compressed image comprising a second number of bits, wherein the second number of bits is larger than a bit capacity for compression associated with the image processor, (see col. 4, lines 1-5, wherein …Together, blocks 130 and 140 achieve a significant share of the compression data reduction. At 150, a lossless compression of the quantized DCT coefficients is performed….), as claimed.
However, Rasche fails to explicitly disclose an image captured by an image capturing device of the computing device, (emphasis added), as claimed.
Alakuijala teaches an image captured by an image capturing device of the computing device, (emphasis added, see paragraph 0046, wherein …computing device 200 can also include …an image-sensing device 220, for example, a camera, or another image-sensing device…), as claimed.
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skilled in the art at the effective date of invention to combine the two references as they are analogous because they are solving similar problem of digital image compression using image analysis. Teaching of Alakuijala of using a camera in the computing device can incorporated into Rasche’s system as the system gets an image to compress, for suggestion, and modifying the system yields a quality controlled image compression, (see Abstract of Alakuijala), for motivation.
With respect to claim 2, Rasche and Alakuijala discloses all the elements as claimed and as rejected in claim 1 above. However, they fail to explicitly disclose wherein the frame buffer has a size greater than the first number of bits, as claimed.
But, it is well-known “Official Notice” in the art that in order to store data in memory the memory has to be greater or larger than the size of the data being stored in it. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skilled in the art at the effective date of invention to simply utilize the well-known feature of having memory size bigger than the data storage size into the system to yield the predictable results.
With respect to claim 3, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the frame buffer is a 32-bit floating point image buffer, (see Rasche col. 1, lines 28-31, wherein …HDR images use a higher number of bits …Typically, a 16-bit or 32-bit floating point number…), as claimed.
With respect to claim 4, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the quantizing comprises selecting a quantization matrix compatible with a high dynamic range (HDR) image format, (see Rasche col. 6, lines 55-60, wherein …Manders et al. have proposed compressing the low-byte of the floating point values in the HDR image directly…), as claimed.
With respect to claim 5, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the quantization matrix is compatible with one or more low frequency values of the HDR image format, (see Rasche col. 6, lines 55-60, wherein …Manders et al. have proposed compressing the low-byte of the floating point values in the HDR image directly…), as claimed.
With respect to claim 6, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the quantization matrix comprises 8 x 8 DCT coefficient arrays, (see Rasche col. 5, lines 46-50 wherien …The DCT is then applied to each data unit, producing an n.times.n block of DCT frequency coefficients for each data unit. For JPEG, n equals 8…), as claimed.
With respect to claim 8, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the generating of the compressed image comprises performing one of a non-color managed compression, a color managed compression, or a high dynamic range (HDR) compression, (see Rasche Abstract), as claimed.
With respect to claim 9, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the frame buffer is associated with a web browsing application, (see Alakauijala paragraph 0002, wherein … A web page may include multiple images, and a large portion of the time and resources spent rendering the web page are dedicated to rendering those images for display…), as claimed.
With respect to claim 10, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein the color transform is applied prior to the DCT transform, (see Rasche figure 1), as claimed.
With respect to claim 11, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein a chromacity plane comprises a u-plane and a v-plane, and the method further comprises: performing a subsampling of the chromacity plane by subsampling the u-plane only, (see Rasche col. 7, lines 41-45, wherein …techniques of computing the automatic error scaling metric are also possible, for example, by sampling the luma levels in different areas of the image and computing a simple or weighted average of the sampled luma values), as claimed.
Claim 12 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejections for claim 1, because claim 12 is claiming subject matter of similar scope as claimed in claim 1. Furthermore, Rasche discloses the inverse operation in figure 3, and see figure 7 for the display numerical 724 which is connected to the computing device 702.
Claims 13-16 are rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejections for claims 2-3 and 5-6, because claims 13-16 are claiming subject matter of similar scope as claimed in claims 2-3 and 5-6 respectively.
With respect to claim 18, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein a decoder of the computing device is configured to perform non-color managed decompression, wherein the received image is a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) formatted image, and the method further comprises: interpreting the JPEG formatted image as a YUV image; and applying color space conversion that is hard-coded for stock JPEG images, (see Rasche col. 5, lines 15-50), as claimed.
With respect to claim 19, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein a decoder of the computing device is configured to perform color managed decompression, (see Rasche Abstract), as claimed.
With respect to claim 20, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses wherein a decoder of the computing device is configured to perform HDR decompression, and the method further comprises: detecting one or more of: (i) a hybrid log gamma (HLG) color curve, or (ii) metadata indicating a maximum luminosity for the image, (see Rasche col. 4, lines 50-65), as claimed.
Claim 21 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection for claim 9, because claim 21 is claiming subject matter of similar scope as claimed in claim 9.
With respect to claim 22, Rasche and Alakuijala further discloses applying a tone mapping to the decompressed image prior to the providing of the decompressed image, (see Alakuijala paragraph 0104, wherein … Determining whether the second bit cost is lower than the first bit cost includes comparing the second bit cost to the first bit cost…), as claimed.
Claim 23 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection for claim 1, because claim 23 is claiming subject matter of similar scope as claimed in claim 1.
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over over Rasche (US 8,666,186) in view of Alakuijala et al (US Pub. 2021/0084339, this reference has a publication date 8/22/2019 for its Priority/Family document WO 2019/161303) as applied to claim 4 above, and further in view of Just noticeable quantization levels for high daynamic range images, by Sozer et al (an IDS document).
With respect to claim 7, Rasche and Alakuijala discloses all the elements as claimed and as rejected in claim 4 above. However, they fail to explicitly disclose wherein an entry in a first row and a first column of the quantization matrix is an integer value in a range from 1 to 7, as claimed.
Sozer teaches wherein an entry in a first row and a first column of the quantization matrix is an integer value in a range from 1 to 7, (see figure7, various quantizing tables having various values at the first row and a first column), as claimed.
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skilled in the art at the effective date of invention to combine the references as they are analogous because they are solving similar problem of image compression. Teaching of Sozer to have various quantizing tables can be incorporated in to the Rasche’s system as suggested in col. 6 a typical quantizing table, for suggestion, and modifying the system yields HDR compression with various frequencies, see Sozer Abstract, for motivation.
Claim 17 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in the rejection for claim 7, because claim 17 is claiming subject matter of similar scope as claimed in claim 7.
Conclusion
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/VIKKRAM BALI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2663
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