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 Objections
1. Claims 3-4, 6-7, 12-13, and 15-16 are objected to because of the following informalities: the claims should be ended with a period. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 19, the spelling of words “optimising” and “optimised” should be changed to ““optimizing” and “optimized”.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
2. 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.
3. Claims 1 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by MEARDI (US 2022/0217372).
Regarding claim 1, MEARDI teaches that a method of decoding image data (Fig. 4), comprising receiving first image data at a first resolution, the first image data being associated with a frame of video (Fig. 4 and pages 3, paragraphs 40 – 43, where teaches the decoder may parse the headers (e.g. containing global configuration data, picture configuration data, and other data blocks) and configure the decoder based on those headers, and in order to re-create the input video, the decoder may decode each of the base stream, the first enhancement stream and the further enhancement stream, the frames of the stream may be synchronized and then combined to derive the decoded video), upsampling the first image data to produce second image data for the frame of video at a second resolution, the second resolution being higher than the first resolution (Fig. 4 and pages 8, paragraphs 75 – 84 where teaches the L-1 reconstructed video is up-sampled to generate an up-sampled reconstructed video. In this example, the up-sampling 166 is performed in both vertical and horizontal directions such that a single value in the L-1 reconstructed video is up-sampled to generate a 2×2 block of elements in the up-sampled reconstructed video, and the size of the array has increased as a result of the up-sampling from 1×1 in the L-1 reconstructed video to 2×2 in the up-sampled reconstructed video, therefore increasing along both dimensions (vertical and horizontal) of the array, and the 2×2 block of elements in the up-sampled reconstructed video is represented in the above pseudo-code by the variable resUpsampledSamples), receiving encoded residual data at the second resolution, the encoded residual data comprising a plurality of encoded data blocks, an encoded data block comprising one or more directional components and at least one component derived from an average of the residual data within the encoded data block; applying an inverse directional decomposition to data blocks of the encoded
residual data to derive decoded residual data (Encoded Level 2 Stream in Fig. 4) (pages 2, paragraphs 28 – 34, Fig. 4, and pages 5, paragraphs 64 – pages 8, paragraphs 79, where teaches the up-sampled stream is then compared to the input video which creates a further set of residuals (i.e. a difference operation is applied to the up-sampled re-created stream to generate a further set of residuals), and the further set of residuals are then encoded as the encoded Level 2 enhancement stream (i.e. an encoding operation is then applied to the further set of residuals to generate an encoded further enhancement stream), and the type of transform performed by the inverse transform module may be indicated by a transform type parameter received by the decoder. For example, a value of zero for the transform type parameter may be used to indicate that a 2×2 directional decomposition transform is to be performed and a value of one for the transform type parameter may be used to indicate that a 4×4 directional decomposition transform is to be performed), and combining the decoded residual data with the second image data to generate an output for the frame of video at the second resolution (page 1, paragraphs 17 – 18, Fig. 2, 4, and pages 8, paragraphs 79 – 81, where teaches the combined video is up-sampled and further combined with the decoded residuals obtained by applying a decoding operation to the encoded level 2 stream), wherein the at least one component derived from an average of the residual data within the encoded data block is computed as an average component of a data block of unencoded residual data that is adjusted using a predicted average, the predicted average being derived from a pixel value in the first image data and an average of a corresponding data block of pixels within the second image data, the corresponding data block being derived from an upsampling of the pixel value in the first image data (pages 2, paragraphs 28 – 34, Fig. 3, 4 and pages 5, paragraphs 62 – pages 8, paragraphs 77, where teaches based on the Predicted Residual mode that was selected, the encoder will further modify the upsampled reconstructed video by applying Predicted Residuals (PRs), and Predicted Residuals are based on the upsampled reconstructed video and on the pre-upsampling reconstructed lower resolution video, and a predicted residual may also be known as a predicted average or a modifier as described in more detail below), and the upsampling comprises applying a set of upsampling coefficients selected to constrain the average of the data block of pixels in the second image data to the corresponding pixel value in the first image data so as to apply the predicted average during the upsampling (pages 7, paragraphs 70 – pages 8, paragraphs 81 and Fig. 3, 4, where teaches adding the modifier as part of the modified up-sampling process as opposed to as part of the transform process may reduce the complexity of the decoding process. For example, this approach obviates the need for the transform process to involve additionally transforming the modifier as well as the de-quantized coefficients obtained from the encoded level 2 stream, and adding the modifier as part of the modified up-sampling process as opposed to as part of the transform process is possible because the transform process involves a linear transformation. Therefore, the decoded video resulting from adding the modifier as part of the transform process is the same as the decoded video resulting from adding the modifier as part of the modified up-sampling process, but is generated more efficiently).
Regarding claim 10, MEARDI teaches all the limitation as discussed in claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
4. Claim 19 is allowed.
Claim 19 is possible allowable over the prior art of record because a search does not detect the combined claimed elements as set forth in the claim 19.
As recited in independent claim 19, none of the prior art of record teaches or fairly suggests training a set of coefficients for an upsampling filter, comprising obtaining a ground truth sequence of video frames, downsampling the ground truth sequence of video frames to obtain a downsampled sequence of video frames, upsampling the downsampled sequence of video frames using a first upsampling filter with a set of fixed coefficients to generate a first upsampled sequence, applying a predicted average modifier to data derived from the first upsampled sequence to output a modified first upsampled sequence, the predicted average modifier representing a difference between the average of the data block of pixels in the first upsampled sequence and the corresponding pixel value in the downsampled sequence of video frames, and upsampling the downsampled sequence of video frames using a second upsampling filter with a set of trainable coefficients to generate a second upsampled sequence, and computing a loss between the second upsampled sequence and the modified first upsampled sequence, and optimizing the set of trainable coefficients to reduce the loss, wherein the optimized set of trainable coefficients provide a predicted-average preserving version of the first upsampling filter, and together with combination of other element as set forth in the claim 19. Therefore, the claim 19 is allowable over the prior art of records.
5. Claims 2-9 and 11-18 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 prior art of record fails to disclose the limitation “the upsampling comprises applying a separable filter having less than five coefficients for each of the two image dimensions” as specified the claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
MEARDI et al. (US 2022/0400270) discloses Low Complexity Enhancement with Video with Coding.
FERRARA et al. (US 2022/0385911) discloses Use of Embedded Signaling for Backward-Compatible Scaling Improvements and Super-Resolution Signaling.
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J.L
June 8, 2026
John J Lee
/JOHN J LEE/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649
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