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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 3/12/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The applicant asserts that Zhang and Chen fail to meet the limitations of claim 1 because the combination prunes duplicate candidates prior to list reordering instead of including duplicates in the re-ordered list without reordering them. The examiner disagrees. The applicant is arguing features which are not claimed. Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993).
Particularly, in regard to duplicate candidates, the claims require 1) determining duplicate candidates and 2) excluding duplicate candidates from reordering. The claims do not require that the reordered list includes the duplicate candidates, nor do the claims exclude removing the duplicate candidates. In the combination of Zhang and Chen, duplicate candidates are identified and removed from the candidate list prior to reordering and are thus excluded from the reordering step as required by the claims. If the applicant wishes to limit the claims to include a reordered candidate list that includes the duplicate candidates which are not reordered then such limitations should be recited in the claims.
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.
Claim(s) 3-8, 43-44, 46-47, 49-51, 54-56 and 58-59 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al (2022/0239899) in view of Zhang et al (2014/0161186 referred to by second inventor Chen to avoid confusion) for the same reasons as stated in the previous Office Acton dated 12/22/2026.
In regard to claim 3 Zhang et al (2022/0239899) discloses a method of decoding image data from a bitstream (Zhang Fig. 3 and pars 129-137), the method comprising:
adding a first set of motion vector predictor candidates to said list (Zhang Fig. 5 and pars 146-151 note constructing a motion vector candidate list also note par. 154 the candidate may be divided into sets called subgroups further note par. 477 the first subgroup may comprise adjacent spatial and temporal merge candidates);
adding a second set of additional motion vector predictor candidates the list (Zhang par. 477 note remaining candidates are added to the list as a second subgroup).
reordering said list of candidates (Zhang pars 173-182 note reordering subgroups of the candidate list);
Zhang further discloses that a candidate list undergoes a pruning operation (Zhang par. 152). Zhang further discloses a maximum candidate list size (Zhang par. 150 note maximum candidate list size of 6, also note par. 142-143) a maximum of 8 merge candidates)
It is noted that Zhang does not explicitly disclose determining duplicate candidates in the list or adding motion vector predictor candidates if the number of candidates is lower than a maximum candidate number. However, Chen discloses a pruning process in which duplicate candidates are identified and removed from a candidate list (Chen par. 103). Chen further discloses determining whether a number of spatial and temporal motion vector predictor candidates is smaller than a maximum candidate number and adding additional candidates to the list so that the total number equals the maximum number (Chen pars 94-119 note pars 117-119 for adding additional candidates including bi-predictive and zero motion vector candidates).
It is therefore considered obvious that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the advantage of including pruning to remove duplicate candidates and conditional inclusion of additional candidates as taught by Chen in the invention of Zhang in order to eliminate redundant candidates via pruning and to improve compression efficiency by providing additional motion vector prediction candidates.
Further note that in the combination of Zhang and Chen duplicate candidates are excluded from reordering because they are removed from the list prior to reordering as suggested by Zhang (Zhang par. 152 note candidates added to the list are candidates after pruning)
In regard to claim 4 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 3 above. Zhang further discloses that said second set of candidates are also excluded from said reordering (Zhang par. 178 only a first subgroup may be reordered).
In regard to claim 5 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 3 above. Zhang further discloses that said second set of motion vector predictors are zero candidates and said first set of candidates are not zero candidates (Zhang pars. 139 and 477 a first subgroup may be spatial motion vectors from neighboring coding units or temporal candidates from collocated coding units, note par. 139 and 477 the second subgroup includes the remaining candidates including zero motion vector candidates).
In regard to claim 6 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 3 above. Zhang further discloses that said first set of candidates are candidates derived from at least one previously decoded or encoded motion information (Zhang pars. 139 and 477 note the first subgroup comprises spatial and temporal candidates from previously coded neighboring blocks or previously coded blocks in an adjacent frame).
In regard to claim 7 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 6 above. Zhang further discloses that said first set of candidates are candidates derived from true samples corresponding to one or more temporal candidates, spatial candidates, historical candidates, previously used candidates, or candidates derived from other candidates (Zhang pars. 139 and 477 note spatial and temporal candidates also note history based candidates).
In regard to claim 8 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 3. Zhang further discloses that said reordering is based on a computed relative cost of said candidates Zhang par. 182 note candidates withing a subgroup may be reordered based on template matching costs).
In regard to claim 43 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 3 above. Zhang further discloses deriving a variable corresponding to the number of motion vector predictor candidates in the first set and the reordering of the list is performed in dependence on the variable (Zhang pars 554-565 note determining a variable indicating N of a number of available merge candidates in a first subgroup, further note if the variable N is smaller than or equal to a number Q reordering is not performed.)
In regard to claim 44 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 43 above. Zhang further discloses that said variable identifies the first candidate from the second set of motion vector predictor candidates (Zhang pars 561-565 note N indicates the number of available spatial and temporal candidates, further note pars 477 the first group is comprised of the spatial and temporal candidates hence the number N indicates the number of candidates in the list where the second subgroup begins and thus identifies the first candidate in the second subgroup, also note Fig. 6 where N=5 and the 0-4th candidates (Mode 0-4) belong to a first subgroup, and the first candidate of the second subgroup is identified as the 5th candidate (Mode 5)) .
In regard to claim 46 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 3 above. Zhang further discloses setting the non-reordered motion vector predictor candidates to the end of the list. (Zhang pars. 178, 249 and 520 note the last subgroup in the list is not reordered)
In regard to claim 47 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 46 above. Zhang further discloses performing a second reordering process on the non-reordered motion vector predictor candidates (Zhang par. 254, 258, 249 note the second subgroup may also be reordered, further note par 481 the first subgroup may be reordered before the second subgroup is added, hence a second reordering process is performed on the second subgroup which was not reordered by a first ordering on the first subgroup) .
In regard to claim 49 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 46 above. Zhang further discloses performing a second reordering process on the non-reordered motion vector predictor candidates in dependence on the coding mode (Zhang pars 530-546 note whether or not to reorder any subgroup of the list depends on the coding mode).
In regard to claim 50 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 49 above. Zhang further discloses that said second reordering is not applied for subblock merge mode (Zhang par. 543 note candidates using subblock based temporal motion vector predictor (SbTVMP) mode are not reordered).
In regard to claim 51 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 46 above. Zhang further discloses performing a second reordering process on the non-reordered motion vector candidates when the mode has a number of candidates above a threshold. (Zhang pars. 250-254 note performing reordering on the second subgroup based on a comparison of the size of the first and second subgroups and a target number of candidates of a specific group type)
Claims 54-56 and 58-59 describe methods, apparatus and non-transitory computer readable storage media storing instructions for performing steps substantially corresponding to those described in claim 3. Refer to the statements made in the regard to claim 3 above for the rejection of claims 54-56 and 58-59 which will not be repeated here for brevity. In particular regard to claims 54-55 and 59 Zhang further discloses an encoding method and apparatus and a decoding apparatus (Zhang Figs 2-3 and pars 105-127). In particular regard to claims 56 and 58 Zhang further discloses non-transitory computer readable storage media including instructions (Zhang pars 68-75).
Claim(s) 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang in view of Chen as applied to claim 8 above, and further in view of Robert et al (2020/0195925) for the same reasons as stated in the previous Office Acton dated 12/22/2026.
In regard to claim 9 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 8 above. Zhang further discloses that said at least one candidate is derived from at least one spatially or temporally matched template (Zhang Figs 7-8 and generally pars 182-222 for details of template matching using spatially adjacent image data and corresponding image data in temporally adjacent frames).
It is noted that neither Zhang nor Chen disclose details of non-available template areas. However Robert discloses that when templates inside a delimited area are available and templates outside of the delimited area are non-available a non-zero cost is computed for the candidate (Robert Fig. 6 and par. 43 note template matching costs where no template area is available, such as the white sub-block in Fig. 6, may be computed using the refined motion vector of a larger block size such as an entire CU).
It is therefore considered obvious that one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention would recognize the advantage of incorporating the non-available cost computation method of Robert in the invention of Zhang in view of Chen in order to compute matching costs for candidates where no template area is available for template matching such as a top left corner of an image.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 48 is 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 following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claim 48, in addition to the requirements of the claims from which it depends requires performing a second reordering process on the non-reordered motion vector predictor candidates when the first set contains no more than one candidate.
The closest arts are Zhang and Chen. Chen discloses details of constructing a motion vector candidate list. Zhang discloses separating a candidate list into sets called subgroups, and selectively reordering the candidate sets. Zhang specifically teaches performing a second reordering process on a second candidate set based on the size of first and second sets (Zhang par. 254), or reordering only a second candidate set (Zhang par. 279). Zhang further discloses determining that a first candidate set has no more than one candidate and not performing reordering on the first candidate set in this case (Zhang pars 554-565 note not reordering when a first subgroup N has a size less than or equal to Q, where Q =1 hence the first subgroup has, at most, 1 candidate). However, Zhang discloses reordering the second candidate set when a first subgroup has 3 candidates (pars 254, 279) and does not disclose performing a second ordering on the second candidate set based on the number candidates in the first candidate set being no more than one.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JEREMIAH CHARLES HALLENBECK-HUBER whose telephone number is (571)272-5248. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
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/JEREMIAH C HALLENBECK-HUBER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2481
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