DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to U.S. Patent Application No.: 18/874,631 filed on 12/13/2024 with effective filing date 6/29/2022. Claims 1-13 & 15-21 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Claim(s) 1-8, 12-13, & 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao et al. US 2020/0244980 A1 in view of Lee US 2021/0306666 A1.
Per claims 1 & 2, Zhao et al. discloses a method, comprising: splitting a sub-partition of a video block using intra sub partition mode based on a condition (para: 102, e.g. a CTU is split into CUs by using a quad tree binary tree (QTBT) structure denoted as a coding tree to adapt to various local characteristics of individual blocks included in the CUs. The decision whether to code a picture area using inter-picture (temporal) or intra-picture (spatial) prediction may be performed at the CU level).
Zhao et al. fails to teach the remaining claim limitation.
Lee however in the same field of endeavor teaches predicting said sub-partition using reconstructed portions of other sub-partitions of the video block; and, encoding the current sub-partition using the prediction (para: 95, 519 & fig. 1, e.g. he entropy encoding unit 165 may encode various types of information, such as information on a residual value coefficient and information on a block type of a coding unit; when an intra-prediction mode of a coding block has a horizontal direction or has a direction similar to the horizontal direction, vertical directional partitioning may be applied to a coding block. In this case, an intra-prediction mode having a direction similar to the horizontal direction represents an intra-prediction mode).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Lee, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Zhao et al. and Lee in order to efficiency code or decode of a video signal by improving by jointly coding the residual components of the color difference components.
Per claims 3 & 4, Zhao et al. discloses an apparatus, comprising: a processor, configured to perform: splitting a sub-partition of a video block using intra sub partition mode based on a condition (para: 102, e.g. a CTU is split into CUs by using a quad tree binary tree (QTBT) structure denoted as a coding tree to adapt to various local characteristics of individual blocks included in the CUs. The decision whether to code a picture area using inter-picture (temporal) or intra-picture (spatial) prediction may be performed at the CU level).
Zhao et al. fails to teach the remaining claim limitation.
Lee however in the same field of endeavor teaches predicting said sub-partition using reconstructed portions of other sub-partitions of the video block; and, decoding the current sub-partition using the prediction (para: 95, 519 & fig. 1, e.g. the entropy encoding unit 165 may encode various types of information, such as information on a residual value coefficient and information on a block type of a coding unit; when an intra-prediction mode of a coding block has a horizontal direction or has a direction similar to the horizontal direction, vertical directional partitioning may be applied to a coding block. In this case, an intra-prediction mode having a direction similar to the horizontal direction represents an intra-prediction mode).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Lee, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Zhao et al. and Lee in order to efficiency code or decode of a video signal by improving by jointly coding the residual components of the color difference components.
Per claims 5 & 16, Lee further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the condition is whether an intra prediction mode is in a same direction as the sub-partition (para: 519, e.g. when an intra-prediction mode of a coding block has a horizontal direction or has a direction similar to the horizontal direction, vertical directional partitioning may be applied to a coding block. In this case, an intra-prediction mode having a direction similar to the horizontal direction represents an intra-prediction mode).
Per claims 6 & 17, Zhao et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the condition is signaled (para: 102).
Per claims 7 & 18, Zhao et al. further teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising splitting said split sub-partitions in another direction (para: 104, e.g. the solid lines indicate quad tree splitting, and the dotted lines indicate binary tree splitting. The binary tree structure may include two splitting types: (i) symmetric horizontal splitting and (ii) symmetric vertical splitting. In each splitting (i.e., non-leaf) node of the binary tree).
Per claims 8 & 19, Zhao et al. further teaches the method of Claim 7 wherein said splitting is inferred from information of a luminance component of said current video block (para: 120, e.g. the ISP algorithm will only be tested with intra modes that are part of the MPM list. Therefore, if a block uses ISP, then the MPM flag will be inferred to be one).
Per claim 12, Zhao et al. further teaches a device comprising: an apparatus according to Claim 4; and at least one of (i) an antenna configured to receive a signal, the signal including the coding unit, (ii) a band limiter configured to limit the received signal to a band of frequencies that includes the coding unit, and (iii) a display configured to display an output representative of a coding unit (para: 44, e.g. embodiments of the present disclosure find application with laptop computers, tablet computers, media players and/or dedicated video conferencing equipment. The network (250) represents any number of networks that convey coded video data among the terminal devices (210), (220), (230) and (240), including for example wireline (wired) and/or wireless communication network).
Per claim 13, Zhao et al. further teaches a non-transitory computer readable medium containing data content generated according to the method of claims 1, for playback using a processor (para: 101).
Per claim 15. (Currently Amended) A computer program product comprising instructions which, when the program is executed by a computer, cause the computer to carry out the method of Claims 1 (para: 101).
5. Claim(s) 9-11, & 20-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao et al. US 2020/0244980 A1 in view of Lee US 2021/0306666 A1 and Wang et al. US 2022/0224915 A1.
Per claims 9 & 20, Zhao et al. in view of Lee fails to explicitly teach the limitation of claims 9 & 20.
Wang et al. however in the same field of endeavor teaches the apparatus of claim 4, further comprising performing a template based intra mode derivation for a sub-partition of the video block (para: 208, e.g. the decoding component 4108 may perform a decoding operation (e.g., entropy decoding) to determine block information that may be provided to the variable template intra prediction unit 4110, which may include one or more of a template selection unit 4120, an IPM deriving unit 4130).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Wang et al., it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to combine Zhao et al., Lee and Wang et al. in order to improve video coding and decoding based on templates for decoder-side intra-prediction mode derivation in an effective manner. The method allows a video processing apparatus to perform video encoding and decoding in an efficient manner.
Per claims 10 & 21, Wang et al. further teaches the apparatus of claim 9, wherein said template based intra mode derivation is performed for a subset of block sizes (para: 141, e.g. an intra sub-partitions (ISP) that divides luma intra-predicted blocks vertically or horizontally into sub-partitions depending on the block size).
Per claim 11, The method or apparatus of claim 9, wherein said template based intra mode derivation is restricted to a subset of intra modes (para: 155, e.g. for each CU in intra mode, a flag indicating whether an MIP mode may be to be applied or not is sent).
Conclusion
6. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Li et al. US 12,015,765 B2, e.g. in a method of decoding, coded information of a coding unit (CU), a template region, and a plurality of reference regions is received. The coded information includes a first syntax element indicating whether the CU is predicted based on a template matching based multiple reference line (MRL) intra prediction mode. In response to the first syntax element indicating that the CU is predicted based on the template matching based multiple reference line (MRL) intra prediction mode.
Zhao et al. US 2020/0244980 A1, e.g. a method of video decoding performed by a video decoder includes receiving a coded video bitstream including a current picture. The method further includes determining a block size of a current block coded in the intra sub-partition (ISP) coding mode. The method further includes determining a direction and number of partitions of the current block based on the determined block size.
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/Irfan Habib/Examiner, Art Unit 2485
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