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
Acknowledgement is made of Applicant’s claim of the present application being a 371 of PCT International Application No. PCT/IB2023/056476 filed 06/22/2023. Acknowledgement is also made of Applicant’s claim of the present application claiming priority and benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to Provisional Application No. 63/367553 filed 07/01/2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed 04/18/2025 has been reviewed and the listed references were noted.
Drawings
The 23-page drawings filed on 12/30/2024 have been considered and placed in the file.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-41 are cancelled. Claims 42-61 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 42, 43, 45-48, 52, 53, and 55-58 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cheng et al. (“A Novel 3D Mesh Compression Using Mesh Segmentation with Multiple Principal Plane Analysis” – IDS), in view of Zhang et al. (“Tencent’s Dynamic Mesh Coding CfP Response” - IDS).
Regarding claim 42, Cheng teaches, “An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory including computer program code;” (Cheng, Section 5, Para. 1 discloses; “To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed segmentation-based compression, the current study implements a 3D mesh model compression system for geometric and connective encoding/reconstruction of meshes on a PC with Pentium IV 1.8 GHz CPU running the Windows XP operating system.” It is implied that Cheng is using a memory because there must be a memory to run Windows XP operating system.) “wherein the at least one memory and the computer program code are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to perform: identifying one or more patch boundaries;” (Cheng, Section 4, Para. 1 discloses; “Basically, the proposed region-based 3D mesh compression consists of two phases: boundary coding and internal connectivity–geometry coding.”) “identifying one or more vertices that form the one or more patch boundaries;” (Cheng, Section 4.2, Para. 3 discloses; “Initially, the algorithm supposes all mesh boundary vertices (1–13) are encoded in the boundary encoding stage (cf. Fig. 8(a)).”) “ Cheng does not explicitly teach “adding signaling information for the one or more vertices that form one more patch boundaries; and encoding at least one of the one or more patch boundaries, the one or more vertices that form the one or more patch boundaries, or the signaling information in or along a bitstream.” Since Cheng does not explicitly disclose this limitation, Examiner relies on the teachings of Zhang in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Zhang teaches “adding signaling information for the one or more vertices that form one more patch boundaries;” (Zhang, Pg. 6, Para. 2 discloses; “Therefore, we need to determine and signal the vertex mates and the corresponding shared xyz coordinates. To this end, a UV-to-XYZ (abbreviated as UV2XYZ) index array is devised and signaled to indicate the mapping from the uv coordinates of boundary vertices to the corresponding xyz coordinates, where the vertices with same indices in UV2XYZ are vertex mates.”) “and encoding at least one of the one or more patch boundaries, the one or more vertices that form the one or more patch boundaries, or the signaling information in or along a bitstream.” (Zhang, Pg. 6, Para. 1 discloses; “The boundary information, including the uv and xyz coordinates of the boundary vertices, is predicted, quantized and entropy coded in the bitstream.”)
Cheng and Zhang are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encoding and decoding image/3D data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Cheng to incorporate the teachings of Zhang in order to signal and encode boundary vertex information in a bitstream. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described apparatus of Cheng with the teachings of Zhang to ensure the boundary vertex information is shared with the decoder and eventually included in the output representation. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Cheng and Zhang to obtain the apparatus of claim 42.
Regarding claim 43, the combination of Cheng and Zhang teaches, “The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the apparatus is further caused to perform: signaling the bitstream to a decoder.” (Zhang, Figure 7 and Figure 7 caption discloses; “Geometry decoding pipeline. The red boxes are part of the bitstream.” Figure 7 shows information from the bitstream (red boxes) being signaled to the decoder for further processing.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Cheng and Zhang references presented in the rejection of claim 42, apply to claim 43 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the apparatus recited in claim 43 is met by Cheng and Zhang.
Regarding claim 45, the combination of Cheng and Zhang teaches, “The apparatus of claim 42, wherein to identify the one or more patch boundaries the apparatus is further caused to perform: comparing vertex indices between different patches comprised in a mesh during an encoding process.” (Cheng, Pg. 272, Para. 4 discloses; “In order to zip the joint boundaries, the shared edges and vertices are indexed at both the encoder and decoder ends.” and Cheng, Pg. 267, Para. 3 discloses; “Geometry coding describes vertex coordinates in the 3D space, and connectivity coding describes how to connect these positions.” This shows that all vertices are compared to determine how they connect.)
Regarding claim 46, the combination of Cheng and Zhang teaches, “The apparatus of claim 45, wherein the apparatus is further caused to perform: encoding the mesh.” (Figure 4 of Cheng shows encoding mesh using boundary encoding and region-based connectivity-Geometry encoding.)
Regarding claim 47, the combination of Cheng and Zhang teaches, “The apparatus of claim 46, wherein identifying the one or more patch boundaries comprises identifying the one or more patch boundaries from the mesh.” (Cheng, Section 4, Para. 1 discloses; “Basically, the proposed region-based 3D mesh compression consists of two phases: boundary coding and internal connectivity–geometry coding.”)
Regarding claim 48, the combination of Cheng and Zhang teaches, “An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory including computer program code;” (Cheng, Section 5, Para. 1 discloses; “To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed segmentation-based compression, the current study implements a 3D mesh model compression system for geometric and connective encoding/reconstruction of meshes on a PC with Pentium IV 1.8 GHz CPU running the Windows XP operating system.” It is implied that Cheng is using a memory because there must be a memory to run Windows XP operating system.) “wherein the at least one memory and the computer program code are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: receiving a bitstream comprising signaling information for indicating one or more vertices that form one more patch boundaries;” (Zhang, Section 1.3, Para. 1 discloses; “The boundary vertices are decoded and reconstructed from the boundary information substream”) “parsing the bitstream;” (Zhang, Section 1.3, Para. 1 discloses; “The boundary vertices are decoded and reconstructed from the boundary information substream. The geometry images are decoded from the video substream. Examiner interprets parsing the bitstream to be decoding the bitstream.) “and identifying the one or more vertices that form the one more patch boundaries based on the parsing of the bitstream.” (Zhang, Section 1.3, Para. 1 discloses; “After decoding internal vertices, triangulation is applied on each chart to estimate the connectivity information among the reconstructed boundary and internal vertices, and the reconstructed mesh can be finally obtained.” Zhang differentiates between boundary and internal vertices which is interpreted to be identifying one or more boundary vertices based on the parsing of the bitstream.)
Cheng and Zhang are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encoding and decoding image/3D data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Cheng to incorporate the teachings of Zhang in order to decode a bitstream based on the vertices indicating a patch boundary. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described apparatus of Cheng with the teachings of Zhang to ensure the boundary vertex information is included in the output representation. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Cheng and Zhang to obtain the apparatus of claim 48.
Claim 52 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 42. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng and Zhang references, presented in rejection of Claim 42, apply to this claim.
Claim 53 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 43. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng and Zhang references, presented in rejection of Claim 43, apply to this claim.
Claim 55 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 45. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng and Zhang references, presented in rejection of Claim 45, apply to this claim.
Claim 56 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 46. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng and Zhang references, presented in rejection of Claim 46, apply to this claim.
Claim 57 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 47. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng and Zhang references, presented in rejection of Claim 47, apply to this claim.
Claim 58 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 48. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng and Zhang references, presented in rejection of Claim 48, apply to this claim.
Claims 44, 49-51, 54, and 59-61 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cheng et al. (“A Novel 3D Mesh Compression Using Mesh Segmentation with Multiple Principal Plane Analysis” – IDS), in view of Zhang et al. (“Tencent’s Dynamic Mesh Coding CfP Response” - IDS), in further view of Graziosi et al. (“Sony’s Dynamic Mesh Coding Call for Proposal Response” - IDS).
Regarding claim 44, the combination of Cheng and Zhang teaches, “(Zhang, Section 1, Para. 1 discloses; “The boundary information of the UV charts (xyz and uv coordinates of boundary vertices) is coded in the bitstream.”) The combination of Cheng and Zhang does not explicitly teach, “The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the bitstream comprises a visual volumetric video-based coding (V3C) bitstream” and “wherein the sub-bitstream comprises an atlas sub-bitstream.” Since the combination of Cheng and Zhang does not explicitly disclose these limitations, Examiner relies on the teachings of Graziosi in an analogous field of endeavor. Specifically, Graziosi teaches, “The apparatus of claim 42, wherein the bitstream comprises a visual volumetric video-based coding (V3C) bitstream” (Graziosi Figure 2 and Figure 2 caption discloses; “V3C-mesh decoder”. Figure 2 shows a V3C decoder receiving a V3C bitstream.) “and wherein the sub-bitstream comprises an atlas sub-bitstream.” (Graziosi Figure 2 and Figure 2 caption discloses; “V3C-mesh decoder”. Figure 2 shows a V3C decoder receiving a V3C bitstream with an atlas sub-bitstream.)
Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encoding and decoding image/3D data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Cheng and Zhang to incorporate the teachings of Graziosi in order to utilize a V3C bitstream with an atlas sub-bitstream. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the previously described apparatus of Cheng and Zhang with the teachings of Graziosi to ensure the atlas information is shared with the decoder and eventually included in the output representation. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to combine Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi to obtain the apparatus of claim 44.
Regarding claim 49, the combination of Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi teaches, “The apparatus of claim 48, wherein the apparatus is further caused to perform: unpacking, from the bitstream, one or more components of a volumetric video content;” (Graziosi Figure 2 and Figure 2 caption discloses; “V3C-mesh decoder”. Figure 2 shows a V3C decoder receiving a V3C bitstream and unpacking multiple components of a volumetric video content.) “and unpacking one or more patches from unpacking the one or more components of the volumetric video content from separate patches by using separate settings and patch information.” (Cheng, Pg. 268, Para. 3 discloses; “At the decoder, based on boundary indexing, this work obtains each individual region and reconstructs the whole object using connectivity and geometry coding information.” Since each region (patch) is decoded individually, it is implied that each region (patch) is going to have its own “settings” and patch information (connectivity and geometry information).) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references presented in the rejection of claim 44, apply to claim 49 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the apparatus recited in claim 49 is met by Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi.
Regarding claim 50, the combination of Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi teaches, “The apparatus of claim 49, wherein the one or more components comprise one or more of an occupancy, a geometry, an attribute, a mesh component, or a displacement component.” (Graziosi Figure 2 and Figure 2 caption discloses; “V3C-mesh decoder”. Figure 2 shows a V3C decoder receiving a V3C bitstream and unpacking multiple components of a volumetric video content including geometry and attribute data.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references presented in the rejection of claim 44, apply to claim 50 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the apparatus recited in claim 50 is met by Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi.
Regarding claim 51, the combination of Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi teaches, “The apparatus of claim 48, wherein the bitstream comprises a visual volumetric video-based coding (V3C) bitstream.” (Graziosi Figure 2 and Figure 2 caption discloses; “V3C-mesh decoder”. Figure 2 shows a V3C decoder receiving a V3C bitstream.) The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references presented in the rejection of claim 44, apply to claim 51 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the apparatus recited in claim 51 is met by Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi.
Claim 54 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 44. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references, presented in rejection of Claim 44, apply to this claim.
Claim 59 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 49. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references, presented in rejection of Claim 49, apply to this claim.
Claim 60 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 50. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references, presented in rejection of Claim 50, apply to this claim.
Claim 61 recites a method with steps corresponding to the elements of the system recited in Claim 51. Therefore, the recited steps of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding elements in its corresponding system claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Cheng, Zhang, and Graziosi references, presented in rejection of Claim 51, apply to this claim.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN M. OAKES whose telephone number is (571)272-9379. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30am-5pm.
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/JUSTIN M OAKES/Examiner, Art Unit 2662
/Siamak Harandi/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2662
Prosecution Insights