DETAILED ACTION
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.
Claim 3 is 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. The phrasing is unclear.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 3, 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021).
Regarding Claim 1, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses a method for Adaptive Loop Filter processing (adaptive loop filter, CC-ALF, Fig.1) of reconstructed video (see the location of the ALF relative to the addition of residual to prediction, Fig. 1), the method comprising:
receiving reconstructed pixels (SAO output pixels are passed to ALF/CCALF, Fig. 1; see the location of the ALF relative to the addition of residual to prediction, Fig. 1), wherein the reconstructed pixels (reconstructed sample values R (x, y), Section II.A Filter Shapes…) comprise a current block (Coding Tree Units, CTUs, Section I. Introduction) and the current block comprises a luma block (one luma CTB, Section I. Introduction) and one or more chroma blocks (two chroma CTBs, Section I. Introduction);
deriving a filtered chroma output (filtered sample value ~R(x, y) at coordinates (x, y), left side of equations 2, 3, 4, Section II.A Filter Shapes…) from a ALF (Adaptive Loop Filter, Section II. title) for a current chroma (one of the chroma CTBs in the CTU, Section I. Introduction) sample (reconstructed sample values R (x, y), right side of equations 2, 3, 4, Section II.A Filter Shapes…) in one of said one or more chroma blocks (one of the chroma CTBs in the CTU, Section I. Introduction), wherein the ALF comprises more than one source sample from at least two colour components among luma, Cb and Cr (CC-ALF Cr and Cb are based on Luma pixels and Cr/Cb pixels, see Fig. 7) from the current block in a first footprint (Fig. 2 ALF filter shapes; luma support shape for CC-ALF, Fig. 8) of the ALF (ALF/CCALF, Fig. 1);
and providing a filtered-reconstructed (filtered sample value ~R(x, y) left side of equations 2, 3, 4, Section II.A Filter Shapes…) first chroma (ALF applies to luma and chroma samples, Section I. Introduction page 3908 right column; filter shapes, 7 × 7 diamond shape and 5 × 5 diamond shape are supported for luma and chroma components, Section II.A Filter shapes…) block (output of ALF Chroma, CC-ALF Cr, output of CC-ALF Cb, Fig. 7), wherein the filtered-reconstructed first chroma block comprises the filtered chroma output (inherent: blocks have pixels; final output picture has filtered samples, Fig. 1).
Regarding Claim 3, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 1, wherein for the ALF, said more than one source sample comprises one or more chroma samples of any before ALF type in another of said one or more chroma blocks (output of SAO Cr, Cb is used in chroma ALF, Fig. 7; several samples, equations 2, 3, 4, 5, are used to form each pixel output ~R).
Regarding Claim 11, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 1.
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.
Claim(s) 2, 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) in view of Hu (NPL: “AHG12: Using samples before deblocking filter for adaptive loop filter,” JVET-Z0146).
Regarding Claim 2, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 1.
Karczewicz does not disclose, but Hu (NPL: “AHG12: Using samples before deblocking filter for adaptive loop filter,” JVET-Z0146) teaches wherein for the ALF (ALF, Section 2), said more than one source sample comprises one or more pre-DBF and/or pre-SAO chroma samples in said one of said one or more chroma blocks (samples before deblocking filter (DBF) are used for ALF, Section 2).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to use pre-DBF pixels for the ALF of Karczewicz because Hu teaches that improved rate-distortion is expected, Abstract, improving decoded video quality and user experience.
Regarding Claim 4, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 1.
Karczewicz does not disclose, but Hu (NPL: “AHG12: Using samples before deblocking filter for adaptive loop filter,” JVET-Z0146) teaches wherein for the ALF, said more than one source sample comprises one or more pre-DBF and/or pre-SAO luma samples in the luma block (samples before deblocking filter (DBF) are used for ALF, Section 2).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to use pre-DBF pixels for the ALF of Karczewicz because Hu teaches that improved rate-distortion is expected, Abstract, improving decoded video quality and user experience.
Claim(s) 8, 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) in view of Sicuranza (NPL: “Quadratic Filters for Signal Processing,” IEEE 1991).
Regarding Claim 8, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 1, wherein the ALF comprises a [] input term (values R (x, y), right side of equations 2, 3, 4, Section II.A Filter Shapes…).
Karczewicz does not disclose, but Sicuranza teaches a high-degree input term (output of the filter is obtained through filtering the square values of the input sequence, p. 1268, bullet number 1, left column, Fig. 2).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to replace the input values of Karczewicz with squared input values, as suggested by Sicuranza, because Sicuranza teaches that quadratic filters are the simplest filters that can be used to detect and preserve edges in image filtering (page 1263 last full sentence; page 1264 right column first full paragraph), improving decoded image quality.
Regarding Claim 9, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 8, wherein the [] input term corresponds to N – R (R(x+xi, y+yi) - R(x, y), equations 3, 4, 5, Section II.A), wherein R is a to-be-processed sample (R(x,y), equations 3, 4, 5, Section II.A) and N is a target sample (R(x+xi, y+yi), equations 3,4,5 Section II.A).
Karczewicz does not disclose, but Sicuranza teaches wherein the high-degree input term corresponds to N2 – R2 (output of the filter is obtained through filtering the square values of the input sequence, p. 1268, bullet number 1, left column, Fig. 2).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to replace the input values of Karczewicz with squared input values, as suggested by Sicuranza, because Sicuranza teaches that quadratic filters are the simplest filters that can be used to detect and preserve edges in image filtering (page 1263 last full sentence; page 1264 right column first full paragraph), improving decoded image quality.
Claim(s) 8, 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) in view of Aurich (NPL: “Non-Linear Gaussian Filters Performing Edge Preserving Diffusion,” Springer 1995).
Regarding Claim 8, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 1 wherein the ALF comprises a [] input term (values R (x, y), right side of equations 2, 3, 4, Section II.A Filter Shapes…).
Karczewicz does not disclose, but Aurich teaches a high-degree input term (
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, page 2, the non-linear gaussian filter).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to replace the difference values of Karczewicz with squared difference values, as suggested by Aurich, because Aurich teaches that it is a simple non-linear modification that avoids iteration steps and convergence problems, but implements edge-preserving smoothing of images (Abstract), improving decoded image quality.
Regarding Claim 10, Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021) discloses the method of Claim 8, wherein the [] input term corresponds to … (R(x+xi, y+yi) - R(x, y), equations 3, 4, 5, Section II.A), wherein R is a to-be-processed sample (R(x,y), equations 3, 4, 5, Section II.A), N is a target sample (R(x+xi, y+yi), equations 3,4,5 Section II.A) ….
Karczewicz does not disclose, but Aurich teaches wherein the high-degree input term corresponds to sign(N-R)x((N-R)x(N-R)) (
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), wherein R is a to-be-processed sample (
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), N is a target sample (
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), and sign(N-R) returns a sign of (N-R) (inherent: the sign of N-R is the sign of N-R).
Although Aurich does not expressly teach the sign of N-R in the edge-preserving filter, one of ordinary skill in the art would know that the sign of (N-R)2 must be preserved and used in the filter because squaring a difference always results in a positive number, which would lead to loss of data and an inaccurate result when the target pixel N is brighter than the to-be-processed sample R.
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to replace the difference values of Karczewicz with squared difference values, as suggested by Aurich, because Aurich teaches that it is a simple non-linear modification that avoids iteration steps and convergence problems, but implements edge-preserving smoothing of images (Abstract), improving decoded image quality.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 5/15/2026 regarding the amendments are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Karczewicz (NPL: “VVC In-Loop Filtering,” IEEE 2021).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20010008418 A1 - sum total of squares of pixel value differences to measure contrast
US 20260019619 A1 - contains a non-linear term, such as a quadratic term
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