DETAILED ACTION
1. This office action is in response to U.S. Patent Application No.: 18/891,078 filed on 9/20/2024
with effective filing date 5/22/2022. Claims 1-20 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, 6, 8-10, 15 & 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen et al. “Intra line copy for HEVC screen content intra-picture prediction” (IDS) in view of Pang et al. US 2016/0057420 A1.
Per claims 1, 10 & 19 Chen et al. discloses a method for displacement vector prediction in video decoding, the method comprising: determining a prediction mode of a current unit, the prediction mode indicating an intra block copy (IBC) prediction mode (page 1569, section B, first para, e.g. IBC (intra block copy) (Fig. 3) is conceptually a simplified version of ISC (intra sting copy). Instead of sequentially parsing pixels in a CU into strings of variable length, it performs block-based string matching, requiring that each string have the same shape and size of a prediction unit (PU); page 1570, section A, second para, e.g. To determine the best mode for each PU, the sum of absolution prediction distortion and the bit overhead for the splitting direction and line vectors are considered in the computation of the PU-level R-D cost…The one with the lowest PU-level R-D cost among vertical ILC, horizontal ILC, and IBC is selected); obtaining at least one candidate displacement vector, the at least one candidate displacement vector related to an intra string copy (ISC) prediction mode (page 1569, left column, first para, e.g. our ILC tries to keep both the flexibility of ISC for better compression performance and the regularity of IBC for lower complexity. To this end, we consider each line of pixels in a prediction block a basic matching unit. Due to their uniform length and explicit end points, the matching for these lines can run independently and in parallel. Furthermore, by controlling their displacement vectors, ILC can produce a prediction effect similar to that of ISC).
Chen et al. fails to explicitly disclose the reaming claim limitations.
Pang et al. however in the same field of endeavor teaches deriving a predicted displacement vector of the current unit from the at least one candidate displacement vector (para: 93, e.g. video encoder 20 determines a two-dimensional offset vector 106 representing the location or displacement of predictive video block 104 relative to current video block 102. This disclosure may also refer to vectors used in intra block copy as “block vectors”); and decoding the current unit based on the predicted displacement vector (para: 93, e.g. video decoder 30 may decode the one or more syntax elements to determine offset vector 106, and may use the determined vector to identify predictive block 104).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Pang 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 Chen et al. and Pang et al. in order to perform spatial prediction and temporal prediction to reduce and remove redundancy inherent in video sequences. The coding efficiency is increased, by converting the temporal motion vector predictor. Intra block copy (BC) enables removing a certain kind of spatial redundancy and improves intra frame coding efficiency.
Per claims 6 & 15, Pang et al. further teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein the obtaining the at least one candidate displacement vector comprises: obtaining a displacement vector of an adjacent unit of the current unit in the ISC prediction mode as the at least one candidate displacement vector (para: 141-142, e.g. motion estimation, performed by motion estimation unit 42, is the process of generating motion vectors, which estimate motion for video blocks. A motion vector, for example, may indicate the displacement of a PU of a video block within a current video frame or picture relative to a predictive block within a reference picture).
Per claims 8 & 17, Chen et al. the method according to claim 1, wherein the obtaining at least one candidate displacement vector comprises: obtaining a preset displacement vector related to the ISC prediction mode as the candidate displacement vector (page 1569, left column, & fig. 1, 1st and 3rd para e.g. due to their uniform length and explicit end points, the matching for these lines can run independently and in parallel. Furthermore, by controlling their displacement vectors, ILC can produce a prediction effect similar to that of ISC; compared with ISC, ILC shows similar performance and runtime characteristics. It is, however, able to reuse many existing components in HEVC and has proved to be as effective as ISC without all the complications from sequential parsing, i.e. examiner is interpreting ICS runtime as preset).
Per claims 9 & 18, Pang et al. further teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein: in response to the prediction mode of the current unit being the IBC prediction mode, the candidate displacement vector comprises at least one of the following: (−w, −h), (−w, 0), (0, −h, (−2*w, 0), or (0, −2*h), wherein w is a width of the current unit and h is a height of the current unit (para: 95, e.g. According to JCTVC-R1005, a video coder initially sets a block vector predictor to (−w, 0) at the beginning of each CTB, where “w” is the width of the CU. Using the block vector predictor, a video coder attempts to predict the block vector for current block 102 based on a value of a previously-coded CU or PU coded using intra BC mode).
5. Claim(s) 2, 11 & 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen in view of Pang and Xu et al. “overview of screen content Coding in recently developed video coding standards” (IDS).
Per claims 2, 11 & 20, Chen in view of Pang fails to explicitly teach the claim limitations.
Xu et al. however teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein the obtaining the at least one candidate displacement vector comprises:
constructing a history-based displacement vector prediction list, the history-based displacement vector prediction list comprising a displacement vector of a historical unit in the ISC prediction mode; and deriving the at least one candidate displacement vector from the history-based displacement vector prediction list (page 6, right hand column line 5-9, e.g. n IBC mode, A look-up table (History-based BV Predictor, or HBVP) is constructed to store the block vector of IBC mode as well as other related information (e.g. block size and location) in encoding or decoding order. This table is utilized to derive the predictor the block vector for each IBC coded block, using a class-based BV prediction (CBVP) method [17]. When ISC mode is enabled, the same HBVP table can serve the similar purpose for SV prediction as well by allowing the inclusion of coded string vectors into this table).
Therefore, in view of disclosures by Xu 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 Pang et al., Xu et al. and Chen et al. in order to need for efficient coding of such content to increase performance and complexity.
Claim Objections
6. Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities: ends with “;” instead of “.”. Appropriate correction is required.
Allowable Subject Matter
7. Claims 3-5, 7, 12-14 & 16 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.
Conclusion
8. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Zhang et al. US 11,509,915 B2, e.g. devices, systems and methods for applying intra-block copy (IBC) in video coding are described. In general, methods for integrating IBC with existing motion compensation algorithms for video encoding and decoding are described. In a representative aspect, a method for video encoding using IBC includes determining whether a current block of the current picture is to be encoded using a motion compensation algorithm, and encoding, based on the determining, the current block by selectively applying an intra-block copy to the current block.
Liu et al. US 11,140,412 B2, e.g. a method for video processing is provided to include constructing, during a conversion between a current video block and a coded representation of the current video block, an intra block copy (IBC) motion candidate list, wherein insertion of motion candidates to the IBC motion candidate list is subject to a size restriction; and performing the conversion using the IBC motion candidate list
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/Irfan Habib/ Examiner, Art Unit 2485