DETAILED ACTION
This is the First Action on the Merits for U.S. Patent Application No. 18/894,444, filed 24 September 2024, which is a continuation of U.S. Patent Application No. 17/389,179, now U.S. Patent No. 12,137,257, filed 29 July 2021, which is a continuation of International Application No. PCT/CN2020/074217, filed 3 February 2020, which claims foreign priority to International Applications PCT/CN2019/101594, filed 20 August 2019, PCT/CN2019/090163, filed 5 June 2019, PCT/CN2019/077620, filed 11 March 2019, and to PCT/CN2019/074701, filed 3 February 2019.
Claims 1–20 are pending.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed 24 September 2024 fails to comply with 37 C.F.R. § 1.98(a)(2), which requires a legible copy of each cited foreign patent document; each non-patent literature publication or that portion which caused it to be listed; and all other information or that portion which caused it to be listed. It has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered. Specifically, Applicant has failed to correct the failure to give copies of NPL Documents 10 (JEM-7.0) and 11 (H.265/HEVC) in the parent ‘179 application.
Drawings
Figure 1, characterized in the specification at paragraph 0015 as representing material found in the H.264/AVC video standard, should be designated by a legend such as --Prior Art-- because only that which is old is illustrated. See M.P.E.P. § 608.02(g). Corrected drawings in compliance with 37 C.F.R. § 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. The replacement sheet(s) should be labeled “Replacement Sheet” in the page header (as per 37 C.F.R. § 1.84(c)) so as not to obstruct any portion of the drawing figures. If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 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.
Claims 7 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) 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.
Claim 7 recites selecting UQT types as selected from two, or possibly four, horizontal splitting and two, or possibly four, vertical splitting types. UQT-H splitting is selected from among a or b splitting, but a and b can each be chosen from 4 values, so it is unclear whether there are two or four options for UQT-H available for a specific block conversions. The same ambiguity is present for UQT-V splitting. Also, claim 7 is dependent on claim 1, not claim 4, so the definitions of the four UQT-H and UQT-V splittings given in claim 4 are not imported into claim 7, and it is unclear what is the extent of the splitting types claimed. Claim 10, dependent on claim 7, gives specific values of splitting type numbers, but these numbers by themselves are not attached to the splitting types given in any of claims 4, 8, or 9. It is suggested that Applicant restructure the claims to eliminate redundancies among claims 4 and 7–10.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 102
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 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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 2, and 17–19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2018/0139453 A1 (“Park”).
Park, directed to video processing, teaches with respect to claim 1 a method of video processing, comprising:
determining, for a conversion between a current video block and a bitstream representation of the current video block, whether to apply unsymmetrical quad-trees splitting (¶¶ 0109–120, asymmetric partitioning), and a specific UQT type to be used for splitting the current video block when UQT splitting is applied (id., centering position of split in terms of n1 and n2 blocks horizontally and vertically), based on a on a slice or a picture containing the current video block (¶¶ 0048, intra or inter coding determined at picture or slice level; ¶¶ 0062–67, differing partition modes available for intra or inter blocks); and
performing the conversion based on the determining (¶ 0121, using the partition mode information to partition a current block).
Regarding claim 2, Park teaches the method of claim 1, wherein when the slice or picture containing the current video block is a P-Slice/P picture or B-slice/B-picture, M kinds of UQT splitting are applied (¶ 0128–130, applying intra/inter prediction mode to quadtree partition of block), and
wherein when the slice or picture containing the current video block is an I-slice/I-picture, N kinds of the UQT splitting are applied, where M and N are integers (id.)
Regarding claim 17, Park teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the conversion includes encoding the current video block into the bitstream representation (¶ 0068, determining whether to partition a coding tree block at an encoder side).
Regarding claim 18, Park teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the conversion includes decoding the current video block from the bitstream representation (¶ 0121, partitioning in decoder).
Regarding claim 19, Park teaches an apparatus for processing video data comprising a processor and a non-transitory memory with instructions thereon (¶ 0008, implementation in memory and processor), wherein the instructions upon execution by the processor, cause the processor to:
[perform the claim 1 method] (claim 1 rejection supra).
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by the H.265/HEVC coding standard1. The statement in ¶ 0045 that HEVC is an “existing video coding standard” is considered a binding admission of admitted prior art. Pharmastem Therapeutics, Inc. v. Viacell, Inc., 491 F.3d 1342, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Any attempt to distinguish claim 20 from Park as allegedly like or parallel in scope to claims 1 or 19 will be considered non-responsive to this rejection made on different, independent grounds. 37 C.F.R. § 1.111(b).
Claim 20 is directed to a “non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a bitstream of a video” generated by a certain video encoding method. This medium storing non-executable content data as digital ones and zeroes is analogous to a printed book in which audio data comprising speech is stored as words written in the Latin alphabet or another writing system. As such, under the “Printed Matter” or “Nonfunctional Descriptive Material” doctrine, the content of the bitstream is not given patentable weight, and the claim is deemed to read “A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a video bitstream that is generated by a video encoding method performed by a video processing apparatus”. See M.P.E.P. § 2111.05(III), “When the programming performs some function with respect to the computer with which it is associated, a functional relationship will be found. However, where . . . the computer-readable medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists”. See also O’Reilly v. Morse, 56 U.S. (15 How.) 62 (1854) (“use of . . . electromagnetism for making or printing intelligible characters, signs, or letters” held to be non-patentable); Ex parte Mathias, 84 U.S.P.Q.2d 1276, 1278–79 (B.P.A.I. 10 August 2005) (informative) (“a computer-readable storage medium that differs from the prior art solely with respect to nonfunctional descriptive material, such as music or a literary work, encoded on the medium” is not distinct from the prior art).
CNIPA Order No. 84 (13 November 2025) that allows for this type of claim in the People’s Republic of China has no effect on the examination of this United States application under United States law. See U.S. Const. Art. 6, § 2; Art. 1, § 8, cl. 8 (exclusive Federal power to set forth requirements for patents in the United States); see also Westminster Confession of Faith ¶ 23.2 (civil magistrates are to execute their office “according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth”). Considering this, any non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a bitstream of a video which is generated by a method performed by a video processing apparatus, in use or for sale before the effective filing date of 9 November 2023, is considered prior art, for example, a medium storing a video encoded with the admitted prior art HEVC codec. If Applicant desires global harmonization among claims, the examiner suggests Applicant amend claim 20 to claim a method of video processing as in claim 1 but further including a step of storing the bitstream or a step of transmitting the bitstream; these claim types permitted by CNIPA Order No. 84 are also acceptable under United States law and practice as ordinary “process” claims. 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3–6, 8, 9, and 11–16 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.
As allowable subject matter has been indicated, applicant's reply must either comply with all formal requirements or specifically traverse each requirement not complied with. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.111(b) and M.P.E.P. § 707.07(a).
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Claim 4 claims, and claim 7 attempts to claim, specific asymmetric 4-fold horizontal and vertical splitting modes. Closest prior art Park at Figure 14 teaches an asymmetric 4-way splitting, but this is one horizontal and one vertical split, not three horizontal and three vertical splits. The binary asymmetric splits given by split_offset_0 are not for quad splitting as claimed, and the split_offset_0 does not qualify as a claimed named split type. Claim 9 as originally filed in the parent ‘179 application contained similar material, and was not rejected over prior art during prosecution of the ‘179 application. Closest prior art US 2021/0250576 at Figure 4 represents the state of the art at the time of effective filing, showing asymmetric binary splits, asymmetric ternary splits, and symmetric quad splits. US 2017/0347095 at Figures 4A, 5C, and 5D and US 2019/0230285 at Figure 31 show similar features. Many other prior art references can be cited as showing some combination of asymmetric binary, asymmetric ternary, and symmetric quad splitting may be cited due to their use in standard video codecs. US 2018/0184110 at Figure 2 and US 2021/0014513 at Figure 1 show iterated binary symmetric splits that may mimic the claimed effect. US 2021/0377531, US 2021/0377530, and US 2021/0377529 each at Figures 9A–9H disclose the claimed invention, but each named inventor on these applications is also a named inventor on the present application, so these are excepted under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)(2)(A) from qualifying as prior art. Park also at ¶¶ 0128–130 does not disclose the specific coding modes according to intra or inter status as in claim 3.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
The following prior art was found using an Artificial Intelligence assisted search using an internal AI tool that uses the classification of the application under the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, as well as from the specification, including the claims and abstract, of the application as contextual information. The documents are ranked from most to least relevant. Where possible, English-language equivalents are given, and redundant results within the same patent families are eliminated. See “New Artificial Intelligence Functionality in PE2E Search”, 1504 OG 359 (15 November 2022), “Automated Search Pilot Program”, 90 F.R. 48,161 (8 October 2025).
US 2021/0076077 A1
US 2021/0112284 A1
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to David N Werner whose telephone number is (571)272-9662. The examiner can normally be reached M--F 7:30--4:00 Central.
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/David N Werner/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
1 Applicant attempted to cite this reference as Non Patent Literature Document No. 11 in the 24 September 2024 Information Disclosure Statement.
Prosecution Insights