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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Summary
This office action for US Patent application 18/899768 is responsive to communications filed on January 14th, 2026. Currently, claims 1-3 are pending are presented for examination.
Response to Arguments
On page 4-5, applicant argument’s with respect to claim 3 have been considered. The applicant is arguing that there is a relationship between the programming content and the medium containing the programming content. While applicant’s arguments have been considered and understood, the examiner respectfully disagrees. The reason is that the claim is about storing “a computer program having instructions” a long with “a bitstream” in a non-transitory CRM. The examiner does not see a single mention of what is being done with “a computer program having instructions”. Therefore, the claim boils down to storing a bitstream into a non-transitory CRM, since “a computer program having instructions” does not have any relevance in the claim and therefore does not have any patentable weight. Because of this reason, the claim 3 rejection is still maintained.
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)(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.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by the DVD® optical disc “Anatomy of a Murder” (Columbia TriStar Home Video, 2000)’.
A bit stream generated by a method, the method comprising… is a product by process claim limitation where the product is the bit stream and the process is the method steps to generate the bitstream. MPEP §2113 recites “Product-by-Process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”. Thus, the scope of the claim is the computer readable storage medium storing the bitstream (with the structure implied by the method steps). The structure includes the information and samples manipulated by the steps.
“To be given patentable weight, the printed matter and associated product must be in a functional relationship. A functional relationship can be found where the printed matter performs some function with respect to the product to which it is associated”. MPEP §2111.05(I)(A). When a claimed “computer-readable medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists. MPEP §2111.05(III). The storage medium storing the claimed bitstream in claim 3 merely services as a support for the storage of the bitstream and provides no functional relationship between the stored bitstream and storage medium. Therefore, the structure bitstream, which scope is implied by the method steps, is non-functional descriptive material and given no patentable weight. MPEP §2111.05(III). Thus, the claim scope is just a storage medium storing data and is anticipated by any computer-readable medium recording medium storing a bitstream of image data in use or on sale before the effective filing date is considered prior art. Considering this, any computer-readable recording medium storing a bitstream of encoded image data in use or on sale before the effective filing date of July 4th, 2018 is considered prior art.
New Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications form the examiner should be directed to Nam Pham, whose can be contacted by phone at (571)270-7352. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon—Thurs.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, CZEKAJ DAVID, can be reached on (571)272-7327.
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/NAM D PHAM/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487