DETAILED ACTION
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 (IDS) submitted on 12/23/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Allowable Subject Matter
The examiner thanks the applicant for the kind words with respect to the indication of allowable subject matter in claims 5-9 and is strongly encouraged to revisit.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. §112
Applicant’s arguments, see page 8, filed 12/23/2025, with respect to the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejections of claims 15-19 have been fully considered and are persuasive. These rejections have been withdrawn.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. §102
Applicant's arguments filed 12/23/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. While the examiner thanks the applicant for the discussion related to mode determination, the examiner still points that a ‘mode’ with respect to position determination is present. The examiner points to the bottom of page 7, which is the prologue to the teachings of claim 8 and thusly not a new ground but mere clarification of the thrust. As can be seen, the previously determined positions A and B are determined in order to make the reconstruction. Being as the modes being claimed are either top, left or top-left, these positions being determined are being considered as the mode determination.
For this reason, the examiner asserts Filippov does, in fact, explicitly disclose the claimed invention of at least claim 1.
As the remaining remarks are solely dependent on this fact, they are all moot and further addressed by the cited claim mappings.
As such, claims 2-4, 10-13 and 19 are also maintained under rejection for the same reasons.
With respect to claim 20, the examiner thanks the applicant for addressing the issue of non-functional descriptive material and the rejection has been modified as such to reflect full patentable weight being given.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. §102/103, Official Notice
With respect to the allegations of improper Official Notice and request for evidence can look again to Page 7 of Filippov as it clearly states for embodiment two that it is applied to encoding and/or decoding). Therefore, the rejection has been modified to reflect this fact. As per MPEP §1207.03(a)(II), this is a situation that would not be considered a new ground of rejection as the modification is relying on the same teachings.
Further, as the Official Notice of claims 15-19 have not been traversed, these rejections will be now considered as being rejected under admitted prior art as per MPEP §2144.03(C).
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(s) 1-4, 10-14 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Filippov et al., (CN 113841405 A) referred to as FILIPPOV hereinafter.
1. A video decoding method, comprising:
decoding a bitstream, and performing prediction on a current block to obtain a first prediction value (Page 8, Top paragraph);
determining a reconstructed sample mode for the current block, wherein the reconstructed sample mode is one of N candidate modes, and the N candidate modes comprise at least one of a top reconstructed sample mode, a left reconstructed sample mode, or a top-and-left reconstructed sample mode (Page 8 discloses reconstructing a sample based on various 'modes' to include references in various positions. Further support can be found in the same embodiment on the bottom of page 7, which determines positions A and B, which indicates the ‘mode’ of choice for reconstructing samples.);
determining a neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block and a neighbouring reconstructed sample of a reference block according to the reconstructed sample mode for the current block (Page 8 discusses referencing the adjacent block, based on position, as the reference sample to reconstruct.); and
determining a linear transform parameter according to the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block and the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the reference block, and performing linear transformation on the first prediction value according to the linear transform parameter to obtain a second prediction value of the current block (Page 8 discloses a linear transformation for determining updated parameters for reconstruction, alpha and beta, based on locations with respect to one another and performing a transformation to obtain a second updated value.).
Regarding claim 2, FILIPPOV shows the limitations of claim 1 as applied above, and further shows wherein determining the reconstructed sample mode for the current block comprises: determining a first index, wherein the first index indicates the reconstructed sample mode for the current block; and determining the reconstructed sample mode for the current block according to the first index (Page 37 discloses using a reference index to determine the mode used for reconstructing a sample.).
Regarding claim 3, FILIPPOV shows the limitations of claim 2 as applied above, and further shows wherein determining the first index comprises: obtaining the first index by decoding the bitstream (Page 37 also shows this as a step of entropy decoding.).
Regarding claim 4, FILIPPOV shows the limitations of claim 2 as applied above, and further shows wherein when a prediction mode for the current block is a Merge mode, determining the first index comprises:
determining a first flag of a neighbouring block of the current block, wherein the first flag of the neighbouring block indicates whether the neighbouring block uses an illumination compensation technology; and determining the first index according to the first flag of the neighbouring block (Page 42, paragraphs 3 and 4 disclose obtaining an LIC flag and copying it over, thus representing the adjacent indexing.).
Claims 10-12 recite the following contingent limitations: “when the reconstructed sample mode for the current block is the top reconstructed sample mode, determining the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block according to a top neighbouring sample of the current block, and determining a neighbouring reconstructed sample of a reference block corresponding to the current block in a reference picture according to a top neighbouring sample of the reference block,” “further shows wherein determining the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block according to the top neighbouring sample of the current block comprises: determining the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block according to a width of the current block and the top neighbouring sample of the current block,” and “further shows wherein determining the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the reference block corresponding to the current block in the reference picture according to the top neighbouring sample of the reference block comprises: determining the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the reference block according to a width of the reference block and the top neighbouring sample of the reference block.”
These limitations are contingent because they recite steps that are only required to be performed if their conditions precedent are met. The limitations associated with determining the mode to be associated with the top reconstructed sample do not need to be met as the prior art meets the top AND left contingency. Therefore, the BRI of claims 10-12 merely require limitations on that selected mode.
As such, the claimed limitations on the top reconstruction mode will not be given patentable weight.
Regarding claim 13, FILIPPOV shows the limitations of claim 1 as applied above, and further shows wherein the linear transform parameter comprises a scaling factor and an offset parameter (Page 8, wherein the equation demonstrates where alpha is a scaling factor and beta is the resultant offset.), and determining the linear transform parameter according to the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block and the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the reference block comprises:
determining the scaling factor according to the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block and the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the reference block; and
determining the offset parameter according to the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the current block, the neighbouring reconstructed sample of the reference block, and the scaling factor (Page 8);
wherein performing linear transformation on the first prediction value according to the linear transform parameter to obtain the second prediction value of the current block comprises performing linear transformation on the first prediction value according to the scaling factor and the offset parameter, to obtain the second prediction value of the current block (Page 8, as described above.).
Regarding claims 14 and 20, the claim limitations are rejected for mappings, reasonings and rationales substantially similar to those of claim 1 above. Further, FILIPPOV further teaches this embodiment of reconstruction may take place both on an encoder and/or a decoder (Page 7).
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.
Claims 14 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as anticipated by FILIPPOV or, in the alternative, under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over OFFICIAL NOTICE.
Regarding claims 14 and 20, on Page 8, FILIPPOV discloses that both then encoding and reversal via decoding methods are shown and therefore the examiner believes the claimed invention to be explicitly taught by FILIPPOV.
However, even if not every step is explicitly laid out as per the claim, claim 14 merely appears to be the routine encoding of video data using prediction according to obvious and well-known techniques that would be common knowledge to one possessing ordinary skill in the art.
Therefore, in the alternative to anticipation, the examiner is also taking Official Notice that it would have been obvious to one possessing ordinary skill in the art to encode video using standard prediction techniques to create an encoded bitstream utilized in claims 1-13 for decoding purposes.
This would be done as the aim of the art area in general is video compression and generally agreed upon standards have been adopted to encode video data in an ever-evolving landscape of needing more data encoded faster and in more implementations.
Regarding claims 15-19, FILIPPOV discloses the availability of most coding a prediction schemes considered the state of the art at or before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Therefore, due to the high level of generality in the dependent claims with respect to standard coding practice, it is hereby admitted prior art that it would have been obvious to one possessing ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have multiple transform modes which are selectable based on some cost metric.
This would be done as the aim of the art area in general is video compression and generally agreed upon standards have been adopted to encode video data in an ever-evolving landscape of needing more data encoded faster and in more implementations.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-9 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
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN W. RIDER whose telephone number is (571)270-1068. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 7.00 am - 4.30 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jamie J Atala can be reached at (571) 272-7384. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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JUSTIN W. RIDER
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2486
/Justin W Rider/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2486