DETAILED ACTION
This Office action for U.S. Patent Application No. 18/915,691 is responsive to communications filed 15 December 2025, in reply to the Non-Final Rejection of 17 September 2025.
Claims 1–3 are pending.
In the previous Office action, claims 1–3 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) for gross informality.
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 .
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendments to the claims have been considered. The rejections of claims 1–3 under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) are withdrawn, and the claims are now in condition for search. As will be shown below in full, Draft 7 of the VVC standard makes obvious the substance of the claims as amended.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 103
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 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 1–3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over B. Bross, J. Chen, S. Liu, & Y.K. Wang, “Versatile Video Coding (Draft 7)”, JVET Document No. P2001 v. E (14 November 2019) (“VVC-7”).
VVC-7, a draft of the Versatile Video Coding standard, teaches with respect to claim 1:
generating performance requirement information into a VPS (Video Parameter Set) regardless of a total number of the one or more layers in a layer group, the performance requirement information indicating a performance requirement for a decoder, the VPS being included in a bitstream (§ 7.3.2.2, vps_num_ptls and dependent syntax in the video parameter set syntax);
generating a flag into a bitstream, the flag indicating whether a hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) parameter is signaled or not (id., vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag in the video parameter set syntax); and
in response to the flag indicating that the HRD parameter is signaled, generating the HRD parameter into the bitstream (id., general_hrd_parameters dependent on the vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag).
VVC-7 further teaches with respect to claim 2:
obtaining performance requirement information into a VPS (Video Parameter Set) regardless of a total number of the one or more layers in a layer group, the performance requirement information indicating a performance requirement for a decoder, the VPS being included in a bitstream (§ 7.3.2.2, vps_num_ptls and dependent syntax in the video parameter set syntax);
obtaining a flag into a bitstream, the flag indicating whether a hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) parameter is signaled or not (id., vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag in the video parameter set syntax); and
in response to the flag indicating that the HRD parameter is signaled, generating the HRD parameter into the bitstream (id., general_hrd_parameters dependent on the vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag).
The claimed invention differs from VVC-7 in that the claimed invention teaches the codec itself, not a memory and circuitry arrangement for an encoder and decoder. However, the examiner takes Official Notice that computers were well-known in the art to be used for implementing video coders, with examples prevalent throughout the references cited in the 15 October 2024 Information Disclosure Statement.
Regarding claim 3, VVC-7 teaches a stream,
wherein the stream includes (i) performance requirement information indicating a performance requirement for a decoder (§ 7.3.2.2, vps_num_ptls and dependent profile-tier-level syntax),
(ii) a flag indicating whether a hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) parameter is signaled or not (id., vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag), and
(iii) a parameter [that] cause[s] a decoder to perform (id., vps_video_parameter_set_id that signals the start of the vps header that contains the other syntax):
obtaining the performance requirement information into a VPS (Video Parameter Set) regardless of a total number of the one or more layers in a layer group, the performance requirement information indicating a performance requirement for a decoder, the VPS being included in a bitstream (§ 7.3.2.2, vps_num_ptls and dependent syntax in the video parameter set syntax);
obtaining a flag into a bitstream, the flag indicating whether a hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) parameter is signaled or not (id., vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag in the video parameter set syntax); and
in response to the flag indicating that the HRD parameter is signaled, generating the HRD parameter into the bitstream (id., general_hrd_parameters dependent on the vps_general_hrd_params_present_flag).
As with claim 2, the examiner takes Official Notice that a computer-implemented video decoder was well-known in the art, with examples including *throws darts at the IDS*.
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 2021/0344964 A1
US 2022/0321920 A1
US 2021/0120235 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