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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Species I in the reply filed on 01/13/2026 is acknowledged. The generic claim is corrected as claim 1. Claims 3-4 and 6-14 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected Species II-VI, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 01/13/2026.
Claim Objections
Applicant is advised that should claim 2 be found allowable, claim 5 will be objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being a substantial duplicate thereof. When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Kadono et al. (Pub. No. US 2004/0076237 A1).
Regarding claim 20, Kadono discloses One or more memory or storage devices having stored thereon a program ([0247] recording a program implementing the steps of … method to a floppy disk or other computer-readable data recording medium; [0251]; [0257] The software for … can be stored to any computer-readable data recording medium (such as a CD-ROM disc, floppy disk, or hard disk drive)).
See MPEP 2111.05 (III), when determining the scope of the claims, “a bitstream of a video” is not given patentable weight, because “a bitstream of a video” is non-functional descriptive material. It is merely static data that imparts no function (unlike an executable computer program which performs a function). It does not have any functional relationship with the intended computer system. Thus, the computer-readable data recording medium disclosed in Kadono meets claim 20.
Claims 1, 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Hu et al. (US 20230300328 A1).
Regarding claim 1. Hu discloses A method for processing video (abstract, A device for decoding video data; [0002] video encoding and video decoding), comprising:
using one or more extended taps in an adaptive loop filter (ALF) or a cross component ALF (CCALF) ([0148] not only samples after SAO are used for ALF, samples before SAO and deblocking filter (DBF) may also be used (samples before SAO and deblocking filter (DBF) correspond to extended taps in the ALF. The teaching matches the disclosure in the instant application specification that the "extended" taps are not extended spatially but extended to other samples than the current samples)); and
performing a conversion between the video and a bitstream based on the extended taps used in the ALF ([0148] not only samples after SAO are used for ALF, samples before SAO and deblocking filter (DBF) may also be used; [0149], [0152]-[0154] equations (22), (25), (26), N.sub.d and N.sub.s are the number of taps that are applied to the samples before DBF and samples before SAO respectively; figure 17 filter unit 216; figure 18 filter unit 312; figure 19 unit 346 ALF),
wherein a syntax element structure in the bitstream contains one or more filters with at least one extended tap ([0106] table 2, syntax signal table for signaling filter coefficients; [0156] the coefficients C.sub.i may be signaled and selected), and
wherein a first syntax element is in the bitstream to indicate whether at least one extended tap inside a filter is enabled ([0162] Flags may be signaled to indicate whether the samples before DBF and/or samples before SAO are used for ALF; [0163] flags maybe signaled at filter/filter set/APS/sequence/picture/sub-picture/slice/CTU/block level to indicate whether the coefficients for samples before DBF are signaled. If not signaled, the values of these coefficients may be equal to 0, and this is equivalent to not using samples before DBF for ALF; [0164] flags maybe signaled at filter/filter set/APS/sequence/picture/sub-picture/slice/CTU/block level to indicate whether the coefficients for samples before SAO are signaled. If not signaled, the values of these coefficients may be equal to 0, and this is equivalent to not using samples before SAO for ALF (whether the samples before DBF and/or samples before SAO are used for ALF corresponds to whether at least one extended tap inside a filter is enabled)).
Regarding claim 16. Hu discloses The method of claim 1, wherein a geometrical base transpose for the one or more extended taps is applied, and wherein the geometrical base transpose is designed the same as or different from a design for spatial taps ([0165] Geometric transposes may be applied to the filter shapes corresponding to the samples before DBF (resp. the samples before SAO). For example, the same transpose process derived in ALF classifiers (C2 or C3) may be applied to the samples before DBF ((resp. the samples before SAO). In another example, the samples before DBF (resp. the samples before SAO) are used to determine the transpose that is applied the samples before DBF (resp. the samples before SAO)).
Regarding claim 17. Hu discloses The method of claim 1, wherein the conversion includes encoding the video into the bitstream (figure 17).
Regarding claim 18. Hu discloses The method of claim 1, wherein the conversion includes decoding the video from the bitstream (figure 18).
Regarding claim 19. The same analysis has been stated in claim 1.
Regarding claim 20. The same analysis has been stated in claim 1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 2 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hu et al. (US 20230300328 A1) in view of Karczewicz et al. (US 20200029095 A1).
Regarding claims 2 and 5. Hu discloses The method of claim 1, wherein the filter includes:
thirteen or twenty-five different spatial taps (figures 2A and 2B, [0011] example adaptive loop filter (ALF) shapes that may be used, 25 and 13 taps; [0076] The filter shapes for ALF that were adopted in the joint exploration model (JEM) software were 5×5, 7×7, and 9×9 diamond shapes); and
one extended tap, five different extended taps, or nine different extended taps (figures 15A-15H, [0158] FIGS. 15A-15H show examples of filter taps that may be used for samples before deblocking filtering (DBF) and/or before SAO. FIG. 15A shows filter 702, which includes 1 tap (C.sub.x). FIG. 15B shows filter 704, which includes 5 taps (C.sub.x-C.sub.x+4). FIG. 15D shows filter 708, which includes 9 taps (C.sub.x-C.sub.x+8); figures 16A-16I, [0159] FIGS. 16A-16I show examples of filters that may be used for samples before DBF and/or before SAO that have coefficients that are centrally symmetrical; [0160] FIG. 16A shows filter 720, which includes 5 taps with 3 unique coefficients (C.sub.x -C.sub.x+2). FIG. 16E shows filter 728, which includes 9 taps with 5 unique coefficients (C.sub.x-C.sub.x+4)), or two different extended taps (figure 14, [0155] samples before SAO 606 and samples before DBF 608 are used for the ALF process; [0158] FIG. 15A shows filter 702, which includes 1 tap (C.sub.x) (applied to samples before SAO and samples before DBF, two taps)).
Karczewicz discloses using a variable number of taps, where the number of filter taps is adaptive at the frame level ([0095]; [0087] the term “filter” with respect to ALF generally refers to a set of filter coefficients. For example, a 3×3 filter may be defined by a set of 9 filter coefficients, a 5×5 filter may be defined by a set of 25 filter coefficients, a 9×5 filter may be defined by a set of 45 filter coefficients, and so on. The term “shape,” sometimes called the “filter support,” generally refers to the number of rows of filter coefficients and number of columns of filter coefficients for a particular filter. For example, 9×9 is an example of a first shape, 7×7 is an example of a second shape, and 5×5 is an example of a third shape. In some instances, filters may take non-rectangular shapes including diamond-shapes, diamond-like shapes, circular shapes, circular-like shapes, hexagonal shapes, octagonal shapes, cross shapes, X-shapes, T-shapes, other geometric shapes, or numerous other shapes or configuration).
According to MPEP 2144.04 IV. A. and B., changes in size or shape of the filter were matter of choice which a person of ordinary skill in the art would have found obvious and therefore held unpatentable over prior art.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the inventions of Hu and Karczewicz, to choose eighteen different spatial taps.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hu et al. (US 20230300328 A1).
Regarding claim 15. Hu discloses The method of claim 1, wherein multiple different inputs are designed in different orders, wherein when there are three different inputs A, B and C for one filter, an order of the three different inputs is designed as one of the following: A-B-C, A-C-B, B-A-C, B-C-A, C-A-B, or C-B-A (figure 14; [0149], [0152]-[0154] equations (22), (25), (26) (inherently, different inputs may be input in any order, including neighboring samples (A), samples before DBF (B), samples before SAO (C), intermediate samples (D))), and wherein a coefficient index is modified according to the order of the three different inputs for the one filter ([0156] In the examples of equations (25) and (26), the coefficients C.sub.i may be signaled and selected (the ranges of index i are different in different terms of the equations, different inputs correspond to different coefficient sets. It is equivalent to modify a coefficient index for different inputs, or according to the order of the inputs); [0098] When ALF is enabled, the filter set index is signaled).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to select a different coefficient set by selecting a different filter/coefficient index for a different input.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to XIAOLAN XU whose telephone number is (571)270-7580. The examiner can normally be reached Mon. to Fri. 9am-5pm.
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/XIAOLAN XU/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2488