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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. 2319649.6, filed on 20 December 2023 with the United Kingdom Patent Office.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/20/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 05/09/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/24/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/11/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim(s) 1-4, 15, 16, 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huo et al. (US 20250047834 A1) referred to as Huo hereinafter and further in view of Tovey et al. (US 20230298133 A1) referred to as Tovey hereinafter.
Regarding claim 1, Huo teaches A method of determining an indication of one or more weighting parameters for use in applying upsampling to input pixel values representing an image region to determine a block of one or more upsampled pixel values, (“A weighting factor is determined according to the reference sample value for the first colour component of the current block.” Huo, para. [0005])
the method comprising: applying a horizontal edge filter to two or more of the input pixel values to determine a first filtered value; applying a vertical edge filter to two or more of the input pixel values to determine a second filtered value; (“It can also be understood that, when performing up-sampling filtering on both the reference luma information and the reference chroma information of the neighbouring area of the current block, the method can further include the following. Based on the colour format information, the second filtering is performed on the value of the first-colour-component sample in the neighbouring area of the current block according to a first horizontal up-sampling factor and a first vertical up-sampling factor, to obtain the filtered neighbouring sample value for the first colour component of the current block; Huo, para. [0166])
applying a horizontal line filter to three or more of the input pixel values to determine a third filtered value; applying a vertical line filter to three or more of the input pixel values to determine a fourth filtered value; (“With regard to case 2 (namely, step S1103), if up-sampling filtering is performed on the reconstructed luma information of the current block, the manner for up-sampling filtering can be any one of linear interpolation methods, such as nearest neighbour interpolation, bilinear interpolation, bicubic interpolation, mean interpolation, median interpolation, copy interpolation, etc.” Huo, para. [0281])
using the first, second, third and fourth filtered values to determine the indication of one or more weighting parameters, wherein the one or more weighting parameters are indicative of relative horizontal and vertical variation of the input pixel values within the image region; (“in embodiments of the disclosure, no matter whether it is the second filtering performed on the value of the first-colour-component sample in the neighbouring area, or the third filtering performed on the reconstructed value of the first-reference-colour-component sample in the current block, or even the fourth filtering performed on the value of the second-colour-component sample in the neighbouring area, all the three types of filtering can be up-sampling filtering. The second filtering can be performed by using a first filter, the third filtering can be performed by using a second filter, and the fourth filtering can be performed by using a third filter. Here, for the three filters, the first filter, the second filter, and the third filter can all be up-sampling filters.” Huo, para. [0158]) and (“A weighted value obtained by multiplying the reference sample value for the second colour component by a corresponding weighting factor is determined. A prediction value of a second-colour-component sample in the first prediction block is set to be equal to a sum of N weighted values, where N represents the number of reference sample values for the second colour component, and N is a positive integer.” Huo, para. [0163])
However, Huo does not teach and outputting the determined indication of the one or more weighting parameters for use in applying upsampling to the input pixel values representing the image region to determine a block of one or more upsampled pixel values.
Tovey teaches and outputting the determined indication of the one or more weighting parameters for use in applying upsampling to the input pixel values representing the image region to determine a block of one or more upsampled pixel values. (“the lock update component 908 increases the confidence/trust factor for new pixel locks and reprojected locks based on the current upsample weight contribution of their associated pixel. The increase value is within the normalized range [0,1] and determined by dividing the current frame upsample weight (e.g., the Lanczos weight calculated in the upsampling sub-stage 903) by a constant value, for example the maximum accumulation weight.” Tovey, para. [0094]) and (“Referring to FIG. 6, a sharpening component 524 of the sharpening stage 613 takes as input the output buffer 506-2 comprising the upscaled frame 508. The sharpening component 524 performs one or more sharpening operations on the pixels of the upscaled frame 508 represented by the output buffer 506-2.” Tovey, para. [0102])
Huo and Tovey are combinable because they are from the same field of endeavor, image processing and upsampling.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Huo in light of Tovey’s applying upsampling to the input values. One would have been motivated to do so because it can improve image quality. (Tovey, para. [0038])
Regarding claim 2, Huo teaches wherein said using the first, second, third and fourth filtered values to determine the indication of one or more weighting parameters comprises combining the first, second, third and fourth filtered values by performing a weighted sum. (“That is, if the number of the reference sample values for the second colour component is N, a weighted value (namely w.sub.kC.sub.k) obtained by multiplying each reference sample value for the second colour component by a corresponding weighting factor is firstly determined, and then the sum of the N weighted values is used as the prediction value of the second-colour-component sample in the prediction block. Specifically, the formula for calculation is as follows:
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Huo, para. [0164])
Regarding claim 3, Huo teaches wherein one or more of the weights used in the weighted sum is trained so that the indication of one or more weighting parameters indicates one or more weighting parameters that are indicative of relative horizontal and vertical variation of the input pixels within the image region. (“A reference sample value for a first colour component of a current block is determined. A weighting factor is determined according to the reference sample value for the first colour component of the current block. A first prediction block for a second colour component of the current block is determined according to the weighting factor and a reference sample value for the second colour component of the current block, where the number of prediction values of the second colour component of the first prediction block is greater than the number of second-colour-component samples in the current block.” Huo, para. [0058])
Regarding claim 4, Huo teaches wherein the indication of the one or more weighting parameters is clamped to be in a range [0,1] before it is output. (“if the number of reference sample values for the second colour component is N, the number of weighting factors is N accordingly, where the sum of the N weighting factors is equal to 1, and each of the weighting factors is a value greater than or equal to 0 and less than or equal to 1, i.e. 0≤w.sub.k≤1. However, it should be noted that, “the sum of the N weighting factors is equal to 1” is only a theoretical concept, and in actual implementation of fixed-point, the absolute value of the weighting factor can be greater than 1.” Huo, para. [0102])
Regarding claim 15, Huo does not teach wherein the input pixel values and the upsampled pixel values are Green channel values, and wherein the upsampling of the Green channel values is for use in a demosaicing technique.
Tovey teaches wherein the input pixel values and the upsampled pixel values are Green channel values, and wherein the upsampling of the Green channel values is for use in a demosaicing technique. (“The green channel of the lock status 620 includes the current luminance of the current frame 502 (e.g., the average luma of the scene in the area around the pixel) at the time the pixel was locked and is obtained by the lock status 620 from the luminance texture 606. In at least some implementations, the locking component 520 populates the green channel of the lock status 620 during the reprojection stage of reproject and accumulate stage 611. The luminance information stored in the green channel of the lock status 620 currently being generated is used by the reproject and accumulate stage 611 when processing the next frame.” Tovey, para. [0079]) and (“At block 2114, the locking stage 609 stores the luminance value of the pixel at the time the lock was created in the green channel of the lock status texture 620 for the current pixel. At block 2116, for each locked pixel of the previously upscaled frame, the locking stage 609 updates the remaining lifetime of the lock in the red channel of the lock status texture 620 for the pixel.” Tovey, para. [0112])
Huo and Tovey are combinable because they are from the same field of endeavor, image processing and upsampling.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Huo in light of Tovey’s Green channel. One would have been motivated to do so because it can improve image quality. (Tovey, para. [0038])
Regarding claim 16, Huo teaches further comprising applying upsampling to the input pixel values representing the image region, said upsampling comprising determining one or more of the upsampled pixel values of the block of one or more upsampled pixel values in accordance with the relative horizontal and vertical variation of the input pixel values within the image region indicated by the one or more weighting parameters. (“when up-sampling filtering is to be performed on the reconstructed luma information of the current block, the size of the first prediction block can be derived according to the YUV video format and a spatial up-sampling rate of the luminance of the current block after performing luma up-sampling on the current block. In this case, the method can further include the following. Based on the colour format information, the third filtering is performed on the reconstructed value of the first-reference-colour-component sample in the current block according to a third horizontal up-sampling factor and a third vertical up-sampling factor, to obtain the filtered sample value of the first-reference-colour-component sample in the current block.” Huo, para. [0172])
Regarding claim 18, refer to the explanation of claim 1.
Regarding claim 19, Huo teaches A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer readable code configured to cause the method as set forth in claim 1 to be performed when the code is run on at least one processor. (“a non-transitory computer storage medium storing a bitstream generated according to an encoding method is provided. The encoding method includes: determining a reference sample value for a first colour component of a current block; determining a weighting factor according to the reference sample value for the first colour component of the current block; determining a first prediction block for a second colour component of the current block according to the weighting factor and a reference sample value for the second colour component of the current block, wherein the number of prediction values of the second colour component of the first prediction block is greater than the number of second-colour-component samples in the current block; performing first filtering on the first prediction block to determine a second prediction block for the second colour component of the current block; and determining a residual value of the second-colour-component sample in the current block according to the second prediction bloc” Huo, para. [0007])
Regarding claim 20, refer to the explanation of claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-14, and 17 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.
Regarding claim 5, Huo teaches wherein said using the first, second, third and fourth filtered values to determine the indication of one or more weighting parameters comprises: processing the input pixel values with an implementation of a neural network to determine a residual value; (“the first filter, the second filter, and the third filter can all be neural-network filters.” Huo, para. [0405]) and (“the first determining unit 3001 is further configured to determine a prediction value of the second-colour-component sample in the current block according to the second prediction block; and determine the residual value of the second-colour-component sample in the current block according to an original value of the second-colour-component sample in the current block and the prediction value of the second-colour-component sample in the current block.” Huo, para. [0494])
However, the combination of the closest prior arts does not teach “and combining the determined residual value with the first, second, third and fourth filtered values to determine the indication of one or more weighting parameters.”
Claims 6-9 are objected to as allowable by virtue of their dependency upon claim 5.
Regarding claim 10, the combination of the closest prior arts does not teach “wherein the horizontal line filter is configured so as to determine the third filtered value to be zero when the three or more of the input pixel values that the horizontal line filter is applied to exhibit purely vertical features, and wherein the vertical line filter is configured so as to determine the fourth filtered value to be zero when the three or more of the input pixel values that the vertical line filter is applied to exhibit purely horizontal features.”
Claims 11 and 12 are objected to as allowable by virtue of their dependency upon claim 10.
Regarding claim 13, the combination of the closest prior arts does not teach “wherein input pixels are represented by values in multiple channels, wherein upsampled pixels are represented by values in multiple channels, wherein said input pixel values are values of the input pixels in a single channel, and wherein said upsampled pixel values are values of the upsampled pixels in said single channel.”
Regarding claim 14, the combination of the closest prior arts does not teach “wherein the input pixel values and the upsampled pixel values are Y channel values, and wherein the upsampling of the Y channel values is for use in a super resolution technique.”
Regarding claim 17, the combination of the closest prior arts does not teach “wherein the one or more upsampled pixel values in the block of one or more upsampled pixel values are non-sharpened upsampled pixel values, or wherein the one or more upsampled pixel values in the block of one or more upsampled pixel values are sharpened upsampled pixel values.”
Conclusion
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/PARDIS SOHRABY/Examiner, Art Unit 2664
/JENNIFER MEHMOOD/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2664
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