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(s) (IDS) was/were submitted on 24 January 2025 and 12 January 2026. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
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.
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.
Claim(s) 12 and 29-30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jacobson et al. (US 2016/0301950 A1) in view of Chandok et al. (US 2021/0398563 A1).
Regarding Claims 12 and 29-30, Jacobson discloses a device to perform an image encoding method via CRM, applied to an encoding-side device, the method comprising: acquiring a maximum code length of a to-be-encoded block, wherein the maximum code length is determined based on a set overflow line of a bitstream buffer [Jacobson: ¶ [0048]: the buffer fullness (BF) can be defined based on the values BufferCurrentSize representing the number of bits currently in the buffer and BufferMaxSize representing the size of the rate buffer 150, i.e., the maximum number of bits that can be stored in the rate buffer 150 at any point in time], and the set overflow line indicates a maximum storage space allowed to be occupied by bitstreams in the bitstream buffer [Jacobson: ¶ [0048]]; and encoding the to-be-encoded block in a fallback mode in a case that the first code length is greater than or equal to the maximum code length, wherein a code length obtained by encoding the to-be-encoded block in the fallback mode is less than the maximum code length [Jacobson: ¶ [0008]: there is provided a device that may include a memory configured to store video information relating to a slice of an image, wherein the slice includes one or more blocks. The device may include at least one processor circuit coupled to the memory and configured to: identify one or more prediction modes for a fixed-rate codec, each prediction mode having a rate-distortion cost; select, for a current block, a prediction mode that has the lowest rate-distortion cost from among the one more prediction modes not previously selected; determine whether the selected prediction mode would result in overflow or underflow of a buffer of the fixed-rate codec; determine whether the selected prediction mode would result in remaining bits in the slice being insufficient to code remaining blocks of the slice; and utilize a fallback mode to code the current block in response to each of the selected one or more prediction modes resulting in at least one of (i) overflow or underflow of the buffer and (ii) insufficient remaining bits in the slice to code the remaining blocks of the slice, wherein the fallback mode may include determining a midpoint value of the current block and predicting current block samples from the midpoint value], and wherein a bitstream obtained by encoding the to-be-encoded block in the fallback mode comprises a first codeword, and the first codeword indicates the fallback mode or a sample mode [Jacobson: ¶ [0008]].
Jacobson may not explicitly disclose obtaining a first code length of the to-be-encoded block by pre-encoding the to-be-encoded block, wherein the first code length is a length of a bitstream obtained after pre-encoding the to- be-encoded block.
However, Chandok discloses obtaining a first code length of the to-be-encoded block by pre-encoding the to-be-encoded block, wherein the first code length is a length of a bitstream obtained after pre-encoding the to- be-encoded block [Chandok: ¶ [0004]: solutions reduce network jitter by selecting a lower resolution of video that uses less memory and less network bandwidth, so that more video frames can be stored in a buffer without an excessive increase in buffer memory requirements. This solution can work for streaming services wherein media content has been pre-encoded in multiple resolutions. However, in real-time video, such as in a video “chat” or teleconference, switching video encodings in real-time can put a sizable computational burden on the transmission-side encoding. Further, in both the pre-encoded and live streaming scenarios, reduced encoding resolution yields a similarly reduced user experience].
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to combine the processing of Jacobson with the pre-encoding of Chandok in order to provide well-known process which reduce computational load.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-11 are allowed.
Claims 13, 27-28, and 31-32 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.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: while fixed length coding for components are used for parsing groups of pixels when a buffer maximum size is exceeded is well-known, the specific code for the specific parameter for the specific single pixel of the first component has not been found in the prior art.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JONATHAN R MESSMORE whose telephone number is (571)272-2773. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9-5 EST/EDT.
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/JONATHAN R MESSMORE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2482