DETAILED ACTION
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.
(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(s) 1-7, 14-21, 28-33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572).
Regarding Claim 1, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses an image decoder (a decoder can decode [0023]) comprising:
circuitry (computing device 304 can be implemented as hardware, software and/or a combination of hardware and software [0039]);
and a memory connected to the circuitry (software [0039]), wherein, in operation, the circuitry acquires an image (decode and display the base layer [0032]; video frames captured by the video capture drivers 202 [0030]) and specification information (metadata [0032]) from a bitstream (resulting video stream contains portions of video which are masked as well as encrypted images corresponding to the masked regions and encrypted security keys [0022]), and the specification information indicates that processing has been applied (metadata includes ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0032]) to a particular region (masked regions [0022]) including privacy information in the image (face or license plate that is blurred [0030]-[0031]).
Regarding Claim 2, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 1, wherein the processing includes at least one of blurring, mosaic, and silhouette processing (blur filter [0031]).
Regarding Claim 3, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 1, wherein the privacy information includes at least one of a human face, a vehicle tag, and information indicating an address (face or license plate [0030]-[0032]).
Regarding Claim 4, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 1, generating a generated image (client devices with appropriate privileges can decrypt and decode the enhancement layer) based on the image (The original content without masking can be encoded in the enhancement layer, and encrypted using encryption keys 210, video frames with masked content in the base layer [0032]) and the specification information (metadata includes ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0032]).
Regarding Claim 5, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 1, wherein the specification information includes information indicating a position and a size of the particular region in the image (ROI boundary [0032]).
Regarding Claim 6, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 1, wherein the circuitry acquires the specification information from a header area (The user data fields provisioned in the SEI in the H.264 AVC/SVC standards can be used to convey the metadata [0032]) of the bitstream (resulting video stream [0022]).
Regarding Claim 7, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to 6, wherein the header area includes supplemental enhancement information (SEI) (SEI in the H.264 AVC/SVC standards can be used to convey the metadata [0032]).
Regarding Claim 14, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses an image decoder comprising:
circuitry (computing device 304 can be implemented as hardware, software and/or a combination of hardware and software [0039]);
and a memory connected to the circuitry (software [0039]), wherein, in operation, the circuitry acquires a first image (decode and display the base layer [0032]) from a first bitstream (the resulting video stream [0022]), acquires specification information (metadata [0032]) and a second image (decode the enhancement layer [0032]) from a second bitstream (the resulting video stream [0022]), the specification information specifying a particular region in the first image (ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0032]), the second image containing image data for the particular region (original content without masking in the enhancement layer [0032]), and generates a third image (the enhancement layer + the base layer, inherent in the SVC standard [0032], which is the typical process of decoding scalably coded video) based on the first image (base layer [0032]), the specification information (metadata [0032]), and the second image (enhancement layer).
Regarding Claim 15, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 14, wherein the first image is transmitted from an image encoder to the image decoder by a base layer in a multilayer form (base layer [0032]), and the second image is transmitted from the image encoder to the image decoder by an enhancement layer in the multilayer form (enhancement layer).
Regarding Claim 16, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses an image encoder comprising:
circuitry (computing device 304 can be implemented as hardware, software and/or a combination of hardware and software [0039]);
and a memory connected to the circuitry (software [0039]), wherein, in operation, the circuitry specifies a particular region including privacy information in an input image (SEI with metadata of ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0032]), generates an image (base layer [0032]) in which processing is applied to the particular region (blur filter privacy mask on ROIs, faces, license plate [0030]-[0032]), generates specification information indicating that the processing has been applied to the particular region in the image (SEI with metadata of ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0032]), and encodes the image and the specification information (base layer + enhancement layer + SEI [0032], resulting video stream [0022]).
Regarding Claim 17, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 2.
Regarding Claim 18, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 3.
Regarding Claim 19, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 5.
Regarding Claim 20, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 6.
Regarding Claim 21, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 7.
Regarding Claim 28, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses an image encoder comprising:
circuitry (computing device 304 can be implemented as hardware, software and/or a combination of hardware and software [0039]);
and a memory connected to the circuitry (software [0039]), wherein, in operation, the circuitry specifies a particular region in an input image, generates specification information about the particular region (SEI with metadata includes ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0030]-[0032]), generates a first image (base layer [0030]-[0032]) in which the particular region is processed in the input image (base layer with masked ROIs [0030]-[0032]), generates a second image (enhancement layer [0030]-[0032]) that contains image data associated with the particular region (enhancement layer with original content without masking [0030]-[0032]), encodes the first image to generate a first bitstream (base layer [0030]-[002], resulting video stream [0022]), and encodes the specification information and the second image (enhancement layer + SEI [0030]-[0032]) to generate a second bitstream (enhancement layer [0030]-[0032] resulting video stream [0022]).
Regarding Claim 29, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 15.
Regarding Claim 30, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses an image decoding method comprising:
acquiring an image and specification information from a bitstream, and specifying a particular region including processed privacy information in the image by the specification information (SEI with metadata includes ROI boundary coordinates information, flags indicating a presence of encrypted video, and information required to derive decryption keys [0032]).
Regarding Claim 31, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 16.
Regarding Claim 32, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 14.
Regarding Claim 33, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 28.
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.
Claim(s) 8-12, 22-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) in view of Aflaki (US PG Publication 2020/0351484).
Regarding Claim 8, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to Claim 1, wherein the particular region includes a plurality of particular regions (ROIs [0032]).
Rao does not disclose, but Aflaki (US PG Publication 2020/0351484) teaches the circuitry generates a packing image in which the plurality of particular regions are packed (packing process aims at mapping the extracted patches onto a 2D grid (FIG. 12), while trying to minimize the unused space, Fig. 12, [0191]).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to frame-pack the ROIs of Rao as described in Aflaki because Aflaki teaches that packing the elements in the image generate a piecewise smooth image suited for compression [0196] and minimizes the unused space [0191] to improve efficiency.
Regarding Claim 9, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to 8.
Rao does not disclose, but Aflaki (US PG Publication 2020/0351484) teaches wherein the particular region in the packing image (packing process aims at mapping the extracted patches onto a 2D grid (FIG. 12), while trying to minimize the unused space, Fig. 12, [0191]) is included in one or more coding unit blocks (HEVC encoding having coding units comprising coding blocks [0297]) that compose a picture of the bitstream (frame-packed output pictures may be encoded into a bitstream e.g. by a video encoder into a bitstream [0153]).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to frame-pack the ROIs of Rao as described in Aflaki because Aflaki teaches that packing the elements in the image generate a piecewise smooth image suited for compression [0196] and minimizes the unused space [0191] to improve efficiency.
Regarding Claim 10, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to 8.
Rao does not disclose, but Aflaki (US PG Publication 2020/0351484) teaches wherein the particular region in the packing image is included in either a subpicture or a tile (each patch is mapped to a sub-picture, e.g., p1 – p6 in Fig. 12; each HEVC picture is partitioned into tiles [0030]) that composes a picture of the bitstream (frame-packed output pictures may be encoded into a bitstream e.g. by a video encoder into a bitstream [0153]).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to frame-pack the ROIs of Rao as described in Aflaki because Aflaki teaches that packing the elements in the image generate a piecewise smooth image suited for compression [0196] and minimizes the unused space [0191] to improve efficiency.
Regarding Claim 11, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to 8, wherein the specification information includes information indicating a correspondence relationship between the particular region in the image and the particular region in the packing image (ROI boundary [0032]).
Regarding Claim 12, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to 8.
Rao does not disclose, but Aflaki (US PG Publication 2020/0351484) teaches wherein a region outside the plurality of particular regions is padded in the packing image (Padding fills the empty space between patches [0196]).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to frame-pack the ROIs of Rao as described in Aflaki because Aflaki teaches that packing the elements in the image generate a piecewise smooth image suited for compression [0196] and minimizes the unused space [0191] to improve efficiency.
Regarding Claim 22, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 8.
Regarding Claim 23, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 9.
Regarding Claim 24, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 10.
Regarding Claim 25, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 11.
Regarding Claim 26, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 12.
Claim(s) 13, 27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) in view of Aflaki (US PG Publication 2020/0351484) and Su (US 2024/0171775 A1).
Regarding Claim 13, Rao (US PG Publication 2017/0076572) discloses the image decoder according to 8.
Rao does not disclose, but Su (US 2024/0171775 A1) teaches wherein the plurality of particular regions have respective partial regions that overlap each other (patch 1 and patch 2 can overlap in the optimized layout [0088]).
One of ordinary skill in the art before the application was filed would have been motivated to modify Rao, as modified by Aflaki to frame-pack the ROIs, to overlap the patches in the frame-packed image because Su teaches that the layout is optimized with minimal addition of invalid pixels [0087], improving coding efficiency.
Regarding Claim 27, the claim is rejected on the grounds provided in Claim 13.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Du (NPL “Privacy preserving for human object in video surveillance via visual cryptography,” IEEE 2014) – H.264 flexible macroblock order encoding with authorized user for seeing the unencrypted video
Sohn (NPL “Privacy protection in video surveillance systems using scalable video coding,” IEEE 2009) – Using PPS, H.264 flexible macroblock order encoding with authorized user for seeing the unencrypted video
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/SHADAN E HAGHANI/Examiner, Art Unit 2485