DETAILED ACTION.
This Office Action is in response to the communication filed on 01/14/2025, wherein claims 1-16 have been examined and are pending.
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 (IDS) was submitted on 07/25/2025.The submission 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 § 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.
1. Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Kadono et al. (U.S. 2006/0268989) hereinafter Kadono.
Regarding claim 15, Claim 15 recites “A non-transitory computer-readable digital storage medium, storing bitstream of image information generated by a method, the method comprising:”
A bit stream generated by a method, the method comprising… is a product by process claim limitation where the product is the bit stream and the process is the method steps to generate the bitstream. MPEP §2113 recites “Product-by-Process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”. Thus, the scope of the claim is the storage medium storing the bitstream (with the structure implied by the method steps). The structure includes the information and samples manipulated by the steps.
“To be given patentable weight, the printed matter and associated product must be in a functional relationship. A functional relationship can be found where the printed matter performs some function with respect to the product to which it is associated”. MPEP §2111.05(I)(A). When a claimed “computer-readable medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists. MPEP §2111.05(III). The storage medium storing the claimed bitstream in claim 18 merely services as a support for the storage of the bitstream and provides no fictional relationship between the stored bitstream and storage medium. Therefor the structure bitstream, which scope is implied by the method steps, is non-functional descriptive material and given no patentable weight. MPEP §2111.05(III). Thus, the claim scope is just a storage medium storing data and is anticipated by Kadono which recites a generated bitstream is stored in a storage medium as in [0060].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-14 and 16-20 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
In light of the specification, the Examiner finds the claimed invention to be patentably distinct from the prior art of records Jeon et al. (U.S. 2017/0155914), Pang et a. (U.S. 2015/0271515) and Maeda et al. (U.S. 2017/0118484).
The prior arts of record, taken individually or in combination fail to explicitly teach or render obvious within the context of the respective independent claims 1, 8 and 16 the feature of deriving a prediction mode for a current block in a current picture as an intra block copy (IBC) prediction mode; generating flag information for the IBC prediction mode; deriving a candidate list for the IBC prediction mode, wherein the candidate list includes block vector candidates for a reference block in the current picture; generating index information for a block vector of the current block based on the candidate list for the IBC prediction mode; and encoding image information including the flag information and the index information, wherein the image information includes information on a maximum number of the block vector candidates included in the candidate list for the IBC prediction mode and information on a maximum number of motion vector candidates included in a candidate list for an inter prediction mode, wherein the information on the maximum number of the block vector candidates included in the candidate list for the IBC prediction mode is different from the information on the maximum number of the motion vector candidates included in the candidate list for the inter prediction mode, wherein the information on the maximum number of the block vector candidates included in the candidate list for the IBC prediction mode is encoded independently of a slice type, wherein the information on the maximum number of the block vector candidates included in the candidate list for the IBC prediction mode is encoded based only on whether the IBC prediction mode is enabled, and wherein a maximum value for the maximum number of block vector candidates included in the candidate list for the IBC prediction mode is predetermined as 6 as cited in claims 1, 8 and 16.
Claims 2-7 and 9-14 are allowed because they depend on allowed parent claims 1 and 8, respectively, as set forth above.
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 KATHLEEN V NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)270-0626. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:00am-6:00pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jamie Atala can be reached on 571-272-7384. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KATHLEEN V NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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