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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is sent in response to Applicant’s Communication received 02 April 2025 for application number 19/025,154. The Office hereby acknowledges receipt of the following and placed of record in file: Specification, Drawings, Abstract, Oath/Declaration, Claims.
Claims 1-40 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on the following dates are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and are being considered by the Examiner: 4/22/25.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 21-30 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claims 21-30 recite a “computer-readable medium” which appears to cover both transitory and non-transitory embodiments. See specification, paragraph 80, which gives examples of one embodiment, may comprise one or more articles, “such as a read-only memory (ROM) 820 or non-volatile RAM…”. The “such as” is broad and is open to many interpretations such as signal or software. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is required to give claims their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification during proceeding before the USPTO. See In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (during patent examination the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms reasonably allow). The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer readable medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations) typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent. See MPEP 2111.01. When the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers a signal per se, the claim must be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter. See ln re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1356-57 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (transitory embodiments are not directed to statutory subject matter) and Interim Examination Instructions for Evaluating Subject Matter Eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101 Aug. 24 2009; p. 2.
The Examiner suggests that the Applicant add the limitation “non-transitory” to the computer readable medium as recited in the claim(s) in order to properly render the claim(s) in statutory form in view of their broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the originally filed specification.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 and 31-40 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
None of the references, alone or in combination, discloses a second GOP size for a second group of frames of the plurality of frames, wherein the second group of frames comprises the second frame, and wherein the second GOP size is different from the first GOP size; and encoding the first group of frames using the first GOP size and encoding the second group of frames using the second GOP size
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.”
Prior Art not relied upon: Please refer to the references listed in attached PTO-892, which are not relied upon for the claim rejections, since these references are pertinent to the disclosure.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NGUYEN T TRUONG whose telephone number is (571)272-5262. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon - Fri, 6AM - 2PM.
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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/NGUYEN T TRUONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2486