DETAILED ACTION
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see application, filed 08/06/2026, with respect to the double patenting rejection has been fully considered and are persuasive. The double patenting rejection has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-4 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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. 16/076,170, filed on 02/03/2017.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) was submitted on 08/06/2026. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 08/06/2026 has been entered.
Terminal Disclaimer
The terminal disclaimer filed on 08/06/2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of U.S. Patent No. 11,109,045 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
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.
Claims 1-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen (US 20120230421) in view of Gamei et al. (herein after will be referred to as Gamei) (US 20150063457).
Regarding claim 1, Chen discloses a method comprising:
splitting a luminance channel of an image unit according to a luma coding-tree; and, [See Chen [0027] The RQT applies to both luma/chroma of a CU. RQT is a representation of the partitioning.]
splitting a chrominance unit representative of at least one chrominance channel of the image unit according to a chroma coding-tree, [See Chen [0027] The RQT applies to both luma/chroma of a CU. RQT is a representation of the partitioning.]
wherein splitting the chrominance unit comprises: determining whether the chroma coding-tree and the luma coding-tree are identical; and [See Chen [Fig. 7] Step (200) is a decision if luma/chroma use the same RQT depths or different RQT depths.]
signaling an information data indicating whether the chroma coding-tree and the luma coding-tree are identical; [See Chen [0135] Flag indicating that transforms for chroma/luma are applied at different RQT depths.]
the information data being a flag equal to a first value when the chroma coding-tree and the luma coding-tree are identical and to a second value otherwise, [See Chen [0135] Flag indicating that transforms for chroma/luma are applied at different RQT depths.]
Chen does not explicitly disclose
when a size of at least one leaf of the chroma coding-tree is larger than a maximum size, then the at least one leaf is recursively split until the chroma coding-tree has leaves with a size equal to the maximum size.
However, Guo does disclose
wherein responsive to the chroma and luma coding-trees being determined as different, when a size of at least one leaf of the chroma coding-tree is larger than a maximum size, then the at least one leaf is recursively split until the chroma coding-tree has leaves with a size equal to the maximum size. [See Gamei [0443] Selecting transform unit block sizes for the transform units derived from a coding unit according to a tree hierarchy of divisions and, in combination with para. 0137, the tree hierarchies for chroma and luma are independent. Also, see 0144, Have the TU structure channel-independent and selectable at different levels. Additionally, see 0120, Leaf CUs are split into TU’s and are split by a maximum of 2 levels. When the TUs are too big, for example over 32x32, must be split into further TUs. Also, see 0129, various levels of splitting is applied to generate the TUs. Also, see 0085, LCU maximum size is defined by HEVC (i.e. such as a size of 128x128} {evidenced via Rosewarne, para. 0004, HEVC, and para. 0082, max CU size of 128x128}. Therefore, a 128x128 size will be recursively split to equal the max TU size (i.e. 128 to 64 to 32) since restricted by 2 levels of splitting. The 128x128 LCU size is being interpreted as not being split (since PUs/TUs are generated at leaf CU) and therefore is a leaf CU.]
It would have been obvious to the person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date to modify the method by Chen to add the teachings of Gamei, in order to improve upon video compression by incorporating teachings from HEVC to improve video quality and the compression ratio [See Gamei [0008]].
Regarding claim 2, see examiners rejection for claim 1 which is analogous and applicable for the rejection of claim 2.
Regarding claim 3, see examiners rejection for claim 1 which is analogous and applicable for the rejection of claim 3.
Regarding claim 4, see examiners rejection for claim 1 which is analogous and applicable for the rejection of claim 4.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20150304662
US 20130195199
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/JAMES T BOYLAN/Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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