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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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) 1-2, 4-6, 8-12, 14-15, 17-18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chen et al (20180359483) in view of “CE10.3.1.B:triangular prediction unit mode” (hereafter referred to by first author Liao submitted by applicant in the IDS filed 12/16/2025)
In regard to claim 1 Chen discloses an apparatus comprising one or more processors configured to obtain a candidate list for performing motion compensated prediction of a current block coded in an inter prediction mode (Chen Figs. 1-2 and par, 100 note merge mode), the candidate list comprising at least one motion candidate whose motion information is obtained from a previously decoded spatially non-adjacent block of the current block (Chen Fig. 2 and pars 100-103 note building a candidate list using spatially adjacent and temporal motion candidates, further note Figs 15-17 and pars 177-183 note use of non-adjacent spatial motion vector predictors); and
decode the current block based on the candidate list (Chen Fig. 25 and par. 256-268 for decoding, particularly note par. 265 for decoding using motion information).
It is noted that Chen does not disclose details of a triangular prediction mode. However, Liao discloses a triangular inter prediction mode in which block is split into one or more triangular prediction units. The triangular prediction units being predicted using a motion candidate list (Liao Part 1 and 2).
It is therefore considered obvious that one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention would recognize the advantage of incorporating a triangle prediction mode as taught by Liao in the invention of Chen in order to gain the advantage non-square partitioning modes as suggested by Liao (Liao Abstract and part 1).
In regard to claim 2 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Chen further discloses that the at least one motion candidate is inserted in the candidate list after spatial candidates and temporal candidates (Chen pars 202-205 note NA-SMVPs are inserted after regular SMVPs in the candidate list).
In regard to claim 4 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Chen further discloses that the one or more processors are further configured to interleave the at least one motion candidate and at least one of the spatial candidate or temporal candidate (Chen par. 205 note NA-SMVPs may be interleaved between the regular SMVPs and the temporal MVP).
In regard to claim 5 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Liao further disclose:
identifying a first candidate from a candidate list and a second candidate from the candidate list, wherein the first candidate is associated with a first triangular prediction unit of the current block and the second candidate is associated with a second triangular prediction unit of the current block, and the current block is decoded based on the first candidate being associated with the first triangular prediction unit and the second candidate is being associated with the second triangular prediction unit (Liao part 1 note a uni-predictive candidate list is determined and used to predict each triangular partition, also note part 2 using an existing candidate list to determine first and second candidates to use with the first and second triangular partitions respectively) .
In regard to claim 6 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 5 above. Chen and Liao further disclose that one of the first candidate or the second candidate is the at least one motion candidate and the other of the first candidate and the second candidate is a spatial candidate or a temporal candidate (Chen pars 100-103 and 177-205 note the merge candidate list may include non-adjacent spatial candidates as well as regular spatial candidates and temporal candidates, further note Liao parts 1 and 2 a merge candidate list is used to determine the first and second candidate for each partition, hence in the combination a first partition may use a non-adjacent spatial candidate and a second partition may use a regular spatial or temporal candidate as each candidate type is available in the merge candidate list).
In regard to claim 8 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 1 above. Chen and Liao further disclose that the candidate list is a uni-prediction motion vector candidate list comprising one or more spatial candidate whose motion information is obtained from a spatially adjacent neighboring block, one or more temporal candidate whose motion information is obtained from a temporally collocated block and one or more other candidates whose motion information is obtained form a non-spatially adjacent neighboring block (Chen pars 202-205 note a merge candidate list may include regular spatial, temporal and non-adjacent spatial motion vector candidates, also note Liao parts 1 and 2 the candidate list for each partition is uni-predictive and includes spatial and temporal motion vector candidates).
In regard to claim 9 refer to the statements made in the rejection of claim 8 above. Liao further discloses that the motion information of a candidate is at least one of a motion vector associated with a first reference picture list, a motion vector associated with a second reference picture list, or an average motion vector from the motion vector associated with the first reference picture list and the motion vector associated with the second reference picture list (Liao parts 1 and 2 note each motion vector is associated with either and L0 or L1 reference picture or is associated with both in the case of a bi-predictive vector).
Claims 10-12, 14-15, 17-18 and 20 describe a method for decoding and a method and apparatus performing encoding that substantially correspond to the apparatus of claims 1-2, 4-6 and 8-9 above. Refer to the statements made in regard to claims 1-2, 4-6 and 8-9 for the rejection of claims 10-12, 14-15, 17-18 and 20 which will not be repeated here for brevity. In particular regard to claims 15 and 18 Chen further discloses encoding (Chen Fig. 24).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 7 13, 16 and 19 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.
Claims 3, 16 and 19, in addition to the limitations of the claims from which they depend, require using history based motion vector prediction candidates in the candidate list of triangle prediction mode partitions.
The closest prior arts are Chen and Liao and "Versatile Video Coding (Draft 3)" JVET-L1001-V9 (provided by the applicant in the IDS filed in parent application 18510196 on 2/13/2024 hereafter referred to as VVC3). Liang and VVC each disclose triangular partitioning mode in which a block is divided into first and second triangular partitions (Liang parts 1-2 and VVC3 section 8.4.3).
Liang and VVC3 disclose that motion vectors for the triangular partitions are derived
using a merge mode in which a candidate list is constructed using spatial and temporal predictor candidates (Liang parts 1 and 2 and VVC3 section 8.4.3.2 describing the derivation of spatial motion vector candidates and section 8.4.3.3 describing the derivation of temporal motion vector candidates,).
VVC3 further discloses the use of history based motion vector predictors (HMVP),
which are motion vectors used in coding past blocks, in merge mode candidate lists (VVC3 section
8.4.2.6). VVC3 does not disclose that such HVMP candidates are used in a merge mode predictor candidate list in conjunction with a triangular partitioning mode (VVC3 note sections 8.4.3.2-8.4.3.6 describing triangle merge mode do not mention HMVP candidates. The use of both a triangle merge mode and HVMP candidates in VVC3 without the indication that HVMP candidates may be used in the triangle merge mode suggests that one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention would not have found it obvious to include HVMP candidates in the triangle merge mode because it is clear that both techniques were known but no combination was suggested.
Claims 7 and 13, in addition to the limitations of the claims from which they depend, require signaling first and second merge indexes for the first and second candidate lists associated with first and second triangular partitions.
The closest arts are Chen and Liao which discloses signaling a merge index for triangle partitioning modes (Liao part 2 note merge_triangle_index). However, Liao expressly discloses using a joint merge index for the first and second triangular partitions in order to improve compression efficiency overhead and thus teaches away from sending separate merge indices for each partition as required by claims 7 and 13.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JEREMIAH CHARLES HALLENBECK-HUBER whose telephone number is (571)272-5248. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
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/JEREMIAH C HALLENBECK-HUBER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2481