DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Response to Arguments
In light of the changes made to claim 15, the rejection of 35 U.S.C. 101 is withdrawn.
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1-16 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1, 8 and 15 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Specifically, the limitation claims “preprocessing the first frame by changing at least one parameter of the first frame based on the preprocessing specification to obtain a preprocessed first frame”, however the term “parameter” is not defined in the specifications, nor is it made obvious in what way or how such a “parameter” is able to change the first frame such that it would now be considered “preprocessed”. In review of the publication of applicant’s specification, the examiner notes that the only citation of a parameter is within ¶0125, which states “The computing device 2000 may perform data processing to reduce parameters for determining, estimating, or otherwise obtaining a predicted image quality. For example, the computing device 2000 may determine, estimate, or otherwise obtain a predicted image quality of a current frame by using a result of dividing an image quality value by a bandwidth value”, to which the examiner considers insufficient in defining what exactly the parameter is and how it is derived. For example, is a change in the parameter of the encoding of the frame considered a limit on the search range of blocks? Is it a change in bit-depth? Is the parameter related to motion vectors of the frame? Is the parameter change related to a change in the chosen transformation type, or separately, a change in entropy encoding type? Is the parameter change that of the Quantization Parameter [QP] in which the frame will be encoded? Additionally, is a frame which has had a parameter adjustment after pre-analysis then considered to be a preprocessed frame? The specification does not provide sufficient information for one of ordinary skill to properly assess or reasonably convey what the invention is actually doing in order to consider the frame “preprocessed”.
For the purpose of compact prosecution, the examiner has provided various prior art references which may be considered pertinent to the claim language.
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) 1-4, 6-11, 13, 14 and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jacobs et al. (“Jacobs”) (U.S. PG Publication No. 2004/0172478) in view of Peng et al. (“Peng”) (CN 113301340).
The 103(a) rejections below are based on Chinese Patent Application Publication No. 113301340. The rejections rely on the machine translations of the Chinese prior art, which were downloaded from the European Patent Office. These English translations are deemed to fully comply with the translation requirement of MPEP section 1207.02. See USPTO memorandum "Machine Translation of a Non-English Document Being Relied Upon by the Examiner in Support of a Rejection in an Examiner's Answer," located at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/exam/20091117_mach_trans_memo.pdf. The English translation of the foreign patent documents is attached.
In regards to claim 1, Jacobs teaches a method, performed by an electronic device, for adaptively encoding a video, the method comprising:
identifying a network bandwidth (See ¶0008);
determining whether a scene transition occurs in a first frame (See ¶0030-0031), based a plurality of partial frames corresponding to the first frame (See ¶0030 wherein partial frames may be taught as blocks which correspond to the motion vector and block matching techniques being described for identifying scene changes) and at least one second frame reproduced before the first frame (See ¶0030-0031 in view of ¶0023 and FIG. 2);
selecting a preprocessing specification corresponding to the first frame, based on the network bandwidth and a result of the determining (Given the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with applicant’s specification, pre-processing is taught as changes in resolution and/or frame rate based on available network bandwidth as described in ¶0075 of the instant application’s publication, see ¶0023, 0035-0038 of Jacobs wherein the bit-rates may be changed based on available bandwidth, wherein it is noted that the system may pre-analyze the video and adjust accordingly when bandwidth indeed changes).
Jacobs, however, fails to teach preprocessing the first frame by changing at least one parameter of the first frame based on the preprocessing specification to obtain a preprocessed first frame; and encoding the preprocessed first frame.
In a similar endeavor Peng teaches Jacobs, however, fails to teach preprocessing the first frame by changing at least one parameter of the first frame based on the preprocessing specification to obtain a preprocessed first frame (See ¶0008-0009, 0051, 0053-0054, 0059 and 0089); and
encoding the preprocessed first frame (See ¶0029 and 0091-0093).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, and before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the teaching of Peng into Jacobs because
Although not used in the rejection, various prior arts will be provided which also preprocess [or pre-analyze] a first frame and change at least one “parameter” of the frame:
Yenneti et al. [U.S. PG Publication No. 2015/0373328] as it teaches in ¶0474 which pre-analyzes a number of look-ahead frames in order to then change the QP of the current frame.
Mao [U.S. PG Publication No. 2020/0260085] as it teaches in ¶0027, 0085 and 0156 a system of encoding which performs pre-coding analysis on video frames to obtain pre-coding costs so that it may then set a quantization parameter threshold according to the cost.
Wang et al. [U.S. PG Publication No. 2022/0046261] as it teaches in ¶0136-0138 that encoding resolution may be optimized by using a pre-analysis module in order to dynamically detect encoding complexity of the current frame in order to adjust a QP of the current to-be-encoded frame in advance in order to prevent network congestion due to a sudden increase in the bit rate during encoding.
In regards to claim 2, Jacobs teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the selecting of the preprocessing specification comprises:
selecting a first preprocessing specification based on the result of the determining indicating that the scene transition occurs in the first frame (See ¶0030-0031 wherein, for example, an extra condition is imposed upon a scene change such as by the adding or dropping of a layer); and
selecting a second preprocessing specification based on the result of the determining indicating that the scene transition does not occur in the first frame (See ¶0036 wherein if the system is aware that all of the data has been received by the receiver, it may continue sending data of the stream at the bitrate it has been sending [thus no layer changes]).
In regards to claim 3, Jacobs teaches the method of claim 2, wherein the selecting of the preprocessing specification further comprises obtaining a predicted image quality of the first frame after the encoding based on the second preprocessing specification being selected (See ¶0036), and
wherein the first preprocessing specification corresponds to the network bandwidth (See ¶0030-0031) and the second preprocessing specification corresponds to the predicted image quality (See ¶0036).
In regards to claim 4, Jacobs teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the obtaining of the predicted image quality comprises:
obtaining frame information comprising bandwidth information and image quality information corresponding to the at least one second frame (See ¶0002-0004); and
obtaining the predicted image quality based on the frame information, wherein the first frame and the at least one second frame are included in a same scene (See ¶0002-0004 wherein quality may be adjusted according to available bandwidth, even if there is currently no scene change taken into consideration).
In regards to claim 6, Jacobs teaches the method of claim 2, further comprising generating frame information comprising bandwidth information and image quality information corresponding to the encoded first frame, wherein the frame information is used for preprocessing of a frame reproduced after the first frame (See ¶0036-0038 in view of FIG. 2 wherein quality may be maintained for frames after a frame that has been considered [possibly a scene change frame] with regards to a specific quality and available bandwidth being sufficient upon communication by the receiver).
In regards to claim 7, Jacobs teaches the method of claim 6, wherein the selecting of the preprocessing specification comprises maintaining the preprocessing specification of the first frame based on determining that a preprocessing specification change history exists for the at least one second frame within a certain interval from the first frame (See ¶0037-0038 in view of FIG. 2 with regards to preprocessing of scene changes with relation to quality changes ahead of time).
In regards to claim 8, the claim is rejected under the same basis as claim 1 by Jacobs in view of Peng wherein the communication interface is taught as seen in ¶0024-0026 in view of FIG. 3, 5 and 6, and wherein the processor and memory are taught as seen in ¶0021-0022 in view of FIG. 1, 3 and 6 with regards to servers, computers and PCs, understood to have memory in order to perform functions and programs.
In regards to claim 9-11, 13 and 14, the claims are rejected under the same basis as claims 2-4, 6 and 7, respectively, by Jacobs in view of Peng.
In regards to claim 16, Jacobs teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the preprocessing specification is selected from among a first preprocessing specification in which at least one first video parameter is adjusted based on the network bandwidth (See ¶0002, 0030 and 0035) and a second preprocessing specification in which at least one second video parameter is adjusted based on predicted image quality (See ¶0023, 0031-0034).
Although not used in the rejection, the various prior arts which were not used as described by the examiner for claim 1 also show parameter adjustment based on predicted image quality and/or network bandwidth.
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) 5, 12 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jacobs et al. (“Jacobs”) (U.S. PG Publication No. 2004/0172478) in view of Peng et al. (“Peng”) (CN 113301340) in view of Kwon et al. (“Kwon”) (U.S. PG Publication No. 2013/0301700).
In regards to claim 5, Jacobs fails to teach the method of claim 3, wherein according to the second preprocessing specification, a resolution of the first frame is reduced based on the predicted image quality being less than a first threshold value, and increased based on the predicted image quality being greater than or equal to a second threshold value.
In a similar endeavor Kwon teaches wherein according to the second preprocessing specification, a resolution of the first frame is reduced based on the predicted image quality being less than a first threshold value (See ¶0039 and 0044-0046 wherein a rate controller may be used to ensure that the number of generated bits does not exceed a threshold [thus being less than a threshold], and thus a decimation process may be executed in order to ensure that said threshold is not exceeded), and increased based on the predicted image quality being greater than or equal to a second threshold value.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, and before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the teaching of Kwon into Jacobs because it allows for overcoming bitrate overshoot as described in ¶0006, wherein the temporary bitrate exceeds channel bandwidth, thus allowing for an adjustable codec system that may overcome a bitrate overshoot problem as further specified in ¶0007.
In regards to claim 12, the claim is rejected under the same basis as claim 5 by Jacobs in view of Peng and Kwon.
In regards to claim 15, the claim is rejected under the same basis as claim 1 by Jacobs and Peng and Kwon, wherein the computer-readable medium may be taught as seen in ¶0111 of Kwon.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDEMIO NAVAS JR whose telephone number is (571)270-1067. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, ~ 9 AM -6 PM.
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, Nasser Goodarzi can be reached at 5712724195. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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EDEMIO NAVAS JR
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2483
/EDEMIO NAVAS JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2426
