Detailed Action
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
2. Reissue application 19/031,172 filed 01/17/2025 is a Reissue of 13744772, filed 01/18/2013, now U.S. Patent # 8914296, 13744772 is a Continuation of PCT/EP2011/062478 , filed 07/20/2011, PCT/EP2011/062478 Claims Priority from Provisional Application 61365936 , filed 07/20/2010.
3. The following cases are continuations of 19031172:19032028 filed on 01/18/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032059 filed on 01/19/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032060 filed on 01/19/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032040 filed on 01/18/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032034 filed on 01/18/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032061 filed on 01/19/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032017 filed on 01/18/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032023 filed on 01/18/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
19032052 filed on 01/18/2025 is a Continuation of 19031172, filed on 01/17/2025
4. For reissue applications filed before September 16, 2012, all references to 35 U.S.C. 251 and 37 CFR 1.172, 1.175, and 3.73 are to the law and rules in effect on September 15, 2012. Where specifically designated, these are “pre-AIA ” provisions.
For reissue applications filed on or after September 16, 2012, all references to 35 U.S.C. 251 and 37 CFR 1.172, 1.175, and 3.73 are to the current provisions.
5. Claims 1-20 have been cancelled. Claims 21-40 are newly added claims.
Reissues
6. Applicant is reminded of the continuing obligation under 37 CFR 1.178(b), to timely apprise the Office of any prior or concurrent proceeding in which Patent No. US 8,914,296 is involved. These proceedings would include any trial at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, interferences, reissues, reexaminations, supplemental examinations, and litigation.
Applicant is further reminded of the continuing obligation under 37 CFR 1.56, to timely apprise the Office of any information which is material to patentability of the claims under consideration in this reissue application.
These obligations rest with each individual associated with the filing and prosecution of this application for reissue. See also MPEP §§ 1404, 1442.01 and 1442.04.
Specification
7. The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities: When an applicant files more than one application for the reissue of a single patent, each such application must contain or be amended to contain in the first sentence of the specification a notice stating that more than one reissue application has been filed and identify each of the reissue applications by relationship, application number, and filing date. The cross-reference in the specification serves as a notification to the public that more than one reissue patent may replace a single original patent; and must identify each of the reissue applications and their relationship within the family of reissue applications, and to the original patent. If the reissue applications are still pending, the applicant should be required to amend the specification to cross-reference the multiple applications (37 CFR 1.177(a)). Applicant’s current amendment to the Specification does not identify the related reissue applications by application number. Appropriate correction is required.
Consent of Assignee
8. This application is objected to under 37 CFR 1.172(a) as lacking the written consent of all assignees owning an undivided interest in the patent. The consent of the assignee must be in compliance with 37 CFR 1.172. See MPEP § 1410.01.
Specifically, in accordance with MPEP 1410.02 and MPEP 325, the consent of assignee must be signed by a party authorized to act on behalf of the assignee. A person having a title that does not clearly set forth that person as an officer of the assignee is not presumed to have authority to sign the submission on behalf of the assignee. In this application, the consent of assignee has been signed by “Team Leader Patents”.
Specifically, MPEP 1410.02 states that “The consent of assignee must be signed by a party authorized to act on behalf of the assignee. For applications filed on or after September 16, 2012, the consent may be signed by the assignee or a patent practitioner of record. Where the assignee is a juristic entity, the consent may be signed by a person in the organization having apparent authority to sign on behalf of the organization, or a person who makes a statement of authorization to act on behalf of the assignee. For a discussion of parties authorized to act on behalf of the assignee, see MPEP § 325 (for applications filed on or after September 16, 2012).”
MPEP 325 specifically states that, “The submission may be signed by a person in the organization having apparent authority to sign on behalf of the organization. 37 CFR 3.73(d)(2). An officer (chief executive officer, president, vice-president, secretary, or treasurer) is presumed to have authority to sign on behalf of the organization…A person having a title (administrator, general counsel) that does not clearly set forth that person as an officer of the assignee is not presumed to have authority to sign the submission on behalf of the assignee.
In this application, the consent of assignee has been signed by “Team Leader Patents” which does not meet the requirement of 37 CFR 3.73(d)(2). See MPEP 325 for a list of persons in an organization having the authority to sign on behalf of the organization. A proper assent of the assignee in compliance with 37 CFR 1.172 and 3.73 is required in reply to this Office action.
35 U.S.C. 251
Reissue Oath/Declaration
9. The reissue oath/declaration filed with this application is defective because 37 CFR. 1.175(c) states:
“The inventor, or each individual who is a joint inventor of a claimed invention, in a reissue application must execute an oath or declaration for the reissue application, except as provided for in § 1.64, and except that the inventor’s oath or declaration for a reissue application may be signed by the assignee of the entire interest if:
(1) The application does not seek to enlarge the scope of the claims of the original patent; or
(2) The application for the original patent was filed under § 1.46 by the assignee of the entire interest.”
The inventors have not signed the oath/declaration and the box indicating the application for the original patent was filed under 1.46 by the assignee of the entire interest has not been checked. Thus, the signature on the oath/declaration is not appropriate at the criteria set forth in 37 CFR 1.175(c) has not been met.
Furthermore, even if the assignee could sign the oath/declaration, the reissue oath/declaration filed with this application is defective because it must be signed by a party authorized to act on behalf of the assignee of the entire interest and may not be signed by the patent practitioner of record. See MPEP § 325, subsection V, items (A), (B), and (D) for examples of a party authorized to act on behalf of the assignee of the entire interest in signing a reissue oath or declaration.
In this application, the oath/declaration has been signed by a person for whom it is not clear if they have the authority to sign under the requirement of 37 CFR 3.73(d)(2). See MPEP 325 for a list of persons in an organization having the authority to sign on behalf of the organization. Correction is required.
10. Claims 21-40 are rejected as being based upon a defective reissue declaration under 35 U.S.C. 251 as set forth above. See 37 CFR 1.175.
The nature of the defect(s) in the declaration is set forth in the discussion above in this Office action.
Claim Interpretation
11. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
12. This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are:
In claims 21 and 30:
“an arithmetic decoder for providing a plurality of decoded spectral values on the basis of an arithmetically encoded representation of the spectral values...”
“a frequency-domain-to-time-domain converter for providing a time-domain audio representation”
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to select a mapping rule...”
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to determine the numeric current context value...”
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to evaluate a hash table...”
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to select the mapping rule..
In claim 23-24:
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to select a mapping rule...”
In claim 27:
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to update a context subregion value...”
In claim 31:
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to compare the numeric context value...determine a next entry of the series of entries of the hash table...”
In claim 32 and 33:
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to select a mapping rule...”
In claim 34:
“the arithmetic decoder is configured to selectively provide a mapping rule index value...”
In claim 37:
“an energy-compacting time-domain-to-frequency-domain converter for providing a frequency-domain audio representation...”
“an arithmetic encoder configured to encode one or more of the spectral values or a preprocessed version thereof...”
“the arithmetic encoder is configured to select a mapping rule...”
“the arithmetic encoder is configured to determine the numeric current context value...”
“the arithmetic encoder is configured to evaluate a hash table...”
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Objections
12. Claim 36 is objected to because of the following informalities: The claim has a bracket at the end of the claim instead of what should be a period. Appropriate correction is required.
Double Patenting
13. The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer.
14. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,028 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Motlicek, Petr, et al., “Wide-Band Audio Coding Based on Frequency-Domain Linear Prediction, EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech and Music Processing, Volume 2010, pages 1-14., May 30, 2009.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas. Further, it would have been obvious to include the audio decoder to handle both frequency-domain encoded audio content and linear-predictive frequency domain encoded audio content because using linear-predictive frequency domain (FDLP)
allows for the approximation of temporal (Hilbert) envelopes of sub-band energies by an autoregressive (AR) model. The goal is to develop a novel wide-band (WB)-FDLP audio coding system that would explore new potentials in encoding mixed input including speech and audio by taking into account relatively long acoustic context directly in the initial step of encoding the input signal. Frequency-domain linear prediction (FDLP) is applied to exploit predictability of temporal evolution of spectral energies in nonuniform sub-bands of the signal. This yields sub band residuals, which are quantized using temporal masking. The use of FDLP ensures that fine temporal details of the signal envelopes are captured with high temporal resolution. See pages 1-2 and 12 of Motlicek.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
15. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,040 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Sherigar et al., US 2005/0174269 A1, 08/11/2005.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
Further, it would have been obvious to include the audio decoder which is configured to determine the context state in dependence on four 2-tuples of already decoded spectral values because it is more efficient by reducing memory space in that each value does not need to be processed separately. See abstract and pages 2-4 of Sherigar.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
16. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,052 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Cho, Yushin et al., “Hierarchical Dynamic Range Coding of Wavelet Subbands for Fast and Efficient Image Decompression”, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 16, No. 8, August 2007.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
Further, it would have been obvious to include the feature reciting, wherein the audio decoder is configured to receive one or more codewords representing one or more less significant bitplanes of one or more spectral values and to provide decoded values of the one or more less-significant bitplanes as speed improvements are observed in hybrid forms of bit plane coding, where once a transform coefficient is classified as significant during a bit-plane pass, its sign and all its less significant bits are encoded together, so that refinement passes are not needed. See Cho at 2006.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
17. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,034 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Verhelst, Werner, “Overlap-add methods for time-scaling of speech”, Speech Communication 30, 2000, pages 207-221.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
It would have been obvious to include the feature reciting, wherein the audio decoder is configured to perform an overlap-and-add between time-domain representations of subsequent audio frames because it achieves a better speech quality at a very low computational cost. See page 11 of Verhelst.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
18. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,023 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Koenig, Ralf, et al., “Recursive Algorithm for Bit-Efficient Realization of Arbitrary Length Inverse Modified Cosine Transforms”, 2008.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
Further, it would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to include the features reciting, wherein the frequency domain to time-domain converter is configured to perform an inverse-modified discrete cosine transform (IMDCT) and a windowing because it can be performed on a reduced bit width datapath without losing accuracy, is more efficient and achieves maximum performance. See Koenig at abstract, introduction and pages 607-609.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
19. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,017 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Kim, Miyoung, et al., “High-quality scalable audio codec”, 2007.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
Further, it would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to include the features reciting, a bitstream payload deformatter configured to extract from a bitstream arithmetically-coded spectral data because it compensates for the degraded quality and maintains fine grain scalability. See figure 5, sections 3-4 and conclusion of Kim.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
20. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,061 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Cho, Yushin et al., “Hierarchical Dynamic Range Coding of Wavelet Subbands for Fast and Efficient Image Decompression”, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 16, No. 8, August 2007.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
Further, it would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to include the features reciting, wherein the audio decoder is configured to decode one or more less-significant bit planes using an arithmetic decoding as speed improvements are observed in hybrid forms of bit plane coding, where once a transform coefficient is classified as significant during a bit-plane pass, its sign and all its less significant bits are encoded together, so that refinement passes are not needed. See Cho at 2006.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
21. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,059 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Wang, Yujie, et al., “A stenography method for AAC audio based on escape sequences”, International Conference on Multimedia Information Networking and Security, 2010.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
Further, it would have been obvious to include wherein the audio decoder is configured to obtain an information describing a number of less significant bit-planes using an escape mechanism because it improves the embedding efficiency. And achieves higher hidden data capacities, good imperceptibility, and decreased audio distortion. See abstract and conclusion of Wang.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
22. Claims 1, 30, 36, and 39 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 21-24 respectively of copending Application No. 19/032,060 in view of Didas, Stephan, “Synchronization in the Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM), 2004 and Levine, Scott, Nathan, “Audio representations for data compression and compressed data processing”, Stanford University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 1999.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan at the time of the invention to have removed the feature of receiving a state reset information and resetting the state information to a default state information in response to the state reset information in situations where a reset of the parameters would result in problems for events that need to be worked up at the same time leading to inconsistent time values. There may be times where it is desirable to pause any default resets such as when a synchronizer is waiting for a wakeup method. See figure 3.5 and pages 20-24 and 31 of Didas.
It would have been obvious to include wherein the audio decoder is configured to perform an inverse quantization and a rescaling, in order to obtain an inversely quantized and rescaled frequency-domain audio representation on the basis of a decoded frequency-domain audio representation thereby allowing for modifications to be performed on the compressed data. See chapter 1, page 1 of Levine.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
Allowable Subject Matter
23. Claims 21-40 are allowable over the prior art; however, they remain rejected for reasons noted above.
In view of the interpretation under 35 USC 112(f), the prior art fails to disclose, wherein the arithmetic decoder is configured to evaluate a hash table, entries of which define both significant state values amongst the numeric context values and boundaries of intervals of non-significant state values amongst the numeric context values, in order to select the mapping rule,
wherein the arithmetic decoder is configured to evaluate the hash table for finding a hash table index value i for which the value ari_hash_m[i]>>8 is equal or greater than c, while, if the found hash table index value i is greater than 0, the value ari_hash_m[i-1]>>8 is lower than c;
wherein the arithmetic decoder is configured to select the mapping rule which is determined by a probability model index which equals to ari_hash_m[i]& 0xFF when ari_hash_m[i]>>8 is equal to c, or equals to ari_lookup_m[i] otherwise;
wherein the hash table ari_hash_m is defined as given in FIGS. 22(1), 22(2), 22(3) and 22(4); and
wherein the mapping table ari_lookup_m is defined as given in FIG. 21;
wherein a mapping rule index value is individually associated to a numeric context value being a significant state value;
and wherein ari_hash_m[i] designates an entry of the hash table ari_hash_m comprising hash table index value i.
Conclusion
24. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RACHNA SINGH DESAI whose telephone number is (571)272-4099. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 7:30-4PM EST.
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, Alexander Kosowski can be reached on 571-272-3744. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/RACHNA S DESAI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3992
Conferees:
/William H. Wood/Reexamination Specialist, Art Unit 3992
/ALEXANDER J KOSOWSKI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3992
Prosecution Insights