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
Summary
This office action for US Patent application 19/034911 is responsive to communications filed on January 23rd, 2025. Currently, claims 1-20 are pending are presented for examination.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. § 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-5, 11 and 13-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C §102 (a)(2) as being anticipated by Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023).
Regarding claim 1, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) meets the claim limitations, as follows:
A method for decoding a video [i.e. Fig. 2], comprising:
receiving an encoded bitstream of the video [i.e. bitstream; Fig. 2];
determining a sequential order for executing a plurality of decoding modules based on an indication extracted from the encoded bitstream [i.e. determining a sequential order of the video decoder based on additional information refer as “metadata; paragraph. 0055, Fig. 2. The foreign application is described with different terms in VCM decoder than the US publication but their invention concept is the same]; and
decoding the encoded bitstream by executing the plurality of decoding modules according to sequential order [i.e. paragraph. 0055, Fig. 2],
wherein the plurality of decoding modules comprises at least one of a Region of Interest (ROI) module, a temporal upsampling module, a spatial upsampling module, a post filtering module, a bit depth restoration module, or a format adapter module [i.e. Fig. 2].
Regarding claim 2, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 1.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 1, wherein the sequential order is selected based on the indication from a set of predefined sequential orders [i.e. the sequential order is selected based on the additional information; paragraph. 0055].
Regarding claim 3, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 2.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 2, wherein the set of redefined sequential orders of the plurality of decoding modules, if executed, comprise at least one of:
the Rol module, followed by the spatial upsampling module, followed by the temporal upsampling module, followed by the post filter module, followed by the bit depth restoration module, and followed by the format adapter module [i.e. operations in specific turn or order can be executed adaptively to achieve a desired result; paragraph. 0156; Fig. 2];
the bit depth restoration module, followed by the Rol module, followed by the spatial upsampling module, followed by the temporal upsampling module, followed by the post filter module, and followed by the format adapter module; and
the Rol module, followed by the temporal upsampling module, followed by the spatial upsampling module, followed by the post filter module, followed by the bit depth restoration module, and followed by the format adapter module.
Regarding claim 4, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 1.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 1, wherein the sequential order is adaptively determined [i.e. operations in specific turn or order can be executed adaptively to achieve a desired result; paragraph. 0156; Fig. 2].
Regarding claim 5, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 4.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 4, wherein: the indication is derived from at least one content characteristics of the video as extracted from the encoded bitstream; and the at least one content characteristics comprises at last one of a temporal dependency, a content complexity, a color complexity, a motion complexity, a texture characteristic, a dynamic range variation, a foreground-background segmentation, a ratio of high frequency area, a ratio of RoI area [i.e. the additional information extracted from an encoded bitstream may include at least one of temporal resampling information, spatial resampling information or ROI processing information; paragraph. 0055-0056].
Regarding claim 11, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 5.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 5, wherein the sequential order is selected from a plurality of sequential orders based on a set of threshold levels of the at least one content characteristics [i.e. the sequential order is selected based on values of flags; 0057, 0061, 0071, 0156; Fig. 2].
Regarding claim 13, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 4.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 4, wherein the indication is derived from a set of additional parameters extracted from the encoded bitstream associated with the at least one of plurality of decoding modules [i.e. additional information associated with preprocessor 110 extracted from the encoded bitstream; paragraph. 0055, Fig. 1-2].
Regarding claim 14, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 13.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 13, wherein the set of additional parameters comprises at least one or a temporal resample ratio or a spatial resample ratio [i.e. temporal resampling information, spatial resampling information; paragraph. 0056].
Regarding claim 15, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 4.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 4, further comprising:
determining that the sequential order is adaptively determined based on a flag in the encoded bitstream [i.e. operations in specific turn or order can be executed adaptively to achieve a desired result based on flags; paragraph. 0057, 0061, 0071, 0156; Fig. 2]; and
determining the sequential order based on a signaled index of the sequential order among a plurality of predefined sequential orders [i.e. operations in specific turn or order can be executed adaptively to achieve a desired result based on flags; paragraph. 0057, 0061, 0071, 0156; Fig. 2].
Regarding claim 16, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 1.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the claim limitations as follows:
The method of claim 1, wherein the sequential order is asymmetric from an encoding order of a plurality of encoding modules corresponding to the plurality of decoding modules for generating the encoded bitstream [i.e. Fig. 1-2].
Regarding claim 17, all the claim limitations which are set forth and rejected as per discussion for claim 1.
Regarding claim 18, all the claim limitations which are set forth and rejected as per discussion for claim 4.
Regarding claim 19, all the claim limitations which are set forth and rejected as per discussion for claim 15.
Regarding claim 20, all the claim limitations which are set forth and rejected as per discussion for claim 1.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Joshi et al. (US 20160150234 A1).
Claim 20 directed to a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (CRM) storing a bitstream generated by an encoding method. The claim does not recite that the CRM contains executable instruction, that when executed, implement the encoding method. The bitstream is a product produced by the encoding method. Therefore, the claims are not limited to the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps. (See MPEP 2113 - Product-by-Process claims.) Hence, the encoding method steps recited are given patentable weight only to structures in the bitstream that are implied by the steps.
To be given patentable weight, the CRM and the bitstream (i.e. descriptive material) must be in a functional relationship. A functional relationship can be found where the descriptive material performs some function with respect to the CRM to which it is associated. See MPEP §2111.05(I)(A). When a claimed “computer-readable storage medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists”. MPEP §2111.05(III).
The CRM storing the claimed bitstream in claim 19 merely services as a support for the CRM of the bitstream and provides no functional relationship between the stored bitstream and the CRM.
Therefore, the structure bitstream, which scope is implied by the method steps, is non-functional descriptive material and given no patentable weight. MPEP §2111.05(III).
Thus, the claim scope is just a storage medium storing data and is anticipated by Joshi et al. (US 20160150234 A1) which recites a storage medium storing a bitstream ([0156] storing the encoded bitstream on a storage medium).
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) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter 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 said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C §103 unpatentable over Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) in view of Lin et al. (US 20250071299 A1).
Regarding claim 12, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) discloses the following claim limitations as set forth in claim 4.
Furthermore, Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) does not disclose using a neural network to extract features form video data.
In the same field of endeavor, Lin et al. (US 20250071299 A1) discloses the deficient claim limitations, as follows:
The method of claim 4, wherein the indication is derived by processing a set of video characteristics derived from the encoded bitstream using a pre-trained neural network [i.e. extract features using a neural network-based video quality model; paragraph. 0006].
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention to modify the teachings of Jung (US 20250119554 A1: refer to its foreign application priority date Oct 10th, 2023) with Lin et al. (US 20250071299 A1) in order to create a method as the claimed invention.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-10 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications form the examiner should be directed to Nam Pham, whose can be contacted by phone at (571)270-7352. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon—Thurs.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, CZEKAJ DAVID, can be reached on (571)272-7327.
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/NAM D PHAM/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487