DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is a response to an Amendment filed on 06/24/2026, in which claims 2-21 are pending and ready for examination.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/24/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Terminal Disclaimer
The terminal disclaimer filed on 03/16/2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of Patent No. 11,284,103, Patent No. 11,979,601, Co-pending Application No. 19/090,180, Co-pending Application No. 19/090,204, and Co-pending Application No. 19/090,225 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 17 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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. With regards to claim 17, the body of the claim recites method steps for video coding, but the preamble recites that the non-transitory computer readable medium having programmed thereon encoded data as a part of the bitstream... usable to cause a decoder to perform the video coding. It is not clear whether or not the CRM contains instructions to perform the coding operations. Clarification of the claim language is required.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-16 are allowed over the prior art of record.
Claims 18-21 are 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.
REASONS FOR ALLOWANCE
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Claims 2 and 12 are allowed because the current prior art of record, considered individually or in combination, fails to teach or reasonably suggest all the claimed features of claims 2 and 12, structurally and functionally interconnected with other limitations in the manner as cited in the claims. More specifically, the prior art on record fails to teach or suggest the limitations of: “constraining values of vectors for intra block copy ("BC") prediction to have integer-sample precision and to indicate reference regions that are within the given slice, within the given tile, and not overlapping the current 2Nx2N block within the frame; asymmetrically partitioning the current 2Nx2N block into first and second partitions for intra BC prediction by splitting the current 2Nx2N block horizontally or vertically into the first and second partitions, the first and second partitions having dimensions of 2Nx(N/2) and 2Nx(3N/2), respectively, or (N/2)x2N and (3N/2)x2N, respectively; performing intra BC prediction for the first partition; and performing intra BC prediction for the second partition; and outputting the encoded data as part of a bitstream” cited in claim 2. Claim 12 claims features similar to the ones claimed in claim 2. Thus, the mentioned limitation in combination with all other limitations of the claim has been found allowable.
Claims 2 and 12 are allowed and all claims dependent on claims 2 and 12 are allowed as well.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 MARYAM A NASRI whose telephone number is (571)270-7158. The examiner can normally be reached 10:00-8:00 M-T.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joseph Ustaris can be reached on 5712727383. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MARYAM A NASRI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2483
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