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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) submitted on 4/01/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 7/07/2026 have been fully considered but they are drawn towards newly amended claim language. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Chen et al. (US 20210084295 A1).
Regarding Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103,
Applicant contends that the cited prior art fails to disclose newly amended limitations of independent claims 1, 2, and 3, including: “wherein the syntax element equal to 0 specifies that a cross-component filter is not applied to the chroma coding tree block and the syntax element not equal to 0 specifies the particular cross-component filter”.
See the rejection below for how the cited art in light of new/existing references reads on the newly amended language as well as the examiner’s interpretation of the cited art in view of the presented claim set.
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.
The factual inquiries 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(s) 1-3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hu et al. (US 20210067793 A1) in view of Liu et al. (US 20230091813 A1) (hereinafter Liu).
Regarding claim 1, Hu discloses:
A decoder for decoding coded data, the decoder comprising: [See Hu, ¶ 0023-0024, 0026 discloses a video decoder.]
a processor; and [See Hu, ¶ 0036 discloses video encoder 200 and video decoder 300 each may be implemented as any of a variety of suitable encoder and/or decoder circuitry, such as one or more microprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs), etc.]
a memory associated with the processor, wherein the processor is configured to: [See Hu, ¶ 0096-0098 discloses video decoder 300 includes coded picture buffer (CPB) memory.]
parse a syntax element in a coding tree unit, wherein the syntax element specifies a particular cross-component filter that is applied to a chroma coding tree block, [See Hu, ¶ 0126, video decoder 300 may code an enable flag at each chroma coding tree block (CTB). If the flag for a CTB is true, video encoder 200 and video decoder 300 may code the control mask for this CTB; if the flag of the CTB is false, video encoder 200 and video decoder 300 do not code the control mask for this CTB, and CCALF is not applied to this CTB.]
Hu does not appear to explicitly disclose:
wherein the syntax element equal to 0 specifies that a cross-component filter is not applied to the chroma coding tree block and the syntax element not equal to 0 specifies the particular cross-component filter;
However, Chen discloses:
wherein the syntax element equal to 0 specifies that a cross-component filter is not applied to the chroma coding tree block and the syntax element not equal to 0 specifies the particular cross-component filter; [See Chen, ¶ 0065, 0097-0099 discloses a syntax element “slice_cross_component_alf_cb_enabled_flag” which specifies whether or not a cross component filter is applied to a chroma component of a CTB.]
It would have been obvious to the person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention disclosed by Hu to add the teachings of Chen in order to improve coding efficiency by simplifying syntax element signaling.
Hu in view of Chen does not explicitly disclose:
apply the cross-component filter to the chroma coding tree block, wherein applying the cross-component filter to the coding tree block includes invoking an adaptive loop filter boundary position derivation process with (i) a first luma location (xCtb, yCtb) specifying a top-left sample location of a current luma coding tree block, (ii) a second luma location ( x, y ) specifying a current sample relative to the top-left sample of the current luma coding tree block, and (iii) a variable vbOffset, set equal to 4, specifying an offset for an adaptive loop filter virtual boundary as inputs, wherein the adaptive loop filter boundary position derivation process includes setting an above horizontal boundary position clipTopPos equal to yCtb + CtbSizeY – vbOffset if y - (CtbSizeY - vbOffset) is greater than or equal to 0, wherein CtbSizeY is the size of the current luma coding tree block.
However, Liu discloses:
apply the cross-component filter to the chroma coding tree block, wherein applying the cross-component filter to the coding tree block includes invoking an adaptive loop filter boundary position derivation process with (i) a first luma location (xCtb, yCtb) specifying a top-left sample location of a current luma coding tree block, [See Liu, ¶ 0969, 1007-1017 discloses an adaptive loop filter (ALF) boundary position derivation process, wherein inputs to the process include a luma location (xCtb, yCtb) specifying the top-left sample of the current luma codingtree block relative to the top left sample of the current picture.]
(ii) a second luma location ( x, y ) specifying a current sample relative to the top-left sample of the current luma coding tree block, and [See Liu, ¶ 0969, 1007-1017 discloses a luma location (x,y) specifying the current sample relative to the top-left sample of the current luma codingtree block.]
(iii) a variable vbOffset, set equal to 4, specifying an offset for an adaptive loop filter virtual boundary as inputs, [See Liu, ¶ 0252-0256, 0275-0279, 0551-0560, 0644-0648, 0663-0667, 0671 discloses checking whether samples located at above-left/above-right/below-left/below-right neighboring regions of current block are in the same video unit (e.g., slice/brick/tile/subpicture/virtual boundaries) as the current block in the ALF processes. Further, for instance, defining CtbSizeY-4 (an offset equal to 4).]
wherein the adaptive loop filter boundary position derivation process includes setting an above horizontal boundary position clipTopPos equal to yCtb + CtbSizeY – vbOffset if y - (CtbSizeY - vbOffset) is greater than or equal to 0, wherein CtbSizeY is the size of the current luma coding tree block. [See Liu, ¶ 1017-1023 discloses the variable clipTopPos is modified as follows: If the bottom boundary of the current coding tree block is not the bottom boundary of the picture and y - (CtbSizeY−4) {Note: here, 4 = = vbOffset} is greater than or equal to 0, the variable clipTopPos is set equal to yCtb+CtbSizeY−4.]
It would have been obvious to the person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention disclosed by Hu in view of Chen to add the teachings of Liu in order to enable derivation of adaptive loop filter virtual boundaries.
Regarding claim 2, one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention would have been aware that decoding is simply the inverse operation of encoding and, in fact is often more generally referred to as "coding", encompassing both. Such a person would have been aware that in order to most accurately decode, it is typically best to use the same method on both the encoding and decoding ends.
Claim 2 thus recites analogous limitations to claim 1, and is therefore rejected based on the decoder of claim 1 performing the complimentary operations of the corresponding encoder and encoding process with respect to video encoding device claim 2 as such. Please see examiner’s earlier rejection of claim 1 for corresponding motivation statement.
Regarding claim 3, this claim recites analogous limitations to claim 1, in the form of “a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program” rather than “a decoder” and is therefore rejected on the same premise. Please see examiner’s earlier rejection of claim 1 for corresponding motivation statement.
Further, claim 3 recites the following limitations which are not explicitly found from claim 1, but are addressed as follows:
Hu discloses:
A non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program causing a processor to implement: [See Hu, ¶ 0036 discloses the techniques are implemented partially in software, a device may store instructions for the software in a suitable, non-transitory computer-readable medium and execute the instructions in hardware using one or more processors to perform the techniques of this disclosure.]
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 PATRICK E DEMOSKY whose telephone number is (571)272-8799. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 7-4 EST.
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/PATRICK E DEMOSKY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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