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 .
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.
Specification
Applicant is reminded of the proper language and format for an abstract of the disclosure.
The abstract should be in narrative form and generally limited to a single paragraph on a separate sheet within the range of 50 to 150 words in length. The abstract should describe the disclosure sufficiently to assist readers in deciding whether there is a need for consulting the full patent text for details.
The language should be clear and concise and should not repeat information given in the title. It should avoid using phrases which can be implied, such as, “The disclosure concerns,” “The disclosure defined by this invention,” “The disclosure describes,” etc. In addition, the form and legal phraseology often used in patent claims, such as “means” and “said,” should be avoided.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 04/11/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Remarks
This communication is in response to the Applicant’s Response to Election / Restriction Filed on 08/06/2026 (Response to Requirement for Restriction/Election mailed on 06/16/2026). Claims 1-20 were originally filed. Claims 1, 2, 4, 8, 11, and 17 were amended. Claims 12-16 and claims 18-20 were cancelled. Claims 21-28 were added. Claims 1-11, 17 and 21-28 were pending prior to this amendment.
Claims 1-5, 7-9, 17, 23, 25-26 and 28 are amended. Claims 1-11, 17 and 21-28 are currently pending.
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)(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, 5-6, 9, 17, 23-24, 26 and 28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by IKONIN et al (US 20230262243 A1, hereinafter “IKONIN”).
Regarding claim 1. (Currently Amended) IKONIN discloses a method of video encoding (0039 and 0172; Figures 1, 3 and 11; “[0039] According to an aspect, a method is provided for encoding a feature map for processing by a neural network into a bitstream, the method comprising: obtaining for a region of the feature map, a region presence indicator, based on the obtained region presence indicator of the feature map, deciding: when the region presence indicator has a first value, encoding the region of the feature map; when the region presence indicator has a second value, bypassing encoding the region of the feature map.”, “[0172] Corresponding to the decoding method described with reference to FIG. 10, an encoding method may be provided as shown in FIG. 11. The encoding method may generate a bitstream obeying the syntax discussed above. Correspondingly, an image or video encoder may comprise unit to decide whether to transmit or bypass corresponding channel information to the receiving side. For each output channel of encoding model (which is supposed to be input channel of generative model) the encoder makes a decision about importance of the corresponding channel for the image or video reconstruction or a machine vision task.”), comprising:
obtaining a latent associated with image data using a neural network, the latent comprising a number of channels of two-dimensional data (0115 and 0174; Figures 1 and 11; “[0115] When programming a CNN for processing images, as shown in FIG. 1, the input is a tensor with shape (number of images)×(image width)×(image height)×(image depth). Then after passing through a convolutional layer, the image becomes abstracted to a feature map, with shape (number of images)×(feature map width)×(feature map height)×(feature map channels). A convolutional layer within a neural network should have the following attributes. Convolutional kernels defined by a width and height (hyper-parameters). The number of input channels and output channels (hyper-parameter). The depth of the convolution filter (the input channels) should be equal to the number channels (depth) of the input feature map.”);
obtaining a probability distribution for each value of the latent (0137 and 0192; Figure 3; “[0137] FIG. 3 shows a network architecture including a hyperprior model. The left side (g.sub.a, g.sub.s) shows an image autoencoder architecture, the right side (h.sub.a, h.sub.s) corresponds to the autoencoder implementing the hyperprior. The factorized-prior model uses the identical architecture for the analysis and synthesis transforms g.sub.a and g.sub.s. Q represents quantization, and AE, AD represent arithmetic encoder and arithmetic decoder, respectively. The encoder subjects the input image x to g.sub.a, yielding the responses y (latent representation) with spatially varying standard deviations. The encoding g.sub.a includes a plurality of convolution layers with subsampling and, as an activation function, generalized divisive normalization (GDN).”, “[0192] … The side information based on the feature map may correspond to the distribution of standard deviations summarized in z. z may be quantized, further compressed (e.g. entropy-coded), and transmitted as the side information. The encoder (as well as the decoder) uses the quantized vector {circumflex over (z)} to estimate {circumflex over (σ)}, the spatial distribution of the standard deviations which is actually used for obtaining the probability values (or frequency values, number of occurrences) for the arithmetic coding (or another kind of entropy coding, in general), and uses it to encode the quantized image representation ŷ (or latent representation). …”); and
entropy encoding the latent based on the probability distribution of the latent (0137 and 0192; Figure 3);
wherein the entropy encoding further includes at least one of:
signaling an indication of an activity of a channel[[,]];
obtaining a conditional probability distribution of the latent[[, and]], or
channel reordering (0172-0173 and 0176; Figure 11).
Regarding claim 5. (Currently Amended) Claim 5 has similar limitations to those limitations treated in the rejections to claim 1 above, and are met by the references as discussed above, and has been rejected for the same reasons of anticipations as used in the rejection to claim 1 above.
Regarding claim 6. (Original) Claim 6 has similar limitations to those limitations treated in the rejections to claim 1 above, and are met by the references as discussed above, and has been rejected for the same reasons of anticipations as used in the rejection to claim 1 above.
Regarding claim 9. (Currently Amended) IKONIN discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises;
sorting the channels of the latent according to a channel order (0178; Figure 12); and
wherein the sorted latent is entropy coded based on the probability distribution of the latent (0170 and 0192; Figure 10).
Regarding claims 17, 23-24 and 26. (Currently Amended) The decoding method claims 17, 23-24 and 26 are drawn to the reverse method of the decoding method of using the corresponding encoding method claimed in claims 1, 5-6 and 9. Therefore, decoding method claims 17, 23-24 and 26 correspond to encoding claims 1, 5-6 and 9 and are rejected for same reasons of anticipation as used above.
Regarding claim 28. (Currently Amended) An apparatus claim 28 is drawn to the apparatus corresponding to the method of using same as claimed in claim 1. Therefore, apparatus claim 28 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of anticipation as used above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-4, 7, 8, 10, 11,21, 22, 25 and 27 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see page 6, filed 08/06/2026, with respect to claims 2-11 and 21-27 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The Requirement for Restriction/Election of 2-11 and 21-27 has been withdrawn.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ASMAMAW G TARKO whose telephone number is (571)272-7493. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 8am-5pm EST.
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/ASMAMAW G TARKO/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2482
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