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
This office Action is in response to a 371 application filed on 06/17/2025 claiming priority to PCT/US2023/083415 filed on 12/11/2023, which has PRO 63/480,262 filed on 01/17/2023 and PRO 63/434,991 filed on 12/23/2022, in which claims 1-2, 4, 6-8, 10, 13-18, 21-24, 27, 29, and 32 are pending and are being examined.
Information Disclosure Statement
This information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/17/2025 and 11/03/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Examiner’s Note
Claims 1-2, 4, 6-8, and 10 refer to "A method for coding a current block”, Claims 13-18, and 21-23 refer to " A method for coding a current block”, Claim 24 refers to "A device”, Claim 29 refers to "A device”, and Claim 32 refers to "A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium”. Claims 13-18, 21-24, 27, 29, and 32 are similarly rejected in light of rejection of claims 1-2, 4, 6-8, and 10, any obvious combination of the rejection of claims 1-2, 4, 6-8, and 10, or the differences are obvious to the ordinary skill in the art. It is well known in the art that encoding and decoding are reverse processes of video coding method/system/device.
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 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.
Claims 1-2, 4, and 6-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mukherjee et al. (US 20170353735 A1), hereinafter Mukherjee, in view of Liu et al. (US 20210176472 A1), hereinafter Liu.
Regarding claim 1, Mukherjee discloses a method for coding a current block of a current frame, comprising (Abstract): obtaining a first prediction block for the current block based on motion information associated with the first prediction block (Fig. 6, element 610); obtaining a second prediction block for at least a portion of the current block based on a-motion information associated with a neighboring block (Fig. 6, element 620, element 640); obtaining a prediction difference measure between the first prediction block and the second prediction block ([0061], residual-based error metric); and determining, based on the prediction measure, whether to combine the first prediction block and the second prediction block of the portion of the current block ([0061], comparing).
Mukherjee discloses all the elements of claim 1 but Mukherjee does not appear to explicitly disclose in the cited section prediction difference.
However, Liu from the same or similar endeavor teaches prediction difference (Fig. 20C, element 2062).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mukherjee to incorporate the teachings of Liu for higher coding efficiency (Liu, [0061]). Similar reasoning/motivation of modification can be applied/extended to the other related/dependent claims.
Regarding claim 2, Mukherjee in view of Liu discloses the method of claim 1, wherein determining, based on the prediction difference measure, whether to combine the first prediction block and the second prediction block of the portion of the current block comprises: determining not to combine the first prediction block and the second prediction block in response to the prediction difference measure exceeding a threshold (Mukherjee, [0055], [0073]).
Regarding claim 4, Mukherjee in view of Liu discloses the method of claim 1,wherein the prediction difference measure is one of a sum of absolute differences (SAD) between the first prediction block and the second prediction block or a sum of squared errors (SSE) between the first prediction block and the second prediction block (It is obvious to the ordinary skill in the art).
Regarding claim 6, Mukherjee in view of Liu discloses the method of claim 1,wherein the prediction difference measure is an absolute maximum of pair-wise differences between the first prediction block and the second prediction block (It is obvious to the ordinary skill in the art).
Regarding claim 7, Mukherjee in view of Liu discloses the method of any of claims 1 to 6 claim 1,wherein; the prediction difference measure is calculated based on at least one of a maximum absolute difference or an average absolute difference, wherein the maximum absolute difference is an absolute maximum of pair-wise differences between the first prediction block and the second prediction block, and wherein the average absolute difference is an average of the pair-wise differences (It is obvious to the ordinary skill in the art).
Regarding claim 8, Mukherjee in view of Liu discloses the method of claim 7, wherein the prediction difference measure is one of: calculated as an absolute difference between the maximum absolute difference and the average absolute difference, or calculated based on a ratio of the maximum absolute difference to the average absolute difference (It is obvious to the ordinary skill in the art).
Regarding claim 10, Mukherjee in view of Liu discloses the method of any of claims 1 to 9 claim 1,further comprising: determining to obtain the second prediction block in response to one of: determining that a motion-vector difference between a first motion vector of the current block and a second motion vector of the neighboring block is smaller than a motion vector threshold; determining that first reference frames used for predicting the current block are at least partially the same as second reference frames used for predicting the neighboring block; or determining that the current block is a block of a P frame or a P slice, that the current block and the neighboring block use the same reference frames and that respective absolute motion vector differences between motion vectors of the current block and motion vectors of the neighboring block are below a motion-vector threshold.
Regarding claim 13-18, 21-24, 27, 29, and 32, See Examiner’s Note. Liu, [0112]-[0114], rounding, Mukherjee, [0123]. Also, Chen et al. (US 20230007238 A1), Fig. 14. Chen is cited but not relied upon as a prior art.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 10, 17 and 18 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
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/Mohammad J Rahman/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
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