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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
35 U.S.C. 101 requires that a claimed invention must fall within one of the four eligible categories of invention (i.e. process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter) and must not be directed to subject matter encompassing a judicially recognized exception as interpreted by the courts. The four eligible categories of invention include: (1) process which is an act, or a series of acts or steps, (2) machine which is an concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices, (3) manufacture which is an article produced from raw or prepared materials by giving to these materials new forms, qualities, properties, or combinations, whether by hand labor or by machinery, and (4) composition of matter which is all compositions of two or more substances and all composite articles, whether they be the results of chemical union, or of mechanical mixture, or whether they be gases, fluids, powders or solids.
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as not falling within one of the four statutory categories of invention because the claimed invention is directed to computer program per se. A claim directed toward a non-transitory computer-readable medium having the program encoded thereon establishes a sufficient functional relationship between the program and a computer so as to remove it from the realm of “program per se”. Hence, adding the limitation of “stored on a non-transitory computer-readable medium” would resolve this issue.
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 of this title, 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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-3 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hongtao Wang et al. [US 20240015284 A1] in view of E. Alshina et al. [EE1: Summary of Exploration Experiments on Neural Network-based Video Coding: JVET-AB0023-V3: already of record].
Regarding claim 1, Hongtao teaches:
1. (Currently Amended) A method for encoding or decoding a video (i.e. This disclosure relates to video coding, including video encoding and video decoding- ¶0002… FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example video encoding and decoding system that may perform the techniques of this disclosure.- ¶0011), the method comprising:
obtaining values of components of reconstructed samples (i.e. reconstructed block (rec) 508 are received- fig. 5, Rec 808- fig. 8, Rec 1008- fig. 10);
obtaining first additional input data (i.e. quantization parameter (QP) 500, partition information (part) 502, boundary strength (BS) 504, prediction information (pred) 506- ¶0098, fig. 5 - QP 800, Part 802, BS 804, Pred 806- ¶0102, fig. 8… QP 1000, Part 1002, BS 1004, Pred 1006, and Rec 1008- ¶0107, fig. 10);
providing the obtained values of the components of the reconstructed samples to a first group of one or more convolution layers, thereby generating an output of the first group of convolution layers (i.e. 510E and 512E- fig. 5, 810E and 812E- fig. 8… 1010E and 1012E- fig. 10);
providing the obtained first additional input data to a second group of one or more convolution layers, thereby generating an output of the second group of convolution layers (i.e. 510A-510D and 512A-512D- fig. 5, 810A-810D and 812A-812D- fig. 8… 1010A-1010D and 1012A-1012D- fig. 10); and
encoding or decoding the video based on the output of the first group of convolution layers and the output of the second group of convolution layers (i.e. addition unit 558 combines this result with the original reconstructed block input 508. This ultimately forms output for presentation and storage as reference for subsequent inter-prediction, e.g., in a decoded picture buffer (DPB)- ¶0098).
However, Hongtao does not teach explicitly:
wherein the first group of convolution layers and the second group of convolution layers are different with respect to a number of channels, a size of a kernel filter, and/or a number of convolution layers.
In the same field of endeavor, Alshina teaches:
wherein the first group of convolution layers and the second group of convolution layers are different with respect to a number of channels (i.e. 2×N×N- fig. 4), a size of a kernel filter, and/or a number of convolution layers (i.e. Fig. 4. Collocated blocks from reference frame are fed to the NCS-1.0 filter set #1 network).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Hongtao with the teachings of Alshina to achieve a 0.5~0.6% gain in RA if NCS-1.0 filter set #1 extended to temporal filtration and the sample flipping is used (Alshina- Conclusion).
Regarding claim 2, Hongtao and Alshina teach all the limitations of claim 1 and Hongtao further teaches:
wherein the method further comprises:
combining the output of the first group of convolution layers and the output of the second group of convolution layers, thereby generating a combined output (i.e. Concatenation unit 514 then concatenates the convolved inputs- ¶0098); providing the combined output to a third group of one or more convolution layers, thereby generating an output of the third group of convolution layers (i.e. Concatenation unit 514 then concatenates the convolved inputs. Fuse filter 516, including 1×1 convolution filter 518 and PReLU filter 520, fuses the concatenated inputs. Transition filter, including 3×3 convolutional filter 524 and PReLU filter 526, subsamples the fused inputs to create output 188- ¶0098), wherein the video is encoded or decoded based on the output of the third group of convolution layers(i.e. addition unit 558 combines this result with the original reconstructed block input 508. This ultimately forms output for presentation and storage as reference for subsequent inter-prediction, e.g., in a decoded picture buffer (DPB)- ¶0098),
Regarding claim 3, Hongtao and Alshina teach all the limitations of claim 1 and Hongtao further teaches:
wherein the first additional input data is any one of values of components of predicted samples (i.e. prediction information (pred) 506- ¶0102), partitional information indicating how components of samples are partitioned (i.e. partition information (part) 502- ¶0102), block boundary strength information indicating strength of a filtering applied to a boundary of components of samples (i.e. BS 804- ¶0102), values of quantization parameters (i.e. QP 800 - ¶0102), block size information indicating a block size, motion vector information indicating motion vectors.
However, Hongtao does not teach explicitly:
prediction mode information indicating a prediction mode, and/or block type information indicating a block type.
In the same field of endeavor, Alshina teaches:
prediction mode information indicating a prediction mode, and/or block type information indicating a block type (i.e. the tested models use block type information IPB (intra/uni-predicted/bi-predicted) and/or block skip information (bypassed or not) as additional input(s) on top of the inter luma model from- page 5)It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Hongtao with the teachings of Alshina to achieve a 0.5~0.6% gain in RA if NCS-1.0 filter set #1 extended to temporal filtration and the sample flipping is used (Alshina- Conclusion).
Regarding claim 21, apparatus claim 21 is drawn to the apparatus using/performing the same method as claimed in claim 1. Therefore, apparatus claim 21 corresponds to method claim 1, and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-18 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.
Conclusion
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CLIFFORD HILAIRE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2488
/CLIFFORD HILAIRE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2488
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