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.
Claims 44-47 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the broadest reasonable interpretation of the instant claims in light of the specification encompasses transitory signals. Transitory signals are not within one of the four statutory categories (i.e., non-statutory subject matter). Claims directed toward a non-transitory computer readable medium may qualify as a manufacture and make the claim patent-eligible subject matter. Therefore, amending the claims to recite a “non-transitory computer readable medium” would resolve this issue.
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.
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 28-32, 34, 36-40, 42, 44-47 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over ZHANG et al. (US 20240275943 A1) in view of He et al. (Adaptive Intra Prediction Filtering (AIPF)).
Regarding claim 28. (New) ZHANG discloses A method (abstract, A method for video processing is proposed) comprising:
copying a reference sample area of an image frame for a block copy-based image intra prediction ([0073] the predication unit 202 may include an intra block copy (IBC) unit) where a block vector is either signaled by an encoder to a decoder or derived by both the encoder and the decoder through template matching ([0651] template-matching based block vector (e.g., used in IBC mode) derivation);
applying the at least one of filters to at least partially modify the copied reference sample area to form a modified version of the copied reference sample area ([0783] the prediction/reference samples may be filtered before being used to calculate the bilateral or template matching cost; [0073] the predication unit 202 may include an intra block copy (IBC) unit; [0651] template-matching based block vector (e.g., used in IBC mode) derivation); and
using the modified version of the copied reference sample area for an image intra prediction to form another area of the same image frame ([0783] the prediction/reference samples may be filtered before being used to calculate the bilateral or template matching cost; [0073] the predication unit 202 may include an intra block copy (IBC) unit; [0651] template-matching based block vector (e.g., used in IBC mode) derivation).
He discloses
deriving of at least one filter using at least a portion of reconstructed samples in template regions defined in neighborhood of a current block and/or neighborhood of a reference block (page 360 III. TEMPLATE MATCHING AND ITS APPLICATION IN AIPF, figure 2, paragraph 1, To avoid transmitting the considerable coding overhead for filter coefficients and get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy, we combine it with template matching. After the best estimation of current block through template matching, the best estimation will be considered as ‘current’ block, and then the equations (2) and (3) in section 2 is used to generate the prediction for current block; paragraph 2, adaptive intra prediction filtering based single template matching and multiple template matching).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the inventions of ZHANG and He, to apply derived adaptive filters in IBC, in order to avoid transmitting the considerable coding overhead for filter coefficients (He III. TEMPLATE MATCHING AND ITS APPLICATION IN AIPF, paragraph 1).
Regarding claim 29. (New) He discloses The method as claimed in claim 28, wherein deriving parameters of the at least one filter and/or applying the at least one filter comprises using information available at a time of coding the current block comprising at least one of:
one or more of spatial reconstructed samples in a neighborhood of the current block (page 360 III. TEMPLATE MATCHING AND ITS APPLICATION IN AIPF, figure 2 X0, paragraph 1, To avoid transmitting the considerable coding overhead for filter coefficients and get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy, we combine it with template matching; abstract, To get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy and no coding overhead, we combine it with template matching (TM). After the best estimation of current block through template matching, the optimal adaptive filter coefficients are calculated with least-square optimization through considering the best estimation as ‘current’ block);
one or more of spatial reconstructed samples in a neighborhood of the reference block;
one or more of spatial reconstructed samples in a neighborhood of a block other than the current block and other than the reference block;
one or more of location information of the spatial reconstructed samples in the neighborhood of the reference block;
one or more of location information of the spatial reconstructed samples in the neighborhood of the current block;
one or more of gradient information of the spatial reconstructed samples in the neighborhood of the current block;
one or more of gradient information of the spatial reconstructed samples in the neighborhood of the reference block;
one or more of direct coding (DC) or average values of the spatial reconstructed samples in the neighborhood of the current block;
one or more of direct coding (DC) or average values of the spatial reconstructed samples in the neighborhood of the reference block; or
a bias or an offset value.
Regarding claim 30. (New) He discloses The method as claimed in claim 28, wherein the derivation of the at least one filter comprises determining filter coefficients based on minimization of an error (page 359 last paragraph, equation (1); page 360 III. TEMPLATE MATCHING AND ITS APPLICATION IN AIPF, figure 2, paragraph 1, To avoid transmitting the considerable coding overhead for filter coefficients and get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy, we combine it with template matching; abstract, To get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy and no coding overhead, we combine it with template matching (TM). After the best estimation of current block through template matching, the optimal adaptive filter coefficients are calculated with least-square optimization through considering the best estimation as ‘current’ block).
Regarding claim 31. (New) Zhang in view of He discloses The method as claimed in claim 28, wherein applying the at least one filter comprises:
generating a list of reference candidates as reference blocks to be filtered (Zhang [0783] the prediction/reference samples may be filtered before being used to calculate the bilateral or template matching cost);
deriving filter parameters for each candidate reference block (He page 360 III. TEMPLATE MATCHING AND ITS APPLICATION IN AIPF, figure 2, paragraph 1, To avoid transmitting the considerable coding overhead for filter coefficients and get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy, we combine it with template matching; abstract, To get the adaptive filter coefficients in an on-line way with an acceptable accuracy and no coding overhead, we combine it with template matching (TM). After the best estimation of current block through template matching, the optimal adaptive filter coefficients are calculated with least-square optimization through considering the best estimation as ‘current’ block);
applying the at least one filter on a template area of the reference block (Zhang [0783] the prediction/reference samples may be filtered before being used to calculate the bilateral or template matching cost);
calculating a template cost using a metric based on difference of samples in a template of the current block and a template of reference blocks (Zhang [0783] the prediction/reference samples may be filtered before being used to calculate the bilateral or template matching cost); and
selecting a block/filter pair based on the template cost (Zhang [0852] at least one refinement process is applied to the target video block based on a cost. The cost depends on a plurality of reference samples corresponding to the target video block and a plurality of further samples corresponding to a template of the target video block).
Regarding claim 32. (New) Zhang discloses The method as claimed in claim 31, wherein the template cost is calculated using one or more of sum of absolute differences (SAD), sum of square errors (SSE), any other difference measuring metrics, or a distance measuring metric ([0783]-[0798] The cost definition may rely on outputs of multiple errors functions, the error function may be: SAD).
Regarding claim 34. (New) He discloses The method as claimed in claim 28, wherein the at least one filter comprises two or more filters derived for different sample intensity ranges in a template area, and applied to corresponding samples in those ranges in the current block (page 360 IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS, paragraph 1, the combination of template matching and adaptive intra prediction filtering are evaluated based on 7 typical video sequences with different resolutions and contents).
Regarding claims 36-40, 42, the same analysis has been stated in claims 28-34, respectively.
Regarding claims 44-47, the same analysis has been stated in claims 28-31, respectively.
Claims 33, 41 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over ZHANG et al. (US 20240275943 A1) in view of He et al. (Adaptive Intra Prediction Filtering (AIPF)) as applied above in claim 28, and further in view of Xu et al. (US 20200228833 A1).
Regarding claim 33. (New) Xu discloses determining to apply the at least one filter, wherein a decision for the applying the at least one filter for an intra blockcopy (IBC) block is at least partially decided using information from a co-located block in a reference channel ([0143] For the block boundaries of the IBC coded chroma CBs, whether to apply the first deblocking filtering process can be determined by the second flag for the corresponding luma CB).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the inventions of ZHANG and He with the invention of Xu, to use flag information from a co-located block in a reference channel to determine to apply the at least one filter, in order to more efficiently code the current block.
Regarding claim 41, the same analysis has been stated in claim 33.
Claims 35, 43 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over ZHANG et al. (US 20240275943 A1) in view of He et al. (Adaptive Intra Prediction Filtering (AIPF)) as applied above in claim 28, and further in view of TOURAPIS et al. (US 20230007272 A1).
Regarding claim 35. (New) TOURAPIS discloses determining at least one of a filter size or a filter type based on at least one of:
block size ([0089] The limitations could be based on block size as well, i.e. for larger partitions longer filters may be used, but the size of the filters may be limited for smaller partitions);
availability of reference samples in the neighborhood of the current block; or
availability of reference samples in the neighborhood of the reference block.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the inventions of ZHANG and He with the invention of TOURAPIS, to determine a filter size based on block size, in order to provide greater flexibility to coding system to represent image data in coding (TOURAPIS [0008]).
Regarding claim 43, the same analysis has been stated in claim 35.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to XIAOLAN XU whose telephone number is (571)270-7580. The examiner can normally be reached Mon. to Fri. 9am-5pm.
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/XIAOLAN XU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2488
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