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 § 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.
Claim(s) 1, 15, 31-33, and 35 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sychev et al. (US 20240348783 A1) in view of Ivanovic et al. (US 20210185313 A1).
Re claim 1, Sychev discloses a method for image decoding, comprising:
obtaining spatial point differentiation information (Sychev: Fig. 21, input encoded picture data), and
decoding a picture bitstream to obtain quantized residual values (Sychev: Fig. 21, quantized coefficients 309);
for any one of the quantized residual values, performing dequantization on the quantized residual value based on the dequantization precision parameter corresponding to the quantized residual value, to obtain reconstructed residual values (Sychev: Fig. 21, inverse quantization unit 310; Fig. 21, reconstructed residual block 313); and
performing a synthesis transform on the reconstructed residual values to obtain a reconstructed picture block (Sychev: Fig. 21, reconstruction unit 314 yields reconstructed block 315).
Sychev does not specifically disclose constructing dequantization precision parameters respectively corresponding to the quantized residual values based on the spatial point differentiation information. However, Ivanovic discloses a system wherein, referring to FIG. 7, one implementation of a method 700 for selecting a quantization parameter (QP) to use for a block being encoded is shown (Ivanovic: paragraph [0041]). In one implementation, a model is trained based on the residuals and the predicted bits and distortion values for different QP values (Ivanovic: paragraph [0041]). In one implementation, the residual of the given video block is provided as an input to the model and the output of the model is the QP that will result in a lowest possible cost for the given video block as compared to the costs associated with other QP values (Ivanovic: paragraph [0041]). Since Sychev and Ivanovic relate to performing quantization on residual data, one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date would have found it obvious to combine the QP selection model of Ivanovic with the system of Sychev in order to improve coding efficiency by finding the optimal QP value for low cost coding (Ivanovic: paragraph [0041]).
Claim 15 recites the corresponding encoding method for generating the data decoded by the decoding method of claim 1. Encoding and decoding are recognized in the art to be inverse operations. Additionally, Sychev discloses an encoding system in Fig. 20. Therefore, arguments analogous to those presented for claim 1 are applicable to claim 15. Accordingly, claim 15 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 1 above.
Claim 31 recites the corresponding decoding device comprising one or more processors, one or more memories and a decoding program stored on the one or more memories and runnable on the one or more processors, wherein the one or more processors execute the decoding program to implement the method of claim 1. Sychev discloses a computer program stored on a non-transitory medium and including code instructions, which, when executed on one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to execute steps of the method according to any of the methods described (Sychev: paragraph [0089]). Therefore, arguments analogous to those presented for claim 1 are applicable to claim 31. Accordingly, claim 31 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 1 above.
Claim 32 recites the corresponding encoding device comprising one or more processors, one or more memories and an encoding program stored on the one or more memories and runnable on the one or more processors, wherein the one or more processors execute the encoding program to implement the method according to claim 15. Sychev discloses a computer program stored on a non-transitory medium and including code instructions, which, when executed on one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to execute steps of the method according to any of the methods described (Sychev: paragraph [0089]). Therefore, arguments analogous to those presented for claim 15 are applicable to claim 32. Accordingly, claim 32 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 15 above.
Claim 33 recites the corresponding non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing an image decoding program; wherein when the image decoding program is executed, the method for image decoding according to claim 1 is implemented. Sychev discloses a computer program stored on a non-transitory medium and including code instructions, which, when executed on one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to execute steps of the method according to any of the methods described (Sychev: paragraph [0089]). Therefore, arguments analogous to those presented for claim 1 are applicable to claim 33. Accordingly, claim 33 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 1 above.
Claim 35 recites the corresponding non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing an image encoding program; wherein when the image decoding program is executed, the method for image encoding according to claim 15 is implemented. Sychev discloses a computer program stored on a non-transitory medium and including code instructions, which, when executed on one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to execute steps of the method according to any of the methods described (Sychev: paragraph [0089]). Therefore, arguments analogous to those presented for claim 15 are applicable to claim 35. Accordingly, claim 35 has been analyzed and rejected with respect to claim 15 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-5, 8-10, 14, 16-19, and 24-25 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.
Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHRISTOPHER G FINDLEY whose telephone number is (571)270-1199. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9AM-5PM.
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/CHRISTOPHER G FINDLEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2482