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 § 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 1-2, 4-9, 11-17, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Martin-Cocher et al. US 2022/0351423
Regarding claim 8, Martin-Cocher discloses a point cloud encoding method applied to an encoder (see figure 1, paragraph 0091, point cloud encoder 10),
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the method comprising: determining location information of a current node (see paragraph 0052 nodes have a parent-child relationship and represent a three-dimensional location of an object)
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; determining that an identifier of the current node has a first identifier value when the location information of the current node satisfies a first condition (see step 502 and 506 of figure 5 which determines if the volume [volume is the same as node- see paragraph 0079] is eligible for planar coding mode and if the volume is planar, see paragraphs 0122-0123)
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; and determining that the identifier of the current node has a second identifier value when the location information of the current node satisfies a second condition (see above steps 502 and 506 of figure 5 which determines if the volume is eligible for planar coding mode and if the volume is planar, see paragraphs 0122-0123); wherein the identifier indicates whether a planar mode is allowed to be used to encode the current node (see step 506, is volume planar?); the first identifier value indicates that the planar mode is allowed to be used to encode the current node (entropy encode planar mode flag=1, step 512 of figure 5); and the second identifier value indicates that the planar mode is not allowed to be used to encode the current node (step 508, entropy encode planar mode flag=0).
Regarding claim 9, Martin-Cocher discloses wherein the first condition comprises that: the location information of the current node indicates that a number of nodes in a N-th layer in which the current node is located is less than a product of a number of nodes in a (N-1)-th layer and a first preset value; or the location information of the current node indicates that an occupancy pattern of neighboring nodes of the current node is equal to a second preset value (note that there is an “or” limitation thus only the bold option need be taught by Martin-Cocher who discloses in paragraph 0123 in step 510 the encoder encodes the occupancy pattern based on there being at least one occupied sub-volume per plane).
Regarding claims 11-12, the claim builds on the optional limitation of claim 9, thus since Martin-Cocher teaches the bold part of claim 9 then claim 11 is rejected as just adding more to the part not required by claim 9.
Regarding claims 13-14, the integer of the second preset value is no occupied sub-volumes or at least one occupied sub-volume (see paragraph 0123).
Regarding claim 15, Martin-Cocher discloses encoding a value of the identifier of the current node, and signaling obtained encoded bits into a bitstream (see figure 1).
Claim 1 is similarly analyzed to claim 8, note that figure 2 discloses the analogous decoding system to the encoding system described in figure 1.
Claim 2 is similarly analyzed to claim 9.
Claims 4-7 are similarly analyzed to claims 11-14.
Claim 16 is similarly analyzed to claim 8, note that figure 2 discloses the analogous decoding system to the encoding system described in figure 1.
Claim 17 is similarly analyzed to claim 2.
Claims 19-20 are similarly analyzed to claims 4-5.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 10, 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Please see the attached 892 notice of references cited.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN B STREGE whose telephone number is (571)272-7457. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5 (PST).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Chan Park can be reached at (571)272-7409. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOHN B STREGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2669
