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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 04/21/2025, 12/24/2025 and 06/24/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Zhang et al., (US 2021/0368185 A1) referred to as ZHANG hereinafter.
Regarding claim 20, a bit stream generated by a method, the method comprising… is a product by process claim limitation where the product is the bit stream and the process is the method steps to generate the bitstream. MPEP §2113 recites “Product-by-Process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”. Thus, the scope of the claim is the storage medium storing the bitstream (with the structure implied by the method steps). The structure includes the information and samples manipulated by the steps.
“To be given patentable weight, the printed matter and associated product must be in a functional relationship. A functional relationship can be found where the printed matter performs some function with respect to the product to which it is associated”. MPEP §2111.05(I)(A). When a claimed “computer-readable medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists. MPEP §2111.05(III). The storage medium storing the claimed bitstream in claim 18 merely serves as a support for the storage of the bitstream and provides no functional relationship between the stored bitstream and storage medium. Therefor the structure bitstream, which scope is implied by the method steps, is non-functional descriptive material and given no patentable weight. MPEP §2111.05(III). Thus, the claim scope is just a storage medium storing data and is anticipated by REFERENCE which recites a storage medium storing a bitstream (ZHANG: Paragraphs [0007], [0578], Claim 20).
Reasons for Allowance
Claims 1-19 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: The present application is directed to a method for neural network-based visual data processing in which the bitstream carries an indication specifying whether a set of values for a set of parameters of the NN-based model is common to processing of a plurality of components of the visual data. While the prior art of record establishes the constituent building blocks of the claimed architecture — Ballé (2017, 2018) discloses the foundational analysis/synthesis autoencoder and hyperprior framework; Minnen (2018) teaches the joint context-plus-hyperprior entropy parameter network; Cui (2020) introduces gain matrix signaling for per-channel rate adaptation within a single component branch; and Bross (JVET-S2001, 2020) describes APS-based parameter sharing conventions in conventional video coding — none of these references, alone or in combination, discloses or fairly suggests the specific signaling mechanism recited in independent claim 1. Each of the cited NN-based compression references operates on the visual data as a single tensor without separate component branches, and the conventional codec art (Bross) lacks any NN-based model. The references collectively establish the technical environment in which the present invention operates but leave uncited the particular concept of a bitstream-borne indication governing whether parameter values are shared across, or signaled separately for, a plurality of visual data components processed by an NN-based model.
The closest art of record, including the foreign patent document CN 111133756 (MediaTek) which teaches that control flags for enabling or disabling an NN can be combined or shared across two or more color components, is directed to tool-enablement signaling rather than to indication of whether the underlying parameter values themselves are common to the processing of multiple components, and the substitution required to bridge that gap is not taught or suggested by any combination of the references of record. Furthermore, when the application's own definition of "set of parameters" — which expressly enumerates scalars, multipliers, scaling factors, thresholds, tile sizes, indices, models, offsets, and additive coefficients (¶[0182]) — is read against the prior art, no reference of record discloses the claimed first indication operating across this breadth of parameter types and across the plurality of visual data components in the NN-based context. For at least these reasons, the prior art of record fails to anticipate or render obvious the subject matter of claim 1, and claims 2–25, which depend therefrom or include corresponding limitations in apparatus, storage medium, and bitstream-storage formats, are allowable for the same reasons.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN W. RIDER whose telephone number is (571)270-1068. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 7.00 am - 4.30 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jamie J Atala can be reached at (571) 272-7384. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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JUSTIN W. RIDER
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2486
/Justin W Rider/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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