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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Joshi (US 20160150234 A1).
Claim 3 is directed to a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (CRM) storing a bitstream generated by a video encoding method. The claim does not recite that the CRM contains executable instruction, that when executed, implement the encoding method. The bitstream is a product produced by the encoding method. Therefore, the claims are not limited to the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps. (See MPEP 2113 - Product-by-Process claims.) Hence, the encoding method steps recited are given patentable weight only to structures in the bitstream that are implied by the steps.
To be given patentable weight, the CRM and the bitstream (i.e. descriptive material) must be in a functional relationship. A functional relationship can be found where the descriptive material performs some function with respect to the CRM to which it is associated. See 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 CRM storing the claimed bitstream in claim 3 merely services as a support for the CRM of the bitstream and provides no functional relationship between the stored bitstream and the CRM.
Therefore, 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 Joshi et al. (US 20160150234 A1) which recites a storage medium storing a bitstream ([0156] storing the encoded bitstream on a storage medium).
Claims 1, 6, 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Siekmann (US 2013/0034159 A1).
Regarding Claims 1, 6, 7, Siekmann discloses a video decoding/encoding method/CRM (e.g. Fig. 1, 2) comprising: performing a first partitioning on a current image into a plurality of blocks (e.g. Fig. 5A and Paragraph [0139]); and performing a second partitioning on a target block into a plurality of sub-blocks, wherein one of the sub-blocks is a current block (e.g. Fig. 5B, 5C and Paragraph [0139]); deriving prediction information of the current block based on a prediction mode of the current block (e.g. Paragraph [0096]); generating a prediction block of the current block based on the prediction information (e.g. Fig. 1 and Paragraph [0090-0091]) and transforming a difference between the current block and the prediction block by a transform method (e.g. Paragraph [0091-0092]), wherein the transform method is determined based on the prediction mode (e.g. Paragraph [0092, 0096]).
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 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.
Claims 2, 3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Siekmann (US 2013/0034159 A1) in view of Jeong (US 2018/0176596 A1).
Regarding Claims 2, 3, Siekmann fails to explicitly disclose DCT and DST; and Jeong further teaches the transform method is determined to DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) when the prediction mode is a horizontal direction mode. (e.g. Paragraph [0301]); and the transform method is determined to DST (Discrete Sine Transform) when the prediction mode is a vertical direction mode.(e.g. Paragraph [0301]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at time of the invention to incorporate transformation as taught as Jeong into the method of Siekmann in order to have better prediction on the edge pattern.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 5 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YULIN SUN whose telephone number is (571)270-1043. The examiner can normally be reached 10AM - 6PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jay Patel can be reached at 571-272-2988. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/YULIN SUN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2485
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