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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 5/5/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Dependent claims 2-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 2-16 depend on independent claim 1 and claims 2-16 recite the limitation "the generation unit" in each of the dependent claims. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the independent and dependent claims. For the purpose of compact prosecution, the limitation will be interpreted as recite(s) sufficient structure, materials, or acts to entirely perform the recited function for generating.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim(s) 1-8, 11-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over LIM; Jin-Ho et al. US 20170358126 A1 (hereafter Lim) and in further view of He; Yong et al. US 20200037029 A1 (hereafter He) and further in view of Yiling Xu ET AL: "Omnidirectional Media Format and Its Application to Immersive Video Streaming: An Overview", 1 January 2018 (2018-01-01) (hereafter Xu) and in further view of Bouazizi; Imed et al. US 20190114830 A1 (hereafter Bouazizi) and further in view of INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION, Text of ISO/IEC FDIS 14496-11 2nd edition, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WGG11, CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO, MPEG2015/N15289, February 29, 2015, pp. i-549. Geneva, CH. (hereafter ISO/IEC 14496-11).
Regarding claim 1, “an information processing apparatus, comprising: circuitry configured to generate scene description data including metadata for six degrees of freedom (6DoF) content that represents a three-dimensional object in a three-dimensional space, wherein the scene description data is configured to permit free setting of both viewing direction and viewpoint position during playback of the 6DoF content, and wherein the scene description data further includes information configured to enable selection of a bit rate during distribution of the 6DoF content” Lim para 318-324 teaches a device for generating video information utilizing three dimensional image object data in a three dimensional space and controlling a transcoder based on the state of the device 52 to determine the images to be transmitted and generate metadata wherein the bandwidth, drop rate, network module performance and QoS information is taken into consideration and wherein the metadata may be determined based on the identified state information; para 62, 288-292, 320, 340 disclosing line of sight and Field of View data is taken into consideration when generating image data. However, whereas Lim teaches utilizing bandwidth, network module performance and QoS information at the time of distribution based on the state information, Lim does not disclose bit rate as claimed.
In an analogous art, He discloses the deficiency of Lim (para 96-99, 104, 173 – utilizing bitrate and/or resolution to determine the quality of the content at the time of distribution; see also para 121, 136 disclosing FOV and three dimensional tracking).
The motivation to modify Lim in further view of He is further evidence in the teachings of Xu disclosing the delivery of omnidirectional content based on the bitrate that would be sustained by the underlying network (pg. 6 col. 2:1-5; pg. 8 Section B Motion constrained Sub-picture encoding; pg. 9 Section D disclosing the bitrate variable of the current FoV at a particular quality).
The additional motivation to further modify Lim, Li, and Xu is further evidenced by Bouazizi para 66-70 disclosing client device sends a feedback which includes information on at least one of a viewport, view field and/or available streaming session bitrate (or bandwidth) wherein the feedback also includes channel state information (CSI), and the serve can determine an available bitrate or bandwidth based on the channel state information. A person of ordinary skill in the art would readily appreciate the benefit of scene description data further includes information configured to enable selection of a bit rate during distribution of the 6DoF content.
The motivation to modify Lim in further view of He is further evidenced in the teachings of ISO/IEC 14496-11 disclosing the representation of object descriptors that provide the configuration and other information for the streams that relate to either an audio-visual object or a scene description and wherein and identifier is used to associate audio-visual objects in the scene description with a particular object descriptor, and thus the elementary streams related to that particular object including the source of the stream data and encoding format (See Section 9.2.8) and also teaching the descriptor identifiers comprise bitrate information relating to the encoding format (Section 9.2.12 to 9.2.12.1, , 9.4.2.1.2 and section 5.21 disclosing bitrate as part of encoding data).
Note: See prior art made of record but not relied upon but pertinent to the claimed subject matter: MAZE; FRÉDÉRIC et al. US 20170223083 A1.
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lim’s invention disclosing an information processing device for generating video content information utilizing three dimensional image object data in a three dimensional space and controlling a transcoder based on the state of the device to determine the images to be transmitted and generate metadata wherein the bandwidth, drop rate, network module performance and QoS information is taken into consideration and wherein the metadata may be determined based on the identified state information by further incorporating known elements of He’s invention for utilizing bitrate and/or resolution to determine the quality of the content at the time of distribution of three dimensional objects in a three-dimensional space in order to improve the performance of omnidirectional video systems, through the selective delivery depending on the user’s FoV by taking into consideration the bandwidth fluctuations to vary the quality of the video delivered including resolution and/or bitrate as disclosed in the teachings of Xu and further because ISO/IEC 14496-11 discloses a standard for object-based multimedia scene in three-dimensional graphics and further teaches the representation of object descriptors that provide the configuration and other information for the streams that relate to either an audio-visual object or a scene description and wherein identifiers are used to associate audio-visual objects in the scene description with a particular object descriptor such that the elementary streams relate to that particular object including the source of the stream data and encoding format.
Regarding claim 2, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including access information for a control file that controls the playback of the 6DoF content” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein Xu pg. 5 Section IV A teaches a media presentation document (MPD) comprising appropriate descriptions as a delivery manifest comprising metadata); See also He para 97 and 105 MPD comprising metadata.
Regarding claim 3, “wherein the control file is a media presentation description (MPD), and wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including access information for an adaptation set corresponding to a level of detail (LoD) of the three-dimensional object, the adaptation set containing information on multiple bit rate variations for said LoD” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content which corresponds to a level of detail.
Regarding claim 4, “wherein the control file is a media presentation description (MPD), and wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data including access information for a representation within an adaptation set corresponding to the three-dimensional object, wherein the representation corresponds to a level of detail (LoD) of the three-dimensional object and includes information on multiple bit rate variations for the LoD” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content region (e.g., RWQR) which corresponds to a level of detail; see also Fig. 8 and para 136, 181 corresponds to three dimensional objects.
Regarding claim 5, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including access information for a desired MPD, information specifying a desired adaptation set within the desired MPD, and information specifying a desired representation within the desired adaptation set” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content which corresponds to a level of detail; see also para 98-99 wherein Adaptationset includes multiple Representations.
Regarding claim 6, “wherein the generation unit further generates an MPD that includes information for grouping together bit rate variations that are identical” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content which corresponds to a level of detail; see also para 98-99 wherein Adaptationset includes multiple Representations; [0099] A Representation may describe a deliverable encoded version of one or several media components, varying from other representations by bitrate, resolution, number of channels, and/or other characteristics. A (e.g., each) representation may include one or more segments. One or more attributes of a Representation element (e.g., such as @id, @bandwidth, @qualityRanking, and @dependencyId) may be used to specify one or more properties of the associated Representation.
Regarding claim 7, “wherein the control file includes a media presentation description (MPD), and wherein the generation unit further generates an MPD that does not include the access information to the scene description data” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 123 teaches restricting access to content wherein metadata discussed in the rejection of claim 1 renders obvious metadata description of media content.
Regarding claim 8, “wherein the scene description data includes spatial display control information based on the viewpoint position for viewing the 6DoF content, and wherein the generation unit is further configured to generate spatial display control information based on the viewpoint position, the spatial display control information including a node holding information which enables the selection of the bit rate during the distribution of the 6DoF content” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein Lim para 318-324 teaches a device for generating video information utilizing three dimensional image object data in a three dimensional space and controlling a transcoder based on the state of the device 52 to determine the images to be transmitted and generate metadata wherein the bandwidth, drop rate, network module performance and QoS information is taken into consideration and wherein the metadata may be determined based on the identified state information; para 62, 288-292, 320, 340 disclosing line of sight and Field of View data is taken into consideration when generating image data. However, whereas Lim teaches utilizing bandwidth, network module performance and QoS information at the time of distribution based on the state information, Lim does not disclose bit rate as claimed.
In an analogous art, He discloses the deficiency of Lim (para 96-99, 104, 173 – utilizing bitrate and/or resolution to determine the quality of the content at the time of distribution; see also para 121, 136 disclosing FOV and three dimensional tracking).
Regarding claim 11, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including information indicating a quality that can be maintained by uniformly controlling bit rates of a plurality of three-dimensional objects” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein one or more segments are encoded utilizing the same bitrates wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content which corresponds to a level of detail; see also para 98-99 wherein Adaptationset includes multiple Representations; [0099] A Representation may describe a deliverable encoded version of one or several media components, varying from other representations by bitrate, resolution, number of channels, and/or other characteristics. A (e.g., each) representation may include one or more segments. One or more attributes of a Representation element (e.g., such as @id, @bandwidth, @qualityRanking, and @dependencyId) may be used to specify one or more properties of the associated Representation.
Regarding claim 12, wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including information indicating a relative quality among a plurality of three-dimensional objects” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content region (e.g., RWQR) which corresponds to a level of detail; see also Fig. 8 and para 136, 181 corresponds to three dimensional objects.
Regarding claim 13, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including a quality ranking which indicates, by ranking, a quality of each bit rate variation of each three-dimensional object, as the information indicating the relative quality among the plurality of three-dimensional objects” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content region (e.g., RWQR) which corresponds to a level of detail; see also Fig. 8 and para 136, 181 corresponds to three dimensional objects; see also Xu pg. 3 col. 1 second paragraph and col. 2 paragraph 3 disclosing “quality ranking”; see also Xu pg. 4 col. 2 disclosing “Region Wise Quality Ranking”’ see also Xu pg. 5 Section IV A and pg. 8 Section A.
Regarding claim 14, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including a quality value which indicates, by a numerical value, a quality of each bit rate variation of each three-dimensional object, as the information indicating the relative quality among the plurality of three-dimensional objects” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content region (e.g., RWQR) which corresponds to a level of detail; see also Fig. 8 and para 136, 181 corresponds to three dimensional objects; see also Xu pg. 3 col. 1 second paragraph and col. 2 paragraph 3 disclosing “quality ranking”; see also Xu pg. 4 col. 2 disclosing “Region Wise Quality Ranking”’ see also Xu pg. 5-6 Section IV A and pg. 8 Section A disclosing quality ranking and selecting a bitrate that could be maintained by the underlying network.
Regarding claim 15, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including information that indicates, as information showing the relative quality among the plurality of three-dimensional objects, each bit rate variation of the three-dimensional object that is capable of simultaneous playback” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein the prior art teaches RWQR for regions to be simultaneously produced and wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content region (e.g., RWQR) which corresponds to a level of detail; see also Fig. 8 and para 136, 181 corresponds to three dimensional objects; see also Xu pg. 3 col. 1 second paragraph and col. 2 paragraph 3 disclosing “quality ranking”; see also Xu pg. 4 col. 2 disclosing “Region Wise Quality Ranking”’ see also Xu pg. 5-6 Section IV A and pg. 8 Section A disclosing quality ranking and selecting a bitrate that could be maintained by the underlying network.
Regarding claims 16, “wherein the generation unit generates the scene description data further including information indicating that a relative quality among a plurality of three-dimensional objects can be maintained when a level of detail of the three-dimensional objects is changed” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 wherein He para 94-101 teaches MPD comprising AdaptationSet including bitrate and quality of content region (e.g., RWQR) which corresponds to a level of detail; see also Fig. 8 and para 136, 181 corresponds to three dimensional objects; see also Xu pg. 3 col. 1 second paragraph and col. 2 paragraph 3 disclosing “quality ranking”; see also Xu pg. 4 col. 2 disclosing “Region Wise Quality Ranking”’ see also Xu pg. 5-6 Section IV A and pg. 8 Section A disclosing quality ranking and selecting a bitrate that could be maintained by the underlying network.
Regarding the method of claims 17 and 19, apparatus claim 18 the claims are grouped and rejected with the apparatus claims 1-8 and 11-16 because the elements of the apparatus are met by the disclosure of the apparatus and methods of the reference(s) as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-8 and 11-19 and because the elements of the apparatus are easily converted into steps of the method by one of ordinary skill in the art. With respect to the tree hierarchy not discussed in the rejection of claims 1-8 and 11-19, Bouazizi further teaches tree hierarchy as related to the limitation wherein para 102 states “3D scene representation metadata include a tree structured logical model describing a 3D scene for a render module by describing 6 degree spatio-temporal relationships among the natural and synthetic objects in a scene. The scene description may be a list of scene description fragments, each scene description fragment corresponding to a particular node of the tree (dependency) structure.”
Claim(s) 9-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over LIM; Jin-Ho et al. US 20170358126 A1 (hereafter Lim) and in further view of He; Yong et al. US 20200037029 A1 (hereafter He) and further in view of Yiling Xu ET AL: "Omnidirectional Media Format and Its Application to Immersive Video Streaming: An Overview", 1 January 2018 (2018-01-01) (hereafter Xu) and in further view of Bouazizi; Imed et al. US 20190114830 A1 (hereafter Bouazizi) and further in view of INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION FOR STANDARDISATION, Text of ISO/IEC FDIS 14496-11 2nd edition, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WGG11, CODING OF MOVING PICTURES AND AUDIO, MPEG2015/N15289, February 29, 2015, pp. i-549. Geneva, CH. (hereafter ISO/IEC 14496-11) and in further view of Wang; Ye-Kui et al. US 20180176468 A1 (hereafter Wang).
Regarding claim 9, “wherein the generation unit generates the spatial display control information based on the viewpoint position including a dedicated node that represents multiple bit rate variations of the three-dimensional object as a plurality of child nodes” the combination of Lim, He and Xu and Bouazizi disclose all the elements except a plurality of child nodes. See also ISO/IEC 14496-11 Section 8.2.1 Coding of individual nodes and field values is very regular, and follows a depth-first order (children or sub-nodes of a node are present in the bitstream before its siblings) and 8.14.2.1 space partitioning nodes (the SPs) occurring at various depth in the scene hierarchy. The type of each SP node is suited to the type of the object it is linked to. See also Lee para 272 a preprocessing process may be performed by transforming the depth map into a point cloud data type and allocating a position value of each object of an image in 3D, and a data type that may express 3D spatial information rather than the pointer cloud data type may be applied instead.
In an analogous art, Wang teaches the deficiency for providing variable bitrate content utilizing child notes comprising MPD elements (para 65, 71, 86, 133, 138, 145).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lim, He, Xu, Bouazizi and ISO/IEC 14496-11 disclosing an information processing device for generating video content information utilizing three dimensional image object data in a three dimensional space for generating content metadata by further incorporating known elements of Wang’s invention for providing variable bitrate content utilizing child notes comprising MPD elements for selective delivery depending on the user’s FoV by taking into consideration the bandwidth fluctuations to vary the quality of the video delivered including resolution and/or bitrate.
Regarding claim 10, “wherein the generation unit generates the spatial display control information based on the viewpoint position including the node, to which a field has been added, the field representing multiple bit rate variations of the three-dimensional object as a plurality of child nodes” is further rejected on obviousness grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 and 9 wherein Lim, He and Xu disclose all the elements including indicating the quality and bitrate of content except a plurality of child nodes. See Wang for teaching the deficiency for providing variable bitrate content utilizing child notes comprising MPD elements (para 65, 71, 86, 133, 138, 145).
Conclusion
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/ALFONSO CASTRO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2421
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