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(s) submitted on 4/24/2026, and 5/14/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pfaff (WO 2019072921 A1) (hereinafter Pfaff) in view of Deng et al. (US 11659185 B2) (hereinafter Deng).
Regarding claim 1, Pfaff discloses:
A video decoding method, wherein a set of neural networks perform intra-prediction based on a size of a block, the method comprising: [See Pfaff, pg. 11 line 25 – line 36 discloses side information as an index into an ordered list of intra-prediction modes ordered according to probability values output by a neural network for neural network-based intra-prediction modes within a set, thereby optimizing or r educing the code rate for side information.]
obtaining, for at least one block in a picture or video, at least information representative that an intra prediction is a neural network-based prediction; [See Pfaff, pg. 11 line 25 – line 36 discloses side information as an index into an ordered list of intra-prediction modes ordered according to probability values output by a neural network for neural network-based intra-prediction modes within a set.]
obtaining a block context for the at least one block; [See Pfaff, pg. 10 lines 11-18, Fig. 5 illustrates a current block (18) and a block “context” as the neighboring samples to current block 18.]
Pfaff does not appear to explicitly disclose:
downsampling the block context such that its size matches a context size, wherein the downsampled context is associated with a downsampled block that the neural network can predict based on its size;
performing intra prediction of the downsampled block by feeding the downsampled block context into a neural network selected based on the size of the downsampled block; and
interpolating the predicted block to match the size of the at least one block.
However, Deng discloses:
downsampling the block context such that its size matches a context size, wherein the downsampled context is associated with a downsampled block that the neural network can predict based on its size; [See Deng, col. 1 lines 37-48, col. 24 lines 30-40, col. 42 lines 21 – 35 discloses a boundary downsampling operation which specifies/normalizes a downsampled boundary size.]
performing intra prediction of the downsampled block by feeding the downsampled block context into a neural network selected based on the size of the downsampled block; and [See Deng, col. 57 line 54 – col. 58 line 26 discloses performing an intra prediction on a downsampled block following a boundary downsampling operation.]
interpolating the predicted block to match the size of the at least one block. [See Deng, col. 57 line 38 – line 53 discloses performing a linear interpolation operation (an upsampling operation) to a corresponding size of a downsampling operation.]
It would have been obvious to the person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention disclosed by Pfaff to add the teachings of Deng in order to provide reduced boundary samples, downsampling and corresponding upsampling to improve coding efficiency.
Regarding claim 2, Pfaff in view of Deng discloses all the limitations of claim 1.
Deng discloses:
wherein factors for downsampling comprise a first factor for a horizontal direction and a second factor for a vertical direction. [See Deng, col. 42 line 21 – line 67 discloses samples being downsampled and correspondingly upsampled along a first dimension (horizontally) in a first filtering stage, and along a second dimension (vertically) in a second filtering stage.]
The reasons to combine the cited prior art are applicable to those presented for previously rejected claim 1.
Regarding claim 3, Pfaff in view of Deng discloses all the limitations of claim 2.
Deng discloses:
wherein factors used for upsampling are the same as the factors used for the downsampling. [See Deng, col. 42 lines 30-40 discloses a downscaling factor being computed by a transform block size and a downsampled boundary size; See Deng, col. 10 lines 42-45 discloses defining an upsampling factor.]
The reasons to combine the cited prior art are applicable to those presented for previously rejected claim 1.
Regarding claim 4, Pfaff in view of Deng discloses all the limitations of claim 1.
Pfaff discloses:
wherein the block context comprises pixels of blocks located at a top side, at a left side, at a diagonal top left side, at a diagonal top right side, and at a diagonal bottom left side of the at least one block. [See Pfaff, Fig. 5 illustrates neighboring samples (60, 62) to a current block, wherein one of ordinary skill would readily understand that spatially neighboring blocks to a top, left, diagonal top-left, diagonal top-right, and diagonal bottom-left are routinely and conventionally employed in the art in intra-prediction schemes.]
Regarding claim 6, Pfaff in view of Deng discloses all the limitations of claim 1.
Deng discloses:
wherein the block context is transposed prior to performing the intra prediction and a predicted block resulting from the neural network based intra prediction is transposed back after the intra prediction. [See Deng, col. 44 lines 4-16 discloses the prediction samples in ALWIP before up-sampling may be transposed according to the block dimensions. a. In one example, a W*H block may be firstly transposed to H*W block, then up-sampling may be applied. Alternatively, furthermore, after the up-sampling process, the up-sampled samples may be transposed in a reversed way.]
The reasons to combine the cited prior art are applicable to those presented for previously rejected claim 1.
Regarding claim 7, Pfaff in view of Deng discloses all the limitations of claim 1.
Deng discloses:
wherein the neural network-based intra prediction is done in both luminance and chrominance of the at least one block. [See Deng, col. 49 lines 37-41 discloses determining that a luma component of a current video block is coded using an affine linear weighted intra prediction mode, and inferring a chroma intra mode.]
The reasons to combine the cited prior art are applicable to those presented for previously rejected claim 1.
Regarding claim 8, Pfaff in view of Deng discloses all the limitations of claim 1.
Pfaff discloses:
wherein signaling information is encoded in a bitstream and comprises a flag indicating that a neural network-based intra prediction mode is selected for the at least one block, the flag being based on a set of flags representing a plurality of intra prediction modes arranged in a binary tree for being encoded in a bitstream and wherein the flag indicating that neural network-based intra prediction mode is selected is located at a first level of the tree and encoded with a single bin. [See Pfaff, pg. 4 line 33 – pg. 5 line 4, pg. 5 lines 14-24, pg. 25 lines 16-35 discloses signaling a flag within side information which indicates whether an intra-prediction mode determined to be the best mode for a current block is within a set (72) is neural network based intra-prediction mode.]
Regarding claim 9, Pfaff discloses this claim recites analogous limitations to claim 1, and is therefore rejected on the same premise. Please see examiner’s earlier rejection of claim 1 for corresponding motivation statement.
Further, claim 9 recites the following limitations which are not explicitly found from claim 1 in the form of “A non-transitory computer readable medium” rather than “a video decoding method”, but are addressed as follows:
Pfaff discloses:
A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 1. [See Pfaff, pg. 30 line 30 – pg. 31 line 22 discloses a computer program product with program code operative for performing the disclosed video coding methods. Further, that the program code may be stored on a machine readable carrier.]
Regarding claim 10, One of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention would have been aware that decoding is simply the inverse operation of encoding and, in fact is often more generally referred to as "coding", encompassing both. Such a person would have been aware that in order to most accurately decode, it is typically best to use the same method on both the encoding and decoding ends.
Claim 10 thus recites analogous limitations to claim 1, and is therefore rejected based on the decoding method of claim 1 performing the complimentary operations of the corresponding encoding process with respect to video encoding method claim 10 as such. Please see examiner’s earlier rejection of claim 1 for corresponding motivation statement.
Regarding claim 11, Pfaff discloses:
A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 10. [See Pfaff, pg. 30 line 30 – pg. 31 line 22 discloses a computer program product with program code operative for performing the disclosed video coding methods. Further, that the program code may be stored on a machine readable carrier.]
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 5 is 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 PATRICK E DEMOSKY whose telephone number is (571)272-8799. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 7-4 EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jamie Atala can be reached at 5712727384. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PATRICK E DEMOSKY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2486
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