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) was submitted on 05/22/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Double Patenting
3. Claim 1 of this application is patentably indistinct from claim 1 of issued patents: US 10,979,710 the US 11,513,114 the US 11,973,946 and the US 12,235,475. Pursuant to 37 CFR 1.78(f), when two or more applications filed by the same applicant or assignee contain patentably indistinct claims, elimination of such claims from all but one application may be required in the absence of good and sufficient reason for their retention during pendency in more than one application. Applicant is required to either cancel the patentably indistinct claims from all but one application or maintain a clear line of demarcation between the applications. See MPEP § 822.
Rationale applied in support
The conflicting patents at their respective claim 1, recite similar semantic matter though through different syntax. Examiner remarks that it is common practice in the art to represent a recursive division of the luma blocks in square or rectangular sub-blocks, being further down-sampled in square/rectangular pixel blocks, e.g., quad partitioned blocks representing luma blocks of 4:4:4 (no down-sampling) format, and down-sampling the primary luma signal into rectangular chroma block formats i.e., 4:2:2 (down-sampling luma in horizontal direction only) and/or 4:2:0 (in both horizontal and vertical luma down-sampling) to predict the secondary chroma components by cross-component luma-chroma to be independently predicted by using luma samples to predict the chroma samples. The cross-component intra-prediction mode is applied to the luma blocks and separately to the chroma blocks according to the prediction mode and down-sampling the luma block size as a constraint to the cross-component being restricted as claimed;
“the cross-component intra prediction is restricted if a size of the primary signal block is greater than or equal to a predetermined size, and
wherein the secondary signal predictor downsamples the primary signal depending on a format of the primary signal and the secondary signal in the cross-component intra prediction.”.
The added limitation at the instant claim 1 reciting;
“wherein the secondary signal predictor downsamples the primary signal depending on a format of the primary signal and the secondary signal in the cross-component intra prediction.”, is interpreted in view of the ordinary skilled in the art finding obvious to apply known techniques of independent prediction of the luma block and the down-sampled derived chroma blocks, in a cross-component prediction.
It is concluded that the captured claim summary in scope is recited without distinction at the conflicting patents where the alternate terminology reciting the “primary signal” defines the luma signal components/pixels and where the “secondary signal” is represented by the chroma signal components to which the luma block size constraint is applied in order to eliminate extra cross-component block dependencies.
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens.
Based on precedent case examination and the supplementary search and consideration, the application would be placed in condition of allowance by addressing the terms of the above Terminal Disclaimer.
Otherwise, the Application would be rejected according to the 35 U.S.C.103 obviousness statute below stated.
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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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 does not name joint inventors.
4. Claims 1-7, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Fukushima Shigeru et al., (hereinafter Fukushima) (TW 201336318A) and Christopher Rosewarne (hereinafter Rosewarne) (US 2015/0326883) in view of Kazushi Sato (hereinafter Sato) (US 2014/0003512).
Re Claim 1. Fukushima discloses, a picture encoding device that divides a picture into blocks, performs encoding for each of the divided blocks and generates a bitstream, the picture encoding device (Abstract, by a bitstream generator 112 in Fig.1) comprising:
a primary signal block divider structured to divide a primary signal of the picture into rectangular blocks and generate a primary signal block (dividing recursively the primary block i.e., a luma block, into rectangular blocks, “Background Art”);
a secondary signal block divider structured to divide a secondary signal of the picture into rectangular blocks (dividing the image in rectangular blocks per Fig.6) and generate a secondary signal block (where the secondary signal is generated by dividing the primary block into secondary signal blocks, by sampling the luma block into two color blocks, i.e., chroma blocks of 4:2:0, 4:2:2 format at “Background Art”);
a primary signal predictor structured to predict a primary signal (the primary signal block per Fig,3(c));
a secondary signal predictor structured to predict a secondary signal (secondary signal predictor set for the color sampled blocks, 4:2:0 Fig.3(a) and 4:2:2 Fig.3(b)); and
wherein the primary signal is a luminance signal and the secondary signal is a color difference signal (per Fig.3 the primary signal being the luma and secondary signal the chroma pixel at their respective positions at Background Art) ,
wherein the secondary signal predictor can select a cross-component intra prediction of predicting a secondary signal from an encoded primary signal (the prediction unit 103, Fig.1 corresponding to each split mode or partition mode PartMode corresponding to the luma signal and the color difference, citing; “intra-picture color difference i.e., secondary signal predictor, prediction mode is only selected, the value predicted from the intra-picture brightness prediction mode corresponding to the color difference format” at section (About intra-prediction, intra prediction mode),
wherein the primary signal block and the secondary signal block are divided independent of each other in case of intra prediction (independently coding the divided luminance and color difference signal, as cited from (color difference format) section;
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from color difference format citing for brevity,
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), but
the cross-component intra prediction is restricted if a size of the primary signal block is greater than or equal to a predetermined size (the size of the tree block, i.e., the primary block to which the sampling is applied to obtain the secondary signal blocks, is set to a luminance signal of 64x64 where the secondary chroma blocks are 32x32 pixels size, as citing;
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, per Fig.6), and
wherein the secondary signal predictor downsamples the primary signal depending on a format of the primary signal and the secondary signal in the cross-component intra prediction (the secondary chroma signal is the result of a down-sampled luma signal according to the chroma formats in Fig.3a and 3b, at Background -Art).
In a wider claim interpretation, the analogous art to Rosewarne teaches in detail the recursive division of the picture blocks (an encoder Fig.1, dividing the video data and encoding each divided blocks, Par.[0090])
a primary signal block divider (Par.[0002]) structured to divide a primary signal of the picture into rectangular blocks and generate a primary signal block (a luminance signal block recursively divided representing the luma blocks, of a predetermined block size e.g., generating a plurality of 4x4 luma blocks e.g., the luma channel, Fig.15 at the Y component recursively divided at Case 1-3, Par.[0029],[0161]-[0165] and encoding the luma blocks, Par.[0036], Fig.6A-C Fig.15, Fig.16 of rectangular blocks i.e., a quadtree split coding tree blocks, CTB, Par.[0015, 0090, 0119] and generating the primary signal);
a secondary signal block divider structured to divide a secondary signal of the picture into rectangular blocks and generate a secondary signal block (recursively dividing the residual sample array into separate chroma residual sample arrays per Fig.18 the U-V components e.g., the second signal of the picture into rectangular sizes, Par.[0106] by the 4:2:2 chroma format, Par.[0028],[0034] or 4:2:0 format Par.[0104], being predicted in the decoding loop of the encoder, Par.[0030]-[0031] further encoded at Par.[0037]-[0038] and generating the secondary signal);
a primary signal predictor structured to predict a primary signal (generating the luma block predictors, of a predetermined block size e.g., a plurality of 4x4 luma blocks e.g., the luma channel, Fig.15 at the Y component recursively divided at Case 1-3, Par.[0029],[0161]-[0165] and encoding the luma blocks, Par.[0036], Fig.6A-C Fig.15, Fig.16 of rectangular blocks i.e., a quadtree split coding tree blocks, CTB, Par.[0015, 0090, 0119]); and
a secondary signal predictor structured to predict a secondary signal (per Fig.16 Par.[0119-0120] or in alternative, Par.[0142]),
wherein the primary signal is a luminance signal and the secondary signal is a color difference signal (as above limitations, being established that the primary signal is a luma signal/block and the secondary signal represents the chroma signal/block),
wherein the primary signal block and the secondary signal block are divided independent of each other in case of intra prediction (separately e.g., independently coding the color, i.e., chroma channels and the luma i.e., primary signal Par.[0092], where the luma Y, and chroma U,V blocks are individually divided in separate blocks and follows separate i.e., independent intra processing paths, per Fig.9B and described at Par.[0122] cited below for brevity
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),
wherein the secondary signal predictor downsamples the primary signal depending on a format of the primary signal and the secondary signal in the cross-component intra prediction (the secondary chroma signals 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 are derived from the primary 4:4:4, luma signal per Figs.5A and 5B, Par.[0104-0105]).
Sato teaches about, a primary signal block divider structured to divide a primary signal of the picture into rectangular blocks and generate a primary signal block (per Fig.25);
a secondary signal block divider structured to divide a secondary signal of the picture into rectangular blocks and generate a secondary signal block (at step S230 in Fig.25);
a primary signal predictor structured to predict a primary signal (step S210-S220 in Fig.25); and
a secondary signal predictor structured to predict a secondary signal (at steps S230-S260 of Fig.25),
wherein the primary signal is a luminance signal and the secondary signal is a color difference signal (at step S230 in Fig.25 and Figs.26-28),
wherein the secondary signal predictor downsamples the primary signal depending on a format of the primary signal and the secondary signal in the cross-component intra prediction (per Figs.25-28).
The ordinary skilled in the art would have fond obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to combine the anticipatory art to Fukushima with teachings for dividing the video luminance in order to convert to color difference formats and code the blocks independently found in Rosewarne, with the similar approach and seek to evade complex methods leading to low rate distortion as found in Sato restricting the intra-prediction of the chroma divided blocks according to different predetermined sizes of the luma divided blocks by which presenting the advantage of reducing the intra-predicted complexity of the chroma block components while the inter-prediction is directed to equal size luma-chroma blocks, hence deeming the claimed limitation predictable in view of the ordinary skilled guided by suggestions found in Rosewarne for improving the prediction technique.
The rationale to combine finds support in the Graham factual inquiries necessary to substantiate the above combination, in view of the instant fact case under consideration and in accordance with explaining the conclusion of obviousness in view of the provisions stipulated in MPEP 2143: Basic Requirements of a Prima Facie Case of Obviousness. I (A-E). EXEMPLARY RATIONALES
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that may support a conclusion of obviousness above evidenced, including :
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(A) Combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results;
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(B) Simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results;
(C) Use of known technique to improve similar devices (methods, or products) in the same way;
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(D) Applying a known technique to a known device (method, or product) ready for improvement to yield predictable results;
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(E) "Obvious to try" – choosing from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, with a reasonable expectation of success;
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See precedence in: “The Federal Circuit recognized Agrizap as "a textbook case of when the asserted claims involve a combination of familiar elements according to known methods that does no more than yield predictable results." Id. Agrizap exemplifies a strong case of obviousness based on simple substitution that was not overcome by the objective evidence of nonobviousness offered. It also demonstrates that analogous art is not limited to the field of applicant’s endeavor, in that one of the references that used an animal body as a resistive switch to complete a circuit for the generation of an electric charge was not in the field of pest control.”
Re Claim 2. This claim represents the picture encoding method performing each and every limitation and in the same order as implemented by the encoding device of claim 1, hence it is rejected under the same evidentiary premises, mutatis mutandis.
Re Claim 3. This claim represents the picture decoding device implementing each and every limitation in the same order as implemented at the prediction/decoding processing loop, of the encoding device of claim 1, hence it is rejected under the same evidentiary premises, mutatis mutandis.
Re Claim 4. This claim represents the picture decoding method performing each and every limitation in the same order as implemented at the decoding device of claim 3, hence it is rejected under the same evidentiary premises, mutatis mutandis.
Re Claim 5. This claim represents the method of transmitting a bitstream generated by a picture encoding device, per Rosewarne (a transmitter 116 Par.[0064]) and performing each and every limitation and in the same order as implemented by the encoding device of claim 2, hence it is rejected under the same evidentiary premises, mutatis mutandis.
Re Claim 6. A method of storing a bitstream generated by a picture encoding method per Sato (a bitstream storage, Par.[0199]) and performing each and every limitation and in the same order as implemented by the encoding device of claim 2, hence it is rejected under the same evidentiary premises, mutatis mutandis.
Re Claim 7. This claim represents the non-transitory computer-readable recording medium storing a bitstream comprising information on whether luminance color difference intra prediction is used or not, in which a picture program code is used in the prediction method performing each and every limitation and in the same order as implemented by the encoding device of claim 2, per (Rosewarne Par.[0003]), hence it is rejected under the same evidentiary premises, mutatis mutandis.
Conclusion
5. The prior art made of record and not relied upon, is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2016/0119631; US 2016/0100175; US 10,200,719; or
Chen, et al, "Algorithm Description of Joint Exploration Test Model 5 (JEM 5)", Joint Video Exploration Team (JVET) of ITU-T SG 16 WP 3 and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 11, 5th Meeting, Geneva, CH 12-20 January 2017.
See PTO-892 form. Applicant is required under 37 C.F.R. 1.111(c) to consider these references when responding to this action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DRAMOS KALAPODAS whose telephone number is (571)272-4622. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 8am-5pm.
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/DRAMOS KALAPODAS/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
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