DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
2. Claims 11-15 and 20 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.
Claim 11 is directed to; A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing a
bitstream generated by the method for video encoding according to claim 1.
Claim 11 is vague because the limitation recited in the preamble does not make it clear whether the computer readable medium contains programs or instructions to perform the video encoding or not.
In accordance with compact prosecution as prescribed in MPEP 2173.06, claim language
Is interpreted as follows:
Patentable weight is given to data stored on a computer-readable medium when there
exists a functional relationship between the data and its associated substrate. MPEP 2111.05 III. For example, if a claim is drawn to a computer-readable medium containing programming, a functional relationship exists if the programming "performs some function with respect to the
computer with which it is associated." Id. However, if the claim recites that the computer-readable medium merely serves as a support for information or data, no functional relationship exists and the information or data is not given patentable weight. Id.
Claim 11 is directed to a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing a bitstream generated by the method for video encoding. The elements or steps are not performed by an intended computer, and the bitstream is not a form of programming that causes functions to be performed by an intended computer. This shows that the computer-readable medium merely serves as support and/or storing the bitstream/data and provides no functional relationship between the elements of the claim by intended computer system. Therefore, those claim elements are not given patentable weight.
Claims 12-15, as a whole, are also rejected by virtue of their dependency to the above claim 11.
Claim 20 is also rejected for the same reason as set forth in claim 11 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
3. Claims 1-10 and 16-19 are allowed.
4. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: The closes prior art of the record, such as Xu et al. (US 2020/0228815) teaches, a method for video coding comprising; determining, in response to a current block being eligible for both applications of Decoder-side Motion
Vector Refinement (DMVR) and Bi-Directional Optical Flow (BDOF), whether a pre-defined criterion
based on mode information of the current block is satisfied, and avoiding, in response to the pre-defined criterion being satisfied, applying BDOF to a subblock in the current block (e.g., figs. 4-7, abstract, paragraphs 0017,0144-0146,0176-0177,0198,0209).
The prior art of the record or prior art found during Examiner's search fails to anticipate or fairly suggest the limitations; pre-defined criterion is satisfied, wherein the pre-defined criterion comprises a sum of absolute differences (SAD) or a sum of squared differences (SSD) between list 0 predicted
samples and list 1 predicted samples of the current block is less than a pre-defined threshold number based on block size; avoiding, in response to the pre-defined criterion being satisfied, applying BDOF to a subblock in the current block; and forming a bitstream based on prediction mode information of the current block; wherein the current block is associated with any one of a quad split process, a binary split
process or a ternary split process, and wherein the current block being eligible for an application of DMVR satisfies conditions comprising: a distance between a current picture and a forward reference picture and a distance between the current picture and a backward reference picture are same;
a height of the current block is equal or greater than 8; the current block is not coded as affine mode;
the current block is not coded as sub-block merge mode; and the current block is not coded as Merge mode with Motion Vector Differences (MMVD) mode, as specifies in independent claim 1, and similar limitations in independent claims 6 and 16.
Claims 2-5,7-10 and 17-19 are allowed, at least, by virtue of their dependency to the above allowable independent claims.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Contact Information
5. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner
should be directed to Behrooz Senfi, whose telephone number is (571)272-7339. The examiner can
normally be reached on Monday-Friday 10:00-6:00.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a
USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use
the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor,
Christopher Kelley can be reached on 571 272 7331. The fax phone number for the organization where
this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application
Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained
from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available
through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see
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the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a
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/BEHROOZ M SENFI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2482
Prosecution Insights