DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is a response to an application filed on 07/10/2025, in which claims 1-20 are pending and ready for examination.
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 11/06/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Interpretation
Claim 20’s recitation of a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a video media bitstream that is encoded by an encoding method…” is a product by process claim limitation where the product is the bitstream and the process is the method steps to generate the bitstream. MPEP §2113 recites “Product-by-Process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”. Thus, the scope of the claim is the computer readable medium storing the bitstream (with the structure implied by the method steps). The structure includes the encoder, the current video block, the motion information, and other information manipulated by the steps.
To be given patentable weight, the computer readable medium (a storage medium) 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 storage medium 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 storage medium storing the claimed bitstream in claim 20 merely services as a support for the storage of the bitstream and provides no functional relationship between the stored bitstream and storage medium. Therefor the structure of the 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.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Du (US 2023/0077218 A1) in view of Zhao (US 2013/0113880 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Du discloses: A method of video decoding, comprising:
receiving a bitstream that comprises coded information of one or more pictures (see Fig. 5 and paragraph 80);
deriving motion vector information associated with a current chroma sample of a current block in a current picture (see Fig. 5 and paragraph 87, the addresses within the reference picture memory (557) from where the motion compensation prediction unit (553) fetches prediction samples can be controlled by motion vectors, available to the motion compensation prediction unit (553) in the form of symbols (521) that can have, for example X, Y, and reference picture components. Also see paragraph 116), the motion vector information pointing to a reference sample in a reference picture of the current picture (see paragraph 114);
applying an adaptive loop filter (see paragraph 134) on the reference sample and one or more neighboring samples of the reference sample in the reference picture (see paragraph 87) to generate a filtering offset for the current chroma sample in the current picture (see paragraph 177-179); and
generating a filtered value of the current chroma sample according to the filtering offset (see paragraph 178).
Du does not explicitly disclose: the adaptive loop filter is of a temporal domain.
However, Zhao from the same or similar endeavor discloses: the adaptive loop filter is of a temporal domain (see Zhao, Fig. 3 and paragraph 123, converting the residual from spatial domain to frequency domain).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to have an “adaptive loop filter of a temporal domain” as taught by Zhao in the video coding method taught by Du to optimize the adaptive loop filtering of compressed video image characteristics (see Zhao, paragraph 2).
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, further comprising:
determining a classification from a plurality of classifications based on the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 138 and 146); and
selecting filter coefficients of the adaptive loop filter according to the classification (see Du, paragraph 147-149).
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 2, wherein the determining the classification comprises:
calculating quantized sample values of the current chroma sample and one or more neighboring chroma samples of the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 145-146);
calculating at least one of a gradient of the current chroma sample and/or an activity of the current chroma sample based on the quantized sample values (see Du, paragraph 147-148); and
determining the classification according to at least one of the gradient of the current chroma sample and/or the activity of the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 147-149).
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 2, wherein the determining the classification comprises:
calculating a quantized sample value of the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 145-146); and
determining the classification according to the quantized sample value (see Du, paragraph 146).
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the applying the adaptive loop filter comprises:
applying a non-linear clipping function on differences of the one or more neighboring samples to the reference sample to generate clipped differences (see Du, paragraph 160-162); and
calculating the filtering offset based on the clipped differences (see Du, paragraph 149-150).
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, further comprising at least one of:
decoding a flag associated with a region of the current picture including the current chroma sample, the flag with a true value indicating to filter chroma samples in the region based on reference samples in the reference picture, the flag with a false value indicating not to filter the chroma samples in the region based on the reference samples in the reference picture (see Du, paragraph 151-152); and
deriving the flag of the false value when the region is coded by intra prediction (see Du, paragraph 151 and 183).
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 6, wherein the region comprises at least one of:
the current picture (see Du, paragraph 81);
a slice that includes the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 81); or
a block that includes the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 81).
Regarding claim 8, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 6, further comprising:
deriving the flag based on at least one of:
a block size of a block including the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 183);
a temporal layer identification;
a gradient mode;
a motion vector level;
a reference picture index; and/or
an index difference of the reference picture to the current picture.
Regarding claim 9, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, where the deriving comprises:
deriving the motion vector information of the current chroma sample based on a scaling of motion vector information of a collocated luma sample of the current chroma sample according to a color format (see Du, paragraph 114-116).
Regarding claim 10, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, where the deriving comprises:
scaling first motion vector information of a collocated luma sample of the current chroma sample according to a color format to obtain second motion vector information (see Du, paragraph 85 and 183); and
rounding the second motion vector information to an integer precision to obtain the motion vector information of the current chroma sample (see Du, paragraph 183).
Regarding claim 11, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the reference sample and the one or more neighboring samples of the reference sample are chroma samples, and the adaptive loop filter of the temporal domain has a same filter shape and a same number of filter coefficients as another adaptive loop filter of the temporal domain for applying on luma samples (see Du, Fig. 9 and paragraph 136 and 180).
Regarding claim 12, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the reference sample and the one or more neighboring samples of the reference sample are chroma samples, and the adaptive loop filter of the temporal domain has a different shape and a different number of filter coefficients from another adaptive loop filter of the temporal domain for applying on luma samples (see Du, Fig. 9 and paragraph 136 and 180).
Regarding claim 13, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 1, wherein the reference sample and the one or more neighboring samples of the reference sample are luma samples (see Du, paragraph 134).
Regarding claim 14, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 13, wherein the adaptive loop filter has a same filter shape as a spatial domain cross-component adaptive loop filter (see Du, paragraph 180).
Regarding claim 15, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 13, wherein the deriving comprises:
deriving the motion vector information of the current chroma sample based on first motion vector information of a collocated luma sample of the current chroma sample without scaling (see Du, paragraph 114-116).
Regarding claim 16, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 15, further comprising:
rounding the motion vector information of the current chroma sample to an integer precision (see Du, paragraph 183).
Regarding claim 17, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 15, wherein the motion vector information includes a non-integer motion vector, and the method comprises:
generating the luma samples in the reference picture according to the motion vector information with an application of motion compensation (see Du, paragraph 87).
Regarding claim 18, the combination of Du and Zhao discloses: The method of claim 15, wherein the motion vector information includes a bi-directional motion vector that points to first luma samples in a first reference picture and second luma samples in a second reference picture (see Du, paragraph 109), and the method comprises:
calculating the luma samples by weighted average of the first luma samples and the second luma samples (see Du, paragraph 283 and 301).
Regarding claim 19, claim 19 is drawn to an encoding method having limitations similar to the decoding method claimed in claim 1 treated in the above rejections. Therefore, method claim 19 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of anticipation as used above.
Regarding claim 20, claim 20 is drawn to a computer readable medium having limitations similar to the decoding method claimed in claim 1 treated in the above rejections. Therefore, CRM claim 20 corresponds to method claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of anticipation as used above. Furthermore, please see paragraphs 304-307 and Fig. 39 of Du for a computer readable medium storing a bitstream.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARYAM A NASRI whose telephone number is (571)270-7158. The examiner can normally be reached 10:00-8:00 M-T.
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/MARYAM A NASRI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2483
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