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 .
Detailed Action
This office Action is in response to an application filed on 08/14/2025 is a CON of 18/677,982 filed on 05/30/2024 (PAT 12418674), which is a CON of 17/780,085 filed on 05/26/2022 (PAT 12041263), claiming priority to 371 of PCT/JP2020/043940 filed on 11/26/2020, in which claims 1-3 are pending and are being examined.
Priority
Acknowledgement is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C § 119(a)-(d). Claimed foreign priority to JAPAN 2019-218449 filed on 12/03/2019. The certified copy of priority has been filed on 01/12/2012.
Information Disclosure Statement
This information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 08/14/2025, and 05/27/2026. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vadim et al. (“AHG8: Enabling BDOF and DMVR for reference picture resampling”, JVET-O0242-v1, Gothenburg, SE, 3-12 July 2019), hereinafter Vadim, in view of Park et al. (US 20200314445 A1), hereinafter Park. Claims 2 and 3 can be rejected similarly as Claim 1. Vadim is cited by the applicant in IDS.
Regarding claim 1, Vadim discloses a video decoding apparatus comprising (Abstract): a weighted prediction circuit configured to decode weight coefficient for an L0 prediction of a luminance component, weight coefficient for an Li prediction of the luminance component, weight coefficient for an L0 prediction of a chrominance component and weight coefficient for an L1 prediction of the chrominance component (Abstract, BDOF & DMVR); and a prediction image generation circuit configured to perform a Bi-Directional Optical Flow (BDOF) prediction for generating a prediction image (Section 1, BDOF), wherein in a case that a condition is satisfied, the prediction image generation circuit sets a fifth flag, indicating whether to perform the BDOF prediction, equal to 1, wherein the condition includes a value of the first flag being 0, a value of the second flag being 0, a value of the third flag being 0 and a value of the fourth flag being 0, in case that a value of the fifth flag is equal to 1, the prediction image generation circuit derives variables of a gradient image from interpolation images, derives an offset by using the variables, and generates the prediction image by using the offset and the interpolation images (Section 1 & 2).
Vadim discloses all the elements of claim 1 but Vadim does not appear to explicitly disclose in the cited section decode a first flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an L0; a second flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an Li prediction; a third flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an L0 prediction; a fourth flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an Li.
However, Park from the same or similar endeavor teaches a first flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an L0; a second flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an Li prediction; a third flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an L0 prediction; a fourth flag indicating presence or absence of a weight coefficient for an Li ([0089], [0126]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Vadim to incorporate the teachings of Park to produce high efficiency image and video (Park, [0005]). Similar reasoning/motivation of modification can be applied/extended to the other related/dependent claims.
Examiner’s Note
Please consider Park et al. (US 11,140,409 B2), Claim 1, for advancing the prosecution.
Conclusion
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/Mohammad J Rahman/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
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