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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
When the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers transitory media or a signal per se, the claim must be rejected under 35 US.C. § 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter. See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1356-57 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (transitory embodiments are not directed to statutory subject matter)
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim is directed to a “bitstream” which embodies a signal per se.
Claims 1-3, 11-15, 17-19 are rejected as being directed toward patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101, under the “Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance” issued on January 7, 2019 (Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 4, 50).
The claims are directed to statutory categories of methods (under Step 1).
Upon analysis of the present claims under the broadest reasonable interpretation (under Step 2A, prong one), the claims appear to recite a judicial exception, an abstract idea directed to mathematical concepts and functions of “determining a volume of a bounding box of a current node, and determining a number of points of the current node … decoding geometric information of the current node … reconstructing the current node according to the geometric information … determining that there is an error in decoding when the volume of the bounding box and the number of points do not meet the preset condition … ” This is consistent with the decision in Ex parte Desjardins, 2024-000567.
Upon consideration of the record (under Step 2A, prong two), Examiner did not find that the additional elements of the present claims integrate the judicial exception into a practical application of that judicial exception “in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception, such that the claim is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the judicial exception.”
The additional elements, when considered individually or in a claim as a whole, do not seem to reflect a substantive improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field under the standards of the present judicial guidance; (using a computer to perform numerical operation does not improve the structure of the computer); do not seem use a judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim (general purpose processing circuitry is not a particular machine); do not seem to effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing (conversion of a numerical value from one format to another is not a physical transformation).
This is further evidenced in that the additional elements, merely recite the words ‘‘apply it’’ (or an equivalent producing, using) with the judicial exception, or merely includes instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea; adds insignificant extra-solution activity to the judicial exception (i.e. obtaining, analyzing, transforming, or outputting information for use with the judicial exception as in CyperSource and Mayo); do no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (i.e. linked to a computer or other well-established activities in the art).
The additional claim elements do not change the nature of the abstract idea, as being directed to: information (volume of a bounding box, number of points, a preset condition, point cloud, identification information, syntax element, length, width, height), collecting information (determining); outputting information (determining ), and/or analyzing information at a high degree of algorithmic generality (initializing). These categories have been identified as abstract ideas by the Federal Circuit as summarized in Electric Power Group, LLC v. ALSTOM SA, 830 F. 3d 1350, 1354 (Fed. Cir. 2016):
Information as such is an intangible. See Microsoft Corp. v. AT & T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 451 n.12, 127 S.Ct. 1746, 167 L.Ed.2d 737 (2007); Bayer AG v. Housey Pharm., Inc., 340 F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2003). Accordingly, we have treated collecting information, including when limited to particular content (which does not change its character as information), as within the realm of abstract ideas. See, e.g., Internet Patents, 790 F.3d at 1349; OIP Techs., Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, Nat'l Ass'n, 776 F.3d 1343, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2014); Digitech Image Techs., LLC v. Elecs. for Imaging, Inc., 758 F.3d 1344, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2014); CyberSource Corp. 1354*1354 v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1370 (Fed. Cir. 2011). In a similar vein, we have treated analyzing information by steps people go through in their minds, or by mathematical algorithms, without more, as essentially mental processes within the abstract-idea category. See, e.g., TLI Commc'ns, 823 F.3d at 613; Digitech, 758 F.3d at 1351; SmartGene, Inc. v. Advanced Biological Labs., SA, 555 Fed.Appx. 950, 955 (Fed. Cir. 2014); Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada (U.S.), 687 F.3d 1266, 1278 (Fed. Cir. 2012); CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2011); SiRF Tech., Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 601 F.3d 1319, 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2010); see also Mayo, 132 S.Ct. at 1301; Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 589-90, 98 S.Ct. 2522, 57 L.Ed.2d 451 (1978); Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67, 93 S.Ct. 253, 34 L.Ed.2d 273 (1972). And we have recognized that merely presenting the results of abstract processes of collecting and analyzing information, without more (such as identifying a particular tool for presentation), is abstract as an ancillary part of such collection and analysis. See, e.g., Content Extraction, 776 F.3d at 1347; Ultramercial, Inc. v. Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 715 (Fed. Cir. 2014).
Finally, the claimed elements, when considered individually and in combination (under step 2B), do not seem to provide an Inventive Concept that is “significantly more” than the ineligible subject matter. The claims simply append well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry to the judicial exception, at a high level of generality (A method … applied to a decoder, … applied to an encoder without limitation of a decoder, an encoder or the intended application).
The claims rejected under this section should be amended to include meaningful limitations within the technical field. For example, Claim 8 recites an application of “decoding a bitstream.”
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.
Claims 1-6, 8-9, 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20240331206 to Oh (“Oh”) in view of US 20200296397 to Wang (“Wang”).
Regarding Claim 1: “A method for decoding, applied to a decoder, comprising:
determining a volume of a bounding box of a current node, (“Referring to FIG. 33, the bitstream may include … position (coordinate) information, size information ( width, depth, height), etc. about the bounding box … logarithmic scale of the box, the maximum node size, and the number of points.” Oh, Paragraph 400, 434. “volume and pixel, refers to a 3D cubic space generated when a 3D space is divided into units (unit=1.0) based on the axes representing the 3D space (e.g., X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis ).” See Oh, Paragraph 92.)
and determining a number of points of the current node; and (“signal the actual number of points coded” Oh, Paragraphs 343, 400.)
when it is determined that the volume of the bounding box and the number of points of the current node meet a preset condition, (For example, “The subgroup bounding boxes may be divided based on an axis related to the bounding box based on the number of points included in the bounding box. The axis may include one of an X-axis, a Y-axis, and a Z-axis, and the number of points included in the subgroup bounding boxes may be less than a threshold.… Here, the thresholds may be set depending on the system, may have the same or different values, and may be transmitted to the decoder as signaling information (parameters).” Oh, Paragraph 538.)
reconstructing the current node to determine a reconstructed point cloud of the current node.” (“Referring to FIG. 1, the reception method may include receiving a bitstream containing point cloud data, and decoding the point cloud data. The decoding of the point cloud data may include decoding subgroup bounding boxes into which a bounding box containing the point cloud data is divided. The subgroup bounding boxes may be divided based on an axis related to the bounding box based on the number of points included in the bounding box. The axis may include one of an X-axis, a Y-axis, and a Z-axis, and the number of points included in the subgroup bounding boxes may be less than a threshold. The number of the subgroup bounding boxes may be less than a threshold.” Oh, Paragraphs 547-548.)
Where necessary, it is noted that Oh does not limit or define the units of size information. Oh teaches coding “size information ( width, depth, height), etc. about the bounding box” in Oh, Paragraph 400, 434.
Wang teaches that sizes can be specified “in pixel units, …” Wang, Paragraphs 95-96.
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to supplement the teachings of Oh to represent box dimensions using numbers determined in terms of pixel units as taught in Wang, in order to store the integer number in a target format as a combination of its constituent bits. See Wang, Paragraphs 95-96.
Regarding Claim 2. “The method of claim 1, wherein the preset condition comprises that the number of points is less than or equal to the volume of the bounding box.” (This condition is not limited to particular units of volume. Prior art provides example definitions where the “volume and pixel, refers to a 3D cubic space generated when a 3D space is divided into units (unit=1.0) based on the axes representing the 3D space ( e.g., X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis ). … According to embodiments, one voxel may include one or more points.” See Oh, Paragraph 92. “The axis may include one of an X-axis, a Y-axis, and a Z-axis, and the number of points included in the subgroup bounding boxes may be less than a threshold.” Oh, Paragraphs 547-548. Thus, for a given bounding box prior art can select the units and/or the threshold such that the number of points is less than or equal to the volume of the bounding box and if not, partition the box to reach the threshold. See Oh, Paragraph 354.)
Regarding Claim 3: “The method of claim 2, further comprising: when it is determined that the volume of the bounding box and the number of points of the current node do not meet the preset condition, initializing the number of points of the current node to the volume of the bounding box.” (The claim does not limit initializing to any particular data operation. Prior art provides an example, “To make the number of points in a subgroup be in the level limit, the cubic bounding box may be subdivided as shown in FIG. 27, … the number of points after the splitting may be lower than the level limit to produce coder-friendly slices,” which reads on initializing the number of points to correspond to the volume of the bounding box. Oh, Paragraphs 354-355.)
Regarding Claim 4: “The method of claim 1, wherein determining the volume of the bounding box of the current node comprises:
decoding a bitstream to determine identification information of a first type of syntax element for the current node; and (Under the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification and ordinary skill in the art, identification information of a first type of syntax can identify width, depth, and height of the bounding box. See original Claim 5. Prior art teaches this: “Referring to FIG. 33, the bitstream may include … position (coordinate) information, size information ( width, depth, height), etc. about the bounding box … logarithmic scale of the box, the maximum node size, and the number of points.” Oh, Paragraph 400, 434.)
determining the volume of the bounding box of the current node according to the identification information of the first type of syntax element.” (“volume and pixel, refers to a 3D cubic space generated when a 3D space is divided into units (unit=1.0) based on the axes representing the 3D space ( e.g., X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis ).” See Oh, Paragraph 92.)
Regarding Claim 5: “The method of claim 4, wherein
the first type of syntax element comprises: identification information of a first syntax element, identification information of a second syntax element, and identification information of the third syntax element; and wherein determining the volume of the bounding box of the current node according to the identification information of the first type of syntax element comprises: … determining a length of the bounding box according to the identification information of the first syntax element; … determining a width of the bounding box according to the identification information of the second syntax element; determining a height of the bounding box according to the identification information of the third syntax element; and (“Referring to FIG. 33, the bitstream may include … position (coordinate) information, size information ( width, depth, height), etc. about the bounding box … logarithmic scale of the box, the maximum node size, and the number of points.” Oh, Paragraph 400, 434.)
determining the volume of the bounding box of the current node by calculating a product of the length, the width, and the height of the bounding box of the current node.” (“volume and pixel, refers to a 3D cubic space generated when a 3D space is divided into units (unit=1.0) based on the axes representing the 3D space ( e.g., X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis ).” See Oh, Paragraph 92.)
Regarding Claim 6: “The method of claim 5, wherein the identification information of the first syntax element comprises identification information of at least two sub-syntax elements; the identification information of the second syntax element comprises identification information of at least two sub-syntax elements; and the identification information of the third syntax element comprises identification information of at least two sub-syntax elements.” (For example, “The arithmetic encoder 40012 according to the embodiments encodes the quantized attributes based on arithmetic coding.” Oh, Paragraph 107. “applying weights to the attribute values according to embodiments is configured as follows. … Create an array Quantization Weight (QW) for storing the weight value of each point. …Subtract the value obtained by multiplying the attribute value of the point by the weight from the existing attribute value to calculate a predicted attribute value.” Oh, Paragraphs 152-153. Thus, each attribute can be coded as two (or three) sub-syntax elements.)
Regarding Claim 8: “The method of claim 1, wherein determining the number of points of the current node comprises: decoding a bitstream to determine identification information of a second type of syntax element for the current node; and determining the number of points of the current node according to the identification information of the second type of syntax element.” (“signal the actual number of points coded” Oh, Paragraphs 343, 400.)
Regarding Claim 9: “The method of claim 8, wherein the identification information of the second type of syntax element comprises identification information of at least two sub-syntax elements.” (For example, “The arithmetic encoder 40012 according to the embodiments encodes the quantized attributes based on arithmetic coding.” Oh, Paragraph 107. “applying weights to the attribute values according to embodiments is configured as follows. … Create an array Quantization Weight (QW) for storing the weight value of each point. …Subtract the value obtained by multiplying the attribute value of the point by the weight from the existing attribute value to calculate a predicted attribute value.” Oh, Paragraphs 152-153.)
Regarding Claim 11: “The method of claim 1, wherein the current node comprises at least one of: a current point cloud sequence, a current point cloud frame, a current point cloud tile, or a current point cloud slice.” (“When the encoded geometry and/or the encoded attributes and the metadata information according to the embodiments are configured into one bitstream, the bitstream may include one or more sub-bitstreams. The bitstream according to the embodiments may contain signaling information including a sequence parameter set (SPS) for signaling of a sequence level, a geometry parameter set (GPS) for signaling of geometry information coding, an attribute parameter set (APS) for signaling of attribute information coding, and a tile parameter set (TPS) for signaling of a tile level, and slice data. … A slice refers to a series of syntax elements representing the entirety or part of a coded point cloud frame.” Oh, Paragraphs 194-195.)
Regarding Claim 12: “The method of claim 1, further comprising:
when it is determined that the volume of the bounding box and the number of points of the current node meet the preset condition, … decoding geometric information of the current node; (“The transmission processor 12012 according to the embodiments may transmit each bitstream containing encoded geometry … The reception processor 13001 according to the embodiments may acquire a geometry bitstream and/or an attribute bitstream from the received data … processor 13009 according to the embodiments may process the reconstructed geometry and the inversely quantized attributes … may render the point cloud data” Oh, Paragraphs 194, 201-202, 210.)
and wherein reconstructing the current node to determine the reconstructed point cloud of the current node comprises: … reconstructing the current node according to the geometric information, to determine the reconstructed point cloud of the current node.” (“The transmission processor 12012 according to the embodiments may transmit each bitstream containing encoded geometry … The reception processor 13001 according to the embodiments may acquire a geometry bitstream and/or an attribute bitstream from the received data … processor 13009 according to the embodiments may process the reconstructed geometry and the inversely quantized attributes … may render the point cloud data” Oh, Paragraphs 194, 201-202, 210.)
Regarding Claim 13: “The method of claim 1, further comprising: when the volume of the bounding box and the number of points do not meet the preset condition, determining that there is an error in decoding the current node.” (For example, when the number of points in a subgroup is not in the level limit, “To make the number of points in a subgroup be in the level limit, the cubic bounding box may be subdivided as shown in FIG. 27, … the number of points after the splitting may be lower than the level limit to produce coder-friendly slices,” which corrects the determined error. Oh, Paragraphs 354-355.)
Regarding Claim 14: “The method of claim 13, wherein when the volume of the bounding box and the number of points do not meet the preset condition, determining that there is the error in decoding the current node, comprises: … when the volume of the bounding box and the number of points do not meet the preset condition, determining that there is an error in decoding geometric information of the current node.” (For example, when the number of points in a subgroup is not in the level limit, “To make the number of points in a subgroup be in the level limit, the cubic bounding box may be subdivided as shown in FIG. 27, … the number of points after the splitting may be lower than the level limit to produce coder-friendly slices,” which corrects the determined error in the geometric information. Oh, Paragraphs 354-355.)
Regarding Claim 15: “The method of claim 1, wherein the current node is a node in which duplicate points are removed.” (First notes that this claim does not limit the method of Claim 1 to performing a particular step. Cumulatively note that prior art describes this situation, where in the current node “the number of points after the splitting may be lower than the level limit to produce coder-friendly slices,” which removes duplicate points from the split box. Oh, Paragraphs 354-355. Also note embodiments directed to quantizing and removing unnecessary points in Oh, Paragraphs 89, 236.)
Regarding Claim 16: “The method of claim 15, further comprising: decoding a bitstream to determine identification information of a third type of syntax element for the current node; and determining that the current node is the node in which the duplicate points are removed according to the identification information of the third type of syntax element.” (For example, see syntax: “lvlNodeSizeLog2.erase( … std::remove_if( …” in Oh, Paragraph 365. Also note embodiments directed to reducing, quantizing, and removing unnecessary points in Oh, Paragraphs 354-355, 89, 236.)
Claim 17: “A method for encoding, applied to an encoder,” is rejected for reasons stated for Claim 1, because the decoding of Claim 1 implements the same data structure as Claim 17, and because prior art teaches that decoding is an direct reversing of the data transformation performed by the encoding. See Ho, Paragraph 68 and Fig. 1.
Claim 18 is rejected for reasons stated for Claim 2 in view of the Claim 17 rejection.
Claim 19 is rejected for reasons stated for Claim 3 in view of the Claim 18 rejection.
Claim 20: “A bitstream,” is rejected because prior art teaches: “the bitstream containing the point cloud video data” in Oh, Paragraph 62. Also see reasons for rejection under section 101 above.
First, note that “The patentability of a product does not depend on its method of production." See Claim Construction section above. Thus, the method of making a bitstream does not limit the claimed bitstream. Cumulatively, prior art teaches “wherein the bitstream is generated by performing bit encoding on information to be encoded, wherein the information to be encoded comprises …” as rejected for reasons stated in Claims 1 and 17, because these claims code the claimed information in the described manner.
Claims 7, 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20240331206 to Oh (“Oh”) in view of US 20200296397 to Wang (“Wang”).
Regarding Claim 7: “The method of claim 6, wherein
the identification information of the at least two sub-syntax elements comprises: identification information of a first sub-syntax element and identification information of a second sub-syntax element; and (See examples in Oh, Paragraph 107, 152-153 as cited in Claim 6. See additional embodiments in Wang, Paragraphs 95-96.)
Oh does not teach “wherein the identification information of the first sub-syntax element is used for indicating values of lower bits of a size of the bounding box, and the identification information of the second sub-syntax element is used for indicating values of higher bits of the size of the bounding box.” Oh teaches coding “size information ( width, depth, height), etc. about the bounding box” in Oh, Paragraph 400, 434.
Wang teaches that the box size information can be represented as a number of bits which comprises values of higher bits and values of lower bits in the context of coding point clouds using video codecs: “The class 1200 includes four unsigned 32 bit integers for total width "total_ width" 1202, total height "total_height" 1204, total depth "total_depth" 1206, and source ID "source_id" 1208. The total_width field 1202 can specify, in pixel units, … The class 1300 includes six unsigned 16 bit integers object …” Wang, Paragraphs 95-96 and Figs. 8-9.
Therefore, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to supplement the teachings of Oh to represent box dimensions using numbers having higher and lower numbers of bits as taught in Wang, in order to store the integer number in a target format as a combination of its constituent bits. See Wang, Paragraphs 95-96.
Finally, in reviewing the present application, there does not seem to be objective evidence that the claim limitations are particularly directed to: addressing a particular problem which was recognized but unsolved in the art, producing unexpected results at the level of the ordinary skill in the art, or any other objective indicators of non-obviousness. It is well understood in the art that a digital number is a combination of higher and lower digits.
Regarding Claim 10. “The method of claim 9, wherein
the identification information of the at least two sub-syntax elements comprises: identification information of a third sub-syntax element and identification information of a fourth sub-syntax element; and (See examples in Oh, Paragraph 107, 152-153 as cited in Claim 9. See additional embodiments in Wang, Paragraphs 95-96.)
wherein the identification information of the third sub-syntax element is used for indicating values of lower bits of the number of points, and the identification information of the fourth sub-syntax element is used for indicating values of higher bits of the number of points.” (“signal the actual number of points coded” Oh, Paragraphs 343, 400. As noted in Wang, Paragraphs 95-96, each dimension is represented as a number having a number of bits and having higher and lower bits. See statement of motivation in Claim 7.)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20220351423 to Martin-Cocher (“Martin-Cocher”) teaches point cloud coding similar to Oh cited above.
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/MIKHAIL ITSKOVICH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2483
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