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 .
TITLE
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed. See MPEP 606.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/01/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-4, 6 and 16-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Hong et al. (“Hong”) (CN 112543324).
The 103(a) rejections below are based on Chinese Patent Application Publication No. 112543324. The rejections rely on the machine translations of the Chinese prior art, which were downloaded from the European Patent Office. These English translations are deemed to fully comply with the translation requirement of MPEP section 1207.02. See USPTO memorandum "Machine Translation of a Non-English Document Being Relied Upon by the Examiner in Support of a Rejection in an Examiner's Answer," located at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/exam/20091117_mach_trans_memo.pdf. The English translation of the foreign patent documents is attached.
In regards to claim 1, Hong teaches a method of video decoding, comprising:
obtaining values of one or more target quantization coefficients in a target region of quantization coefficients of a current block (See ¶0033 and 0056 in view of 0066);
deriving a sub-block transform (SBT) mode of the current block based on the values of the one or more target quantization coefficients in the target region (See ¶0064-0066 in view of 0081 wherein if the “first number” [or more properly named as the sub-block transform implicit derived index in other portions of the specification] is odd, then it means that at least one quantization coefficient is non-zero and the system may perform SBT); and
reconstructing the current block based on the SBT mode of the current block (See ¶0002 and 0005 in view of 0064-0066).
In regards to claim 2, Hong teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein:
the target region includes all of the quantization coefficients of the current block; or
the target region includes non-zero quantization coefficients in the quantization coefficients of the current block (See ¶0064-0066 in view of 0033 and 0056).
In regards to claim 3, Hong teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein the one or more target quantization coefficients comprise at least one of:
all of quantization coefficients in the target region;
quantization coefficients at X preset positions in the target region, X being a positive integer;
M rows of quantization coefficients in the target region, M being a positive integer;
N columns of quantization coefficients in the target region, N being a positive integer;
P rows of quantization coefficients and Q columns of quantization coefficients in the target region, P and Q being positive integers;
quantization coefficients at positions on K oblique lines in the target region, K being a positive integer; or
quantization coefficients at Y preset positions in a scan order of the current block, Y being a positive integer (See ¶0056-0057 in view of 0033 and 0064-0066 wherein all of the quantization coefficients of the current block are taken into consideration).
In regards to claim 4, Hong teaches the method according to claim 1, further comprising:
obtaining at least one of a first index and a size of the current block, the first index indicating whether to determine the SBT mode of the current block based on the one or more target quantization coefficients; and
determining, based on at least one of the first index and the size of the current block, whether to determine the SBT mode of the current block based on the one or more target quantization coefficients in the target region in the current block (See ¶0064-0066 in view of 0081 wherein the sub-block transform implicit derived index may be used to signify that SBT may be performed, this is because such a value indicates that there is at least one non-zero quantization coefficient within the current block).
In regards to claim 6, Hong teaches the method according to claim 4, wherein the determining comprises: determining the SBT mode of the current block based on the one or more target quantization coefficients in the target region when the size of the current block is within a preset range (See ¶0080 and 0030).
In regards to claim 16, the claim is rejected under the same basis as claim 1 by Hong wherein the encoding portion of a codec is the inverse of a decoding portion, see ¶0021 and 0029.
In regards to claims 17-20, the claims are rejected under the same basis as claims 1-4 by Hong, wherein the processing circuitry may be as seen in ¶0084-0092.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5 and 7-15 objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Specifically, there exists within the prior art the performance of SBT to be based on transform coefficients, whereas the current claim language differs in that the performance of SBT is to be instead based on quantization coefficients, which are altogether different as, within the decoding side – inverse quantization is performed before inverse transformation is performed, an entire step ahead of other potential prior art references, which is not believed to be an obvious step in the coding process.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDEMIO NAVAS JR whose telephone number is (571)270-1067. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, ~ 9 AM -6 PM.
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EDEMIO NAVAS JR
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2483
/EDEMIO NAVAS JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2483
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