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 .
Priority
Acknowledgement is made of Applicant’s claim of priority from PCT Application No. PCT/CN2020/089105, filed May 8, 2020 and as a continuation of U.S. Application No. 17/982,046, filed November 7, 2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (“IDS”) filed on March 26, 2026 were reviewed and the listed references were noted.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims recite a method, decoder, and encoder for generating tone mapping curves from temporally filtered parameter sets. Consider method claim 1:
Step 1:
With regard to Step 1, the instant claim is directed to a method or a process; and therefore, the claim is directed to one of the statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A, Prong One:
With regard to 2A, Prong One, the limitation “temporally filtering, by the decoder, the plurality of parameter sets to obtain a temporally filtered parameter set, wherein a length of a queue for the filtering is 32, and wherein each parameter set comprises metadata of the HDR video frame” as drafted, recite an abstract idea, such as a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitations manually and in the mind of a person. That is, a user or person skilled in the art may manually perform temporal filtering of the parameter sets using mathematical calculations and equations. This is the concept that falls under the grouping of abstract ideas mathematical concepts, i.e., mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, and mathematical calculations.
Step 2A, Prong Two:
The 2019 PEG defines the phrase “integration into a practical application” to require an additional step or a combination of additional steps in the claim to apply, rely on, or use the judicial exception. In the instant case, the additional step of “obtaining, by the decoder, a plurality of parameter sets, wherein each parameter set defines a tone mapping curve, and wherein each parameter set is derived based on one of a plurality of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video frames” is considered to be extra-solution activity of gathering information. In addition, with respect to the decoder and encoder claims of independent claims 14 and 19, the mere recitation of a generic processor, decoder, encoder and/or storage medium to perform/store programming instructions of the recited/identified abstract idea does not integrate the identified abstract idea into a practical application. Accordingly, the above-mentioned additional elements/limitations do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application; and therefore, the independent claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
Because the claims fail under Step 2A, the claims are further evaluated under Step 2B. The claims herein do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into practical application, the additional elements/limitations to perform the recited steps, amount to no more than insignificant extra-solution activity. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic component cannot provide an inventive concept. Therefore, independent claims 1, 14, and 19 are not patent eligible. In addition, dependent claims 2-13, 15-18 and 20 of the instant application provide limitations that both individually or in combination do not integrate the identified abstract idea into a practical application or provide significantly more than the identified abstract idea.
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 4, 8, 14, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seifi (US 2018/0167587 A1) in view of Timothy Alan Port (US 2020/0220906 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Seifi teaches a method for determining a parameter set for a tone mapping curve by a decoder, the method comprising:
obtaining, by the decoder, a plurality of parameter sets (Seifi, Para. [0135], these parameters can be transmitted through the bitstream, or they can be determined at the decoder),
wherein each parameter set defines a tone mapping curve (Seifi, Para. [0135], determining the parameters for the HDR2HDR tone mapper. The parameters may be the threshold
τ
f
and the curve parameters a, b, c), and
wherein each parameter set is derived based on one of a plurality of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video frames (Seifi, Para. [0135], the parameters for the HDR2HDR tone mapper. Para. [0137], a correction of the estimated
τ
f
values for every new frame of the video is proposed, i.e., the
τ
f
parameter is from each frame of the HDR video); and
temporally filtering, by the decoder, the plurality of parameter sets to obtain a temporally filtered parameter set (Seifi, Para. [0137], Block 406 may perform temporal filtering of the curve. For video content, the estimated thresholds for consecutive frames can be different. Considering the fact that flicker (i.e., noticeable variations in the intensity of the consecutive frames) is not desired for the video content, a correction of the estimated
τ
f
values for every new frame of the video is proposed),
wherein each parameter set comprises metadata of the HDR video frame (Seifi, Para. [0091]-[0092], the parameter η, which is used to calculate the threshold τ, may be sent along with the content as meta-data. The parameter n, which determines the percentage of pixels to be subjected to non-linear compression, may additionally be supplied as meta-data).
Although Seifi teaches temporally filtering the parameter sets (Seifi, Para. [0137]), Seifi does not explicitly teach “wherein a length of a queue for the filtering is 32”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Port teaches calculating an average of the intermediate masks of the N last video frames. For example, N is in the range of 4-32 frames. The intermediate mask calculated is stored in a FIFO data structure, such as a queue. The average of the intermediate masks is then calculated by averaging all intermediate masks in the queue (i.e., average is taken of the N masks in the queue, N is in the range of 4-32 frames. Length of the queue is 32) (Port, Para. [0061]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the method of Seifi with the teachings of Port by including a queue for filtering with a length of 32. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for performing adaptive thresholding on video frames of interest, as recognized by Port. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Regarding claim 4, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, and further teaches wherein each parameter set directly or indirectly defines the tone mapping curve (Seifi, Para. [0138]; Fig. 4, the curve in block 406 corresponds to the tone-mapping curve. The output of block 406 is the leaky estimation of the threshold and the updated parameters of the tone-mapping curve i.e., after temporal filtering).
Regarding claim 8, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, and further teaches wherein
each parameter set comprises one or more curve parameters of the tone mapping curve computed based on metadata extracted from the respective HDR video frame (Seifi, Para. [0091]-[0092], the parameter η, which is used to calculate the threshold τ, may be sent along with the content as meta-data. Para. [0135], determining the parameters for the HDR2HDR tone mapper. The parameters may be the threshold
τ
f
and the curve parameters a, b, c), and
the temporally filtered parameter set comprises one or more temporally filtered curve parameters (Seifi, Para. [0137], Block 406 may perform temporal filtering of the curve. For video content, the estimated thresholds for consecutive frames can be different. Considering the fact that flicker (i.e., noticeable variations in the intensity of the consecutive frames) is not desired for the video content, a correction of the estimated
τ
f
values for every new frame of the video is proposed).
Claims 14 and 17 recite decoders with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claims 1 and 4, respectively. Therefore, the recited elements of these claims are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in their corresponding method claims. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Seifi and Port references, presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to these claims. Finally, the combination of the Seifi and Port references discloses a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Seifi, Para. [0184]).
Claim 19 recites an encoder with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 1. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Seifi and Port references, presented in rejection of Claim 1, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Seifi and Port references discloses a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Seifi, Para. [0184]).
Claims 2-3, 9 and 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seifi (US 2018/0167587 A1) in view of Timothy Alan Port (US 2020/0220906 A1), as applied to claims 1, 4, 8, 14, 17 and 19 above, and further in view of Smolic et al. (US 2017/0070719 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, as described above.
Although Seifi in view of Port teaches temporally filtering the curve (Seifi, Para. [0137]), they do not explicitly teach “wherein the temporally filtering the plurality of parameter sets comprises calculating a weighted average or an average of at least a part of parameters of the plurality of parameter sets”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Smolic teaches instead of using only the tone curve parameter from the previous frame, the tone mapping system may use an average of the previous five tone curve parameter values. By maintaining a running average of previous tone curve parameters, the tone mapping system can temporally filter the current tone curve parameter to prevent unintended flashes in the tone mapped video (Smolic, Para. [0033]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Seifi in view of Port with the teachings of Smolic by including using a running average of parameter values in temporally filtering the current tone curve parameter. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for preventing unintended flashes in the tone mapped video, as recognized by Smolic. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Regarding claim 3, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, as described above.
Although Seifi in view of Port teaches the temporally filtered curve corresponds to the tone-mapping curve (Seifi, Para. [0138] and teaches applying the HDR2HDR tone mapper after filtering (Seifi, Para. [0139]), they do not explicitly teach “generating the tone mapping curve based on the temporally filtered parameter set”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Smolic teaches the tone mapping system generates a tone curve from the temporally filtered tone curve parameter (Smolic, Para. [0035]).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port and Smolic references presented in the rejection of Claim 2, apply to Claim 3 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in Claim 3 is met by Seifi in view of Port further in view of Smolic.
Regarding claim 9, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 8, as described above.
Although Seifi in view of Port teaches the temporally filtered curve corresponds to the tone-mapping curve (Seifi, Para. [0138]) and teaches applying the HDR2HDR tone mapper after filtering (Seifi, Para. [0139]), they do not explicitly teach “generating the tone mapping curve based on the one or more temporally filtered curve parameters”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Smolic teaches the tone mapping system generates a tone curve from the temporally filtered tone curve parameter (Smolic, Para. [0035]).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port and Smolic references presented in the rejection of Claim 2, apply to Claim 9 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in Claim 9 is met by Seifi in view of Port further in view of Smolic.
Claims 15-16 recite decoders with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claims 2-3, respectively. Therefore, the recited elements of these claims are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in their corresponding method claims. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Seifi, Port and Smolic references, presented in rejection of Claim 2, apply to these claims. Finally, the combination of the Seifi, Port and Smolic references discloses a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Seifi, Para. [0184]).
Claims 5-6 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seifi (US 2018/0167587 A1) in view of Timothy Alan Port (US 2020/0220906 A1), as applied to claims 1, 4, 8, 14, 17 and 19 above, and further in view of Atkins (US 2018/0144692 A1).
Regarding claim 5, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, and further teaches wherein
each parameter set comprises metadata extracted from the respective HDR video frame (Seifi, Para. [0091]-[0092], the parameter η, which is used to calculate the threshold τ, may be sent along with the content as meta-data. The parameter n, which determines the percentage of pixels to be subjected to non-linear compression, may additionally be supplied as meta-data).
Although Seifi in view of Port teaches parameters comprising metadata (Seifi, Para. [0091]-[0092]), they do not explicitly teach “the temporally filtered parameter set comprises temporally filtered metadata”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Atkins teaches performing temporal filtering of the values of the
L
F
t
function of these metadata values and the related metadata (the filtered values for each frame) may be saved to be stored with the modified bitstream (Atkins, Para. [0046]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Seifi in view of Port with the teachings of Atkins by performing temporal filtering on the metadata to create a temporally filtered parameter set. One having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for improved techniques for the display of high-dynamic range images, as recognized by Atkins. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date.
Regarding claim 6, Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins teaches the method according to claim 5, further comprising:
computing one or more curve parameters of the tone mapping curve based on the temporally filtered metadata (Atkins, Para. [0046], the results of the temporal filtering (i.e., the filtered metadata) are used to determine the proper instantaneous luminance range (e.g.,
M
i
n
T
and
M
a
x
T
) to display the input data on the target display).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port and Atkins references presented in the rejection of Claim 6, apply to Claim 6 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in Claim 6 is met by Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins.
Regarding claim 11, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, as described above.
Although Seifi in view of Port teaches temporally filtering the curve (Seifi, Para. [0137]), they do not explicitly teach “transmitting or storing the temporally filtered parameter set together with the plurality of HDR video frames”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Atkins teaches related metadata (e.g., the filtered values for each frame) may be saved to be stored together with the modified (tone-mapped) by the display management bitstream (Atkins, Para. [0046]).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port and Atkins references presented in the rejection of Claim 5, apply to Claim 11 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in Claim 11 is met by Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins.
Claims 7, 12-13, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seifi (US 2018/0167587 A1) in view of Timothy Alan Port (US 2020/0220906 A1) further in view of Atkins (US 2018/0144692 A1), as applied to claims 5-6 and 11 above, and further in view of Smolic et al. (US 2017/0070719 A1).
Regarding claim 7, Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins teaches the method according to claim 6, as described above.
Although Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins teaches the temporally filtered curve corresponds to the tone-mapping curve (Seifi, Para. [0138]) and teaches applying the HDR2HDR tone mapper after filtering (Seifi, Para. [0139]), they do not explicitly teach “generating the tone mapping curve based on the one or more curve parameters”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Smolic teaches the tone mapping system generates a tone curve from the temporally filtered tone curve parameter (Smolic, Para. [0035]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Seifi, Port and Atkins with the teachings of Smolic by including generating the tone mapping curve based on the temporally filtered curve parameters. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine these references because doing so would allow for preventing unintended flashes in the tone mapped video, as recognized by Smolic. Thus, the claimed invention would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Regarding claim 12, Seifi in view of Port teaches the method according to claim 1, as described above.
Although Seifi in view of Port teaches temporally filtering the curve (Seifi, Para. [0137]), they do not explicitly teach “obtaining a first parameter set of a first HDR video frame and pushing the first parameter set into a queue”, “obtaining a second parameter set of a second HDR video frame”, and “detecting whether a scene change is occurred between the first HDR video frame and the second HDR video frame, and pushing the second parameter set into the queue when no scene change is occurred”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Atkins teaches in a time-reverse EMA filter, future preview frames are added one-by-one, starting from the most future one and working backwards towards the current frame. If the time-reverse moving average is getting closer to the time-forward moving average, then one can determine that there is no scene change moment. Likewise, if the two moving averages are within a distance threshold of each other, then one may continue normal in-scene progression; however, when one detects a large difference between the forward and reverse moving average metrics, then one with high confidence can determine there is a scene cut between the current frame and the N-th future frame, typically occurring at the maximum of their distance (Atkins, Para. [0049]). Atkins also teaches the temporal filter having a memory of the previous values that is reset to zero every time there is a scene cut (i.e., the queue) (Atkins, Para. [0037]).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port and Atkins references presented in the rejection of Claim 5, apply to Claim 12 and are incorporated herein by reference.
Although Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins teaches detecting a scene change occurring between video frames (Atkins, Para. [0049]), they do not explicitly teach “computing an average of the parameter sets in the queue to obtain the temporally filtered parameter set”. However, in an analogous field of endeavor, Smolic teaches instead of using only the tone curve parameter from the previous frame, the tone mapping system may use an average of the previous five tone curve parameter values. By maintaining a running average of previous tone curve parameters, the tone mapping system can temporally filter the current tone curve parameter to prevent unintended flashes in the tone mapped video (Smolic, Para. [0033]).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port, Atkins, and Smolic references presented in the rejection of Claim 7, apply to Claim 12 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in Claim 12 is met by Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins and Smolic.
Regarding claim 13, Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins and Smolic teaches the method according to claim 12, and further teaches:
clearing the queue when a scene change is occurred (Atkins, Para. [0037], Atkins teaches that when a new scene cut is detected, t may be reset to 0, and all the previous
S
t
values may be cleared from the memory. In other words, optionally, the memory of the temporal filter may be reset to zero every time there is a scene cut).
The proposed combination as well as the motivation for combining the Seifi, Port, Atkins, and Smolic references presented in the rejection of Claim 7, apply to Claim 13 and are incorporated herein by reference. Thus, the method recited in Claim 13 is met by Seifi in view of Port further in view of Atkins and Smolic.
Claim 18 recites a decoder with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 12. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Seifi, Port, Atkins and Smolic references, presented in rejection of Claim 7, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Seifi, Port, Atkins and Smolic references discloses a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Seifi, Para. [0184]).
Claim 20 recites an encoder with elements corresponding to the steps recited in Claim 12. Therefore, the recited elements of this claim are mapped to the proposed combination in the same manner as the corresponding steps in its corresponding method claim. Additionally, the rationale and motivation to combine the Seifi, Port, Atkins and Smolic references, presented in rejection of Claim 7, apply to this claim. Finally, the combination of the Seifi, Port, Atkins and Smolic references discloses a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (Seifi, Para. [0184]).
Conclusion
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/Emma Rose Goebel/Examiner, Art Unit 2662
/AMANDEEP SAINI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2662
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