DETAILED ACTION
This Office action for U.S. Patent Application No. 19/414,703 is responsive to communications filed 14 September 2026, in reply to the Non-Final Rejection of 17 July 2026.
Claims 1, 6, and 7 are pending.
In the previous Office action, claims 1, 6, and 7 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0170612 A1 (“Zhou”) in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0007648 A1 (“Chen”).
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 filed on 22 July 2026 fails to comply with 37 C.F.R. § 1.98(a)(2), which requires a legible copy of each cited foreign patent document, each non-patent literature publication or that portion which caused it to be listed; and all other information or that portion which caused it to be listed. Specifically, there is no copy of the “Chinese Office Action issued on March 28, 2026 in counterpart Chinese Application No. 202310969081.5”1. Of the three foreign references filed in the IDS, WO 2012/174635 A1 (an ‘A’ reference in the Chinese First search) does not show any immediate relevance to rotation and flipping. CN 103959794 A (an ‘A’ reference in the Chinese First search) illustrates in Figure 4 material being rotated 0, 90, 135, and 45 degrees. US 2014/0286396 A1, an English-language equivalent, reveals at ¶ 0075 that Figure 4 illustrates edge offset angles. CN 1929613 A (a ‘Y’ reference in the Chinese First search) illustrates at figure 10 a pixel block in what can be described as a claimed 270-degree2 rotation and then horizontal flipping. US 2007/0058715 A1, an English-language equivalent, reveals these two pixel blocks as two different scan methods, not the before-and-after transformation of one block. Neither US 2015/0201204 A1 nor US 2014/0307774 A1 show any immediate relevance to rotation and flipping.
The examiner does not have the investigative authority to determine whether the repeated absence of copies of foreign communications from what Applicant certifies under 37 C.F.R. § 1.97(e)(1) to be counterpart applications to the application being examined (and therefore information objectively material to patentability of the application being examined as disclosing the presence, identity, and relevance of, or alternatively, the absence of, relevant prior art), or in some cases, even identifications of the counterpart applications, constitutes a violation of the Duty of Disclosure. M.P.E.P. § 2010. Applicant is encouraged to prevent government waste and delay by limiting Information Disclosure Statements based on 37 C.F.R. § 1.97(e)(1) to foreign office actions that are true counterparts to the application being examined, meaning they claim substantially the same material as the application being examined, but file the foreign office actions directly in the original IDS having the 37 C.F.R. § 1.97(e)(1) certification, should Applicant deem the foreign applications to be counterpart to the application being examined.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed with respect to claim 1 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Specifically with respect to the allegation that Chen does not teach parsing bitstream parameters, much less the claimed single piece of integrated information (Rem. 5), the Zhou control code that indicates how to perform the “rotation and/or mirror operation” (¶ 0024) is sufficient to teach the claimed single piece of integrated information. Zhou, not Chen, was relied on in the previous Office action as teaching reconstruction-related information included in the bitstream that indicates a reconstruction mode. Applicant is reminded one cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
Specifically with respect to the arguments that Chen does not teach rotation followed by flipping (Rem. 5–6), Chen is not limited to the Figure 5 engine showing a choice to “pick an engine to process” (¶ 0030), but also includes paragraph 0032, stating that “Rotating of step 660 can also include flipping the scaled block”. Paragraph 0032 does not present flipping as an alternative to rotating as in the Figure 5 embodiment, but can reasonably be interpreted as including flipping as a component of the step 660 rotating. Also, regardless of the teachings of Chen alone, Zhou at Fig. 3 explicitly teaches a “Rotation and mirror” step 302. Finally, the examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant’s assertion that mathematical equivalence is not the same as structural equivalence in this case. The claimed eight candidate modes form the complete dihedral group D4, as shown in the table below.
Visualization
Claimed candidate mode as a (clockwise ¶ 00302) rotation followed by horizontal flip
b
0-degree rotation
ᓂ
90-degree rotation
q
180-degree rotation
ᓄ
270-degree rotation
d
horizontal flipping
ᓀ
90-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping
p
180-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping
؎
270-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping
The specification at Figure 10 also shows a visualization. More generally, claim 1 restricts the generating set to rotation followed by horizontal flipping. With rotation considered clockwise, the following map results:
PNG
media_image1.png
618
628
media_image1.png
Greyscale
The examiner’s position is that either of a 90 degree and 270 degree rotation, in combination with either of a horizontal and vertical flip, in any order, is sufficient to produce D4, and as such, would render claim 1 obvious in view of such a prior art disclosure. See Andrew Misseldine, Southern Utah University, Abstract Algebra I, Lecture 17: Dihedral Groups (Oct. 2020), Theorem 5.2.2. Other generating sets for D4 include a 90 degree or 270 degree rotation in combination with a diagonal flip, or as given in US 6,298,166 B1 (“Ratnakar”) at column 6; lines 1–25 and Table 3, a vertical flip in combination with a diagonal flip3. Given this, the Chen paragraph 0032 embodiment allowing for rotating at 90 degrees, 180 degrees, or 270 degrees, and “can also include flipping the scaled block” is sufficient guidance to allow one of ordinary skill in the art to produce the claimed complete set of D4 transformations, even if the exact generating set used to implement Chen differs from the claimed generating set. For example, a 90° clockwise rotation followed by a vertical flip produces this map:
PNG
media_image2.png
610
612
media_image2.png
Greyscale
Applicant is encouraged to experiment with other generator subsets and orderings to produce similar maps of the eight D4 transforms.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 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.
Claims 1, 6, and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0170612 A1 (“Zhou”) in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0007648 A1 (“Chen”).
Zhou, directed to a video codec, teaches with respect to claim 1 a method for processing an image, the method comprising:
receiving a bitstream for the image (Fig. 3, receiving input stream NAL);
obtaining a decoded image by decoding the bitstream (id., entropy decoding 212 and inverse transform and processing 304); and
determining a mode for reconstructing the decoded image based on reconstruction-related information included in the bitstream (¶ 0024, control code).
reconstructing the decoded image based on the mode (¶¶ 0024, 0029; control code for reconstruction using rotation and mirror; Fig. 3, rotation and mirror 302 in decoding pipeline);
wherein the reconstructing the decoded image comprises flipping or rotating the decoded image (Fig. 1, various rotate and mirror transforms),
wherein the reconstructing is performed based on a prediction block and a residual block for a block included in the image (¶ 0026, current block predicted from reference block)
wherein the reconstructing the decoded image comprises rearranging pixels in the decoded image (¶ 0029–31, Fig. 7; changing pixel addresses), and
the reconstruction-related information comprises a single piece of integrated information (¶¶ 0024, 0029; control code for inter/intra reconstruction including rotation and mirror).
The claimed invention differs from Zhou in that the invention specifies performing the reconstruction using based on specific information indicating a set list of eight predefined candidate rotation and flipping modes constituting the dihedral group D4. Zhou mentions control for rotation and mirror (Fig. 3, “rotation and mirror” step 302; ¶ 0029 and Fig. 7 illustrate an example of reconstruction “with vertical mirror control”), and Fig. 1 illustrates five of the eight candidate modes, but does not go into the claimed detail. However, Chen, directed to rotating video as part of streaming, teaches with respect to claim 1:
wherein the reconstruction-related information . . . indicat[es] one among predefined eight candidate modes . . . comprising a 0-degree rotation, a 90-degree rotation, a 180-degree rotation, a 270-degree rotation, a horizontal flipping, a 90-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping, a 180-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping, [and] a 270-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping (Fig. 5, ¶ 0030, rotate 90, 180, and 270 degrees and horizontal and vertical flip are available generators; 0032, Fig. 6A, selecting a rotation parameter that can be a 0 degree rotation or “can include flipping”, interpreted as meaning the Fig. 6 rotation may include a flip as a component of rotation, and not merely an alternative to rotation as in Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of effective filing to modify Zhou to control the flipping and rotation using generators producing the complete D4 dihedral group as claimed, as taught by Chen, in order to simplify the processing by using dedicated circuits for these operations. Chen ¶ 0029.
Regarding claim 6, Zhou in view of Chen teaches a method for processing an image, the method comprising:
encoding the image into a bitstream (Chen ¶ 0017, encoding image data for transmission);
determining a mode for reconstructing a decoded image which is obtained by decoding the bitstream (Zhou ¶¶ 0024, 0029; control code for controlling reconstruction); and
encoding the mode based on reconstruction-related information into the bitstream (id.),
wherein the image is encoded based on a prediction block and a residual block for a block included in the image (¶ 0026, current block predicted from reference block), and
the reconstruction-related information comprises a single piece of integrated information (¶¶ 0024, 0029; control code for controlling reconstruction including mirror and/or flip) indicating one among eight candidate modes . . . comprising a 0-degree rotation, a 90-degree rotation, a 180-degree rotation, a 270-degree rotation, a horizontal flipping, a 90-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping, a 180-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping, [and] a 270-degree rotation and then horizontal flipping (Zhou Fig. 3, “rotation and mirror” step 302; Chen Fig. 5, ¶ 0030, rotate 90, 180, and 270 degrees and horizontal and vertical flip are available generators; 0032, Fig. 6A, selecting a rotation parameter that can be a 0 degree rotation or “can include flipping”, interpreted as meaning the Fig. 6 rotation may include a flip as a component of rotation, and not merely an alternative to rotation as in Fig. 5).
Regarding claim 7, Zhou in view of Chen teaches a method for transmitting a bitstream, the method comprising:
[the claim 6 method] (claim 6 rejection supra); and
transmitting the bitstream (Chen ¶ 0017, encoding image data for transmission).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 2014/0192149 A1 (¶ 0083, “the non-nested SEI message is one of: . . . a display orientation SEI message that includes information that specifies flipping and/or rotation to be applied to the output pictures when the output pictures are displayed”).
US 2014/0056531 A1
US 2009/0202158 A1
US 2008/0198936 A1
US 2012/0155532 A1
US 2014/0226721 A1
WO 96/25723 A1
V. Ratnakar, B. Vasudev, & V. Ivashan, “Fast dihedral symmetry operations on digital images in the compressed domain”, Proc. of 2000 Int’l Conf. on Multimedia & Expo 221–224 (Aug. 2000)
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 C.F.R. § 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
/David N Werner/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
1 The Espacenet machine translation of Claim 1 of this application reads:
1. A method of decoding images, comprising:
Get at least one offset of the image;
Derive a variable for scaling the picture based on the at least one offset; and
perform inter prediction based on the variables used to scale the picture,
wherein said at least one offset is defined in a direction of scaling, and
The at least one offset is a positive or negative value.
Espacenet does not show a 28 March 2026 Chinese Office action, but a 22 April 2026 First search. The First search lists US 2015/0201204 A1, CN 1929613 A, and US 2014/0307774 A1 as ‘Y’ references and WO 2012/174635 A1 CN 103959794 A as ‘A’ references. This First search and the two US references cited therein are placed in the Notice of References Cited (PTO-892) mailed with this Office action.
2 The specification at paragraph 00302 adopts a clockwise rotation convention.
3 This also means that the examiner finds Ratnakar Table 3 discloses the claimed eight candidate modes. Applicant is cautioned of the implications of this finding in drafting the response to this Office action.
Prosecution Insights