Ex Parte HAN

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 28, 2016

12705384 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 28, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
121705,384 02/12/2010
23373 7590 05/02/2016
SUGHRUE MION, PLLC
2100 PENNSYLVANIA A VENUE, N.W.
SUITE 800
WASHINGTON, DC 20037
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Woo-jinHAN
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
Qll7374 8301
EXAMINER
HALLENBECK-HUBER, JEREMIAH CHARLES
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2489
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/02/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
PPROCESSING@SUGHRUE.COM
sughrue@sughrue.com
USPTO@sughrue.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte WOO-JIN HAN
Appeal2014-005324
Application 12/705,3841
Technology Center 2400
Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, DEBRA K. STEPHENS, and
SHARON PENICK, Administrative Patent Judges.
PENICK, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's Final
Rejection of claims 1-11. Claims 12-14 were withdrawn from
consideration. (Appeal Br. 5; Final Action 2.) We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b)(l).
We affirm.
Invention
Appellant's invention relates to the scalable coding of a sequence of
video frames for compression. As part of the encoding process, the frames
are temporally filtered to remove temporal redundancy. This temporal
1 Appellant identifies Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. as the real party in
interest. (Appeal Br. 2.)
Appeal2014-005324
Application 12/705,384
filtering progresses from the frame at the highest temporal level to the frame
at the lowest temporal level in sequence. (Abstract; Spec. i-f 2, 49, 107.)
Representative Claim
Claim 1, reproduced below with key limitations emphasized, is
representative:
1. A method for video coding, the method comprising:
(a) receiving a plurality of frames constituting a video
sequence and sequentially eliminating a temporal redundancy
between the plurality of frames on a Group Of Pictures (GOP)
basis, starting from a frame at a highest temporal level and
ending at a frame at a lowest temporal level, wherein each
temporal level has a higher frame rate than the previous
temporal level; and
(b) generating a bit-stream by quantizing transformation
coefficients obtained from the plurality of frames whose
temporal redundancy has been eliminated,
wherein the frame at the highest temporal level
corresponds to an original frame or a restored frame in the GOP.
Rejections
The Examiner rejects claims 1--4 and 7-11under35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Chaddha (US 6,392,705 Bl; May 21, 2002) and Felts et
al. (US2002/0150164; Oct. 17, 2002) (hereinafter, "Felts"), and in the
alternative as unpatentable over Chaddha. (Final Action 2-8.)
The Examiner rejects claims 5 and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Chaddha, Felts, and Nakatani (US2002/0012523
Al; Jan. 31, 2002). (Final Action 8-9.)
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Appeal2014-005324
Application 12/705,384
Issues
Did the Examiner err in finding that the combination of Chaddha and
Felts teaches or suggests eliminating temporal redundancy between frames
"starting from a frame at a highest temporal level and ending at a frame at a
lowest temporal level, wherein each temporal level has a higher frame rate
than the previous temporal level" (hereinafter, "the temporal level
limitation"), as recited in claim 1?
ANALYSIS
Chaddha and Felts
The Examiner finds that Chaddha teaches or suggests all limitations of
claim 1, except that in Chaddha each temporal level has a higher or equal
frame rate than the rate at the previous temporal level. (Final Action 2-3.)
The Examiner finds in Felts, the teaching or suggestion of an encoding
method where there is a "pyramidal layout" between temporal levels in
which the frame rate among temporal levels is strictly increasing, with a
higher frame rate for each successive temporal level. (Id. at 3--4.) Thus, the
Examiner finds that an ordinarily skilled artisan would have used the Felts
pyramidal form of organization of temporal level frame rates in combination
with the teachings of Chaddha to teach or suggest the disputed limitation of
claim 1. (Id.)
Appellant argues that the temporal redundancy in Felts is eliminated
first at a temporal level with the highest frame rate, proceeding then to
temporal levels with successively lower frame rates. (Appeal Br. 7-9.)
However, this attack on Felts ignores the substance of the rejection, in which
the Examiner only relied on Felts' teaching of a pyramidal layout of the
temporal levels. (Final Action 3--4; Answer 9-10.)
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Appeal2014-005324
Application 12/705,384
The temporal level limitation requires that temporal redundancy is
eliminated starting from a frame at a "highest temporal level" and ending at
a frame at a "lowest temporal level" and the Examiner finds, and we agree,
that no definition has been explicitly provided in the Specification or claim
regarding these terms other than the "wherein" clause of the claim which
states that "each temporal level has a higher frame rate than the previous
temporal level." (Answer 9-10.) Appellant argues that in Felts, temporal
decomposition starts with the lowest temporal level (with the highest frame
rate) and "proceeds to the highest temporal level" (with the lowest frame
rate.) (Appeal Br. 6-7.) While Appellant is correct that this is the opposite
order from the encoding performed according to the claim and in Chaddha,
the nomenclature of "highest temporal level" and "lowest temporal level" is
consonant with the terms as used in the claim and with the Examiner's
reliance on Felts.
We agree with the Examiner (Answer 10) that the Appellant is
arguing against the teaching of Felts alone, while the rejection is based on a
combination of Chaddha and Felts.
Lastly, Appellant's remark that "Felts discloses wavelet
decomposition which is unrelated to the claims at issue" (Appeal Br. 9) is a
conclusory statement unsupported by evidence or reasoning, and as such
does not apprise us of error in the Examiner's findings.
We do not find error in the Examiner's 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of
claim 1 as obvious over Chaddha and Felts. Accordingly we sustain the
rejection, and the rejections of claims 2-11, argued on the basis of
arguments set forth for claim 1 or not separately argued with specificity.
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Appeal2014-005324
Application 12/705,384
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1-11 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Chaddha and Felts.
Pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv), no time period for taking any
subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended.
AFFIRMED
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