Ex Parte LIU et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 29, 2019

12479068 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/479,068 06/05/2009
139020 7590 04/02/2019
BakerHostetler / Apple Inc.
Washington Square, Suite 1100,
1050 Connecticut Ave, NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20036-5304
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
YuxinLIU
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.
082438.021750 1708
EXAMINER
PRINCE, JESSICA MARIE
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2486
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/02/2019 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):
eofficemonitor@bakerlaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED ST ATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte YUXINLIU, HSI-JUNG WU, XIAOJIN SHI,
and CHRIS YOOCHANG
Appeal2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
Technology Center 2400
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, CARLAM. KRIVAK,
and SHARON PENICK, Administrative Patent Judges.
HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-16, and21-24, which constitute all of the claims pending in this
application. 1 Claims App. Claims 17-20 have been withdrawn from
consideration. Id. We have jurisdiction under35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 Appellants identify the real party in interest as Apple Inc. App. Br. 3.
Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
Introduction
According to Appellants, the claimed subject matter relates to a
method and system of applying noise patches to decoded video data to
compensate for losses of content leading to perceptible artifacts. Spec. ,r 11.
FIG. 3 is reproduced below.
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FIG. 3
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FIG. 3 depicts a Video Decoding System.
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Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
As depicted in Figure 3 above, upon decoding coded video data, a
video decoding engine (330) forwards the decoded video data to a noise
mask generator (350), which locates coding artifacts present in the decoded
video data based on a patch identifier received from an encoder (500), and
retrieves a suitable noise patch from a local noise patch database (360). Id.
,r,r 19-21, Fig. 5. Subsequently, a post-processor (340) blends the selected
noise patch received from the noise mask generator (350) with the decoded
video data from the decoding engine (330) to mask the artifacts thereby
making them less perceptible. Id.
Representative Claim
Claims 1, 10, 13, 14, 21, and 23 are independent. Independent claim
1 is representative, and is reproduced below with limitation at issue
italicized:
1. A video decoder system, comprising:
a video decoding engine to generate recovered video from a data
stream of coded video data,
a noise database storing a plurality of noise patches, and
an artifact estimator to estimate a location of coding artifacts present
in the recovered video and to select a noise patch from the database
according to a noise mask identifier received in the data stream from
an encoder to mask the artifacts, wherein the noise mask identifier
identifies at least one noise patch from a plurality of noise patches
stored in the database,
a post-processing unit to blend the selected noise patches into the
recovered video.
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Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
Rejecti ans on Appeal
Claims 1, 2, 4--7, 9, 21, and22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Jia et al. (US Pat. No. 7,593,465 B2; Sept. 22, 2009)
in view of Pao et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2005/0207492 Al; Sept. 22, 2005) and
further in view of Lee et al., (U.S. Pub. 2003/0219073 Al; Nov. 27, 2003).
Final Act. 4--10.
Claims 10 and 13-16 arerejectedunder35 U.S.C. § 103(a)as being
unpatentable over Jia and further in view of Lee. Id. at 11-16.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jia
in view ofLee and further in view of Carr et al. (US. Pat. No. 5,291,284;
Mar. 1, 1994). Id. at 16-17.
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jia
in view of Lee in view ofThumpudiet al. (U.S. Pub. No. 2008/0109230Al;
May 8, 2008).
Id. at 17.
Claims 23 and24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Jia in view of Pao and in view of Carr and further in view
of Francois et al., (U.S. Pub. No. 2005/0069040 Al; Mar. 31, 2005). Id. at
18-20.
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Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
ANALYSIS 2
"Section 103 forbids issuance of a patent when 'the differences
between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such
that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the
invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said
subject matter pertains.'" KSR!nt'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398,406
(2007) ("KSR"). The question of obviousness is resolved on the basis of
underlying factual determinations including ( 1) the scope and content of the
prior art, (2) any differences between the claimed subject matter and the
prior art, (3) the level of skill in the art, and ( 4) where in evidence, so-called
secondary considerations. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17-18
(1966).
Appellants argue that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 over the
combination of Jia, Pao, and Lee because the proposed combination of
references does not teach or suggest "select[ing] a noise patch from the
database according to a noise mask identifier received in the data stream
from an encoderto mask the artifacts," as required bythe claim. App. Br.
13-15. In particular, Appellants argue that Jia's disclosure ofa decoder
(Fig. 4) having a noise generator (120) generating a single array G of
random noise signals for storage in a lookup table (114) from which an
address generator ( 124) reads the noise values via generated random offsets
does not teach the disputed limitations. Id. at 11 (citing Jia 4:18--63, 7:28-
2 We refer to Appellants' arguments and the Examiner's fmdings and
conclusions set forth in the Final Office Action (mailed October 7, 2015)
("Final Act."), the Appeal Brief (filed, July 7, 2016) ("App. Br."), the
Answer (mailed December 16, 2016) ("Ans."), and the Reply Brief (filed
February 15, 2017) ("Reply Br.") for the respective details.
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Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
30). According to Appellants, Jia's noise values stored in the lookup table
do not teach the plurality of noise patches. Id. at 13. Further, Appellants
argue that because Jia's address generator is not controlled by any inputs, the
random offsets that it generates to retrieve noise values from the lookup
table do not teach using a noise mask identifier received in a data stream
from the encoder to select the noise patch from the database. Id. Further,
Appellants argue that Lee's disclosure of a filtering loop performing a
filtering process generating pixel values or flags to determine whether to use
deblocking filtering (110) or deringing filtering (130) does not cure the
noted deficiencies of Jia and neither does Pao' s disclosure of removing
artifacts from a block of encoded video signal. Id. at 10-13 ( citing Lee ,r,r
5-7, 19-24; Pao ,r,r 59). These arguments are persuasive.
At the outset, we note the Examiner fmds the following:
Jia does not explicitly disclose to estimate the location of the
artifact; a noise mask identifier received in the data stream from an
encoder; wherein the noise mask identifier identifies at least one noise
patch from a plurality of noise patches stored in the database.
Final Act. 5.
However, the Examiner fmds Pao teaches estimating the location of the
artifact (if 59; Fig. 6, element 74). Id. Then, the Examiner concludes it
"would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
the invention to incorporate the teachings of Pao with Jia for providing
improved artifact detection in video data". Id. at 6
Jia (modified by Pao) does not explicitly disclose to a noise
mask identifier received in the data stream from an encoder.
However, Lee teaches the known concept of a noise mask
identifier received in the data stream from an encoder ([0045-0049]
and [F] ig. 1; the examiner interprets the flag extracted by the flag
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Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
extractor used for performing deb locking or deringing as the a noise
mask identifier).
Id.
We agree with Appellants that the Examiner improperly relied upon
the cited teachings of Pao and Lee to cure the admitted deficiencies of Jia.
The cited portions of Pao and Lee pertain to filtering alternatives for curing
perceptible artifacts in an encoded sequence, and not to the noise patch
approach disclosed in Jia and the claimed invention. 3 Id. As persuasively
argued by Appellants, the cited portions of Lee pertain to a loop filtering
using a blocking flag and/or a ringing flag to indicate respectively whether a
blocking artifact or a ringing noise near the image must be reduced. (Lee ,r,r
45--49). Lee does not teach a noise mask identifier received in the data
stream from an encoder. Likewise, the cited portion of Pao pertains to
filtering a blocking noise in a reconstructed video signal from a decoder, and
not to specifying a mask identifier in the data stream from the encoder, as
required by the disputed claim limitations. Thus, none of the cited art
teaches or suggests the claimed noise mask identifier identifying at least one
noise patch from a plurality of noise patches stored in the database.
Because Appellants have shown at least one reversible error in the
rejection of claim 1, we need not reach Appellants' remaining arguments.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner's obviousness rejection of
3 "Three approaches to reducing coding artifacts currently exist: spatial
filtering, temporal filtering and random noise addition. The spatial filtering
approach tries to detect spatial discontinuities in a decoded picture and
smooth the discontinuities by spatial filtering. The temporal filtering
approach performs temporal filtering along a motion trajectory of an object.
The random noise addition approach adds random noise into a decoded
picture for the purpose of hiding coding artifacts." Jia 1 :26-35.
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Appeal 2017-005506
Application 12/479,068
independent claim 1. Likewise, we do not sustain the rejections of
independent claims 10, 13, 14, 21, and 23, which recite the disputed
limitations.
Because claims 2-9, 11, 12, 15, 16, 22, and 24 depend from
independent claims 1, 10, 13, 14, 21, and 23 discussed above and necessarily
incorporate all of the limitations of their respective base claims, we do not
sustain the obviousness rejection of the cited dependent claims for the same
reasons.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the obviousness rejections of claims
1-16, and21-24.
REVERSED
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