SONY CORPORATION

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 3, 2020

2019006073 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 3, 2020)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
15/024,705 03/24/2016 James Alexander GAMEI 468190US8X PCT 1095
22850 7590 09/03/2020
OBLON, MCCLELLAND, MAIER & NEUSTADT, L.L.P.
1940 DUKE STREET
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22314
EXAMINER
LUO, KATE H
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2488
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/03/2020 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):
OBLONPAT@OBLON.COM
iahmadi@oblon.com
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PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JAMES ALEXANDER GAMEI and KARL JAMES SHARMAN
Appeal 2019-006073
Application 15/024,705
Technology Center 2400
Before JENNIFER S. BISK, JASON J. CHUNG, and
DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges.
BISK, ADMINISTRATIVE PATENT JUDGE.

DECISION ON APPEAL1
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant2 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 30–41, 44, and 47–49.3 See Final

1 Throughout this Decision we have considered the Specification filed
March 24, 2016 (“Spec.”), the Final Rejection mailed September 26, 2018
(“Final Act.”), the Appeal Brief filed March 28, 2019 (“Appeal Br.”), the
Examiner’s Answer mailed June 12, 2019 (“Ans.”), and the Reply Brief
filed August 12, 2019 (“Reply Br.”).
2 We use the term “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Sony Corporation.
Appeal Br. 2.
3 Claims 42, 43, 45, and 46 are objected to as being dependent upon a
rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form
Appeal 2019-006073
Application 15/024,705
2
Act. 1. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). An oral hearing took
place on August 27, 2020 and a transcript will be added to the record in due
course.
We REVERSE.
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to video data encoding and decoding. Claim
30, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
30. A video data encoding apparatus configured to encode an
array of input video data values, the apparatus comprising:
a differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) coder
implemented by circuitry and configured to apply a differential
pulse code modulation operation to the array of input video data
values to generate an array of DPCM data values;
a quantizer implemented by the circuitry and configured
to quantize data derived from the DPCM data values; and
a controller implemented by the circuitry and configured
to control selection of a rounding operation by the quantizer from
two or more candidate rounding operations,
the selected rounding operation being associated with a
scan order of the array of DPCM data values, such that any
DPCM data value in the scan order does not have a dependency
on a DPCM data value provided later in the scan order.
Appeal Br. 12 (Claims App.) (emphasis added).

including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Final Act. 13.
Appeal 2019-006073
Application 15/024,705
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REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Lee U.S. 2005/0063462 A1 March 24, 2005
Chen U.S. 2009/0122868 A1 May 14, 2009
Gharavi-Alkhansari U.S. 2011/0292247 A1 Dec. 1, 2011
Lu U.S. 2012/0307890 A1 Dec. 6, 2012
REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejects claims 30–36, 44, and 47–49 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Gharavi-Alkhansari, Lu, and Lee. Final
Act. 3–10.
The Examiner rejects claims 37–41 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Gharavi-Alkhansari, Lu, Lee, and Chen. Final Act. 10–
13.
OPINION
We review the appealed rejections for error based upon the issues
identified by Appellant, and in light of the arguments and evidence produced
thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential).
To the extent Appellant has not advanced separate, substantive arguments
for particular claims, or other issues, such arguments are waived. 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
We have considered all of Appellant’s arguments and any evidence
presented. We highlight and address specific findings and arguments for
emphasis in our analysis below.
Rejection of Claims 30–36, 44, and 47–49
The Examiner rejects claims 30–36, 44, and 47–49 as obvious over
the combination of Gharavi-Alkhansari, Lu, and Lee. Final Act. 3–10. In
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Application 15/024,705
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particular, the Examiner cites to all three references as teaching or
suggesting at least of a portion of “the selected rounding operation being
associated with a scan order of the array of DPCM data values, such that any
DPCM data value in the scan order does not have a dependency on a DPCM
data value provided later in the scan order” (“the selected rounding
limitation”) as recited by claim 30.4 Id. at 3–4 (citing Gharavi-Alkhansari
¶¶ 23–24; Lu Fig. 1, ¶ 26); Ans. 16–17 (citing Gharavi-Alkhansari Figs. 1, 6,
¶¶ 21–24, 40; Lee Fig. 2, ¶¶ 10–15).
Because the Specification does not define explicitly the selected
rounding limitation, the Examiner broadly construes the limitation such that
“any scan order after quantization is associated with quantization factor or
rounding operation.”5 Ans. 16. The Examiner then asserts that Gharavi-
Alkhansari “clearly shows that each block DPCM data is independently and
don’t have dependency on any DPCM data value of other blocks.” Id. at 17
(citing Gharavi-Alkhansari Fig. 4). The Examiner adds that Lee discloses a
scanning method similar to those shown in Figure 24b, 25b, and 26b of the
Specification. Id. (citing Lee Fig. 2, ¶¶ 10–15). The Examiner relies on Lu
as showing rounding. Final Act. 4. Based on these disclosures and the

4 Independent claims 48 and 49 recite substantially similar limitations.
5 The Examiner also states that paragraph 135 of the Specification discusses
residual differential pulse code modulation data (“RDPCM”) rather than
DPCM data as recited in the selected rounding limitation. Ans. 16. The
Examiner does not explain how this difference affects the rejection. Id. The
Patent Trial and Appeal Board is a review body, rather than a place of initial
examination. We leave to the Examiner whether to consider the
appropriateness of further rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. § 112. Although the
Board is authorized to reject claims under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b), no inference
should be drawn when the Board elects not to do so. See Manual of Patent
Examining Procedure (MPEP) § 1213.02.
Appeal 2019-006073
Application 15/024,705
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broad construction of the selected rounding limitation, the Examiner
concludes that it would have been obvious “to modify the teachings of
Gharavi-Alkhansari with Lu and Lee to perform a zigzag scan on the
quantization blocks from a top-left corner to a bottom-right corner before
entropy encoding, the motivation being to improve the video encoding
performance and efficiency.” Ans. 18.
Appellant argues that the rejection does not show obviousness of the
selected rounding limitation sufficiently. Appeal Br. 6–11; Reply Br. 2–6.
Appellant notes that, as described in the Specification, a common feature of
scan orders that meet the requirement of the selected rounding operation is
that they are based on a forward, rather than a reverse, scan order. Appeal
Br. 10–11 (citing Spec. Figs. 24b, 25b, 26b, ¶ 135). Appellant, therefore,
objects to the Examiner’s construction of the selected rounding limitation as
including “any scan order after quantization,” because a qualifying scan
order must at least exclude reverse scans. Reply Br. 4–5.
Moreover, Appellant argues that Gharavi-Alkhansari discloses only
one scanning order and therefore does not teach or suggest selecting a
rounding operation associated with a particular scan order. Id. at 4. With
respect to Lu, Appellant asserts that “at best, Lu appears to select a rounding
offset adaption component 150 from a list based on either a rate distortion
optimization component or a resolution of the frame being compressed,” and
therefore does not address the selected rounding limitation. Appeal Br. 8–9
(citing Lu ¶ 26). With respect to Lee, Appellant asserts that Lee describes
scanning “in a zigzag shape from a top-left corner to a bottom-right corner,”
and therefore “clearly identifies a dependency between prior blocks and
subsequent blocks.” Id. at 9–10; see also Reply Br. 6 (stating that “Lee
describes coding using a square of 8 x 8 values, which necessarily requires
Appeal 2019-006073
Application 15/024,705
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that some values later in the scanning order be used to generate the DPCM
values.”).
Finally, Appellant asserts that a person of ordinary skill in the art
would not have been motivated to combine “the zigzag scan of Lee with the
raster scan of [Gharavi-Alkhansari]” to achieve the claimed selected
rounding limitation. Id. at 10.
We agree with Appellant that the Examiner does not explain
sufficiently how or why a person of ordinary skill in the art would combine
the rounding operation disclosed by Lu with the scanning orders disclosed
by Gharavi-Alkhansari and Lee. Even assuming that both Gharavi-
Alkhansari and Lee teach or suggest a scanning order such that any DPCM
data value in the scan order does not have a dependency on a DPCM data
value provided later in the scan order, the Examiner does not address how or
why a person of ordinary skill would select a rounding operation associated
with that scanning order.
To the extent that the Examiner is relying on a broad construction of
the selected rounding limitation, and, in particular, to the term “associated,”
to provide the connection of the selected rounding operation in Lu to the
sorting orders disclosed by Gharavi and/or Lee, we agree with Appellant that
the Examiner’s construction is unreasonable. Based on the plain wording of
the claims, the selected rounding operation must be associated with a scan
order that “does not have a dependency on a DPCM data value provided
later in the scan order.” We agree with Appellant that not all scan orders
after quantization qualify. Moreover, the Examiner’s construction appears
to read the term “associated” out of the claim. In any event, the rejection
must as least address how the selected sorting operation disclosed by Lu is
associated with a scan order disclosed by Gharavi and/or Lee.
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Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the Examiner has shown
sufficiently that the selected rounding limitation would have been obvious
over the combination of Gharavi-Alkhansari, Lu, and Lee. We, therefore, do
not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 30, 48, and 49 or
of claims 31–36, 44, and 47, which depend from claim 30.
Claims 37–41
Claims 37–41 depend indirectly from claim 30. The Examiner rejects
these claims under 35 U.S.C. §103, as obvious over Gharavi-Alkhansari, Lu,
Lee, and Chen. Final Act. 10–13. However, because the Examiner relies on
the rejections for claims 30 and 34 for the inherited limitations, including the
selected rounding limitation, the rejection of these claims suffers from the
same problems as those discussed above. See Final Act. 10 (incorporating
the rejection of claim 34 into the rejection of claim 37). Accordingly, we
also do not sustain the rejection of claims 37–41.
CONCLUSION
We reverse the Examiner’s rejections.
DECISION SUMMARY
Claim(s) 35 U.S.C. § Basis/Reference(s) Affirmed Reversed
30–36, 44,
47–49
103 Gharavi-
Alkhansari, Lu,
Lee
30–36, 44,
47–49
37–41 103 Gharavi-
Alkhansari, Lu,
Lee, Chen
37–41
Overall
Outcome
30–41, 44,
47–49
Appeal 2019-006073
Application 15/024,705
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REVERSED