14561480 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 27, 2017)

Ex Parte Horowitz

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardFeb 27, 2017

14561480 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 27, 2017)

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. 14/561,480 12/05/2014 Michael Horowitz 40766-0003002 9959 143308 7590 03/01/2017 FISH & RICHARDSON P.C. (Dolby) PO BOX 1022 MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55440-1022 EXAMINER KIR, ALBERT ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2489 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/01/2017 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): PATDOCTC@fr.com patents @ dolby.com mguo @ dolby. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte MICHAEL HOROWITZ Appeal 2016-008683 Application 14/5 61,48c1 Technology Center 2400 Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, HUNG H. BUI, and JEFFREY A. STEPHENS, Administrative Patent Judges. BUI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 2—21, which are all of the claims pending on appeal. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE.2 1 According to Appellant, the real party in interest is Dolby International AB. App. Br. 1. 2 Our Decision refers to Appellant’s Appeal Brief filed December 29, 2015 (“App. Br.”); Reply Brief filed September 20, 2016 (“Reply Br.”); Examiner’s Answer mailed July 21, 2016 (“Ans.”); Final Office Action mailed June 29, 2015 (“Final Act.”); and original Specification filed December 5, 2014 (“Spec.”). Appeal 2016-008683 Application 14/561,480 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant’s invention relates to a method and system for segmentation of a coded picture into columns, each column covering only a part of the picture in a horizontal dimension. Spec. 12; Title; Abstract. Claims 2, 11, and 16 are independent. Representative claim 2 is reproduced below with disputed limitations in italics: 2. A method for decoding in a decoder a bitstream of coded pictures, the method comprising: obtaining, by one or more processors and from a first picture parameter set encoded in the bitstream, a value for a number of columns N minus one for a first coded picture of the bitstream, the first coded picture comprising a plurality of coded tree blocks (CTBs) in at least two columns; determining, by the one or more processors, a first CTB size for the first coded picture from among a plurality of different CTB sizes; obtaining, by the one or more processors and from the first picture parameter set encoded in the bitstream, a signal indicating whether the column widths pertaining to a leftmost N-l columns of the first coded picture are equal; determining, by the one or more processors and based on the signal, a column width for each of the leftmost N-l columns of the first coded picture; determining, by the one or more processors, a width of the first coded picture measured in units of the first CTB size; and calculating, by the one or more processors, a width of a rightmost column of the first coded picture using the width of the first coded picture and the determined column widths pertaining to the leftmost N-l columns of the first coded picture, wherein, when the signal obtained from the first picture parameter set encoded in the bitstream indicates that the column widths pertaining to the leftmost N-l columns of the first coded picture are equal, the calculated width of the rightmost column of the first coded picture is not equal to the column width of a leftmost column of the first coded picture. 2 Appeal 2016-008683 Application 14/561,480 App. Br. 16—20 (Claims App’x). Examiner’s Rejection & References Claims 2—21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Matsuura (US 2010/0296585 Al; published Nov. 25, 2010) and Test Model under Consideration, JCTVC-A205, Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) of ITU-T SGI 6 WP3 and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11, 1st Meeting, Dresden, DE, 1-119, April 15-23 (2010) (“JCT-VC”). Final Act. 4-15. Issue on Appeal Based on Appellant’s arguments, the dispositive issue on appeal is whether the cited prior art teaches or suggests: A method for decoding in a decoder a bitstream of coded pictures, the method comprising: obtaining . . . from a first picture parameter set encoded in the bitstream, a value for a number of columns N minus one for a first coded picture of the bitstream, the first coded picture comprising ... at least two columns, as recited in Appellant’s independent claim 2, and similarly recited in independent claims 11 and 16. App. Br. 9—13; Reply Br. 2-4. ANALYSIS With respect to independent claim 2, the Examiner finds Matsuura teaches Appellant’s method for decoding a bitstream of coded pictures, including obtaining “from a first picture parameter set encoded in the bitstream, a value for a number of columns N minus one for a first coded picture of the bitstream.” Final Act. 4—5 (citing Matsuura 102, 127—128, 3 Appeal 2016-008683 Application 14/561,480 Fig. 2). Particularly, the Examiner finds Matsuura’s decode processing apparatus uses a coded bitstream data variable i to iterate through bands or columns of a picture encoded in a bitstream of encoded moving picture data. Final Act. 5 (citing Matsuura 1102, Fig. 2). Matsuura’s Figure 2 is reproduced below. FIG . 2 mb offset(0) mb offset(1) mb„width(D) MB HANDLED BY DECODE PROCESSOR 2(0) mb. width CL) mb„offset(N-l) mb„width(N-t) MB HANDLED BY DECODE PROCESSOR 2(1) MB HANDLED BY DECODE PROCESSOR 2CN-15 f ; pic...mb...width y AXIS (PICTURE WIDTH (IN UNITS OF MACRO BLOCK )) X 05 S X u CL oo —i C£> O O i-;