Ex Parte Lee et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 23, 201811829167 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 23, 2018) Copy Citation 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. 11/829,167 07/27/2007 Kun-Bin Lee 251314-4460 1659 109673 7590 01/25/2018 EXAMINER McClure Qualey & Rodack LLP 3100 Interstate North Circle ALATA, AYOUB Suite 150 Atlanta, GA 30339 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2494 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/25/2018 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): uspatents @ mqrlaw.com dan.mcclure@mqrlaw.com gina. silverio @ mqrlaw. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte KUN-BIN LE, CHI-CHENG JU, YUNG-CHANG CHANG, AND CHIH-MING WANG Appeal 2016-000097 Application 11/829,1671 Technology Center 2400 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., and JON M. JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judges. NAPPI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Final Rejection of claims 1 through 20. We have jurisdiction over the pending claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. INVENTION Appellants’ invention relates to a method of processing macroblock in a video stream. Abstract. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is MediaTek Inc. App. Br. 2. Appeal 2016-000097 Application 11/829,167 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reproduced below: 1. A method for processing a video stream based on macroblock units, each macroblock unit corresponding to at least one macroblock of a frame in the video stream, the method comprising: identifying a dependent set of macroblock units for a current macroblock unit; determining necessary portions of macroblock parameter sets of the dependent set of macroblock units for processing the current macroblock unit; processing the current macroblock unit if a local buffer already stores the necessary portions of macroblock parameter sets of the dependent set of macroblock units; and using decision information of the determined necessary portions to direct copying of the necessary portions of the macroblock parameter sets of the dependent set of macroblock units that are not available in the local buffer from a memory circuit into the local buffer for processing the current macroblock unit such that less than all unnecessary portions of the macroblock parameter sets of the dependent set of macroblock units are copied, wherein said macroblock parameter sets of the dependent set comprises inter prediction information and intra coding information. App. Br. (Claims Appendix A-l). REJECTIONS AT ISSUE The Examiner rejected claims 1 through 7, 9 through 17, 19 and 20, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Oguz (US 2006/0013320 Al, pub. 2 Appeal 2016-000097 Application 11/829,167 Jan. 19, 2006), and Sriram (US 6,539,059 Bl, iss. Mar. 25, 2003). Final Act. 5—12.2 The Examiner rejected claims 8 and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Oguz, Sriram, and Kuo (US 2005/0089097 Al, pub. Apr. 28, 2005). Final Act. 12-14. ANALYSIS Appellants argue, on pages 6 through 11 of the Appeal Brief, that the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1 and 16 is in error. We concur with the augment that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1 and 16. Appellants assert that the combination of Oguz and Sriram does not teach the claim 1 and claim 16 limitations of determining necessary portions of macroblock parameter sets for processing the current macroblock unit, using the determined necessary portions to direct a copy of the necessary portions of the macroblock parameter to the local buffer, as well as, the copy of the necessary portions that are not available in the local buffer for processing by the current macroblock, such that less than all unnecessary portions of the macroblock parameter set are copied. App. Br. 6—10. Appellants specifically assert that Sriram, which the Examiner relies upon to teach these limitations, teaches all parameters of the macroblock are stored and that there is no mention of determining necessary portions of a macroblock parameter set as claimed. App. Br. 6—7. Appellants argue that Sriram teaches parameters not frequently used are determined but necessary 2 Throughout the Opinion we refer to the Appeal Brief filed January 15, 2015 (“App. Br.”), the Final Office Action mailed September 11, 2014 (Final Act.”), and the Examiner’s Answer mailed July 15, 2015 (“Answer”). 3 Appeal 2016-000097 Application 11/829,167 portions are not determined. App. Br. 7—8. Further, Appellants argue that Sriram teaches copying all of the parameters and as such does not teach copying necessary portions not available in the buffer such that less than all unnecessary portions of the macroblock parameter sets of the dependent set of macroblock units are copied, as claimed. App. Br. 9-10. The Examiner in response to Appellants’ arguments states that Sriram does not teach copying all of the macroblock processing data as it teaches minimizing the macroblock structure by storing parameters that are less frequently used in a separate data structure. Answer 5, (citing col. 12,11. 57— 63, and col. 13,11. 1—24). Further, the Examiner finds that Sriram teaches prediction requires information from previous macroblock parameters and hence these parameters must be identified and updated. Answer 6, citing col. 10,11. 55-64. We have reviewed the teachings cited by the Examiner and we concur with the Examiner’s description of Sriram. However, we do not find that the Examiner has adequately explained, nor is it readily apparent to us, how these teachings relate to the disputed limitations. That is, it is unclear if the Examiner is considering Sriram’s determination that a parameter frequently or infrequently used is being equated to the claimed step of determining necessary portions macroblock parameter sets of dependent macroblock units. These teachings of Sriram do not meet the claims, as infrequently or frequently used is different from necessary or un-necessary for processing. If the Examiner is considering the processing of the macroblock to implicitly require determining the necessary dependent macroblocks, it is unclear what the Examiner is equating to the copying limitation. Sriram’s copying to minimizing macroblock cited by the Examiner is directed to 4 Appeal 2016-000097 Application 11/829,167 frequently/infrequently used data, and not to necessary/unnecessary data as claimed. As such we do not find that the Examiner has identified sufficient evidence to support the statement “[t]hus Sriram's system copies only the needed portion of the parameters to save the memory, lessen the processing, and minimize the bandwidth for a more efficient system.” Answer 6. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claims 1 and 16 and dependent claims 2 through 7, 9 through 15, 17, 19 and 20 based on Oguz, and Sriram. The Examiner has not shown that the additional teachings of Kuo make up for the deficiency in the rejection of independent claims 1 and 16. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 8 and 18 for the same reasons as claims 1 and 16 discussed above. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1 through 20 is reversed. REVERSED 5 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation