Ex Parte Matsuo et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 27, 2017

13122054 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 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.
13/122,054 03/31/2011 Shohei Matsuo 5259-000132/US/NP 5014
27572 7590 05/01/2017
HARNESS, DICKEY & PIERCE, P.L.C.
P.O. BOX 828
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI 48303
EXAMINER
SULLIVAN, TYLER
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2487
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/01/2017 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):
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PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SHOHEI MATSUO, SEISHI TAKAMURA,
KAZUTO KAMIKURA, and YOSHIYUKI YASHIMA
Appeal 2017-000929
Application 13/122,054
Technology Center 2400
Before HUNG H. BUI, BETH Z. SHAW, and AARON W. MOORE,
Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2017-000929
Application 13/122,054
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1—8 and 10, which are all of the pending claims. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse and enter a NEW GROUND OF REJECTION UNDER 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(b).
THE INVENTION
The application is directed to “a deblocking method used in a video
coding apparatus.” (Spec. 11.) Claim 1, reproduced below, is exemplary of
the subject matter on appeal:
1. A deblocking method for reducing block distortion occurring
in a video coding scheme for performing predictive coding on a
block basis and in a video decoding scheme for decoding video
coded by the video coding scheme, the method comprising:
a detection step of detecting, for each block, a direction in
which a pixel value is changed which is represented by an edge
that indicates a direction of change in pixel value in each block;
a determination step of determining a direction in which a
deblocking filter is to be applied to a block boundary, based on a
combination of a direction of an edge detected for a block to be
processed which includes the block boundary subject to
deblocking and a direction of an edge detected for at least one
block contacting the block to be processed, a direction of an edge
detected for a block which is included in the at least one block
being different from the direction of the edge detected for the
block to be processed; and
1 Appellants identify Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation as the
real party in interest. (See App. Br. 3.)
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Appeal 2017-000929
Application 13/122,054
a filtering step of applying the deblocking filter to the block
boundary in accordance with the determined direction.
THE REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Moon et al. US 2005/0201633 A1 Sept. 15, 2005
Lee et al. US 2006/0033936 Al Feb. 16, 2006
Kim et al. US 2006/0181740 Al Aug. 17, 2006
Dung T. Vo, et al., Edge-Based Directional Fuzzy Filter for
Compression Artifact Reduction in JPEG Images, 15th IEEE
International Conference on Image Processing, pp. 797—800
(Oct. 2008)
THE REJECTION
Claims 1—8 and 10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Vo, Kim, Moon, and Lee. (See Final Act. 6—14.)
ANALYSIS
Appellants explain that “[i]n conventional video encoding/decoding . .
. a picture is divided into blocks and then coded” and “[wjhile this process
can significantly compress the digital representation of the encoded picture,
removal of high frequency components produces an undesirable side effect”
in that it “can generate block noise at the boundaries.” (App. Br. 12.) The
application is generally directed to a “deblocking filter,” which “operates
upon pixels that are perpendicular to [a] block boundary, adaptively
applying filtration to those pixels based on boundary strength and pixel
difference.” (Id. ) In particular, Appellants characterize their invention as
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Application 13/122,054
“tak[ing] into account edge information from not only the block to be
processed, but also edge information from a block contacting the block to be
processed.” (App. Br. 15.) Appellants assert that “[i]n so doing, [the]
invention can handle situations in which a line segment of texture is
disjointed or interrupted across a block boundary” and also “exclude the
texture to which a deblocking filter is to be applied.” (Id.)
The block/contacting block aspect of the invention is claimed in the
“determining” step, in which the deblocking filter direction is “based on a
combination of [A] a direction of an edge detected for a block to be
processed . . . and [B] a direction of an edge detected for at least one block
contacting the block to be processed.”
In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner finds Vo “teaches processing
blocking artifacts” and concludes that “[i]t would have been obvious ... to
modify Vo’s invention utilizing edges across block boundaries using block
boundaries considerations as taught by Lee, Kim, and Moon and further with
adaptive filtering considering other block edges detected by Lee, Kim, and
Moon.” (final Act. 6—7.)
Appellants argue the rejection is unfounded because “none of the
references teach or suggest that the filter direction should be determined
based on Appellants’ claimed combination of: (1) the edge direction of a
block to be processed and (2) the edge direction of a block that contacts the
block to be processed.” (App. Br. 26.)
We agree with Appellants that the cited portions of Lee, Kim, or
Moon do not teach or suggest the use of “a direction of an edge detected for
a block to be processed” and “a direction of an edge detected for at least one
block contacting the block to be processed.”
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Appeal 2017-000929
Application 13/122,054
Moon describes a method that includes “searching] for direction of a
4x4 block . . . using pixels located on the boundaries of upper and left two
blocks that are adjacent to a current block in a spatial domain.” (Moon |
65.) Even if it is the case that Moon uses pixel information from a
contacting block, we do not agree that it teaches or suggest use of “a
direction of an edge detected” for such a block.
The cited portions of Kim relate to an “edge distinguisher” that
“distinguishes pixels into three kinds,” “a non-edge pixel corresponding to
the homogeneous region,” “an object edge pixel corresponding to a person
or object contour line,” and “a block edge pixel corresponding to the block
boundary region generated in a block based encoding process.” (Kim 170.)
We do not agree with the Examiner that such a disclosure teaches or
suggests use of “a direction of an edge detected” for contacting blocks.
Lee, in the cited portion, describes a technique for “sharpness”
improvement that “operates ... an overlapped block structure.” (Lee 192.)
Although this uses information from different blocks, Lee does not teach or
suggest the use of directions of edges associated with the blocks.
The Examiner’s reliance on these references may be explained by the
comment on page 8 of the Answer that “the pixels in a block are considered
to determine and edge direction for the block” and “[tjhus, pixel edge
information serves as a nexus in determining the edge direction of a block.”
However, the fact that pixels of a block can be used to determine a direction
of an edge in that block does not mean that any use of pixels in a block
constitutes determining a direction of an edge for the block based on its
pixels.
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Application 13/122,054
Because we agree with Appellants that the cited art does not teach or
suggest
determining a direction in which a deblocking filter is to be
applied to a block boundary, based on a combination of a
direction of an edge detected for a block to be processed which
includes the block boundary subject to deblocking and a
direction of an edge detected for at least one block contacting the
block to be processed,
we do not sustain the Section 103(a) rejection of claims 1—8 and 10.
NEW GROUND OF REJECTION
UNDER 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(B)
Claims 1, 7, and 10 are newly rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Vo and Jongho Kim, et al., Reduction of Blocking
Artifacts for HDTV using Offset-and-Shift Technique, IEEE Transactions on
Consumer Electronics, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Nov. 2007) (“Reduction of Blocking
Artifacts”).2
In essence, we adopt the Examiner’s findings and explanations
regarding the teachings of Vo but substitute Reduction of Blocking Artifacts
in place of Lee, Kim, and Moon.
Vo teaches deblocking with a directional filter. As explained above,
however, Vo does not explicitly teach determining the direction “based on a
combination of a direction of an edge detected for a block to be processed
which includes the block boundary subject to deblocking and a direction of
an edge detected for at least one block contacting the block to be processed,”
as recited in independent claims 1, 7, and 10.
2 Reduction of Blocking Artifacts was first cited in an IDS submitted on June
3, 2016, after the mailing date of the Final Action.
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In the same field of endeavor, Reduction of Blocking Artifacts teaches
or suggests the missing feature, as it describes directional deblocking in
which the direction of the filter is based on the type of block and the type of
an adjacent block, where the type of block (e.g., “UDB,” “VDB”) reflects
the direction of an edge in the block. (See Reduction of Blocking Artifacts,
Section III.B (“Since horizontal or vertical edges usually appear in several
consecutive blocks instead of in an 8x8 block only, we examine the type of
adjacent DB before the DDB filtering.”).) The type of block is the
“direction of an edge detected for the block” or, at a minimum, teaches or
suggests use of the direction of a detected edge for the block, as it
emphasizes the desirability of determining edge information for adjacent
blocks on a whole block basis.
We conclude that it would have been obvious to one of skill in the art
at the time of the invention to modify Vo’s directional filter with the
teachings in Reduction of Blocking Artifacts regarding the use of edge
information for the block and a contacting block. The skilled artisan would
have been motivated to make the combination because the use of an edge
direction determined for the block and an adjacent block would have
allowed for a more accurate determination of the edge direction (or the non­
existence of an edge) and, thus, a more accurate filter direction.
Claims 1,7, and 10 are therefore rejected as unpatentable over Vo and
Reduction of Blocking Artifacts. We have not reviewed the dependent
claims to the extent necessary to determine whether these claims are
unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Instead, we leave it to the Examiner
to determine whether the dependent claims are patentable over Vo and
Reduction of Blocking Artifacts.
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Application 13/122,054
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claims 1—8
and 10. We enter a new ground of rejection of claims 1,7, and 10 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a), pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b).
TIME PERIOD
This decision contains a new ground of rejection pursuant to 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(b).
37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) provides that “[a] new ground of rejection
pursuant to this paragraph shall not be considered final for judicial review”
and that Appellant, WITHIN TWO MONTHS FROM THE DATE OF THE
DECISION, must exercise one of the following two options with respect to
the new ground of rejection to avoid termination of the appeal as to the
rejected claims:
(1) reopen prosecution by submitting an appropriate amendment of
the claims so rejected, or new Evidence relating to the claims so rejected, or
both, and have the matter reconsidered by the examiner, in which event the
proceeding will be remanded to the examiner; or
(2) request that the proceeding be reheard under § 41.52 by the Board
upon the same Record.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a).
REVERSED
37 C.F.R, $ 41.50(B)
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