Sony Corporation

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jan 5, 2022

2020005955 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 5, 2022)

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. 15/250,711 08/29/2016 Teruhiko SUZUKI 10845US09CON 1034 154930 7590 01/05/2022 XSENSUS LLP 100 Daingerfield Road Suite 402 Alexandria, VA 22314 EXAMINER AN, SHAWN S ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2483 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/05/2022 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): Faith.Baggett@xsensus.com Sandy.Miles@Xsensus.com anaquadocketing@Xsensus.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte TERUHIKO SUZUKI ___________ Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., JASON V. MORGAN and ADAM J. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judges. WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE1 Appellant2 is appealing the final rejection of claims 2-11 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). See Appeal Brief 11. Claims 2 and 3 are independent. 1 Rather than reiterate Appellant’s arguments and the Examiner’s determinations, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed March 6, 2020), the Reply Brief (filed August 17, 2020), the Final Action (mailed October 10, 2019) and the Answer (mailed June 17, 2020), for the respective details. 2 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. 1.42(a) (2013). (“The word ‘applicant’ when used in this title refers to the inventor or all of the joint inventors, or to the person applying for a patent as provided in §§ 1.43, 1.45, or 1.46.”). Appellant identifies Sony Corporation as the real party in interest. Appeal Brief 2. Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 2 Claim 1 cancelled. See Claims Appendix. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse and enter a new ground of rejection. Introduction According to Appellant: [T]he present invention relates to an encoding device and a method, a decoding device and a method, an editing device and a method, a storage medium, and a program which are preferably used for transmitting/receiving image information (bitstreams), compressed by motion compensation and orthogonal transformation, such as a discrete cosine transform or Karhunen- Loeve transform, through a network medium, such as satellite broadcast, cable television broadcast, or the Internet, or are preferably used for processing image information on a storage medium, such as an optical disk, a magnetic disk, or a flash memory. Specification 1, lines 17-24. Representative Claim3 (disputed limitations emphasized) 2. A decoding method, comprising: acquiring, from a bitstream as bitstream syntax, identification information identifying whether pictures in a randomly accessible predetermined section in a sequence of the bitstream do not refer to pictures included in another predetermined section in the sequence of the bitstream and buffer characteristic 3 Appellant does not argue independent claims 2 and 3 individually. See Appeal Brief 2 (“The rejection of independent claims 2 and 3 is appealed herewith. Claims 2 and 3 recite parallel subject matter and therefore stand or fall together.”). Accordingly, we select independent claim 2 as representative. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (2019) (“When multiple claims subject to the same ground of rejection are argued as a group or subgroup by appellant, the Board may select a single claim from the group or subgroup and may decide the appeal as to the ground of rejection with respect to the group or subgroup on the basis of the selected claim alone.”). Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 3 information corresponding to the sequence of the bitstream, which is contained within the bitstream and includes at least a first combination of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream and a second combination of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream as criteria for determining whether the bitstream is decodable and for checking bitstream and decoder conformance using a decoder buffer size and a decoding bit rate in bitstream conformance points corresponding to at least the first combination and the second combination, the buffer size information indicating a required buffer size of a buffer that stores the bitstream during decoding of the bitstream and the bit rate information indicating an input bit rate of the buffer; and decoding the sequence of the bitstream using the identification information and the buffer characteristic information corresponding to the sequence of the bitstream. References Name4 Reference Date Hoang US 5,719,632 February 17, 1998 Sullivan US 2003/0156640 A1 August 21, 2003 Ribas-Corbera US 7,646,816 B2 January 12, 2010 Rejection on Appeal Claims 2-11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hoang, Sullivan, Ribas-Corbera and Appellant’s Admitted Prior Art (Background Art). Final Action 2-5. 4 All reference citations are to the first named inventor only. Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 4 ANALYSIS Appellant contends that, “Hoang, Sullivan, Ribas-Corbera and Background even if combined, fail to disclose a decoding method (claim 2) or decoder (claim 3) that includes acquiring buffer characteristic information from a bitstream and using the buffer characteristic information to decode a sequence of a bitstream as claimed.” Appeal Brief 5 (emphasis omitted). Appellant argues: At no point, does Hoang describe that a bitstream that is decoded includes buffer characteristic information corresponding to a sequence of the bitstream, which is contained within the bitstream and includes at least a first combination of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream and a second combim1tion of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream, as required by independent claim 2. Appeal Brief 6 (emphasis omitted). The Examiner finds that Hoang discloses, “using the decoder buffer size and the decoding bit rate in bitstream corresponding to at least the combination” wherein “the buffer size information [indicates] a required buffer size of a buffer that stores the bitstream (101) and the bit rate information indicating the input bit rate of the buffer (Figs.1 and 8; col. 2, lines 6-23; col. 7, lines 43-67; col. 8, lines 46-67).” Final Action 3; see Answer 8. We find Appellant’s argument persuasive of Examiner error for the following reasons. The Examiner relies on Hoang’s Virtual Buffer Verifier (VBV) “that verifies whether an encoded bit stream is decodable with specified limitations on the decoder buffer size and the input bit rate. The VBV has two modes of operation: constant bit rate (CBR) and variable bit rate (VBR).” Hoang, column 2, lines 7-10. Hoang discloses, “For constant-bit-rate operation, the Decoder Buffer 101 is filled at a constant bit rate with compressed data 100 from the storage or transmission medium” wherein “the buffer size and the bit rate are Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 5 parameters that are transmitted in the compressed bit stream. After an initial delay, which is also derived from information in the bit stream, a hypothetical decoder 103 instantaneously removes from the buffer all of the data associated with the first picture.” Hoang, column 2, lines 13-20; see column 7, lines 60- 62. Hoang states: the VBV is devised as a decoder buffer 101 followed by a hypothetical decoder 103, whose sole task is to place bounds on the number of bits used to code each picture so that the overall bit rate equals the target allocation and the short-term deviation from the target is bounded. Hoang, column 7, lines 51-56. Appellant argues, “the sole task of the VBV in Hoang [is] to allow a content author to adjust encoder parameters to ensure that a bitstream satisfies certain R [rate] and B [bits] constraints before the bitstream is completed” and therefore the VBV disclosed in Hoang “merely represents a hypothetical model that does not actually decode a bitstream, and Hoang fails to describe the contents of any bitstream that is decoded, much less that such a bitstream includes the buffer characteristics information recited in claim 2.” Reply Brief 2-3. We agree and find Appellant’s argument persuasive of Examiner error. Neither Sullivan, Ribas-Corbera nor the Background Art addresses Hoang’s noted deficiencies. Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claims 2, 3, as well as, dependent claims 4-11. Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 6 New Ground of Rejection under Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 112, First Paragraph, Written Description Requirement Claims 2-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. Appellant amended independent claims 2 and 3 in an amendment filed July 3, 2019 before the mailing of the Final Action on October 10, 2019 as follows: includes at least a first combination a plurality-of combinations of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream and a second combination of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream as criteria for determining whether the bitstream is decodable and for checking bitstream and decoder conformance using a decoder buffer size and a decoding bit rate in bitstream conformance points corresponding to at least the first combination and the second combination plurality of combinations, the buffer size information indicating a required buffer size of a buffer that stores the bitstream during decoding of the bitstream and the bit rate information indicating an input bit rate of the buffer. Appellant indicates that support for the claimed first and second combinations is found in Figure 7 and Specification page 15, line 8 to page 16, line 11. See Appeal Brief 3. Appellant’s Figure 7, reproduced below: Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 7 A decoding device 90 shown in FIG. 7 corresponds to the encoding device 70 shown in FIG. 5. The decoding device 90 includes the image-information decoding device 40 shown in FIG. 2 therein. A bitstream BS input to the decoding device 90 is supplied to a bitstream analyzing unit 91 a decoding-possibility determining unit 92. Specification 15, lines 9-12. The Specification further discloses in regard to Figure 7 that: The decoding-possibility determining unit 92 determines whether or not the input bitstream can be decoded without the input bitstream causing buffer failure, in accordance with the buffer information BH and decoder information DI supplied from the image information decoding device 40. Examples of the decoder information DI include a decoder buffer size and a decoding bit rate. Specification 15, lines 19-23 (emphasis added); see Appeal Brief 3. Both the Specification and Figure 7 are silent in regard to “at least a first combination of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream and a second combination of buffer size information in the bitstream and bit rate information in the bitstream as criteria for determining whether the bitstream is decodable” (emphases added) as recited in both independent claims 2 and 3. Thus, one of ordinary skill, in reading the Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 8 disclosure, would not understand the inventors to have possession of these claim limitations at the time of filing. Accordingly, claims 2-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. CONCLUSION Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed New Ground 2-11 103(a) Hoang, Sullivan, Ribas-Corbera, Background Art 2-11 2-11 112 Written Description 2-11 Overall Outcome 2-11 2-11 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.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) also provides that the 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. Submit 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 prosecution will be remanded to the examiner. . . . (2) Request rehearing. Request that the proceeding be reheard under § 41.52 by the Board upon the same Record. . . . Appeal 2020-005955 Application 15/250,711 9 Further guidance on responding to a new ground of rejection can be found in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure § 1214.01. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. §1.136(a)(1)(iv). See 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(f). REVERSED; 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b)