Ex Parte Melnyk et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 12, 2016

12580212 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 12, 2016)

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.
12/580,212 10/15/2009 Miguel Melnyk 09266.0028-00000 9881
109619 7590 12/14/2016
Citrix Systems, Inc./Finnegan
901 New York Avenue
NW
Washington, DC 20001
EXAMINER
SUN, YULIN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2485
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/14/2016 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):
regional-desk @ finnegan. com
Cindy. B aglietto @ finnegan. com
Sherbonne'.Barnes-Anderson@finnegan.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte MIGUEL MELNYK, ROBERT KIDD,
JOSEPH SESTRICH, JEREMY TIDEMANN, KARTIK AYYAR,
FREDERICK KOOPMANS, and ANDREW PENNER
Appeal 2016-000801
Application 12/580,212
Technology Center 2400
Before JEFFREY S. SMITH, NABEEL U. KHAN, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2016-000801
Application 12/580,212
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1—4, 6—8, 10-16, 18, 19, and 21,2 which are all of the pending claims.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
The application is directed to “methods and systems for budget
encoding,” which is “a technique to generate files in a media container
format, having a frame index specifying a byte size and a byte offset for
each media frame, within a real-time processing model.” (Spec. 118.)
Claim 1, reproduced below, is exemplary:
1. A method comprising:
receiving streaming media data having a media frame and a
frame index referencing the media frame;
allocating a frame budget for an output media frame by esti­
mating a frame size of the output media frame based on the frame
index;
generating the output media frame in real-time by processing
the media frame based on first processing parameters;
if the allocated frame budget is greater than a frame size of
the processed media frame, padding the processed media frame;
if the allocated frame budget is less than a frame size of the
processed media frame, determining second processing parame­
ters based on the frame budget and the first processing
1 Appellants identify Citrix Systems, Inc. as the real party in interest. (See
App. Br. 2.)
2 Claims 9, 20, and 22—31 were withdrawn as being drawn to a nonelected
group. (See Final Act. 2.)
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Application 12/580,212
parameters, re-processing the media frame based on the second
processing parameters and, if the allocated frame budget is
greater than a frame size of the re-processed media frame, pad­
ding the re-processed media frame; and
providing the output media frame.
THE REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Sugiyama US 2004/0141732 A1 July 22,2004
Neff et al. US 2009/0232220 A1 Sept. 17, 2009
Zhouetal. US 2010/0061448 Al Mar. 11,2010
THE REJECTIONS
1. Claims 1—3, 8, 10-15, 19, and 21 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Neff and Zhou. (See Final Act. 2;
Dec. 6, 2013 Non-Final Act. 2—8.)
2. Claims 4, 6, 7, 16, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Neff, Zhou, and Sugiyama. (See Final Act. 2;
Dec. 6, 2013 Non-Final Act. 8—9.)
3. Claims 1—4, 6—8, 10-16, 18, 19, and 21 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Zhou and Neff. (See Final Act. 3;
Dec. 6, 2013 Non-Final Act. 9—16.)
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Application 12/580,212
APPELLANTS’ CONTENTIONS
Appellants argue the rejections are in error for the following reasons:
1. With respect to rejections 1 and 2 above, “AY^does not
disclose any ‘frame index’ included in the received streaming media data,
and Neff does not disclose estimating a frame size based on a received frame
index.” (App. Br. 9.)
2. With respect to rejection 3 above, “Zhou, alone or in
combination with Neff, fails to disclose or suggest, at least, ‘estimating a
frame size of the output media frame based on the frame index [of the
received streaming media data].”’ (App. Br. 13, brackets in original.)
ANALYSIS
Neff teaches reformatting digital broadcast multimedia based on “Up-
Lront” parameters that “may be specific to a particular broadcast channel
within the broadcast service, in which case the ‘Up-Lront’ parameters may
be available to the repackaging element 20 when the user of the mobile
device 14 selects the broadcast channel for viewing.” (Neff 1 61.) “The
‘Up-Lront’ parameters may . . . have a ‘videoSampleSize’ parameter” which
“may be a constant size to use for video samples in the file.” {Id. 1 62.)
“The ‘videoSampleSize’ parameter may be established as a value that may
be larger than the size of the largest expected video frame” and “[v]ideo
samples which may have a size smaller than the size of the largest expected
video frame may be padded to the size of the largest expected video frame.”
{Id. 1 63; see id. 80.) If the incoming video sample is larger than the
“videoSampleSize” parameter, the repackaging element 20 may truncate the
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Application 12/580,212
incoming video sample to correspond to the “videoSampleSize” parameter.
(Id. 183.)
The Examiner finds the claim 1 limitations “receiving streaming
media data having a media frame and a frame index referencing the media
frame” and “allocating a frame budget for an output media frame by
estimating a frame size of the output media frame based on the frame index”
in Neff, as follows:
Neff discloses receiving streaming media data (e.g. Figs. 1, 5,
Paragraph [0002, 0059, 0090]) having a media frame (e.g. Fig. 4
and Paragraph [0090]) and a frame index referencing the media
frame (e.g. Paragraph [0106-0109]); allocating a frame budget
(e.g. target frame size, see Figs. 6-10 and Paragraph [0032,
0091]) for an output media frame (e.g. Paragraph [0089, 0092])
by estimating a frame size of the output media frame based on
the frame index (e.g. Figs. 6-10, Paragraph [0090-0093]).
(Ans. 16.) The Examiner further explains that “Paragraph [0108] of Neff
describes ‘H.264 bitstream syntax for individual frames’, and herein ‘the
H.264 bitstream syntax or Up-Front Parameter’ of Neff is considered as
‘frame index referencing the media frame’ as claimed” and that “these
‘Up-Front’ parameters are used to map a predetermined target frame size
accordingly.” (Ans. 16—17.)
Appellants reply that “the Examiner has not shown how Neff’s Up-
Front parameters include a frame index”; “the ‘Up-Front metadata’ in Neff
which is created based on the received Up-Front parameters, is not a ‘frame
index’ that is ‘received,’”; and “Neff does not disclose ‘estimating a frame
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Application 12/580,212
size of the output media frame based on the [received] frame index.’”
(Reply Br. 3—6.3)
We find Appellants’ argument that the “Up-Front parameters” are not
“a frame index referencing the media frame” unpersuasive because it fails to
explain why that is not the case. We recognize that the Specification
describes, for example, a “media frame index that references each frame in
MP4 file 100 and specifies a frame size and a byte offset for each frame”
(Spec. 12), but the claims do not include such language and Appellants do
not argue that claimed media frame index is necessarily that limited.
Appellants have not provided sufficient argument or evidence for us to
conclude that the broadest reasonable construction of “a frame index
referencing the media frame” does not encompass Neffs Up-Front
parameters and, specifically, the “videoSampleSize” parameter, which “may
be a constant size to use for video samples in the file.” (Neff 1 62.)
The argument that the Up-Front metadata is not “received” is not
persuasive because we agree with the Examiner that the Up-Front
parameters are, as the reference states that “[t]he repackaging element 20
may access the ‘Up-Front’ parameters associated with the audiovisual
content of the broadcast signal as generally shown at step 201.” (Neff 1 61.)
We further agree that the output frames are “based on” the Up-Front
parameters, as “based on” is a very broad concept and the reference states
3 Appellants also assert that “the ‘GOP frame pattern and target video
sample sizes’ in Neff do not include ‘frame size[s] of the output media
ffame[s] [estimated] based on the [received] frame index.” (Reply Br. 4.)
Because we agree with the Examiner that the frame sizes are “estimated”
based on the “videoSampleSize” parameter, this argument is moot.
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that “[t]he ‘videoSampleSize’ parameter may be established as a value that
may be larger than the size of the largest expected video frame” (Neff 1 63)
and, as noted above, the video is padded or truncated to fit that size.
For these reasons, we sustain the Section 103(a) rejections of claims
1—4, 6—8, 10-16, 18, 19, and 21 over Neff in view of Zhou and Sugiyama.
We do not reach the rejection of claims 1—4, 6—8, 10-16, 18, 19, and 21 over
Zhou in view of Neff and Sugiyama. See In re Hyon, 679 F.3d 1363, 1367
(Fed. Cir. 2012) (affirmance of rejection of all claims under Section 103(a)
made it unnecessary to reach other grounds of rejection); Beloit Corp. v.
Valmet Oy, 742 F.2d 1421, 1423 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
DECISION
The rejections of claims 1—4, 6—8, 10-16, 18, 19, and 21 are affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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