Ex Parte Pau

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

May 15, 2019

14052207 - (D) (P.T.A.B. May. 15, 2019)

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.
14/052,207 10/11/2013 Danilo Pietro Pau 12AG0718US01 6798
810063.406
38106 7590 05/17/2019
Seed IP Law Group LLP/ST (EP ORIGINATING)
701 FIFTH AVENUE, SUITE 5400
SEATTLE, WA 98104-7092
EXAMINER
TOWE, JOSEPH DANIE A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2481
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/17/2019 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):
US PTOe Action @ S eedIP .com
pairlinkdktg @ seedip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte DANILO PIETRO PAU
Appeal 2017-009302
Application 14/052,2071
Technology Center 2400
Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, THU A. DANG, and
STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges.
DANG, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1—6 and 11—23 (App. Br. 52—57), which constitute
all the claims pending in this application. Claims 7—10 are cancelled. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
A. INVENTION
According to Appellant, the invention relates to “encoding/decoding
of flows of digital video frames.” Spec. 1.
1 According to Appellant, the real party in interest is STMicroelectronics
s.r.l. App. Br. 2.
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Application 14/052,207
B. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM
Claim 1 is exemplary and is reproduced below:
1. A method of encoding a first and a second video frame in
a flow of digital video frames, the method including:
extracting for said first and second frame respective sets
of points of interest and descriptors wherein each descriptor
includes a plurality of orientation histograms relative to a patch
of pixels centered on the respective point of interest,
identifying a pair of linked descriptors, one for the first
frame and the other for the second frame, having a minimum
distance out of the distances of any of the descriptors for the
first frame and any of the descriptors for the second frame,
calculating the differences of the histograms of the
descriptors linked in said pair, and
encoding the descriptors linked in said pair as a set
including one of the descriptors linked in said pair and said
histogram differences, wherein said histogram differences
are subjected, after thresholding by setting to zero all the
differences below a certain threshold, to quantization and to
run-length encoding.
C. REJECTION
Claims 1—6 and 11—23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Guetz et al. (US 6,091,777; issued July 18, 2000) in
view of Baheti et al. (US 2012/0011119 Al; published Jan. 12, 2012) and
Ahonen et al. (US 2013/0272583 Al; published Oct. 17, 2013).
II. ISSUE
The dispositive issue before us is whether the Examiner has erred in
finding the combination of Guetz, Baheti, and Ahonen teaches or suggests
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“identifying a pair of linked descriptors, one for the first frame and the other
for the second frame, having a minimum distance out of the distances of any
of the descriptors for the first frame and any of the descriptors for the
second frame.” Claim 1 (emphasis added).
III. ANALYSIS
Appellant contends that “none of the references discloses ‘identifying
a pair of linked descriptors, one for the first frame and the other for the
second frame, having a minimum distance out of the distances of any of the
descriptors for the first frame and any of the descriptors for the second
frame. ’ as generally recited.” App. Br. 42 (quoting claim 1). In particular,
Appellant contends, although the Examiner relies on Baheti for teaching and
suggesting this contested limitation, “Baheti does not appear to ‘pair frames’
in a sequence of image frames,” but rather appears to “prune the descriptors
[in a database] in order to make an object database as small as possible.”
App. Br. 43. Appellant argues that
Baheti appears to disclose retrieving a query image, extracting
keypoints, generating descriptors, determining nearest
neighbors, in a local database of kevpoint descriptors (instead
of in frames, and without any regard to which frame a
descriptor might be associated with or whether there are other
descriptors in the respective frames which have a smaller
distance), and removing outliers from the database.
App. Br. 45.
The Examiner finds that:
Baheti teaches extracting for said first and second frame
respective sets of points of interest and descriptors wherein
each descriptor includes a plurality of orientation histograms
relative to a patch of pixels centered on the respective point of
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interest, (Baheti Fig. 12A, 128,1 [0063]: FIGS. 12A and 12B
are, respectively, a block diagram and corresponding flow
chart illustrating the query process with extracted feature
matching and confidence level generation (410) and outlier
removal (420). The query image is retrieved (406) and
keypoints are extracted and descriptors are generated (408)
producing a set of query descriptors Q.sub.j (j=l ... K.sub.Q)
(408.sub.result). For each query descriptor Q.sub.j, a nearest
neighbor search is performed using the local database of
keypoint descriptors ( 411)2)
identifying a pair of linked descriptors, one for the first
frame and the other for the second frame, having a minimum
distance out of the distances of any of the descriptors for the
first frame and any of the descriptors for the second frame,
(Baheti Fig. 6, f [0044]: Matching keypoint descriptors may be
identified based on a similarity metric, e.g., such as distance,
distance ratio, etc. For example, distance may be used where
any two keypoint descriptors f.sub.ij andf.sub.i,m (where I,
m=l ... K.sub.l) are determined to be a match if the Euclidean
distance between the features is less than a threshold, i.e.,
.parallel.f.sub.i,j-f.sub.i,m.parallel.. sub.L.sub.2<.tau.. The
cardinality of the set of matching keypoint descriptors is
L.sub.j.)
Final Act. 6.
In the Examiner’s Answer, the Examiner acknowledges Appellant’s
contention that the claims require that “the pair of descriptors identified must
have one from a first frame and one from another having the minimum
distances between the descriptors of the two frames.” Ans. 6. However, the
Examiner finds that the “descriptors” in Baheti “are extracted” from
“frames” in video data. Id. (citing Baheti || 25—26). According to the
Examiner, the claims only require a “single pair” of descriptors {id. at 5)
wherein Baheti’s “descriptors were initially pulled from frames with the
object imaged within it,” i.e., Baheti discloses “a comparison of keypoint
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Application 14/052,207
descriptors from two frames” (id. at 6), and thus, the claims read on using
the existing database described in Figs. 12A and 12B of Baheti, “which is
pruned to keep this process from being time-consuming, to find descriptor
matching using the process described.” Id.
We have considered all of Appellant’s arguments and evidence
presented. We agree with Appellant that the preponderance of evidence on
this record does not support the Examiner’s finding that the claims would
have been obvious over Guetz, Baheti, and Ahonen. In particular, we agree
with Appellant that the portions of Baheti relied on by the Examiner fail to
disclose or suggest identifying linked descriptors, “one for the first frame
and the other for the second frame,” the identified descriptors having “a
minimum distance out of the distances of any of the descriptors for the first
frame and any of the descriptors for the second frame.” See claim 1.
Baheti Figure 6, as cited by the Examiner for the “identifying” step
(Final Act. 6), discloses intra-object pruning. See Baheti, Fig. 6,144. In
particular, intra-object pruning shown in Figure 6 of Baheti uses a single
object and “removes descriptor redundancies within the views of the same
object.” Id. (emphasis added). We agree with Appellant that, for the inter-
object pruning shown in Figs. 12A and 12B, “at the time of the comparison
of Baheti, the object images are no longer in image frames (let alone in
frames of a flow of digital video frames).” Reply Br. 7. That is, at the time
of comparison the object data for the inter-object pruning of Figs. 12A and
12B, the object data are pruned data without the descriptor pairs that were
eliminated in the intra-object pruning described in Baheti Fig. 6. Baheti
11 56, 57, 62, and 63. Thus, as shown in these cited sections of Baheti,
inter-object pruning is performed not on two frames (i.e., claim l’s “first
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frame” and “second frame”) of a video flow as found by the Examiner, but
rather, is performed on a downloaded local database that no longer
represents a pair of video frames. Id.
Further, in the section referenced by the Examiner for the “descriptor”
extracting step (Final Act. 6), Baheti discloses a collection of many
descriptors within objects that are paired and reduced to a smaller set of
descriptors. Baheti | 63. Here, a query descriptor is compared with a
second set of local descriptors by comparing the distance between the query
and local descriptors, wherein the comparison determines a pairing of
descriptors when the query and local descriptors are less than a given
distance threshold apart. Id. Thus, in this section of Baheti relied on by the
Examiner, similar descriptors are found based on their proximity to each
other {id.), whereas the language of claim 1, for example, requires that a pair
of descriptors is determined by a comparison having a minimum distance
amongst any possible pairs of descriptors in the first and second frames. See
claim 1.
That is, the Examiner does not establish where Baheti teaches or
suggests the descriptors having a “minimum distance out of the distances of
any of the descriptors for the first frame and any of the descriptors for the
second frame,” as claimed. Final Act. 6. Further, the Examiner does not
point to any teaching or suggestion in Guetz and Ahonen to make up for the
shortcomings of Baheti.
Because the Examiner has not satisfied the notice requirement to
establish aprima facie case under 35 U.S.C. § 132(a), the Examiner has not
fully developed the record to establish the unpatentability of claim 1
pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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Accordingly, we are constrained on this record to reverse the
Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1, independent claims 5, 11, 15,
17, and 21, reciting substantially similar limitations (App. Br. 45 and 49),
and claims 2—4, 6, 12—14, 16, 18—20, 22, and 23 depending respectively
from claims 1,5, 11, 15, 17, and 21, over Guetz in view of Baheti and
Ahonen.
IV. CONCLUSION AND DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—6 and 11—23 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a), is reversed.
REVERSED
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