Prior disclosure of adaptive quantization offsets across multiple color spaces negates inventive step under Section 2(1)(ja).

The Appellant, NEC Corporation, filed a National Phase Application (No. 201717010986) on March 28, 2017, titled "VIDEO CODING DEVICE, VIDEO DECODING DEVICE, VIDEO CODING METHOD, VIDEO DECODING METHOD AND PROGRAM"

The invention relates to video coding/decoding using an "adaptive color transform in residual domain" combined with a "chroma quantization offset" to enhance compression efficiency and image quality

The Respondent (Controller) issued a First Examination Report (FER) citing three prior arts: D1 (HEVC Screen Content Coding Draft), D2 (Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding meeting text), and D3 (WO2015143671)

Following a hearing, the Respondent passed the Impugned Order on June 21, 2022, refusing the patent under Section 15 of the Patents Act, 1970, on the grounds that the claims lacked an "inventive step" under Section 2(1)(ja)

The Appellant challenged this refusal, arguing that the prior arts did not disclose the derivation of offsets for a plurality of color spaces in block units

1. Whether the Subject Application involves an "inventive step" as defined under Section 2(1)(ja) of the Patents Act, 1970, in view of prior arts D1, D2, and D3

2. Whether D3, having a publication date after the Subject Application’s priority date, can be cited for anticipation by prior claiming under Section 13(1)(b)

The Court applied Section 2(1)(ja) of the Patents Act, 1970, which defines "inventive step" as a feature involving technical advancement or economic significance that is not obvious to a person skilled in the art

It considered Section 13(1)(b) regarding anticipation by prior claiming for documents published after the priority date but filed earlier

The Court further referred to the principles of obviousness and burden of proof established in F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. & Anr. v. Cipla Ltd. and the factors for revocation/prior claiming from Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GMBH & Co. KG v. Vee Excel Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Private Ltd.

The Court analyzed D1 and found that Section 8.6.2 explicitly discloses equations for adjusting Quantization Parameters (QP) for chroma components (Cb/Cr) using offsets (e.g., -5, -3) when an adaptive color transform flag is enabled

This directly addressed the Appellant's claim regarding "deriving a chroma quantization offset" for multiple color spaces

Regarding D2, the Court noted it discloses delta QPs for the YCoCg space, and a Person Skilled in the Art (PSITA) would logically infer an offset of 0 when no transform is applied, fulfilling the "plurality of color spaces" requirement

While D3 was published after the priority date, the Court held it could be considered for prior claiming under Section 13(1)(b); D3 explicitly mentions separate QP offsets for different color spaces (RGB and YCoCg)

The Court rejected the Appellant’s contention that the prior arts were confined to simple color conversion, concluding that the combination of switching color spaces at the coding unit level and applying adaptive offsets was clearly suggested by the prior arts

The Court held that the Subject Application lacked an inventive step under Section 2(1)(ja) because the claimed features were rendered obvious by the disclosures in D1, D2, and D3

The Court concluded that the technical solutions proposed by the Appellant regarding adaptive chroma quantization offsets were already known or logically derivable from the cited prior art documents