Ex Parte 6771808 et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Aug 31, 2011

95001176 (B.P.A.I. Aug. 31, 2011)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
95/001,176 06/15/2009 6771808 M2058-6000 1855
23459 7590 09/01/2011
COGNEX CORPORATION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
1 VISION DRIVE
NATICK, MA 01760-2077
EXAMINER
LAROSE, COLIN M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3992
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/01/2011 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

MVTec SOFTWARE GmbH
Third Party Requester, Appellant

v.

COGNEX CORPORATION
Patent Owner, Respondent
____

Appeal 2011-005542
Inter partes Reexamination Control No. 95/001,176
Patent 6,771,808 B1
Technology Center 3900
____________

Before SALLY C. MEDLEY, KEVIN F. TURNER, and STEPHEN C. SIU,
Administrative Patent Judges.

SIU, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This proceeding arose from a third party request on behalf of MVTec
Software GmbH for an inter partes reexamination of U. S. Patent 6,771,808
B1 (the ‘808 patent) assigned to Cognex Corporation and issued to Aaron S.
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Reexamination Control 95/001,176
Patent 6,771,808 B1

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Wallack (August 3, 2004). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. §§ 134(b)
and 306. An oral hearing of this appeal was held on June 1, 2011.
The ‘808 patent describes a search tool that registers patterns
transformed by multiple degrees of freedom (co. 1, ll. 10-12). Claim 6 on
appeal reads as follows:
6. A method for registering an object in six degrees of freedom
using a machine vision system comprising:
recognizing, with a search tool of the machine vision system, a
plurality of instances of a trained pattern, the plurality of instances each
being transformed to exhibit different amounts of aspect and shear;
providing from the search tool, a plurality of search results
corresponding, respectively, to the plurality of instances of the trained
pattern; and
combining the plurality of search results, including comparing found
relative positions of the instances of the trained pattern with known relative
positions of the instances of the trained pattern so as to provide a location of
the object in the six degrees of freedom.

(Claims Appendix, App. Br. 31)

The Examiner confirms patentability of the claims over the following
prior art references:

Nakajima US 5,623,560 Apr. 22, 1997
Matsutake US 5,793,901 Aug. 11, 1998
Peurach US 6,173,066 B1 Jan. 9, 2001

Lanser, Stefan, et al., “MORAL – A Vision-based Object Recognition System
for Autonomous Mobile Systems,” 1997 (“Lanser”).
Clark F. Olson and Daniel P. Huttenlocher, “Automatic Target Recognition
by Matching Oriented Edge Pixels,” IEEE Transactions on Image
Processing, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1997 (“Olson”).
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Appellant appeals the Examiner’s confirmation of the following
claims over the proposed rejections:
Claims 6, 8-12, and 14-17 as being anticipated or obvious over
Peurach.
Claims 10 and 16 as being obvious over either Peurach or the
combination of Peurach and Matsutake.

Appellant withdraws the appeal of the Examiner’s confirmation of the
following:1
Claims 6, 8-12, and 14-17 as being anticipated by Nakajima or Olson
or obvious over either Nakajima or the combination of Olson and Lanser.
Claims 9 and 15 as being obvious over Nakajima and Peurach.
Claims 10 and 16 as being obvious over Matsutake and any one of
Nakajima or Olson.

ISSUE
Did the Examiner err in making a final decision favorable to the
patentability of claims 6, 8-12, and 14-17 over Peurach and/or the
combination of Peurach and Matsutake?

1 All parties agree that “the claims are necessarily limited to the
embodiment in which multiple fiducial marks on an object are imaged”
(Oral Hearing Transcript 5, 11-12, 16). Based on this construction with
which all parties agree, Third Party Requester maintains the appeal only
with respect to the Peurach reference and the combination of the Peurach
and Matsutake references (Oral Hearing Transcript 5, 11).

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ANALYSIS
The Examiner finds that claim 6 is limited to the alternate
embodiment as disclosed in the ‘808 Specification at col. 9, l. 9, et seq.,
namely, “the presence of multiple patterns” (Right of Appeal Notice 5) as
opposed to the presence of only a single trained pattern. Third Party
Requester states that “the claims do not cover the single pattern/fiducial
embodiment” (App. Br. 9) and that the claims “are necessarily limited to the
embodiment in which multiple fiducial marks on an object are imaged”
(Oral Hearing Transcript 5). Patent Owner concurs (Oral Hearing Transcript
11-12, 16). Hence, all parties agree that the claims require the presence of
multiple trained patterns on an object.
Under this agreed upon construction, the ‘808 Specification discloses
an example in which “three discrete fiducials/patterns” are “on an object”
(col. 9, l. 11; Fig. 7). Claim 6 recites “a plurality of instances of a trained
pattern,” which, according the agreed upon construction of claim terms,
corresponds to a “fiducial . . . consisting of alternating light and dark
quadrants” (in one example illustrated in Fig. 3 of the ’808 Specification) as
a “trained pattern” and multiple trained patterns (or fiducials) located on an
object (i.e., multiple (3 in this example) “trained patterns” of Fig. 3 on an
object as illustrated in Fig. 7).
Claim 6 recites “a plurality of instances of a trained pattern” and
“comparing found relative positions of the instances of the trained pattern
with known relative positions of the instances of the trained pattern”
(emphasis added). While it has been agreed upon that claim 6 requires
multiple trained patterns, the requirement of claim 6 that a comparison be
made between (multiple) instances of found positions of “the” trained
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pattern with known (multiple) positions of the instances of “the” trained
pattern indicates that each of the required multiple trained patterns are
multiple instances of the same trained pattern. In other words, claim 6
requires multiple trained patterns, as agreed upon by all parties, but each of
the multiple trained patterns in question is of the same trained pattern (but a
separate instance of the same trained pattern).
Appellant argues that Peurach discloses “‘instances of a trained
pattern’ are the edges of the pyramid shown in Figure 2” (App. Br. 13).
Even assuming that each edge of the pyramid illustrated in Fig. 2 of Peurach
corresponds to a “trained pattern,” Peurach would disclose multiple
(different) trained patterns (e.g., a particular edge or line segment, another
particular edge or line segment, etc. – col. 3, ll. 11-15) rather than “a
plurality of instances of a trained pattern” and “comparing [multiple] found
relative positions of the [multiple] instances of the trained pattern” as recited
in claim 6 in which each of the (multiple) found instances of the trained
pattern is a found instance of the same trained pattern that is modified to
“different amounts of aspect and shear” as recited in claim 6.
Specifically, each edge of the pyramid model in Fig. 2 of Peurach
cited by Appellant is a separate and different element of the pyramid and
would each constitute different “trained patterns,” even assuming an edge of
a pyramid could be characterized as a trained pattern at all. Rotating the
model (i.e., pyramid) “in pitch, roll, and yaw over the entire angular range”
(col. 7, ll. 51-52), as cited by Appellant, would result in multiple instances of
“known relative positions of the instances” of the model with which to
subsequently compare (i.e., such data is “preferably precomputed off-line
prior to the matching operation and stored in a model file” for later
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comparison to an “image generated” array – col. 7, ll.61-63). However,
Appellant has not sufficiently demonstrated that Peurach discloses or
suggests comparing multiple found positions of multiple instances of the
trained pattern with the stored instances of known positions of the instances
of the model.
At best, Peurach appears to disclose comparing a found position of an
instance (singular) of one (singular) trained pattern (e.g., a particular edge in
an image) with known positions (obtained by previously rotating the
corresponding model in pitch, roll, and yaw) of that one (singular) trained
pattern. Even if Peurach discloses performing the same operation for other
edges of the model (pyramid), each of the other edges are other “trained
patterns” that are different from the first trained pattern (and each other). It
does not appear that Peurach also discloses comparing found positions of
multiple instances (as agreed upon by all parties) of a particular edge of the
pyramid (i.e., a “trained pattern”) with known positions of instances of that
particular edge of the model (pyramid).
Appellant draws lines connecting three separate “trained patterns” in
Fig. 7 of the ‘808 patent and argues that “fiducials F1, F2 and F3 [illustrated
in Fig. 7] comprise portions of an overall pattern that is a triangle” (App. Br.
17). Appellant thus argues that a triangle formed by drawing connecting
lines in Fig. 7 of the ‘808 patent is a “trained pattern” as recited in claim 6.
We agree with Respondent that “this reasoning is inconsistent with the
express words of the claims” (Respondent’s Br. 12). For one thing, forming
a single triangle by connecting three separate fiducials together would result
in a single “trained pattern” (the triangle) rather than multiple trained
patterns as was previously agreed claim 6 requires.
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Claim 12 recites similar features as claim 6. Claims 8-11 and 14-17
depend from claim 1 or claim 12. Appellant does not argue that Matsutake
makes up for the deficits of Peurach.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in making a final decision favorable to the
patentability of claims 6, 8-12, and 14-17.
DECISION
The Examiner’s final decision favorable to the patentability of claims
6, 8-12, and 14-17 is affirmed.

AFFIRMED

rvb

PATENT OWNER

COGNEX CORPORATION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
1 VISION DRIVE
NATICK, MA 01760-2077

PROSKAUER ROSE LLP
ONE INTERNATIONAL PLACE
BOSTON, MA 02110

THIRD PARTY REQUESTER

FOLEY & LARDNER LLP
111 HUNTINGTON AVENUE
26TH FLOOR
BOSTON, MA 02199-7610