10236009 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 28, 2010)

Ex Parte Auwera et al

Board of Patent Appeals and InterferencesSep 28, 2010

10236009 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 28, 2010)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS AND INTERFERENCES ____________ Ex parte GEERT VAN DER AUWERA, IOANNIS ANDREOPOULOS, ADRIAN MUNTEANU, PETER SCHELKENS, and JAN CORNELIS ____________ Appeal 2009-005465 Application 10/236,009 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before JAMES D. THOMAS, MAHSHID D. SAADAT, and CARL W. WHITEHEAD, JR., Administrative Patent Judges. SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL1 1 The two month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304 or for filing a request for rehearing as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 41.52, begins to run from the “MAIL DATE” (paper delivery mode) or the “NOTIFICATION DATE” (electronic delivery mode) shown on the PTOL-90A cover letter attached to this decision. Appeal 2009-005465 Application 10/236,009 2 Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of claims 1-4, 6-9, 18, 21, and 23-33, which constitute all the claims pending in this application as claims 5, 10-17, 19, 20, and 22 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants’ invention relates to a method of digital encoding or decoding a digital bit stream comprising a representation of a sequence of n- dimensional data structures, or matrices, in which n is typically 2. (Spec. 1:12-15; 4:28–5:14). Claim 1, which is illustrative of the invention, reads as follows: 1. A method of digital encoding or decoding a video bit stream, the bit stream comprising a representation of a sequence of n- dimensional data structures, the method comprising: providing a set of one or more subsampled subbands forming a multilevel subband transform of one data structure of the sequence; and after providing the set, inputting at least a part of the set to at least one digital filter so as to generate a further set of one or more subbands of a shifted version of said data structure, wherein said shifted version of said data structure is at least one of temporally shifted and spatially shifted in a video frame, and wherein the further set is generated based on the provided set, and the further set has at least one subsampled subband that is not included in the one or more subsampled subbands of the provided set. The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims: Radu Zaciu, Motion Estimation and Motion Compensation Using an Overcomplete Discrete Wavelet Transform, 1 PROC. INT’L CONF. ON IMAGE PROCESSING, 973 (1996). Appeal 2009-005465 Application 10/236,009 3 Claims 1-4, 6-9, 18, 21, and 23-33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Zaciu. Rather than repeat the arguments here, we make reference to the Briefs and the Answer for the respective positions of Appellants and the Examiner. ISSUE With respect to claim 1, Appellants contend that Zaciu does not disclose inputting a set of subbands to a filter to generate a further set of subbands using the filter (App. Br. 16). Additionally, Appellants argue that Zaciu does not describe the output of filter l(n) with sufficient clarity in order to meet the claimed filter predicting or generating further subbands (App. Br. 17). Additionally, Appellants contend that Zaciu neither generates further subbands based on already provided subbands (id.) nor discloses that “the further set has at least one subsampled subband that is not included in the one or more subsampled subbands of the provided set” (App. Br. 18). The Examiner responds that Zaciu, in section 2.2, discloses filtering Overcomplete Discrete Wavelet Transform (ODWT) members through the use of the discrete filters g(n) and l(n) to generate a filtered set (Ans. 5). The Examiner further asserts that Zaciu, in the “Corollary” section at the bottom of the right-hand column on page 974, states “how another ODWT member (e.g. translated version) is generated” (id.). With respect to the claimed feature related to the generated set having at least one subsampled subband that is not included in the subbands of the provided set, the Examiner merely makes general assertions that sections 3 and 4 on page 975 of Zaciu disclose Appeal 2009-005465 Application 10/236,009 4 the generation of subbands and the first full paragraph on page 975 of Zaciu shows that the FS-BMA covers different levels of subbands (Ans. 6). Therefore, the issue is whether the Examiner erred in rejecting the claims as anticipated by Zaciu by determining that Zaciu’s ODWT meets the claimed subject matter recited in claim 1. PRINCIPLES OF LAW A rejection for anticipation requires that the four corners of a single prior art document describe every element of the claimed invention, either expressly or inherently, such that a person of ordinary skill in the art could practice the invention without undue experimentation. See Atlas Powder Co. v. IRECO, Inc., 190 F.3d 1342, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 1999); In re Paulsen, 30 F.3d 1475, 1478-79 (Fed. Cir. 1994). ANALYSIS Upon reviewing the disclosure of Zaciu, we find Appellants’ argument to be persuasive. In particular we agree with Appellants (App. Br. 18) that the Examiner has not shown in Zaciu that “the further set is generated based on the provided set, and the further set has at least one subsampled subband that is not included in the one or more subsampled subbands of the provided set,” as recited in claim 1. While the Examiner finds in Sections 3 and 4 on page 975 of Zaciu a statement related to coding schemes for the ODWT subband components, we do not agree with the Examiner that the first full paragraph of the right-hand column on page 975 describes the disputed claimed feature. In fact, Zaciu teaches that “[t]he maximum search displacement is assumed to be 5 on the 1st level, 3 on the Appeal 2009-005465 Application 10/236,009 5 2nd and 2 on the 3rd level and in the approximation subband. For the FS- BMA simulation, 8x8 subblocks are employed” (p. 975). Therefore, as stated by Appellants (Reply Br. 5), Zaciu selects the best match (using FS- BMA procedure) instead of generating a new or further set. We also disagree with the Examiner (Ans. 5) that claim 1 requires providing only a subset smaller than the whole set because the claim clearly requires that at least one subsampled subband of the generated set is not included in the provided set. Therefore, as explained by Appellants (App. Br. 18; Reply Br. 4-5), the Examiner has not shown that at least a part of a set of subsampled subbands is inputted to the filters in Zaciu so as to generate a further set, let alone showing that the further set has at least one subband that is not included in the provided set. CONCLUSION On the record before us, we find that the Examiner erred in rejecting the claims as anticipated by Zaciu by determining that Zaciu’s ODWT meets the claimed subject matter recited in claim 1. Other independent claims 18, 24, 26, 32, and 33 include limitations similar to those of claim 1, which we found to be absent from Zaciu. Therefore, we do not sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 102 rejection of claims 1, 18, 24, 26, 32, and 33 nor of claims 2-4, 6-9, 21, 23, 25, and 27-31 dependent thereon, as anticipated by Zaciu. ORDER The decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1-4, 6-9, 18, 21, and 23-33 is reversed. Appeal 2009-005465 Application 10/236,009 6 REVERSED babc KNOBBE MARTENS OLSON & BEAR LLP 2040 MAIN STREET FOURTEENTH FLOOR IRVINE, CA 92614