Ex parte Clair

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Feb 15, 2000

08084345 (B.P.A.I. Feb. 15, 2000)

Application for patent filed June 28, 1993.1
1
Paper No. 20
THIS OPINION WAS NOT WRITTEN FOR PUBLICATION
The opinion in support of the decision being entered today
(1) was not written for publication in a law journal and
(2) is not binding precedent of the Board.
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
_______________
BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
_______________
Ex parte ROBERT CLAIR
______________
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,3451
_______________
ON BRIEF
_______________
Before THOMAS, MARTIN and HECKER, Administrative Patent
Judges.
THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant has appealed to the board from the examiner's
final rejection of claims 1 through 6, which constitute all
the claims in the application.
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
There appears to be no identifiable date as to this reference. 2
It appears that it was originally supplied to the Office to be considered
as prior art as part of the submission on June 28, 1993 in appellant's prior
art statement of that date. Therefore, for purposes of its use as applied
prior art within 35 U.S.C. § 103, appellant appears to have admitted by the
submission that it was prior art to him.
2
Representative claim 1 is reproduced below:
1. A method of selectively repeating a unit image cell
in a pixelmap image datafile comprising a grid of pixel
locations, the method comprising the steps of:
a. defining the unit image cell by specifying a bounded
region of pixels to be copied;
b. defining an origin point on the grid;
c. defining two cartesian placement vectors such that at
least one placement vector is oriented vertically or
horizontally and the other diverges therefrom by an angle
equal to or less than 90E;
c.[d.] generating linear combinations of the placement
vectors that collectively specify a set of copying locations
in the pixelmap relative to the origin point; and
d.[e.] sequentially copying the unit image cell into the
pixelmap datafile such that a predetermined location within
the copied cell coincides with pixel [sic] specified by each
said linear combination of placement vectors.
The following references are relied on by the examiner:
Yan et al. (Yan) 4,615,013 Sep. 30, 1986
Weyl, Symmetry, “Ornamental Symmetry” pp. 83-1132
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
3
Claims 1 through 6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
As evidence of obviousness, the examiner relies upon Yan in
view of Weyl.
Rather than repeat the positions of the appellant and the
examiner, reference is made to the briefs and the answers for
the respective details thereof.
OPINION
We reverse the rejection of claims 1 through 6 under
35 U.S.C. § 103.
In reviewing the examiner's statement of the rejection at
pages 2 and 3 of the answer, the examiner asserts that certain
portions of Yan teach the claimed feature of generating linear
combinations of the placement vectors. In the middle of page
3 of the answer, however, the examiner then indicates that the
reference does not explicitly teach that feature but only
suggests it in a different location in the reference. In the
statement of the rejection as well as the responsive arguments
portion of the answer, the examiner does not return to or
effectively rely upon in any manner this reference as a basis
to explain the combinability or correlation of its teachings
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
4
to the claimed invention of representative claim 1, for
example, on appeal.
For appellant's part, we generally agree with the
appellant's characterization of this reference to Yan in the
principal brief on appeal where appellant makes reference at
page 11 of this brief to the earlier noted conflicting
positions of the examiner as to the feature of generating
linear combinations of placement vectors.
We conclude the examiner has not set forth a prima facie
case of obviousness of the claimed invention in light of the
collective teachings of the two references relied upon because
of the above noted weaknesses in the examiner's position as to
Yan and the fact that the examiner does not attempt to
correlate the individual features of representative
independent claim 1 on appeal, for example, to the teachings
and showings in Weyl. There is no explicit teaching in this
reference of placement vectors per se, let alone a linear
combination of them in the manner claimed. There is, however,
in Weyl an apparent historical development of a mathematical
basis of vector algebra as applied to images that are
effectively duplicated or translated from one position to
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
5
another. However, Weyl's discussion is in the abstract and
not in the context of any application to pixelmap images in a
data file as claimed. There appears to be no relevance of the
teaching value of Weyl's ability to effectively replicate or
translate images to the portions of Yan that the examiner has
relied upon (Figures 2-6 and column 10) and thus to the
claimed invention of representative independent claim 1 on
appeal. The examiner has also not made a persuasive showing
of such correlation or relevance.
Notwithstanding these considerations, we do not agree
with appellant's characterization that Yan does not deal in
any manner with image copying, and the examiner has not
indicated or apparently appreciated that Yan does teach a
methodology of repeating what may amount to unit image cells.
Column 18 begins a discussion of Yan's so-called “tile method”
of minimizing storage spaces for replicated storage elements
where any given identifiable tile image is repeated in
adjacent or surrounding tiles to form a supertile of an image
which will be operated upon to achieve the overall approach of
textured imaging to the viewer by the circuitry of Figure 11.
The examiner has therefore not correlated any teaching value
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
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of the translation of images utilizing vector algebra of Weyl
to these teachings in Yan. We are, therefore, left to
conjecture on our own any applicability of the combined
teachings from the references to the presently claimed
invention on appeal. This we will not do.
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
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In view of the foregoing, the examiner's decision to
reject claims 1 through 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
REVERSED
James D. Thomas )
Administrative Patent Judge )
)
)
)
John C. Martin ) BOARD OF
PATENT
Administrative Patent Judge ) APPEALS AND
) INTERFERENCES
)
)
Stuart N. Hecker )
Administrative Patent Judge )
JDT/cam
Appeal No. 1997-1304
Application 08/084,345
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Steven J. Frank
Cesari and McKenna
30 Rowes Wharf
Boston, MA 02110