Ex Parte Corazza et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 24, 201813555548 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 24, 2018) Copy Citation 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. 13/555,548 07/23/2012 Stefano Corazza 20030.706.1 6902 119741 7590 01/26/2018 Keller Jolley Preece / Adobe 1010 North 500 East, Suite 210 North Salt Lake, UT 84054 EXAMINER TSENG, CHARLES ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2613 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/26/2018 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): docketing@kjpip.com gj olley @ kj pip. com tmeid @ kj pip. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte STEFANO CORAZZA and EMILIANO GAMBAREITO Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,5481 Technology Center 2600 Before BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, JON M. JURGOVAN, and NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection of claims 1—20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 Appellants identify Adobe Systems Inc. as the real party in interest. App. Br. 4. Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,548 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The Invention According to Appellants, the invention relates to “generating recommendations for animations to apply to animate 3D characters.” Abstract. Exemplary independent claim 1 is reproduced below. 1. An animation server system for providing recommendations for adding animations to a sequence of animations comprising: at least one processor; and at least one non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the system to: identify an animation sequence for a 3D character, the animation sequence comprising a first animation; receive a request to provide an animation recommendation that recommends at least one animation to add to the first animation in the animation sequence; locate a node on a taxonomy tree that matches an identified animation category of the first animation, wherein the taxonomy tree comprises a set of nodes, wherein each node represents an animation category comprising a plurality of animations, wherein each node is directly connected to at least one other node to form a logical animation transition between the directly connected nodes, and wherein traversing the taxonomy tree between two adjacent nodes results in a smooth sequence of animations; traverse one or more directly connected nodes on the taxonomy tree to identity one or more additional animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to the first animation; generate a recommendation list comprising the one or more additional animations; 2 Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,548 provide the recommendation list to a client device associated with a user; receive, from the client device, a selection of an animation selected from the recommendation list; and concatenate the selected animation to the first animation in the animation sequence. References and Rejections 1. Claims 1—5, 7—16, 19 and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Victor B. Zordan, et al., Dynamic Response for Motion Capture Animation, ACM Transactions on Graphics — Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2005, Vol. 24, Issue 3, July 2005, Feng Liu, et al., 3D Motion Retrieval with Motion Index Tree, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, Vol. 92, Issues 2—3, November—December 2003, Alvarez (US 2006/0109274 Al, published May 25, 2006), and Okan Arikan, et al., Motion Synthesis from Annotations, ACM Transactions on Graphics — Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2003, Vol. 22, Issue 3, July 2003. Final Act. 2—36. 2. Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Zordan, Liu, Alvarez, Arikan, and Shah (US 7,372,536 B2, May 13, 2008). Final Act. 36-37. 3. Claims 17 and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Zordan, Liu, Alvarez, Arikan, and Hayashi (US 6,203,425 Bl, issued Mar. 20, 2001). Final Act. 37-AO. 3 Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,548 DISCUSSION Findings and Contentions Claim 1 recites a “taxonomy tree” comprising nodes “wherein each node is directly connected to at least one other node to form a logical animation transition between the directly connected nodes, and wherein traversing the taxonomy tree between two adjacent nodes results in a smooth sequence of animations.” Claim 1 further recites “travers[ing] one or more directly connected nodes on the taxonomy tree to identify one or more additional animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to the first animation.” The Examiner finds Liu teaches a motion index tree used as a hierarchical classifier “for organizing and categorizing motion sequences in a motion library where motion sequences and corresponding categories are ordered and clustered as directly connected nodes . . . Final Act. 9. Liu’s motion index tree, the Examiner finds, corresponds to the claimed “taxonomy tree . . . wherein the taxonomy tree comprises a set of nodes, wherein each node represents an animation category comprising a plurality of animations.” Acknowledging that Liu “does not explicitly disclose generating a smooth sequence of animations” (Final Act. 12), the Examiner relies upon Arikan, which “explains the use of various constraints to ensure the synthesis of a smooth motion sequence.” Final Act. 12 (citing Arikan, Section 3). The Examiner finds that “Liu may be accordingly modified with the teachings of Arikan to generate a smooth sequence of animation.” Final Act. 12. Appellants argue “the phrase ‘generating a smooth sequence of animations’ [should not be read] in isolation.” Reply Br. 4. Instead, the 4 Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,548 limitation of “traversing] one or more directly connected nodes on the taxonomy tree to identify one or more additional animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to the first animation” should be considered as a whole. Reply Br. 4. According to Appellants, neither Liu nor Arikan, nor their combination, teaches a taxonomy tree where traversing the nodes of the tree identifies an animation that results in a smooth sequence of animations. Reply Br. 4. For example, Appellants assert “the motion index tree of Liu is fundamentally different from the taxonomy tree of the present claims.” Reply Br. 3. According to the Appellants, “the motion index tree of Liu is built to identify similar motions to a query sample rather than identify one or more additional animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to a first animation.” Reply Br. 3; see also App. Br. 17 (“Liu’s focus is retrieving similar motions to a submitted sample by comparing joints of a query motion [to] the root-level of the motion index tree all the way down to the leaf-level, and as such, does not teach or suggest forming transitions between animations in an animated sequence between nodes.”) Furthermore, even if Arikan teaches generating a smooth sequence of animations, “Arikan fails to teach any type of taxonomy tree” and thus fails to remedy the deficiencies of Liu. Reply Br. 4. Analysis Appellants’ arguments are persuasive. Ordinarily “one cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references individually where, as here, the rejections are based on combinations of references.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 426 (CCPA 1981). In this case, however, we agree with Appellants that the limitation of “travers[ing] one or more directly connected nodes on 5 Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,548 the taxonomy tree to identify one or more additional animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to the first animation” should be considered as a whole. The nodes in the claimed taxonomy tree are used to categorize animations so that, when traversed, they “identify one or more additional animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to the first animation.” There is no finding by the Examiner that Liu’s motion index tree can be traversed to identify animations that result in a smooth sequence of animations when added to a given animation. Although Arikan teaches generating a smooth sequence of animations, it does so using annotations and constraints, not the traversal of a taxonomy tree. See Arikan, sections 3 and 4. The Examiner relies on two separate references, Liu and Arikan, to teach the aforementioned disputed limitation. However, the Examiner has not sufficiently explained how the combination of Arikan’s constraints with Liu’s motion index tree would result in the disputed limitation. For example, even if the nodes in Liu’s motion index tree represent animation categories, as the claim requires, and even if Arikan’s constraints were used in combination with Liu’s motion index tree so that animations represented by nodes in the tree formed a smooth sequence when combined, the combination would still not teach traversal of the nodes of the motion index tree results in identifying animations that form a smooth sequence of animations. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1, or of independent claims 19 and 20, which contain similar limitations, and which were rejected on substantially the same basis. 6 Appeal 2017-007227 Application 13/555,548 See Final Act. 25—36. For the same reasons we do not sustain the rejection of the pending dependent claims. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—20 is reversed. REVERSED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation