Ex Parte Feldman

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Feb 21, 2012

11220674 (B.P.A.I. Feb. 21, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte BERNARD FELDMAN
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Appeal 2011-005175
Application 11/220,674
Technology Center 2600
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Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, ROBERT E. NAPPI,
JASON V. MORGAN, Administrative Patent Judges.

MacDONALD, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2011-005175
Application 11/220,674

2
STATEMENT OF CASE
Introduction
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims
1-21. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

Exemplary Claim
Exemplary claim 1 under appeal reads as follows:
1. In a display driving circuit, the improvement comprising:
a memory for holding a plurality of frames of video data, each
frame comprising red, green and blue fields of video data;
a compensator for compensating, on a frame-by-frame basis,
(1) video data from a first field of the red, green and blue fields of
video data from a first frame of the plurality of frames of video data
using (2) video data from the first field of the red, green and blue
fields of video data from a second frame of the plurality of frames of
video data; and
a driver for driving the compensated video data from the first
field of the red, green and blue fields of video data from the first
frame of the plurality of frames of video data after compensation by
the compensator,
wherein the video data from the first field of the second frame
are displayed at a same position as the video data from the first field
of the first frame.

Rejections on Appeal 1
The Examiner rejected claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combination of Suntola (US 4,907,862) and Martinez
(US 4,838,685).

1 Separate patentability is not argued for claims 2-21.
Appeal 2011-005175
Application 11/220,674

3
Appellant’s Admissions and Contentions
Appellant admits that Martinez “discloses methods and apparatus for
motion estimation in motion picture processing in which an initial velocity
vector is selected as an estimation of the displacement of a region from a
location in a first frame to a different location in a second frame and the
velocity estimate is then refined by minimizing an average value of the
squared directional gradient residual over the region. (See Abstract.)”
(App. Br. 15).
Appellant then contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because “neither Suntola nor Martinez, alone
or in combination, teach or suggest the video data from the first field of
the second frame are displayed at a same position as the video data
from the first field of the first frame, as in independent claims 1….”
(App. Br. 16).
Issue on Appeal
Did the Examiner err in rejecting claim 1 as being obvious because
the references fail to teach or suggest the claim limitations at issue?

ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
argument (Appeal Brief and Reply Brief) that the Examiner has erred.
We disagree with Appellant’s conclusion. We adopt as our own
(1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from
which this appeal is taken and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner
in the Examiner’s Answer in response to Appellant’s Appeal Brief. We
concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner.
Appeal 2011-005175
Application 11/220,674

4
Separately, we note that the gist of Appellant’s argument is that
compensation for a stationary object would not be suggested by Martinez’s
compensation for a moving object. We disagree. Stationary is merely the
special case where motion is at zero and this special case is well-known to
artisans. Appellant admits that compensation is known for cases where
motion is greater than zero, and Appellant does not set forth a reasonable
basis to conclude that compensating for the well-known zero motion special
case would be beyond a mere routine exercise in the art.
CONCLUSIONS
(1) The Examiner has not erred in rejecting claims 1-21 as being
unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
(2) Claims 1-21 are not patentable.
DECISION
The Examiner’s rejections of claims 1-21 are affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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