Ex Parte IsakharovDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardFeb 28, 201310923173 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 28, 2013) 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. 10/923,173 08/20/2004 Svetlana M. Isakharov ITL.2107US (P18833) 4389 47795 7590 02/28/2013 TROP, PRUNER & HU, P.C. 1616 S. VOSS RD., SUITE 750 HOUSTON, TX 77057-2631 EXAMINER YEH, EUENG NAN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2669 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/28/2013 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 PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte SVETLANA M. ISAKHAROV ____________________ Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 Technology Center 2600 ____________________ Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD, JR., ERIC S. FRAHM, and ANDREW J. DILLON, Administrative Patent Judges. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 2 STATEMENT OF CASE1 Introduction Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1, 3-15, and 17-33. Claims 2 and 16 have been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. Appellant’s Invention Appellant discloses an apparatus (Fig. 2; claim 1), method (Fig. 5; claims 15 and 26), and an article including a computer-readable medium having instructions (Fig. 5; claim 30) for performing a data driven color conversion (Abs.). The apparatus (Fig. 2) includes a plurality of interconnected low-level processors (Fig. 2, 210-1, 210-2, 210-n; Fig. 3, 310, 320, 330) located in a same chip, at least one processor including (i) a first processing unit to perform a first portion of a color conversion scheme to generate first intermediate pixel data from pixel data stored in a memory, and (ii) a second processing unit to perform a second portion of the color conversion scheme to generate converted pixel data using the first intermediate pixel data (Spec. 11:21-12:2), wherein indicator data associated with the pixel data designates which processing units internal to the plurality of interconnected low-level processors should perform which portions of the color conversion scheme (Spec. 10:17-11:9; claim 1). 1 Throughout our decision, we make reference to the Appeal Brief filed February 24, 2010 (“App. Br.”); the Examiner’s Answer mailed May 10, 2010 (“Ans.”); and the Reply Brief filed June 23, 2010 (“Reply Br.”). Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 3 Exemplary Claim Exemplary independent claim 1 under appeal, with emphasis added to the disputed portion of the claim, reads as follows: 1. A system, comprising: a plurality of interconnected low-level processors located in a same chip, at least one of the processors including: a first processing unit to perform a first portion of a color conversion scheme to generate first intermediate pixel data from pixel data stored in a memory; and a second processing unit to perform a second portion of the color conversion scheme to generate converted pixel data using the first intermediate pixel data, wherein indicator data associated with the pixel data designates which processing units internal to the plurality of interconnected low-level processors should perform which portions of the color conversion scheme. Examiner’s Rejections (1) The Examiner rejected claims 1, 3-6, 13-152, 17-19, and 26-33 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the combination of Trivedi (US 6,573,846 B1) and Huang (US 2005/0185836 A1). Ans. 3-12. (2) The Examiner rejected claims 7-12, and 20-25 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the combination of Trivedi, Huang, and Lee (US 2004/0257453 A1).3 Ans. 12-14. 2 The Examiner inadvertently failed to list claims 13 and 14 in the statement of the obviousness rejection over the combination of Trivedi and Huang (see Ans. 3), even though claims 13 and 14 are discussed on the merits in the body of the rejection (see Ans. 11). For purpose of this appeal, we consider claims 13 and 14 to be rejected under § 103(a) along with claims 1, 3-6, 15, 17-19, and 26-33. Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 4 Appellant’s Contentions (1) With regard to claim 1, rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Trivedi and Huang, Appellant makes numerous arguments (see App. Br. 12- 13, Reply Br. 1-2), including: (a) Trivedi does not teach indicator data that designates which processing units should perform which portions of a color conversion scheme (App. Br. 12); (b) Huang does not teach indicator data that designates which processing units should perform which portions of a color conversion scheme (App. Br. 12-13); (c) Huang does not use indicator data associated with pixel data, and Huang’s Figure 1B teaches using a CPU code, and not pixel data (Reply Br. 1); and (d) Figure 93 of Trivedi does not look up indicator data associated with pixel data (Reply Br. 2). 3 Separate patentability is not argued for claims 3-15 and 17-33, and the Appellant relies on the arguments presented for claim 1 with respect to claims 3-14 (depending from claim 1), and claims 15 and 17-33 (claims 15, 26 and 30 being independent claims) (see App. Br. 12-13). We select claim 1 as representative of the group of claims rejected under § 103(a) over Trivedi and Huang (claims 1, 3-6, 13-15, 17-19 and 26-33), pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv). See In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (“If the brief fails to meet either requirement [of 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)], the Board is free to select a single claim from each group of claims subject to a common ground of rejection as representative of all claims in that group and to decide the appeal of that rejection based solely on the selected representative claim.”). Accordingly, our analysis herein will only address claim 1. Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 5 (2) With regard to claims 7-12 and 20-25, rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Trivedi, Huang, and Lee, Appellant relies (App. Br. 13) on the arguments made with respect to claims 1 and 15. Issues on Appeal Based on Appellant’s arguments in the Appeal Brief (App. Br. 12-13) and the Reply Brief (Reply Br. 1-2), the following issues are presented on appeal: Did the Examiner err in rejecting representative claim 1 as being obvious because the combination of Trivedi and Huang fails to teach or suggest “indicator data” that designates which processing units should perform which portions of color conversion scheme, as recited in representative claim 1? Has Appellant adequately shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 7-12 and 20-25 as being obvious because the combination of Trivedi, Huang, and Lee fails to teach or suggest “indicator data” that designates which processing units should perform which portions of a color conversion scheme, as recited in claims 1 and 15 from which claims 7-12 and 20-25 respectively depend? ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s contentions in the Appeal Brief (App. Br. 12-13) that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellant’s conclusions. With regard to representative claim 1, we concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner, and we adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 6 the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Ans. 4-7), and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer in response to the Appellant’s Appeal Brief (Ans. 14-15). We highlight and amplify certain teachings and suggestions of the references, as well as certain ones of Appellant’s arguments as follows. We agree with the Examiner’s findings with respect to the individual references, and with the Examiner’s determination that it would have been obvious to combine the references based on the rationale set forth by the Examiner (Ans. 3-7 and 14-15), including using Trivedi’s indices (i.e., indicator data) with Huang’s methodology of using different processing units to perform different portion of color conversion scheme to efficiently produce good quality images (Ans. 7), and accelerate the speed of color conversion (Ans. 15). With regard to representative claim 1, we agree with the Examiner (Ans. 5-7) that Trivedi teaches the selection of Look-Up tables (LUTs) to be used by the Vector Look-Up Table unit (VLUT) based on Red-Green-Blue (RGB) indices. Trivedi’s LUTs contain partial components for converting RGB color space into YCbCr color space (see Trivedi, Fig. 90 and col. 56, ll. 33-47 which show and describe indices 4401, 4402, 4403, 4405, and 4407 which act as “indicator data”). Appellant only presents arguments as to Trivedi’s Figure 93 (see Reply Br. 2), and fails to rebut the Examiner’s reliance on Figure 90 and column 56, lines 33-47 (Ans. 5-6) as teaching or suggesting “indicator data” as recited in claim 1. We also agree with the Examiner (Ans. 6-7) that Huang teaches controlling plural processing units such that (i) a first color space converter 114 converts original image data 112 to image data that corresponds to a second color space 120, and (ii) a Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 7 second color space converter 118 converts image data in the second color space 120 to final image data 122 that corresponds to a final color space 130 (Huang, Fig. 1B and ¶ [0019]). We note that each reference cited by the Examiner must be read, not in isolation, but for what it fairly teaches in combination with the prior art as a whole. See In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (one cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references) (citation omitted). Appellant makes arguments with regard to claim 1 (App. Br. 12) concerning the individual shortcomings in the teachings of each of the applied references to Trivedi and Huang. We have carefully reviewed these arguments, however, and they are not convincing of the non-obviousness of the claimed invention set forth in independent claim 1. For example, Appellant criticizes Trivedi and Huang for not teaching or suggesting indicator data that designates which processing units should perform which portions of a color conversion scheme (App. Br. 12), when the Examiner has relied upon the combination of Trivedi and Huang to teach this feature (Ans. 3-7 and 14-15). Appellant criticizes Huang for not teaching indicator data associated with pixel data (Reply Br. 1), when the Examiner has relied upon Trivedi (Fig. 90 and col. 56, l. 33) as teaching indicator data associated with pixel data (Ans. 5-6). Furthermore, Appellant criticizes that Trivedi’s look- up tables of Figure 93 do not look up indicator data associated with pixel data (Reply Br. 2 citing Fig. 93 and col. 58, ll. 60-65), when the Examiner has relied upon these portions of Trivedi (Ans. 15 citing Fig. 93 and col. 58, l. 60) for motivation to combine Trivedi and Huang and has relied upon Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 8 Trivedi’s indices (Fig. 90 and col. 56, l. 33; Ans. 5-6) as teaching the “indicator data” recited in claim 1. We sustain the rejection of claim 1, as well as claims 3-6, 13-15, 17- 19, and 26-33 grouped therewith under § 103(a) over Trivedi and Huang for the reasons provided by the Examiner (Ans. 3-12 and 14-15), and because Trivedi discloses indices (see Trivedi, Fig. 90 and col. 56, ll. 33-47) which are “indicator data.” We sustain the rejection of claims 7-12 and 20-25, under § 103(a) over Trivedi, Huang , and Lee for the reasons provided by the Examiner (Ans. 12-14), and for the same reasons provided as to claims 1 and 15 from which claims 7-12 and 20-25 respectively depend. In view of the foregoing, we conclude that the inventions recited in claims 1, 3-15, and 17-33 have not been shown to be patentably distinguishable from the combined teachings of the applied prior art. CONCLUSIONS (1) The Examiner has not erred in determining that the combination of Trivedi and Huang teaches or suggests the system having indicator data as recited in representative claim 1, and claims 3-6, 13-15, 17-19, and 26-33 grouped therewith. (2) Appellant has not adequately shown that the Examiner has erred in determining that the combination of Trivedi, Huang, and Lee teaches or suggests the subject matter of claims 7-12 and 20-25. DECISION The Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 3-15, and 17-33 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) are affirmed. Appeal 2010-011194 Application 10/923,173 9 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 llw Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation