Ex Parte Ishiguro et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 20, 201613334299 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 20, 2016) 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. 13/334,299 12/22/2011 Yasuyuki ISHIGURO 1248-1286PUS1 6473 127226 7590 12/22/2016 Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch, LLP P.O. Box 747 Falls Church, VA 22040-0747 EXAMINER LELAND III, EDWIN S ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2677 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/22/2016 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): mailroom @ bskb. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte YASUYUKIISHIGURO, HISASHI KUNIHIRO, and HITOSHINAGAHAMA Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 Technology Center 2600 Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and ERIC S. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judges. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims 1, 2, 4—6, and 9. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. The invention relates to an image forming apparatus that displays environmental information about the apparatus (Spec. 1:10—12, 4:3—10). Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. An image forming apparatus comprising: operation accepting means for accepting an instruction corresponding to a job; and display controlling means for controlling a display section, said image forming apparatus being switchable between a normal mode and an energy saving mode in which electric power is consumed less than in the normal mode, the display controlling means controlling the display section not to display, during the energy saving mode, a mark image indicative of a carbon footprint label, which has been obtained by said image forming apparatus, and controlling the display section to display the mark image indicative of the carbon footprint label during returning operation from the energy saving mode. The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on REFERENCES appeal is: Owen US 2003/0076330 A1 Apr. 24, 2003 July 19, 2007 June 25, 2009 Watanabe et al. US 2007/0165262 Al Zolezzi US 2009/0164264 Al 2 Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 Tsuzuki US 7,619,766 B2 Nov. 17,2009 Pat et al. US 2010/0149573 A1 June 17, 2010 Osann, JR. US 2011/0242003 Al Oct. 6, 2011 REJECTIONS The Examiner made the following rejections: Claims 1,2, and 4 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Owen, Zolezzi, and Watanabe. Claim 5 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Owen, Zolezzi, Watanabe, and Pat. Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Owen, Zolezzi, Watanabe, Pat, and Tsuzuki. Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Owen, Zolezzi, Watanabe, and Osann. ANALYSIS Appellants contend “Owen merely discloses that graphics can be displayed during each of the above states (as shown in Figs. 6A—6D of Owen), and does not disclose or suggest displaying graphics during returning operation from the energy saving mode (e.g., from termination of the power save mode to an initiation of the ready state)” (App. Br. 6—7). Further, Appellants contend Watanabe “discloses not displaying a mark during the energy saving mode,” and thus “Owen as modified by Watanabe would result in a blank display during the energy saving mode until the machine is ready in the ready state” (App. Br. 7). Additionally, Appellants contend “in the present invention, the mark image is not displayed in the normal mode (corresponding to the ready state of Owen),” in contrast to 3 Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 Owen, in which “the graphic (i.e., mark image) is displayed in a small screen of an image forming apparatus (i.e., printer device) during the ready state” (App. Br. 8). We are not persuaded by Appellants’ arguments. Owen discloses a display 208 on an electrical device 102, such as a printer, that displays graphical data stored on the electrical device (Owen, 16, 31). A user can specify whether graphics are to be “displayed by the device for particular stages of electrical device operation” (Owen, 134). For example, where the data is to be displayed during device initialization (i.e., booting), the command identifies] the graphical data can comprise variables “PJL INITGRAPHICS.” Similarly, where the data is to be displayed during a ready state, operating state, or power-save state, the commands can, for instance, comprise the variables “PJL RDYGRAPHICS,” “PJL OPGRAPHICS,” and “PJL PWR SAVEGRAPHICS,” respectively. (Owen, 136). Watanabe discloses a processing apparatus 1 that includes a printer unit 10 and a display 74 for “displaying the state of the processing apparatus 1 and various instructions to the user in characters and illustrations” (Watanabe, 124). Watanabe teaches a power saving mode with two states: in “low power mode” the display 74 displays “Power Saving Mode! Please Press the Start key”; in “sleep mode” the display on display 74 disappears and no power is supplied to the fixing device of the printer (Watanabe, 127). Thus, the Examiner’s combination of Watanabe with Owen results in a printer with a display that displays no graphic in a sleep mode, but displays a specific graphic in a ready state after returning from sleep mode. Further, as the Examiner explains, in such combination some decision would have to be made as to what graphic to display, if any, when returning from the power saving sleep mode to the ready state (see Ans. 12—13). Indeed, as 4 Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 Watanabe teaches that no power is supplied to the fixing device of the printer during sleep mode (Watanabe, 127), we find one of ordinary skill in the art would have understood there would need to be some warm-up period before the combination printer returned to the ready state. The Examiner finds, and we agree, that it would have been obvious to display a graphic, such as Owen’s “PJL PWR SAVEGRAPHICS,” during this return period (see Ans. 12). Owen teaches such a flexible approach by describing a selection/identification process for the graphics where “the user can specify whether the graphics are . . . displayed by the device for particular stages of electrical device operation” and noting that “persons having skill in the art will appreciate that alternative commands could be used depending upon the configuration of the electrical device 102” (Owen, H 34, 36). Further, we find Owen suggests displaying graphics for an interim state by teaching the display of “PJL fNITGRAPHICS” during a “device initialization (i.e., booting)” (Owen, 136). With the knowledge of displaying a graphic during device booting, one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the advantage of using a graphic for another interim state such as between a power saving sleep mode and a ready state in the combination of Owen and Watanabe. We are thus not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that Owen does not disclose “displaying graphics during returning operation from the energy saving mode” (App. Br. 6—7) because the combination of Owen and Watanabe teaches or suggests this feature, as discussed above. We are similarly not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that “Owen as modified by Watanabe would result in a blank display during the energy saving mode until the machine is ready in the ready state” (App. Br. 7) because it would have been obvious for the combination printer discussed above to display a 5 Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 graphic during the return from a power saving mode to the ready state. Further, it would not have rendered Owen inoperable to not display a graphic during the power saving mode (Reply Br. 6) because Owen allows the user to specify whether a graphic is displayed during any given state of the device (Owen, 134), and thus does not “require^ that the PJL PWR SAVEGRAPHICS be displayed in the power-save state” (Reply Br. 6). Moreover, as the Examiner states (Final Act. 5), one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to reduce power by not displaying a graphic in the power saving mode as taught by Watanabe (Watanabe, 127). Finally, we are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that Owen’s display of the “PJL RDYGRAPHICS” graphic in the ready state is in contrast to claim 1 where “the mark image indicative of the carbon footprint label” is not displayed during the normal state (see App. Br. 8; see also Reply Br. 4) for two reasons. First, the combination discussed above includes displaying Owen’s “PJL PWR SAVEGRAPHICS” during the return to the ready state, which is different than Owen’s “PJL RDYGRAPHICS” graphic that is displayed in the actual ready state. Second, claim 1 does not specify whether “the mark image indicative of the carbon footprint label,” is displayed during the normal mode; it only specifies that the image is displayed “during returning operation from the energy saving mode.” Accordingly, Appellants’ argument directed to the display of an image while in the normal mode is not commensurate with the scope of claim 1, and is therefore not persuasive. We are, therefore, not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1, and claims 2, 4—6, and 9 not specifically argued separately. 6 Appeal 2015-008237 Application 13/334,299 CONCLUSION The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1,2, 4—6, and 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). DECISION For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 2, 4—6, and 9 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)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation