Ex Parte Lorie

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Aug 20, 2002

08938044 (B.P.A.I. Aug. 20, 2002)

The opinion in support of the decision being entered today was not written for
publication and is not binding precedent of the Board.
Paper No. 26
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________
BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________
Ex parte RAYMOND A. LORIE
____________
Appeal No. 2000-0222
Application No. 08/938,044
____________
ON BRIEF
____________
Before FLEMING, RUGGIERO, and DIXON, Administrative Patent Judges.
DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is a decision on appeal from the examiner's final rejection of claims 1, 3,
and 5-21, which are all of the claims pending in this application.
We REVERSE.
Appeal No. 2000-0222
Application No. 08/938,044
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BACKGROUND
Appellant's invention relates to a optical character recognition system having a
context analyzer. An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of
exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced below.
1. An optical character recognition (OCR) system comprising:
means for producing a scan of an input image of text to be
recognized;
a context analyzer coupled to receive the scan, for checking the
scan for consistency with a predetermined text content constraint, the
predetermined text content constraint including a syntactical constraint
and a semantic constraint;
user input means for accepting user-selected text content
constraints, including a character-based syntactical constraint and a
character-based semantic constraint, the user input means including a
document specification language which serves as a user interface to allow
the user to enter the user selected text content constraints;
syntax means for checking the preliminary scan for consistency
with the character-based syntactical constraint; and
semantics means for checking the preliminary scan for consistency
with the character-based semantic constraint.
The prior art reference of record relied upon by the examiner in rejecting the
appealed claims is:
Chong et al. (Chong) 5,535,120 Jul. 9, 1996
Appeal No. 2000-0222
Application No. 08/938,044
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Claims 1, 3, 5-7, and 13-21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102 as being
anticipated by Chong. Claims 8-12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Chong.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
appellant regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the examiner's
answer (Paper No. 24, mailed Jun. 21, 1999) for the examiner's reasoning in support of
the rejections, and to appellant's brief (Paper No. 23, filed Mar. 15, 1999) for appellant's
arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art reference, and to the
respective positions articulated by appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
35 U.S.C. § 102
Appellant argues that Chong is silent as to any details of the OCR system. (See
brief at pages 8, 12 and 13.) We agree with appellant that Chong provides only a
cursory discussion of the OCR system to be used in the machine translation system.
While Chong mentions OCR with respect to the recognition of the characters at the
input of the system to identify readable text and cover page designation (Chong at
columns 6 and 7), Chong discloses that the "translation functions are kept separate
Appeal No. 2000-0222
Application No. 08/938,044
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from the receiving, recognition . . . and other functions of the Computer Server 10."
(Chong at columns 9, lines 34-38.) From this teaching, it is clear that the OCR
functionality and the translation functionality are separate and distinct functions.
Therefore, the examiner's reliance on the discussion of dictionaries used after the
recognition module performs the OCR function are not relevant to the scanning of the
image and analysis of the input image to determine the appropriate character
recognition as recited in the language of independent claim 1. (See answer at pages 3-
4.)
Appellant argues that the examiner has gone far-afield and applied the prior art
disclosures without giving any context to the claimed features. (See brief at pages 14
and 15.) We agree with appellant as discussed above and we will not sustain the
rejection of independent claim 1 and its dependent claims 3, 5-7 and 15-17.
Independent claims 13 and 14 contain similar limitations which are not taught by
Chong. Therefore, we will not sustain the rejection of these claims and dependent
claims 18-21.
35 U.S.C. § 103
The examiner's obviousness determination is based upon the same deficiency
as discussed above which the examiner has not remedied by the various uses of
"Official Notice." The examiner's obviousness determination has not corrected the
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Application No. 08/938,044
5
noted deficiencies above, and we will not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 8-12
under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1, 3, 5-7 and 13-21
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed, and the decision of the examiner to reject claims 8-
12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
REVERSED
MICHAEL R. FLEMING )
Administrative Patent Judge )
)
)
)
) BOARD OF PATENT
JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO ) APPEALS
Administrative Patent Judge ) AND
) INTERFERENCES
)
)
)
JOSEPH L. DIXON )
Administrative Patent Judge )
JD/RWK
Appeal No. 2000-0222
Application No. 08/938,044
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FREDERICK W. GIBB, III
MCGINN & GIBB, PLLC
8321 OLD COURTHOUSE ROAD
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VIENNA, VA 22182-3817