Ex Parte Nyczyk

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 8, 2017

13370951 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 8, 2017)

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.
13/370,951 02/10/2012 Piotr Nyczyk 2670.039US1 2005
21186 7590 02/10/2017
SCHWEGMAN LUNDBERG & WOESSNER, P.A.
P.O. BOX 2938
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55402
EXAMINER
PRINGLE-PARKER, JASON A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2618
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/10/2017 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):
uspto@slwip.com
SLW @blackhillsip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte PIOTR NYCZYK
Appeal 2016-005075
Application 13/370,951
Technology Center 2600
Before DEBRA K. STEPHENS, JON M. JURGOVAN, and
DAVID J. CUTITTAII, Administrative Patent Judges.
JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2016-005075
Application 13/370,951
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant1 seeks review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final
rejection of claims 1—29. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.2
CLAIMED INVENTION
The claims are directed to a system and method for multistage
optimized jpeg output. (Spec. Title.) Claim 1, reproduced below, is
illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method of encoding graphical updates to a display screen
of a remote device, the method comprising:
identifying, using one or more computer processors, regions
of a display screen of a remote device to update;
encoding graphical updates of the identified regions as
consecutive macroblocks of a JPEG image; and
transmitting the encoded graphical updates and positioning
metadata to the remote device, the positioning metadata
specifying:
a first location of a first macroblock of the macroblocks
within the display screen of the remote device; and
a second location of a second macroblock of the
1 The Appeal Brief identifies nComputing, Inc. as the real party in interest.
(App. Br. 2.)
2 Our Decision refers to the Specification (“Spec.”) filed Feb. 10, 2012, the
Final Office Action (“Final Act.”) mailed Oct. 10, 2014, the Appeal Brief
(“App. Br.”) filed Sept. 8, 2015, and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”)
mailed Feb. 5, 2016.
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Application 13/370,951
macroblocks within the display screen of the remote
device.
REJECTIONS
Claims 5—12, 17—23, and 26—29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112,
second paragraph, as being indefinite. (Final Act. 6.)
Claims 5, 7, 12, 17, 23, 26, and 27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) based on Marpe (US 2009/0168894 Al, July 2, 2009). (Final Act.
7-10.)
Claims 1—4, 13—16, 24, and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) based on Macq (US 2010/0020875 Al, Jan. 28, 2010) and Auld
(US 6,088,391, July 11, 2000). (Final Act. 11-14.)
Claims 6 and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on
Marpe and Reinhart (US 7,194,129 Bl3, Mar. 20, 2007). (Final Act. 14—15.)
Claims 10 and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on
Marpe and Carrigan (US 2005/0246433 Al, Nov. 3, 2005). (Final Act. 15—
16.)
Claims 8, 9, 19, 20, 28, and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) based on Marpe and Noel (US 2006/0010392 Al, Jan. 12, 2006).
(Final Act. 16—18.)
Claims 10 and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on
Marpe, Carrigan, and Noel. (Final Act. 18—19.)
3 The Final Office Action misidentifies the patent number. However, the
patent is correctly identified in Form PTO-1449 dated Feb. 24, 2014. We
are aware of no evidence to suggest Appellant misunderstood the thrust of
the rejection because of this error nor has Appellant argued such.
Accordingly, we view this error as harmless.
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Application 13/370,951
ANALYSIS
Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, Second Paragraph
Independent claim 5 recites “the motion-filled area having a greater
change between a set of image frames than the static area.” (App. Br. 22—23
— Claims App’x.) Similar limitations are recited in independent claims 17
and 26.
The Examiner notes the claims recite that the motion-filled areas have
“greater change” than static areas, but states the Specification does not
provide a measure of the degree of change that is needed in order to be
considered “greater change.” (Final Act. 6.) The Examiner also finds the
Appellant has not clearly defined in the claims “static” to be zero change,
and “motion-filled” to be a specific amount of change. (Id.) The Examiner
further finds the term “relatively static” used in the Specification appears to
be somewhere in-between static and motion-filled. (Id.) The Examiner
concludes the claimed terms do not provide one of ordinary skill an exact
understanding of the degree of change meant by these terms. (Id.)
Appellant argues the claimed phrase is supported by the following
statement from the Specification:
The regions may include regions containing fast changing
areas, such as videos, flash animations, or 2D or 3D
animations. The regions also may include relatively static
regions that require updating. The identification may be
performed by a server that transmits graphical updates to the
remote device.
(App. Br. 11—12 citing Spec. 1 86.)
Appellant also points to operations 904 and 908 in flowchart 900
depicted in Fig. 9 of the Specification, stating “for regions containing fast
changing areas, encode regions as YCbCr blocks using JPEG compression,”
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Application 13/370,951
and “for static regions of display screen, encode regions as RGB planar
blocks using JPEG compression.” {Id.) Appellant contends a person of
ordinary skill, reading these passages, would understand a motion-filled area
having a “greater change” of image frames from a static region to be videos,
flash animations, or 2D or 3D animations, as opposed to a static area or
region, which a person of ordinary skill would understand to have no change
in image frames.
We agree with the Examiner that claims 5,17, and 26 are indefinite
for not particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter
regarded as the invention, as required by § 112, second paragraph.
Specifically, we note that “motion-filled area” is not mentioned in the
Specification, which instead mentions “fast-changing areas.” (Spec. Tfl[ 86,
87, Fig. 9 [904].) Also, the Specification mentions “relatively static areas”
as well as merely “static areas.” (Spec. 86, 89, Fig. 9 [908].) We do not
readily find any definitions or descriptions in the Specification to enlighten
what these terms would signify to a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Appellant also has not identified any evidence, but provides only argument,
regarding what a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand these
terms to mean. Arguments of counsel cannot take the place of factually
supported objective evidence. In re Huang, 100 F.3d 135, 139—140 (Fed.
Cir. 1996), In re Geisler, 116 F.3d 1465, 1470 (Fed. Cir. 1997). Thus,
Appellant has not persuaded us the claim is amenable to construction
because Appellant has not proffered sufficient evidence or argument to
persuade us an ordinarily skilled artisan could discern the boundaries of the
claim based on the claim language, the specification, or knowledge in the
relevant art. Haemonetics Corp. v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 607 F.3d 776,
783 (Fed.Cir.2010) (citations omitted). Absent an understanding of what
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Application 13/370,951
these claim terms mean, the Examiner is correct that “the motion-filled area
having a greater change between a set of image frames than the static area”
is indefinite as claimed.
Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
Appellant argues Marpe, one of the references relied on by the
Examiner in the rejection, fails to disclose a method in which areas of a
display screen are identified as either motion-filled areas or static areas
based on a “rate of change” between a set of image frames. (App. Br. 13.)
Appellant also argues the method disclosed in the independent claims does
not require any associated “picture information” to identify its color-space
representation (e.g., YCbCr or RGB), but instead identifies motion-filled
areas of a display based on a “rate of change” of associated image sets.
(App. Br. 14.)
We find this argument unpersuasive. Independent claims 5,17, and
26 recite no limitation concerning a “rate of change.” Instead, these claims
merely state that the motion-filled areas have “greater change” than static
areas. Accordingly, Appellant argues for patentability on the basis of a
limitation that is not recited in the claims. Limitations not appearing in the
claims cannot be relied upon for patentability. See In re Self, 671 F.2d 1344,
1348 (CCPA 1982).
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
Consecutive Blocks
Claim 1 recites “encoding graphical updates of the identified regions
as consecutive macroblocks of an image.” (See claim 1, supra.) Similar
limitations appear in independent claims 13 and 24.
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Application 13/370,951
Appellant argues “Macq does not disclose a method wherein graphical
updates are encoded as consecutive macroblocks.” (App. Br. 17.) As
support for their argument, Appellant cites Figure 1 of Macq, shown below.
Fig La
Macq, Fig. l.a, shows a frame with I-type and P-type macroblocks.
We do not agree this figure supports Appellant’s argument. Instead,
the figure supports the Examiner’s finding that Macq teaches the claimed
limitation. (Ans. 21.) Many of the I-type and P-type macroblocks of Macq
are shown in Figure l.a as consecutive macroblocks in either the horizontal
or vertical directions. Appellant’s argument appears to interpret
“consecutive” to mean that all of the macroblocks of a group are ordered one
after the other, but there is no such limitation in the claims, nor can we infer
this from Appellant’s Specification, which does not restrictively define
“consecutive” in this way. Although the claims are interpreted in light of the
specification, limitations from the specification are not to be read into the
claims. In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181 (Fed. Cir. 1993)). Also, as stated
previously, limitations not appearing in the claims cannot be relied upon for
patentability. See Self, supra.
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Storing Decoded JPEG Image in both an Overlay Buffer and a Frame Buffer
Dependent claim 8 recites “decoding, at the remote device, the JPEG
image in both an overlay buffer and a frame buffer.” Dependent claims 19
and 28 recite similar limitations. Dependent claims 9, 20, and 29 depend
from these claims.
The Examiner finds this claim limitation taught by the flowchart of
Figure 24 of Noel, which describes copying a tile from the scratch buffer to
a current frame buffer and copying jpeg from the current frame buffer to the
scratch buffer. (Final Act. 16 citing Noel Fig. 24, [812], [832], [848].)
Appellant argues Noel teaches image data is copied from a temporary
space in memory into a frame buffer for display. (App. Br. 19.) According
to Appellant, Noel does not discuss storing image data in both an overlay
buffer and a frame buffer, let alone any technique which employs video
overlay. (Id. ) Appellant asserts the Specification describes that the final
display signal is composed from a base RGB frame buffer and YUV overlay
buffer for the areas masked by a key color. (Id.)
Appellant does not persuade us the Examiner’s findings or conclusion
of obviousness are in error. As the Examiner notes, the claim as recited
stores data in two buffers, without any recitation of the specific function or
structure of the buffer other than to store data. (Final Act. 16, Ans. 22.) The
mere naming or labeling of a buffer as an “overlay” or “frame,” however,
does not change its structure or functionality. (Id.) Specifically, as so
recited, the claims merely require two buffers storing the same image data,
which are taught by Noel. (See Fig. 24, [812], [832], [848].) Appellant has
not persuaded us the labels change the structure or function of the buffers as
claimed.
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Application 13/370,951
Remaining Claims
No separate arguments are presented for the remaining dependent
claims, which fall for the reasons stated with respect to their respective
independent claims. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
DECISION
We affirm the rejections of claims 1—29.
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
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