Ex Parte Sharma

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 2, 2018

13965843 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 2, 2018)

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.
13/965,843 08/13/2013 Vinay Sharma TI-74145 6828
23494 7590 01/04/2018
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
P O BOX 655474, M/S 3999
DALLAS, TX 75265
EXAMINER
BADER, ROBERT N.
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2614
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/04/2018 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@ti.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte VINAY SHARMA1
Appeal 2017-000480
Application 13/965,843
Technology Center 2600
Before JASON V. MORGAN, SHARON FENICK, and
DAVID J. CUTITTAII, Administrative Patent Judges.
CUTITTA, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final
Rejection of claims 1—3, 5—11, and 13—20.2 This appeal is related to a
currently pending but undecided appeal for co-pending application
13/965,776 (Appeal 2017-008651) and to Appeal 2017-000485, decided
March 30, 2017, for co-pending application 13/965,808. See Supp. Appeal
Br. We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.
1 According to Appellant, the real party in interest is Texas Instruments
Incorporated. See Appeal Br. 2.
2 Claims 4 and 12 are cancelled. See Appeal Br. 17—18.
Appeal 2017-000480
Application 13/965,843
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
According to Appellant, the claimed invention relates to
superimposing content to have a fixed pose in relation to a fixed world x-y-z
coordinate frame. See Spec. 4—5.3
Exemplary Claim
Claims 1, 9, and 17 are independent. Claim 1 is exemplary of the
claimed subject matter and is reproduced below:
1. A method of superimposing content to have a fixed
pose, the method comprising:
capturing first images of first views with a first camera;
displaying the first images on a screen of a display device;
capturing second images of second views with a second
camera; and
with a combination of electronic circuitry components:
detecting and tracking visual features in the second images;
estimating a pose of the second camera in response to the tracked
visual features; and, on the first images on the screen,
superimposing the content to have the fixed pose in response to
the estimated pose of the second camera.
Appeal Br. 17.
3 Throughout this Opinion, we refer to the following documents: (1)
Appellant’s Specification, filed August 13, 2013 (“Spec.”); (2) the Final
Office Action (“Final Act.”), mailed November 30, 2015; (3) the Appeal
Brief (“Appeal Br.”), filed May 31, 2016, and supplemental Appeal Brief,
filed October 4, 2016 (“Supp. App. Br.”); (4) the Examiner’s Answer
(“Ans.”), mailed August 4, 2016; and (5) the Reply Brief (“Reply Br.”), filed
October 4, 2016.
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REFERENCES
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art in rejecting the
claims on appeal:
Oskiper, Fields et al. US 2007/0115352 A1 May 24, 2007
(“Fields”)
Diaz et al. (“Diaz”) US 2012/0120186 Al May 17, 2012
Enrico Rukzio and Paul Holleis, Projector Phone Interactions'. Design
Space and Survey, Proceedings of the Workshop on coupled display visual
interfaces (PPD10), pp. 39-42, available at https://aquigley.host.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/proceedings/FinalProceedingsPPD10.pdf (May 25, 2010)
(“Rukzio”).
Georg Klein and David Murray, Parallel Tracking and Mapping for Small
AR Workspaces, 6th IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed
and Augmented Reality, pp. 225—34 (Nov. 13—16, 2007) (“Klein”).
Taragay Oskiper et al., Visual Odometry System Using Multiple Stereo
Cameras and Inertial Measurement Unit, IEEE Conference on Computer
Vision and Pattern Recognition (June 17—22, 2007) (“Oskiper”).
REJECTIONS
Claims 1—3, 5, 7—11, 13, 15—18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over the combination of Klein, Oskiper, and Diaz.
Final Act. 3—13.
Claims 6, 13, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over the combination of Klein, Oskiper, Diaz, Rukzio, and
Fields. Final Act. 13—17.
Our review in this appeal is limited only to the above rejections and
issues raised by Appellant. We have not considered other possible issues
that have not been raised by Appellant and which are, therefore, not before
us. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv) (2015).
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ISSUES
1. Does the Examiner err in concluding the combination of Klein,
Oskiper, and Diaz is proper, because, as Appellant alleges, Klein teaches
away from the proposed combination?
2. Does the Examiner err in concluding the combination of Klein,
Oskiper, and Diaz is proper, because, as Appellant alleges, Oskiper is non-
analogous art?
ANALYSIS
We disagree with Appellant’s contentions and, insofar as they relate
to issues raised in this appeal, we adopt as our own: (1) the findings and
reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Final Office Action from which this
appeal is taken (Final Act. 3—10) and (2) the reasons set forth by the
Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer in response to Appellant’s Appeal Brief
(Ans. 3—6). We concur with the findings and conclusions reached by the
Examiner, and we highlight the following for emphasis.
Issue 1
Appellant argues “the Examiner’s proposed theoretical combination
of Klein and Oskiper is improver, because Klein itself directly teaches away
from such combination.” Reply Br. 2. Specifically, Appellant argues Klein
“repeatedly asserts its PTAM [parallel tracking and mapping] approach’s
superiority over SLAM [simultaneous localization and mapping], thereby
rejecting Oskiper’s SLAM type method and refuting the Examiner’s
proposed theoretical combination of Klein with Oskiper.” Reply Br. 3.
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We are unpersuaded. Appellant fails to rebut the Examiner’s finding
that Klein teaches the PTAM algorithm cannot handle dynamic (high
motion) scenes well. Ans. 4 (citing Klein § 5.6). In view of this finding, we
agree with the Examiner that Klein’s problem is the type of problem
addressed by Oskiper. Namely, the Examiner finds “both Klein and Oskiper
recognize the problems of high motion, obstacles/occlusion, and poor feature
tracking which can occur with camera based tracking, and Oskiper provides
a solution to mitigate these problems.” Ans. 5. Appellant fails to
specifically rebut the Examiner’s reasoning and, thus, fails to persuasively
establish why Oskiper’s improvement is limited to SLAM and is not relevant
to Klein’s PTAM-based approach.
Appellant further argues:
Klein expressly states that it imposes “constraints on the scene to
be tracked: it should be mostly static, i.e. not deformable, and it
should be small. By small we mean that the user will spend most
of his or her time in the same place: for example, at a desk, in
one comer of a room, or in front of a single building . . . where
the user is anyway often tethered to a computer. . . Exploratory
tasks such as mnning around a city are not supported.” These
constraints of Klein are clearly incompatible with Oskiper, and
therefore refute the Office Action’s proposed theoretical
combination with Oskiper.
Appeal Br. 7 (omissions in original).
We are unpersuaded because Appellant fails to establish the examples
provided from Klein, such as the user spending most of his or her time in
one comer of a room or in front of a single building, “are clearly
incompatible with” Oskiper’s improvement. Appeal Br. 7. Oskiper seeks to
improve poor feature detection and tracking in indoor environments by
providing user-wearable front and back stereo cameras that may be
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selectively used to obtain the best feature points. Oskiper § 1. For example,
Oskipler states in challenging conditions, such as when
the cameras come very close to walls or other obstacles, or the
images do not contain good features that can be tracked
accurately, the pose estimates rapidly deteriorate. These
challenging conditions are more common in indoors
environments where the user can come close to plain walls with
little features or walk down crowded corridors, and while
opening doors, in which case the moving door occupies the entire
view in the front camera.
Oskiper § 1.
Oskiper’s front and back camera pairs provide more, and potentially
better, features to choose from for tracking, particularly in an indoor
environment such as in Klein. See Oskiper § 1 (“whenever the scenery is
challenging for one stereo pair, the other pair is utilized and vice versa.
Then the problem boils down to deciding which one of the pairs is providing
the best pose solution at any given time.”).
Appellant fails to demonstrate why Klein’s problem of poor feature
tracking in an indoor environment is “clearly incompatible” (Appeal Br. 7)
with Oskiper’s solution to provide more, and potentially better, features to
choose from by alternatively selecting features from front and back camera
pairs.
Appellant, thus, fails to persuasively establish that Oskiper’s
improvement does not apply to Klein or that Klein is incompatible with
Oskiper. Accordingly, Appellant does not proffer sufficient evidence or
argument that Klein teaches away from the cited combination by criticizing,
discrediting, or otherwise discouraging the claimed solution. See In re
Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004).
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Issue 2
Appellant argues the Examiner errs in rejecting claim 1 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a), based on the combination of Klein, Oskiper, and Diaz,
because Oskiper is non-analogous art. Appeal Br. 7. Appellant argues
“[t]he invention of claim 1 is directed to the problem of superimposing
content to have a fixed pose.” Appeal Br. 7. Appellant further argues
Oskiper is not reasonably pertinent to the problem with which Appellant was
involved because Oskiper “describes a visual odometry system to address
the problem of localization in GPS denied environments” and so “an
inventor seeking to solve the problem of superimposing content to have a
fixed pose would not have looked to Oskiper in an attempt to find a
solution.” Appeal Br. 7; see Reply Br. 3. Appellant further argues Oskiper
fails to superimpose any content to have a fixed pose. Reply Br. 3.
To qualify as prior art a reference must “qualify as ‘analogous art’ by
satisfying one of the following conditions: (1) the reference must be from
the same field of endeavor; or (2) the reference must be reasonably pertinent
to the particular problem with which the inventor is involved.” K—TEC, Inc.
v. Vita-Mix Corp., 696 F.3d 1364, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2012). “A reference is
reasonably pertinent if, even though it may be in a different field from that
of the inventor’s endeavor, it is one which, because of the matter with which
it deals, logically would have commended itself to an inventor’s attention in
considering his problem.” In re Clay, 966 F.2d 656, 659 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
The Examiner finds Oskiper’s “pose estimation of a moving camera
based on detected camera features is highly relevant to the problem
Appellant is attempting to solve.” Ans. 6. We find this is namely the
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problem of superimposing content to have a fixed pose by detecting and
tracking visual features in an image. See, e.g., Spec. 14—5.
Based on these findings as to the purposes of the claimed invention
and Oskiper, we agree with the Examiner that Oskiper teaches “pose
estimation of a moving camera based on detected camera features” (Ans. 6
(emphasis omitted)), and that this logically would have commended itself to
an inventor’s attention in considering the problem facing Appellant, viz,
superimposing content to have a fixed pose by detecting and tracking visual
features using a camera or “pose estimation using camera tracking.'1'’ Id.
Appellant’s argument is not persuasive because Appellant defines the
problem facing the inventor too narrowly as “superimposing content [onto a
surface] to have a fixed pose” (Reply Br. 3) without consideration of the
“detecting and tracking of visual features in the second images” aspect of the
problem. Appeal Br. 17 (claim 1). This definition of the problem confines
the relevant art to only Appellant’s field of endeavor, and thus, conflates the
first test for analogous art with the second. As such, Appellant has failed to
persuasively demonstrate that Oskiper is not analogous art to the claimed
invention.
Accordingly, because we agree with the Examiner that Oskiper
satisfies at least the second analogous art condition, we are not persuaded
Oskiper is non-analogous art or that the Examiner improperly combined
Klein, Oskiper, and Diaz.
We sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claim 1.
We also sustain the Examiner’s § 103(a) rejection of independent claims 9
and 17, which are argued for similar reasons as independent claim 1. Appeal
Br. 10-15. Dependent claims 2, 3, 5—8, 10, 11, 13—16, and 18—20, are not
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argued separately and so the rejection of these claims are sustained for the
reasons given for their respective independent claims. See Appeal Br. 8—15.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—3, 5—11, and
13-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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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