Ex Parte Unno et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 27, 2017

13592708 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 27, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
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APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
13/592,708 08/23/2012 Takahiro Unno TI-71334 9145
23494 7590 03/01/2017
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
P O BOX 655474, M/S 3999
DALLAS, TX 75265
EXAMINER
PULLIAS, JESSE SCOTT
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2657
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/01/2017 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@ti.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte TAKAHIRO UNNO and
BABOO VIKRHAMSINGH GOWREESUNKER
Appeal 2016-002823
Application 13/592,708
Technology Center 2600
Before LINZY T. McCARTNEY, TERRENCE W. McMILLIN, and
STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges.
McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING
Appellants request rehearing of our December 1, 2016 decision
(“Decision”) affirming the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—27. We deny
Appellants’ request.
Appeal 2016-002823
Application 13/592,708
In the Decision, we agreed with the Examiner that, based on
paragraph 86 of Chan, “one of ordinary skill in the art would understand . . .
that, in some embodiments, Chan’s filters separate directional interfering
sources (i.e., directional noise) from an input signal that also includes speech
and diffuse noise.” Decision 3. Put another way, we agreed that “one of
ordinary skill in the art would understand that in certain embodiments
Chan’s filters divide an input signal into two parts: (1) directional noise and
(2) the remainder of the input signal, which includes speech and diffuse
noise.” Id. at 3^4.
Appellants contend these “teachings are never stated by Chan itself.”
Req. for Reh’g 1. In Appellants’ view, “one of ordinary skill in the art
would understand that all of the ‘other components’ [referenced in
paragraph 86]. . . are filtered in an effort to separate from the directional
desired sound components.” Id. at 2. Appellants argue Chan discloses
several examples of Chan’s invention in which “Chan’s speech channels are
clearly distinct from the noise channels.” Id. According to Appellants,
“Chan never teaches that a particular one of those channels represents the
speech and the diffused noise while attenuating most of the directional noise
from the first signal.” Id.
We find Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive. “[T]he dispositive
question regarding anticipation [i]s whether one skilled in the art would
reasonably understand or infer from the [prior art reference’s] teaching that
every claim element was disclosed in that single reference.” Dayco Prod.,
Inc. v. Total Containment, Inc., 329 F.3d 1358, 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2003)
(substitutions and first emphasis in original) (final emphasis added)
(quotation marks omitted). As explained in the Decision, Chan’s apparatus
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Appeal 2016-002823
Application 13/592,708
includes “spatial separation filters” and “each of the spatial separation filters
... is configured to separate one or more directional desired sound
components of the M-channel input signal from one or more other
components of the signal, such as one of more directional interfering sources
and/or a diffuse noise component.” Chan | 86 (emphasis added); Decision 3
(quoting Chan 186). One of ordinary skill in the art would understand or
infer at least two things from Chan’s use of “and/or” in the preceding
sentence: First, that in at least some circumstances, the disclosed M-channel
input includes “directional desired sound components,” “directional
interfering sources,”1 and “a diffuse noise component.” Second, when the
M-channel input includes all three of these components, in some cases
Chan’s filter separates the directional noise from the rest of the input signal,
that is, the “directional desired sound components” and the “diffuse noise
component.”
Chan further discloses that the same filters “separate a directional
desired sound component of [an] input signal. . . from one or more noise
components of the signal” and “produce [] a two-channel signal that includes
[a] speech channel. . . and [a] noise channel.” Chan | 89 (emphasis added);
Decision 4 (quoting | 89). In light of the disclosures discussed above, one
of skill in the art would understand or infer from paragraph 89 that, in
certain cases, separating a “directional desired sound component of an input
signal. . . from one or more noise components” includes separating only the
“directional interfering sources” from the input signal. See Chan | 86
(“separate one or more directional desired sound components of the M-
1 Appellants do not dispute that the “directional interfering sources” are the
same as the recited “directional noise.”
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Appeal 2016-002823
Application 13/592,708
channel input signal from one or more other components of the signal, such
as one of more directional interfering sources and/or a diffuse noise
component.” (emphasis added)). Accordingly, as explained in the Decision,
“one of ordinary skill in the art would understand that, at least in some
embodiments, Chan’s filters generate a (1) speech channel that includes
diffuse noise but lacks directional noise and (2) a noise channel that includes
directional noise but not speech.” Decision 4.
In sum, one of ordinary skill in the art would reasonably understand or
infer the disputed teachings from Chan’s disclosure. That is sufficient to
establish Chan anticipates the claimed invention. See Dayco Prod., 329 F.3d
at 1368. Cf. Kennametal, Inc. v. Ingersoll Cutting Tool Co., 780 F.3d 1376,
1381 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (“[A] reference can anticipate a claim even if it
‘d[oes] not expressly spell out’ all the limitations arranged or combined as in
the claim, if a person of skill in the art, reading the reference, would ‘at once
envisage’ the claimed arrangement or combination.”). We therefore find
Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive and decline Appellants’ request to
modify the Decision.
REHEARING DENIED
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