Ex Parte Tapia et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 27, 201714165676 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 27, 2017) 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. 14/165,676 01/28/2014 William Joseph Tapia 13-1261 2267 64722 7590 12/29/2017 OSTRAGER CHONG FLAHERTY & BROITMAN, P.C. 570 LEXINGTON AVENUE FLOOR 19 NEW YORK, NY 10022 EXAMINER BAILEY, FREDERICK D ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2483 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/29/2017 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): JBROITMAN@OCFBLAW.COM patentadmin @ boeing. com patentdockets @ ocfblaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte WILLIAM JOSEPH TAPIA and GARY E. GEORGESON Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,6761 Technology Center 2400 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, JOHN P. PINKERTON, and SCOTT B. HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judges. HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection of claims 1-21, which constitute all of the claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellant is the Applicant, The Boeing Company, and is identified as the real party in interest. App. Br. 1. Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,676 THE INVENTION According to Appellant, the disclosed and claimed invention is directed “to equipment and methods for non-destructive evaluation and testing of structures.” Spec. 1:1-2. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method for non-destructive evaluation of an area on a structure, the method comprising: introducing stress into a local area of a structure where hidden damage may be present; recording a video of the stressed local area; processing the video using motion amplification to magnify small motions of material in the structure in the stressed local area; and observing the processed video. App. Br. 17 (Claims Appendix). REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner as evidence in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Johansson Ellingson Bard et al. Thompson Akiyama Brown Isomura US 4,615,220 US 6,285,449 B1 US 6,717,681 B1 US 2005/0109941 Al US 2012/0307043 Al US 2014/0016035 Al US 2014/0241611 Al Oct. 7, 1986 Sept. 4, 2001 Apr. 6, 2004 May 26, 2005 Dec. 6, 2012 Jan. 16, 2014 Aug. 28, 2014 2 Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,676 Liu et al., Motion Magnification, 24 ACM Transactions on Graphics 519-26 (2005). REJECTIONS Claims 1, 2, 8-10, 12, and 15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu. Final Act. 5-7. Claims 3 and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu and Johansson. Final Act. 7-8. Claim 4 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu and Ellingson. Final Act. 8-9. Claims 5-7 and 19-21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu and Bard. Final Act. 9-10. Claims 11, 14, and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu and Brown. Final Act. 11. Claim 13 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu and Akiyama. Final Act. 11-12. Claim 18 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Thompson in view of Liu and Isomura. Final Act. 12-13. ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellant’s arguments that the Examiner erred. In reaching this decision, we have considered all evidence presented and all arguments made by Appellant.2 3 2 Rather than reiterate the entirety of the arguments of Appellant and the positions of the Examiner, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed Oct. 12, 2016); the Reply Brief (filed Dec. 19, 2016); the Final Office Action (mailed May 3 Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,676 We are not persuaded of error by Appellant’s arguments regarding claims 1- 21. Independent Claims 1, 12, and 15 Appellant contends the combination of Thompson and Liu does not teach “processing the video using motion amplification to magnify small motions of material in the structure,” as recited in claims 1, 12, and 15. See App. Br. 4. Specifically, Appellant argues the Examiner’s combination of the references is improper because: the chaotic motion of the vibrating liquid on the surface of the structure disclosed in Thompson (which chaotic motion is produced by the combined effects of the excitation device exciting the liquid and the vibrating test specimen, also excited by the excitation device) would obscure (i.e., make it not clearer to see) such magnified motions [as taught by Liu]. App. Br. 13; see also Reply Br. 5. We are not persuaded of Examiner error. The claims do not require any specific observations to be made with regard to the material in the structure; rather, the claims broadly recite “observing the processed video.” Further, the broadest reasonable interpretation, consistent with Appellant’s Specification, of “using motion amplification to magnify small motions of material in the structure” does not preclude the use of a liquid couplant on the surface of the material that couples with, and is therefore representative of, motions of the material in the structure. See Ans. 3; In re Am. Acad, of Sci. Tech. Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (During examination of a patent application, a claim is given its broadest reasonable construction 13, 2016); and the Examiner's Answer (mailed Dec. 5, 2016) for the respective details. 4 Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,676 “in light of the specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in the art.”). Because the claims encompass a vibrating liquid on the surface of the material that is representative of the motions of the material, Appellant’s argument that the liquid obscures the motions of the material is not persuasive. Instead, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that Liu’s motion magnification technique, combined with Thompson’s video of a vibrating liquid couplant that is representative of motions of a stressed material teaches “processing the video using motion amplification to magnify small motions of material in the structure” and “observing the processed video.” Final Act. 5-6; Ans. 3-4 (citing Thompson, Fig. 2 and 15-21; Liu, Abstract). Appellant also contends the combination of Thompson and Liu is improper because “[i]n at least some embodiments of the Thompson system, ‘the vibration effects are readily detectable by the unassisted human eye,”’ and, thus, “a person skilled in the art would understand that there would be no need to magnify the motion of the liquid couplant in the Thompson system since the motion of the liquid is visible to the naked eye.” App. Br. 12. Appellant further argues there is no evidence that “magnifying the visible liquid couplant response would produce any additional benefit,” and “[njothing in the Liu reference discloses or suggests that their motion magnification technique is suitable for magnifying visible motions of a liquid.” Reply Br. 6-7. We are not persuaded of error. Appellant’s contention focuses on only one embodiment of Thompson, and does not address the embodiments discussed in paragraph 16 of Thompson where “videography for motion analysis” and “specialized lenses” (i.e., equipment beyond the naked eye) 5 Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,676 are used. See Ans. 3 (citing Thompson, 15-21). Thus, Appellant has not persuasively rebutted the Examiner’s findings regarding the combination of Liu’s motion magnification technique, which is useful for amplifying subtle motions in a video sequence (Ans. 3 (citing Liu, Abstract)), with Thompson’s videography for motion analysis using specialized lenses, further, we are not persuaded of error by Appellant’s argument that Liu’s magnification technique is not suitable for magnifying visible motions of a liquid because Appellant has not provided persuasive evidence or argument showing that magnifying the motion of a liquid material was “uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art.” See Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher—Price, Inc., 485 L.3d 1157, 1162 (Led. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR Int 7 Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 419 (2007)). Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1,12, and 15, along with the rejections of dependent claims 2-11, 13, 14, 16, 17, and 19-21, which are not argued separately. Dependent Claim 18 Appellant contends the combination of Thompson, Liu, and Isomura does not teach a “means for introducing stress into the structure” that comprises “means for enclosing a volume ... a vacuum pump . . . and a control valve,” as recited in claim 18. App. Br. 15. Appellant argues claim 18 requires “introducing a change in the vacuum pressure being produced by the vacuum pump” in order to introduce stress in the structure (Reply Br. 8- 9), but “[tjhere is no disclosure or suggestion [in Isomura] that the vacuum pressure is varied to induce stress in a test specimen for inspection purposes” (App. Br. 15). 6 Appeal 2017-003475 Application 14/165,676 We are not persuaded of Examiner error in the rejection. Appellant’s Specification discloses introducing stress in a structure by changing the pressure inside a vacuum chamber to produce vacuum loading. Spec. 9:15- 17. Isomura teaches exhausting the gas inside a chamber to create a vacuum (Ans. 6-7 (citing Isomura ^ 69)), which teaches changing the pressure inside the chamber and, consistent with Appellant’s disclosure, would produce a vacuum loading stress. Appellant’s implicit claim construction, which would exclude this preferred embodiment, is not the broadest reasonable construction of the claim. See In re Katz Interactive Call Processing Patent Litig., 639 F.3d 1303, 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (As a general rule, “there is a strong presumption against a claim construction that excludes a disclosed embodiment.”). Therefore, the preponderance of the evidence supports the Examiner’s finding that the combination of Isomura’s means of inducing a vacuum loading stress with the test set-up of Thompson in view of Liu teaches the disputed limitations of claim 18. Final Act. 12-13; Ans. 6-7. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claim 18. DECISION For the above reasons, we affirm the Examiner’s decisions rejecting claims 1-21. 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). See 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(f). AFFIRMED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation