SONY CORPORATION

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 25, 2022

2021000660 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 25, 2022)

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. 15/875,582 01/19/2018 Yoshihito OHKI 1946-0615A 9465 142241 7590 03/25/2022 Paratus Law Group, PLLC 1765 Greensboro Station Place Suite 320 Tysons Corner, VA 22102 EXAMINER LIU, LI ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2666 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/25/2022 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte YOSHIHITO OHKI, YASUYUKI KOGA, TSUBASA TSUKAHARA, IKUO YAMANO, HIROYUKI MIZUNUMA and MIWA ICHIKAWA ___________ Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR. and MINN CHUNG, Administrative Patent Judges. WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL1 Appellant is appealing the final rejection of claims 1, 2 and 5-16 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a).2 See Appeal Brief 11. Claims 1, 12 and 13 are 1 Rather than reiterate Appellant’s arguments and the Examiner’s determinations, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed August 13, 2020), the Reply Brief (filed November 3, 2020), the Final Action (mailed November 15, 2019) and the Answer (mailed September 3, 2020), for the respective details. 2 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). (“The word ‘applicant’ when used in this title refers to the inventor or all of the joint inventors, or to the person applying for a patent as provided in §§ 1.43, 1.45, or 1.46.”). Appellant identifies Sony Corporation as the real party in interest. Appeal Brief 3. Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 2 independent. Claims 3 and 4 are cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. Introduction According to Appellant, “The present disclosure relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and an information processing program for formatting handwritten input characters and figures (hereinafter, collectively referred to as marks).” Specification ¶ 1. Representative claim3 (disputed limitations emphasized) 1. An information processing apparatus, comprising: a display; a touch pad configured to receive a consecutive stroke input given by a user; and a processor configured to recognize that the consecutive stroke input including at least two characters has been received by the touch pad, perform, in parallel and after recognition of the at least two characters of the consecutive stroke input, an enlargement processing or a contraction processing on the at least two characters of the consecutive stroke input to align the at least two characters in relative alignment with each other, and 3 Appellant does not argue independent claims 1, 12 or 13 individually. See Appeal Brief 14 (“Accordingly, Appellant respectfully requests reconsideration and withdrawal of the rejection of claims 1, 2 and 5-16 under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a).). Accordingly, we select independent claim 1 as representative. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (“When multiple claims subject to the same ground of rejection are argued as a group or subgroup by appellant, the Board may select a single claim from the group or subgroup and may decide the appeal as to the ground of rejection with respect to the group or subgroup on the basis of the selected claim alone.”). Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 3 display the at least two characters in relative alignment with each other, after the enlargement processing or the contraction processing has been performed on the consecutive stroke input. Rejection on Appeal Claims 1, 2 and 5-16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. § 112 (pre-AIA), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. ANALYSIS The Examiner states, “Independent claims 1, 12 and 13 have been amended to read ‘perform, in parallel and after recognition of the at least two characters of the consecutive stroke input, an enlargement processing or a contraction processing on the at least two characters.’” The Examiner determines claim limitations fail to comply with the written description requirement for the following reasons: (1) Paragraph [0016] [of the Specification] recites “a handwritten input stroke (mark) is corrected based on a pattern recognition result of the stroke.” Examiner’s note: “pattern recognition result of the stroke” is quite different from “recognition of the at least two characters.” (2) Paragraph [0045] [of the Specification] recites “When a plurality of marks (characters and figures) are input consecutively, processing for a parallel movement, enlargement and contraction, and the like.” Paragraph [0046] [of the Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 4 Specification] recites “FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a state of processing of performing parallel movement or enlargement and contraction processing on bounding boxes.” Examiner’s note: The phrase “parallel movement” in both paragraphs [0045] and [0046] simply means that every point in the stroke input is moved the exact same distance and in the same exact direction, without being rotated, reflected, or resized. It is more often called “translation” in image processing art (rotation and translation). Final Action 3-4. Appellant contends, that “the Examiner seems to allege on the Continuation Sheet of the Advisory Action mailed January 6, 2020, that Appellant’s disclosure discloses pattern recognition of a stroke, and not pattern recognition of a character (see Continuation Sheet, numbered section (1)).” Appeal Brief 11 (emphasis added). Appellant disagrees with the Examiner’s allegation. See Appeal Brief 11. Appellant highlights sentences of paragraphs 15, 16 and 21 and concludes, “that at least paragraphs [0015], [0016], and [0021] and FIG. 7 of the originally-filed specification clearly provide support for the ‘recognition of the at least two characters’ as recited by each of claims 1, 12, and 13.” Appeal Brief 12. Paragraphs 15, 16 and 21 of the Specification are reproduced below: [Difference from typical technique] In general, in formatting a handwritten input stroke, a correction of a distance or curvature of consecutive sampling points is performed locally before a pattern recognition of the stroke. Specifically, the formatting performed herein is assumed to be used as preprocessing for improving a character recognition processing accuracy. In contrast, in the present disclosure, a handwritten input stroke (mark) is corrected based on a pattern recognition result of the stroke and formatted to become readable, and thus an object and method differ from those of the typical technique. Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 5 The recognition processing unit 2 recognizes what the data input by the user is by a known method for a character recognition or figure recognition based on a stroke as the input data accepted by the input controller 1. Appellant’s Figure 7 is reproduced below: Fig. 7 is a diagram showing a state of processing of performing parallel movement or enlargement and contraction processing on bounding boxes BB1 to BB4 of respective characters and adjusting sizes, central coordinates, and intervals of the bounding boxes BBl to BB4. By this processing, the handwritten input characters are aligned as in bounding boxes BB1’ to BB4’ shown on the lower side of the figure. Specification ¶ 46. Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 6 Appellant disagrees with the Examiner’s characterization of parallel movement and argues that, “An example of parallel movement or enlargement and contraction processing is shown in FIG. 7, in which the sizing and/or positioning of each of the characters is changed due to the parallel movement or enlargement and contraction processing.” Appeal Brief 13; see Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1323 (Fed. Cir. 2005). Appellant contends that, “paragraph [0045] of the originally-filed specification indicates that a plurality of characters can be consecutively input (referring also to FIG. 7), and that processing (for parallel movement, enlargement and contraction) as well as semi-formatting processing may be performed after character recognition (see also paragraph [0016]).” Appeal Brief 14. Here, Appellant’s argument is persuasive of Examiner error. Paragraph 45 of the Specification is reproduced in its entirety below (emphasis added): When a plurality of marks (characters and figures) are input consecutively, processing for a parallel movement, enlargement and contraction, and the like may be additionally performed for each mark before or after the semi-formatting processing described above for suppressing variations in the sizes of areas occupied by the marks, central coordinates, intervals, and the like. Although paragraph 45 uses the term marks instead of strokes, the paragraph supports claim 1’s limitation - “perform, in parallel and after recognition of the at least two characters of the consecutive stroke input.” See Specification ¶ 16 (“a handwritten input stroke (mark)”). Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s written description rejection of independent claims 1, 12 and 13, commensurate in scope, as well as dependent claims 2, 5-11 and 14-16. Appeal 2021-000660 Application 15/875,582 7 DECISION SUMMARY Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 2, 5-16 112 Written description 1, 2, 5-16 REVERSED