Dov Katz et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jan 3, 2020

15089447 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Jan. 3, 2020)

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.
15/089,447 04/01/2016 Dov Katz 31718-33034/US 1280
87851 7590 01/03/2020
Facebook/Fenwick
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
EXAMINER
DEMETER, HILINA K
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2674
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/03/2020 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):
fwfacebookpatents@fenwick.com
ptoc@fenwick.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte DOV KATZ, MICHAEL JOHN TOKSVIG, ZIHENG WANG,
TIMOTHY PAUL OMERNICK,
and
TORIN ROSS HERNDON
____________________

Appeal 2019-000185
Application 15/089,447
Technology Center 2600
____________________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, HUNG H. BUI, and JON M. JURGOVAN,
Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of
claims 1, 2, 4–13, and 16–20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
The claims are directed to a method and a head mounted display
(HMD) for “tracking portions of a user’s face uncovered by [the] head
mounted display worn by the user” by illuminating portions of the user’s
face outside of the HMD using HMD-mounted illumination sources,

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant(s)” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. The real party in interest is Oculus VR, LLC. Appeal Br. 1.
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capturing images of the illuminated portions of the user’s face by sensors
coupled to a bottom side of the HMD, and generating a representation of the
portions of the user’s face by identifying landmarks of the user’s face in the
captured images. (Title (capitalization altered); Abstract.)
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject
matter:
1. A head mounted display (HMD) comprising:
a rigid body including display element configured to
display content to a user wearing the HMD and an optics block
configured to direct light from the display element to an exit
pupil of the HMD;
one or more illumination sources coupled to a surface of
the rigid body and configured illuminate portions of a face of
the user that are external to the rigid body;
one or more image capture devices coupled to the surface
of the rigid body and configured to capture one or more images
of one or more portions of the face of the user external to the
rigid body that are illuminated by the one or more illumination
sources; and
a controller configured to receive one or more captured
images from the one or more image capture devices and to
generate a reconstruction of a portion of the face of the user
from the one or more captured images by:
identifying a pixel having a maximum brightness
in each of the captured images;
identifying a section of the portion of the face of
the user based on the identified pixel;
retrieving a mapping of coordinates of pixels in the
one or more captured images to one or more landmarks
of the identified section of the portion of the face of the
user, the mapping stored by the controller; and
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generating the reconstruction of the identified
section of the portion of the face of the user based on the
retrieved mapping.
(Appeal Br. 9 (Claims Appendix).)

REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Corazza et al. US 2013/0235045 A1 Sept. 12, 2013
(“Corazza”)

Bond et al. US 2014/0125789 A1 May 08, 2014
(“Bond”)

REJECTION
Claims 1, 2, 4–13, and 16–20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Bond in view of Corazza.

ANALYSIS
With respect to independent claim 1, the Examiner finds Bond
captures images by image capture devices coupled to an HMD, and Corazza
identifies a pixel having a maximum brightness in captured image(s),
identifies a section of the portion of the user’s face based on the identified
pixel, and retrieves a mapping of coordinates of pixels in the captured
image(s) to one or more landmarks of the identified section of the portion of
the user’s face, as recited in claim 1. (Final Act. 5–8 (citing Bond ¶¶ 18–19,
38, 40, 42, 45, Figs. 6–7; Corazza ¶¶ 64–65, 80, 82, Figs. 8A, 8B, 8C).) We
do not agree.
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We agree with Appellant that Bond and Corazza, alone or in
combination, fail to teach or suggest identifying a pixel having a maximum
brightness in a captured image of a user’s face, and retrieving a mapping
between the captured image’s pixels and a landmark of a user’s face section
that was identified based on the maximum brightness pixel, as recited in
claim 1. (Appeal Br. 5–7; Reply Br. 2–4.) As Appellant explains,
“[n]owhere does Corazza disclose or suggest that a pixel having a maximum
brightness in a captured image is used to determine a mapping of pixels in
captured images to landmarks of a portion of a user’s face;” instead, Corazza
discloses “determining a feature vector for a person’s face and using the
feature vector to identify an expression of the person’s face” by “identifying
a feature vector within the vector space that is a closest match to the feature
vector of the human face.” (Appeal Br. 6–7 (citing Corazza ¶¶ 47, 64–65);
Reply Br. 4.)
The Examiner alleges that Corazza’s paragraphs 63–65 and 80 teach
and suggest the claimed “identifying a pixel having a maximum brightness”
in captured images. (See Final Act. 7; Ans. 4.) We disagree with the
Examiner because (i) Corazza’s paragraph 63 merely describes using a
“variable range of lighting conditions” to increase robustness of facial
expression detection, (ii) paragraphs 64 and 65 merely describe
“determining [a] feature vector from a PCA [(Principal Components
Analysis)] space of [a training set of] human faces and facial expressions
that most closely matches the human face detected within a video image,”
and (iii) paragraph 80 merely describes animation rendering in which “data
related to a scene including (but not limited to) spatial, textural and lighting
information is combined to determine the values of each pixel within a
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flattened image.” (See Corazza ¶¶ 63–65, 80.) These portions of Corazza
do not teach or suggest an explicit identification of a pixel having maximum
brightness as recited in claim 1. (Reply Br. 3.)
The Examiner also concludes “it would have been obvious for
Corazza to implicitly teach the maximum brightness value for the images
since Corazza is able to utilize and render the facial expressions i.e. portions
of the face that is changing with a great lighting and quality as shown in figs.
8A–8C,” because “it is a known concept for an image to have maximum
brightest or the least bright pixel in the image.” (Ans. 4–5.) However, the
Examiner has not provided an adequate reason based on rational
underpinnings to explain why a skilled artisan would have been led to
identify a pixel having a maximum brightness in a face image, and then use
the previously identified pixel of maximum brightness to identify a face
section, as required by claim 1. (Reply Br. 3.) See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex
Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (citing In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed.
Cir. 2006) (“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by
mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be some articulated
reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness”)); In re NuVasive, Inc., 842 F.3d 1376, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 2016)
(“‘[C]onclusory statements’ alone are insufficient and, instead, the finding
must be supported by a ‘reasoned explanation.’” (internal citation omitted));
see also In re Chaganti, 554 Fed. Appx. 917, 922 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (“It is not
enough to say that . . . to do so would ‘have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill.’ Such circular reasoning is not sufficient—more is needed to sustain
an obviousness rejection.”).
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The Examiner also has not shown that the additional teachings of
Bond make up for the above-noted deficiencies of Corazza. Bond merely
captures images with a camera coupled to a head-mounted device, but does
not teach processing the images as claimed. (See Bond Figs. 6–7.) Thus, for
the reasons set forth above, we do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness
rejection of independent claim 1, and independent claims 10 and 20
similarly reciting processing a captured image by identifying a pixel of
maximum brightness in the image. (See claim 10 (“identifying a pixel
having a maximum brightness in an image captured by an image capture
device,” “identifying a section of the portion of the face of the user based on
the identified pixel,” and “retrieving a mapping of coordinates of pixels in
the one or more captured images to one or more landmarks of the identified
section of the portion of the face of the user”), claim 20 (“identifying a pixel
having a maximum brightness in each of the captured images” and
“generating mappings between the identified pixel [in] each of the captured
images and a surface of the portion of the face of the user”).) We also do
not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claims 2, 4–9, 11–13, and
16–19.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1, 2, 4–13, and 16–20 based
upon obviousness.

DECISION
For the above reasons, we REVERSE the Examiner’s obviousness
rejections of claims 1, 2, 4–13, and 16–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
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In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C.§  Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 2, 4–13, and 16–
20
103  Bond, Corazza 1, 2, 4–13,
and 16–20
Overall Outcome 1, 2, 4–13,
and 16–20

REVERSED