Ex Parte DU et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Aug 31, 2016

13243405 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 31, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/243,405 09/23/2011
113694 7590
Oblon/Corelogic Inc.
1940 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
09/02/2016
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Wei DU
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
38411 lUSS 7061
EXAMINER
KHOLDEBARIN, IMAN K
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2669
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/02/2016 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):
oblonpat@oblon.com
patentdocket@oblon.com
AHudgens@oblon.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte WEI DU, THOMAS C. JEFFERY, and HOWARD BOTTS
Appeal2015-003198
Application 13/243,405
Technology Center 2600
Before JOHN F. HORVATH, NABEEL U. KHAN, and
AMBER L. HAGY, Administrative Patent Judges.
KHAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1-23. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We reverse.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Bank of America,
N.A. App. Br. 2.
Appeal2015-003198
Application 13/243,405
THE INVENTION
Appellants' invention relates to techniques for extracting building
footprints from imagery data associated with a property to identify locations
of building structures within particular parcels. See Abstract.
Exemplary independent claim 1 is reproduced below.
1. A method for extracting a building footprint from imagery
data, comprising:
accessing imagery data of land containing a plurality of
parcels;
detecting with a processing circuit image contrasts
between natural terrain and potential man-made structures in said
imagery data;
determining a parcel from the plurality of parcels that a
portion of the potential man-made structures are located on by
overlaying parcel boundaries over said imagery data so as to
spatially distinguish said plurality of parcels; and
extracting a building footprint of a detected man-made
structure on said determined parcel from the plurality of parcels
that the portion of the potential man-made structures are located
on, said extracting including filtering-out remaining potential
man-made structures having features inconsistent with
predetermined extraction rules defined based at least in part on
property characteristics for the determined parcel from the
plurality of parcels that the portion of the potential man-made
structures are located on.
REFERENCES and REJECTIONS
1. Claims 1, 2, 3, 19, 20, and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Jin et al. (US 7,650,047 B2, issued Jan. 19,
2010.
2
Appeal2015-003198
Application 13/243,405
2. Claims 4--10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jin and Munson et al. (US 2005/0034074 Al, published
Feb. 10, 2005).
3. Claims 11, 12, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Jin and Guo et al. (US 2011/0075882 Al, published
Mar. 31, 2011).
4. Claims 13-17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Jin, Guo, and Pearcy et al. (US 7,890,509, issued Feb. 15, 2011).
ANALYSIS
The Examiner finds steps 604--606, depicted in Figure 6 of Jin, teach
or suggest "extracting a building footprint ... said extracting including
filtering-out remaining potential man-made structures having features
inconsistent with predetermined extraction rules." Final Act. 5.
Appellants argue2 "steps 604-606 of Jin relate to the extraction of a
changed area of the overlaid images (step 604), the calculation of a
footprint matching rate (step 605) and the evaluation of a regional change
(step 606) (see Jin, c. 6, 1. 42 to c. 7, 1. 19)." Br. 15. Thus, Appellants
contend "[s]teps 604-606 do not describe or reasonably suggest extracting a
building footprint of a detected man-made structure by filtering-out other
potential man-made structures that have features inconsistent with
predetermined extraction rules." Id.
2 Appellants present additional arguments in their Appeal Brief. However,
because the identified argument is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach
the merits of these additional arguments.
3
Appeal2015-003198
Application 13/243,405
We agree with Appellants. Steps 604---606 of Jin's Figure 6 illustrate
the process of determining the differences between an old foot-print map and
a new foot-print map by overlaying the new image over the old image. See
Jin 6:22-7:19; Fig. 6. These differences reflect changes made to objects
over time, as seen in satellite or aerial photographs. See Jin 2: 1--4; 8: 19-34.
However, we do not discern from Jin's disclosure that steps 604---606
describe "filtering-out" other man-made structures that are inconsistent with
extraction rules from the detected man-made structure located on a parcel of
land. Nor has the Examiner cited any other portions of Jin that teach or
suggest the disputed limitation.
Accordingly, constrained by the record before us, we do not sustain
the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1 and of independent claims
19 and 20. For the same reasons, we do not sustain the Examiner's
rejections of the pending dependent claims.
DECISION
The Examiner's rejections of claims 1-23 are reversed.
REVERSED
4