Ex Parte Gendron et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jun 2, 2009

09911846 (B.P.A.I. Jun. 2, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte DAVID PIERRE GENDRON, DALE PHILIP KINGSBURY,
JEFFREY ALLEN ROMATOSKI, and LARRY ROBERT SITKA
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Appeal 2008-005158
Application 09/911,846
Technology Center 3600
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Decided:1 June 2, 2009
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Before: MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, HUBERT C. LORIN and
ANTON W. FETTING, Administrative Patent Judges.

CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal from the final rejection of claims 1-19. We have
jurisdiction to review the case under 35 U.S.C. §§ 134 and 6.

1 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, begins to run from the decided date
shown on this page of the decision. The time period does not run from the
Mail Date (paper delivery) or Notification Date (electronic delivery).

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Application 09/911,846

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The claimed invention is directed to systems and methods of routing
medical images and other patient data between medical modalities and other
various medical imaging devices (Spec. p. 2, ll. 11-13). Claim 1, reproduced
below, is further illustrative of the claimed subject matter.
1. (Original) A computer-readable medium having a
storage asset therein comprising:
a first data structure that stores asset meta information
to control routing of the asset through a medical imaging
network;
a second data structure that stores medical imaging
information received from a medical imaging modality; a
third data structure that stores pixel data received from the
medical imaging modality;
a fourth data structure that stores patch data that
includes modifications to the medical imaging information;
and
a fifth data structure that stores error detection and
correction information.

The references of record relied upon by the Examiner as evidence of
obviousness are:
Schnellinger et al. US 5,642,513 Jun. 24, 1997
Pourjavid US 5,883,985 Mar. 16, 1999
Booth US 6,065,073 May 16, 2000
Zandi US 6,195,465 Feb. 27, 2001
DeLaHuerga US 2002/0116509 Aug. 22, 2002

The Examiner rejected claims 1, 2, 8-13 and 18-19 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schnellinger; rejected claims 3 and 17
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schnelliner in view of
Pourjavid; rejected claims 6 and 16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
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unpatentable over Schnelliner in view of DeLaHuerga; rejected claims 4, 5,
14 and 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schnelliner
in view of Zandi; and rejected claim 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Schnelliner in view of Booth.

OPINION
We have carefully reviewed the rejections on appeal in light of the
arguments of the Appellants and the Examiner. As a result of this review,
we have reached the conclusion that the applied prior art does not establish
the prima facie obviousness of the claimed subject matter. Therefore the
rejections on appeal are reversed. Our reasons follow.
The following comprise our finding of facts with respect to the scope
and content of the prior art. Schnellinger discloses medical imagery
generated by a variety of source devices or modalities such as x-ray
machines and magnetic resonance imaging devices (col. 2, ll. 23-25). The
images are routed over a network to be viewed, edited, previewed, adjusted,
manipulated or composed on a work station, stored or printed (col. 4, ll. 4-6;
col. 11, ll. 47-51). A Medical Imaging Gateway (MIG) provides an
image device interface for providing compression/expansion of data,
communication control, temporary storage and security/error checking
(col. 5, ll. 12-14, 24-27).
The disagreement between the Appellants and the Examiner is
whether any of editing, adjusting, manipulating or compressing/expanding
of the medical images in Schnellinger corresponds to “patch data that
includes modifications to the medical imaging information” as recited in
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independent claims 1, 8 and 18 (App. Br. 10-19; Examiner’s Ans. 10-15).
While the editing, adjusting, manipulating or compressing/expanding
(hereinafter “editing”) of the medical images in Schnellinger corresponds to
modifications to the medical imaging information, independent claims 1, 8
and 18 each distinctly recite storing both medical imaging information and
modifications to the medical imaging information, each of which must be
given full effect as separate and distinct claim elements. See Unique
Concepts, Inc. v. Brown, 939 F.2d 1558, 1563 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
Schnellinger does not set forth any specifics, nor does the Examiner
provide any reasoning, of how the editing of medical images is performed
in Schnellinger. Accordingly, we default to the most straight-forward
explanation that any edits are performed directly to the original medical
images. As the original and manipulated medical images in Schellinger are
the one and the same, Schnellinger does not disclose “patch data” separate
from the medical imaging information as recited in independent claims 1, 8
and 18. Indeed, to find that the edited medical images corresponded to
both the recited medical imaging information and the patch data would
impermissibly read one of those elements out of the claim. See Texas
Instruments Inc. v. United States Int'l Trade Comm'n, 988 F.2d 1165, 1171
(Fed. Cir. 1993).
Therefore we are constrained to reverse all rejections on appeal.

CONCLUSION AND ORDER
The rejections of claims 1-19 are reversed.

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JRG

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