Ex Parte HECHT

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 26, 2018

14210138 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 26, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
14/210,138 03/13/2014
83667 7590 11/28/2018
Patterson & Sheridan, LLP / PIXAR
24 Greenway Plaza, Suite 1600
Houston, TX 77046
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Florian HECHT
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.
PIXA/0068US (064509) 7875
EXAMINER
BADER, ROBERT N.
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2617
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/28/2018 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):
P AIR_eOfficeAction@pattersonsheridan.com
PSDocketing@pattersonsheridan.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex Parte FLORIAN HECHT
Appeal 2018-004663
Application 14/210,138
Technology Center 2600
Before LARRY J. HUME, BETH Z. SHAW, and
JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges.
SHAW, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL 1
Appellant2 seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner's final rejection of claims 1---6, 8-13, 15-20, and 22-24, which are
all the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
INVENTION
Appellant's invention is directed to volume rendering and importance
sampling of sparse voxel octrees. Spec. ,r 1.
1 Throughout this Decision we have considered the Appeal Brief filed
October 4, 2017 ("App. Br."), Reply Brief filed March 30, 2018 ("Reply
Br."), the Examiner's Answer mailed January 30, 2018 ("Ans."), and the
Final Rejection mailed May 4, 2017 ("Final Act.").
2 Appellant identifies Pixar as the real party in interest. App. Br. 3.
Appeal 2018-004663
Application 14/210, 13 8
Claim 1 is illustrative of the claims at issue and is reproduced below:
1. A method of sampling lighting intensity data
stored by an octree decomposition which includes a plurality of
nodes, the method comprising:
generating, by operation of one or more computer
processors, the octree decomposition by:
creating a root node of the octree decomposition
representing a volume containing lighting intensity data
associated with a volumetric light source;
dividing the volume into a plurality of sub-volumes, by
repeatedly dividing each sub-volume into sub-volumes until
one of a plurality of predetermined conditions is satisfied,
wherein a portion of the plurality of sub-volumes contain the
lighting intensity data, wherein a first one of the plurality of
predetermined conditions comprises the respective sub-volume
containing lighting intensity data with a single data value,
wherein a second one of the plurality of predetermined
conditions comprises the respective sub-volume containing
lighting intensity data with data values below a predetermined
threshold; and
for each of the sub-volumes containing the lighting
intensity data, storing the lighting intensity data within the sub-
volume in a respective child node of the octree decomposition;
determining, by operation of one or more computer
processors, an importance value for each node of the octree
decomposition containing the lighting intensity data, wherein
the importance value for each node of the octree decomposition
reflects a proportional contribution of the lighting intensity
from the node to its parent node;
traversing, by operation of one or more computer
processors, a path in the octree decomposition until reaching a
leaf node containing the lighting intensity data based on the
importance values for each node of the octree decomposition;
selecting, by operation of one or more computer
processors, a voxel associated with the leaf node to sample
from a plurality of voxels of the volumetric light source;
sampling, by operation of one or more computer
processors, a lighting intensity of the selected voxel; and
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Appeal 2018-004663
Application 14/210, 13 8
determining, by operation of one or more computer
processors, a lighting contribution resulting from the sampled
light intensity of the selected voxel for one or more pixels in a
rendered image of a three-dimensional (3D) graphics scene
illuminated by the volumetric light source.
REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejected claims 1---6, 8-13, 15-20, and 22-24 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Gruenschloss, et al.
(US20I0/0198877 Al, published Aug. 5, 2010) (hereinafter
"Gruenschloss"), Per H. Christensen & Dana Batali, An Irradiance Atlas for
Global Illumination in Complex Production Scenes (H.W. Jenson & A.
Keller eds., 2004) (hereinafter "Christensen"), H. Woo et al., A New
Segmentation Method For Point Cloud Data, 42 Int'l J. Mach. Tools &
Manufacture 167 (2002) (hereinafter "Woo"), Jane Wilhelms & Allen Van
Gelder, Octrees for Faster lsosurface Generation, 11 ACM Transactions on
Graphics 201 (1992) (hereinafter "Wilhelms"), Balazs Csebfalvi & Laszlo
Szirmay-Kalos, Monte Carlo Volume Rendering, 14 IEEE Visualization
Conf. 449 (2003) (hereinafter "Csebfalvi"). Final Act. 4--25. In an
Advisory Action dated July 26, 2017, the Examiner withdrew rejections
under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and 35 U.S.C. § 112.
CONTENTIONS AND ANALYSIS
Appellant argues the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of
Gruenschloss, Christensen, Woo, Wilhelms, and Csebfalvi. In particular,
Appellant argues Woo does not teach "wherein a first one of the plurality of
predetermined conditions comprises the respective sub-volume containing
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Appeal 2018-004663
Application 14/210, 13 8
lighting intensity data with a single data value." App. Br. 11-12 (emphasis
omitted); Reply Br. 2-3. We agree with Appellant.
The Examiner finds Christensen and Gruenschloss teach various
elements of Appellant's claim 1, but do not explicitly teach "wherein a first
one of the plurality of predetermined conditions comprises the respective
sub-volume containing lighting intensity data with a single data value."
Final Act. 12. The Examiner finds Woo teaches this limitation because
"Woo teaches that an octree subdivision process may use a termination
condition of a cell (i.e. sub-volume) containing only a single data point." Id.
As Appellant argues, and we agree, however, Woo teaches
subdividing a cell into daughter cells, until a daughter cell contains a single
point, where the single point is expressed as a set of three dimensional
coordinates. Woo, 172, 3.3. We agree that Woo's teaching of subdividing a
cell until a daughter cell contains a single set of three-space coordinates does
not teach the disputed limitation. We also agree that the claims recite a
single data value of lighting intensity data, not merely any type of data ( e.g.,
three-space coordinates taught by Woo). App. Br. 13.
The Examiner generally alleges that "[ o ]ne of ordinary skill in the art
would understand the analogous octree data structures are merely spatial
structures for containing data, and the type of data is not necessarily
significant." Ans. 7. However, this statement does not provide sufficient
explanation or evidence as to why one ordinarily skilled in the art would
have made the Examiner's proposed modification to Christensen. KSR Int'!
Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418-19.
Therefore, on this record, the Examiner has not shown sufficiently
how the combination of references teaches "dividing the volume into a
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Application 14/210, 13 8
plurality of sub-volumes, by repeatedly dividing each sub-volume into sub-
volumes until one of a plurality of predetermined conditions is satisfied,
wherein a portion of the plurality of sub-volumes contain the lighting
intensity data, wherein a first one of the plurality of predetermined
conditions comprises the respective sub-volume containing lighting intensity
data with a single data value," as recited in claim 1 ( emphasis added). Thus,
we are persuaded of error in the Examiner's rejection of claim 1 under 35
U.S.C. § 103, and we do not sustain the§ 103 rejection of claim 1. For the
same reasons, we do not sustain the § 103 rejection of independent claims 8
and 15, as well as dependent claims 2---6, 9-13, 16-20, and 22-24.
DECISION
We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1---6, 8-13,
15-20, and 22-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
REVERSED
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