14391966 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 2019)

Ex Parte Ma

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardMar 29, 2019

14391966 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 14/391,966 10/10/2014 JianjunMa 109676 7590 04/02/2019 Brooks Kushman P.C./Harman 1000 Town Center Twenty Second Floor Southfield, MI 48075 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. HARM0396PUSA 6014 EXAMINER MUSTAFA, IMRAN K ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3663 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/02/2019 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): docketing@brookskushman.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED ST ATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte JIANJUN MA Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 Technology Center 3600 Before MICHAEL J. FIT ZP AT RICK, ANNETTE R. REIMERS, and LEE L. STEP INA, Administrative Patent Judges. REIMERS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Jianjun Ma appeals under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) from the Examiner's decision to rejectunder35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) 1:(1) claims 1-3, 6, 7, 9-16, 19, and 20 as unpatentable over Lee (US 2008/0051991 Al, published Feb. 28, 2008) and Epshtein (US 2010/0250126 Al, published Sept. 30, 2010); and (2) claims 5 and 18 as unpatentable over Lee, Epshtein, and Appellant's 1 The Examiner refers to "35 U.S.C. Â§ 102(b)." See Final Office Action 2 ("Final Act."), dated Mar. 29, 2017. We consider this a typographical error. Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 Admitted Prior Art ("AAP A"). 2 Claims 4, 8, and 17 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b). We REVERSE. CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The claimed subject matter "relates to a navigation system and a navigation method thereof." Spec. ,r 1, Fig. 5. Claims 1, 7, and 14 are independent. Claim 1 is illustrative of the claimed subject matter and recites: 1. A navigation system, comprising: an image capturing device, configured to capture an image of an object fed by a user; a positioning device, configured to obtain positioning information of the navigation system; and a processing device, configured to calculate a feature code based on features of a logo in the captured image; retrieve a piece of address information of a target location corresponding to the feature code from a database; and calculate a route from a current location to the target location using the positioning information and the piece of address information, wherein the processing device is further configured to: determine whether a barcode is contained in the nnage; retrieve the piece of address information of the target location corresponding to the barcode from the database in response to determining that the barcode is contained in the image; and 2 The Examiner indicates that paragraph 29 of the Specification constitutes Appellant's Admitted Prior Art ("AAP A"). See Final Act. 6; see also Spec. ,r 29. 2 Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 calculate the feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image. ANALYSIS Obviousness over Lee and Epshtein Claims 1-3, 6, 7, 9-16, 19, and 20 Independent claim 1 is directed to a navigation system including a processing device configured to: "determine whether a barcode is contained in the image" and "calculate [a] feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image." Appeal Br. Claims App. 1. 3 The Examiner fmds that Lee discloses the system of claim 1 substantially as claimed except "Lee does not explicitly disclose calculating the feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image." Final Act. 4. The Examiner fmds "Epshtein teaches calculating the feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image." Id. at 4--5 ( citing Epshtein ,r 32, Fig. 1). Appellant contends that "the claimed navigation system requires calculating the feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image," that paragraph 32 ofEpshtein, at best, "discloses that an OCR recognition is performed on image data to identify words that appear in the image," and that Epshtein does not "account for the conditional association between calculating the 3 Appeal Brief ("Appeal Br.") Claims Appendix ("Claims App."), filed Sept. 28,2017 3 Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 feature code and determining that the barcode is not contained in the image as claimed." Appeal Br. 4--5. Paragraph 32 ofEpshtein describes that optical character recognition (OCR) may be performed on image data to identify any words that appear in images and that "images could be analyzed to distinguish words ( or logos) that appear on businesses from words that appear on vehicles." Epshtein ,r 32. Thus, paragraph 32 of Epshtein merely discloses using OCR to identify and analyze images to distinguish words ( or logos) that appear on businesses from words that appear on vehicles. We agree with Appellant that there is no description in paragraph 32 ofEpshtein about "calculat[ing] a feature code based on features in a logo," let alone, "calculat[ing] a feature code based on features in a logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image." Appeal Br. 4; see also id. Claims App. 1. The Examiner appears to take an alternate approach in the Answer by fmding that "Lee discloses of capturing an image and using information from an image to determine coordinates of the destination from the captured image." Ans. 2. 4 In particular, the Examiner fmds that "translator [102 of Lee] generates geographical information system (GIS) coordinates, site name, or address of the destination by using character recognition OR barcode decoding of the captured image." Id. ( citing Lee ,r 43). The Examiner reasons that a skilled artisan "would clearly realize if a barcode is not contained in an image then the system of Lee perform[ s] character recognition of the image to extract destination information since as disclosed in Paragraph 43 the system performs both character recognition OR barcode decoding." Ans. 2; see also id. at 4 ("Of course if the image 4 Examiner's Answer ("Ans."), dated Apr. 27, 2018. 4 Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 does not contain a barcode then the translator would use character recognition to identify the characters contained in the image to identify the business name since the translator of Lee performs recognition of a barcode and character recognition."); Lee ,r 43. Lee discloses that "[ t ]ranslator 102 may generate the GIS [geographic information system] coordinates, site name, phone number, or the address of the destination by character recognition or bar code decoding on the captured image." Lee ,r 43 ( emphasis added). We agree with Appellant that "[ a ]t no point does paragraph [0043] of Lee disclose that in the event a bar code is not contained in an image, then character recognition of the image is performed" and in particular, there is nothing in paragraph 43 of Lee that "provides a condition precedent between detecting that a bar code is not in an image and then performing character recognition of an image once the bar code is detected not to be in the image." Reply Br. 2. 5 Further, the fact that the system of Lee discloses character recognition or bar code decoding on a captured image does not mean that "if the image does not contain a barcode then the translator [necessarily] would use character recognition to identify the characters contained in the image." See Ans. 4; see also id. at 2; Reply Br. 2 ("[T]here is no association in [paragraph 43 ofJ Lee of performing character recognition when a bar code is not contained in an image."). Thus, we agree with Appellant that the Examiner's fmdings as to paragraph 4 3 of Lee are "conclusory and not supported by Lee." See Reply Br. 2-3; see also Ans. 2, 4. For these reasons, the Examiner fails to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the combined teachings of Lee and Epshtein disclose a 5 Reply Brief ("Reply Br."), filed June 21, 2018. 5 Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 processing device configured to: "calculate [a] feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image," as claimed. See Appeal Br. Claims App. 1. Similar to independent claim 1, independent claim 14 is directed to a navigation system that includes the same language to a processing device configured to: calculate a feature code based on the features of the logo in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image. See Appeal Br. Claims App. 3. Independent claim 7 is directed to a navigation method including the step of "calculating [a] feature code based on the features of the logo in the captured image in response to determining that the barcode is not contained in the image." See id. Claims App. 2. The Examiner relies on the same unsupported fmdings in Lee and Epshtein discussed above. See Final Act. 5---6; see also Ans. 2--4. As such, the Examiner's fmdings with respectto Lee andEpshtein are deficient for claims 7 and 14 as well. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claims 1- 3, 6, 7, 9-16, 19, and20 as unpatentableoverLee andEpshtein. Obviousness over Lee, Epshtein, andAAPA Claims 5 and 18 Claims 5 and 18 depend from claims 1 and 14, respectively. See Appeal Br. Claims App. 1, 3. The Examiner relies on the same unsupported fmdings in Lee and Epshtein discussed above for claims 1 and 14. See Final Act. 6. The Examiner does not rely on Appellant's Admitted Prior Art to remedy the deficiencies of Lee or Epshtein. Thus, for reasons similar to 6 Appeal2018-006990 Application 14/391,966 those discussed above for claims 1 and 14, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claims 5 and 18 as unpatentable over Lee, Epshtein, and AAP A. DECISION We REVERSE the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-3, 6, 7, 9-16, 19, and 20 as unpatentable over Lee and Epshtein. We REVERSE the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 5 and 18 as unpatentable over Lee, Epshtein, and AAP A. REVERSED 7