Ex Parte Morgan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 9, 2018

14644557 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 9, 2018)

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.
14/644,557 03/11/2015 Gareth Morgan 070852.000102 8192
125968 7590 02/13/2018
Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP
(ImgTec)
1909 K St., N.W.
Ninth Floor
Washington, DC 20006
EXAMINER
LHYMN, SARAH
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2613
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/13/2018 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):
patlaw @ vorys. com
vmdeluc a @ vorys. com
rntisdale@vorys.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte GARETH MORGAN and LUKE T. PETERSON
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,5571
Technology Center 2600
Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, JOSEPH P. LENTIVECH, and
NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
KHAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1—20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Appellants identify Imagination Technologies Limited as the real party in
interest. App. Br. 1.
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
BACKGROUND
The Invention
According to Appellants, the invention relates to “systems,
architectures, and methods for asynchronous and concurrent hybridized
rendering, such as hybridized ray tracing and rasterization-based rendering.”
Spec. 12.
Exemplary independent claim 1 is reproduced below with the disputed
limitation emphasized.
1. A process for rendering an image from a 3-D scene,
comprising:
identifying a respective visible surface, from a viewpoint,
for pixels of a frame of pixels;
providing a sample pattern, wherein each sample of the
sample pattern is associated with a respective ray direction
determined for sampling occlusion of light, originating from an
area light, on the identified visible surface;
sampling the pixels using an array of the sample pattern,
the array providing that each pixel is associated with one sample
of the sample pattern, the sampling comprising, for each pixel,
tracing a ray, from the visible surface for that pixel in a direction
determined according to the respective ray direction associated
with the one sample of the sampling pattern associated with that
pixel; and
for each pixel,
identifying a set of pixels around that pixel that, including
that pixel, are congruent with the sample pattern,
excluding from the identified set of pixels any pixel with
a visible surface that has a respective value for one or more
parameters that differs by more than a threshold amount from a
respective value of those one or more parameters for the visible
surface of that pixel of the frame, and
2
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
using a result of the ray tracing for any pixel remaining in
the set of pixels in producing a value for that pixel.
References and Rejections
1. Claims 1, 3—8, 10-12, 14—18, and 20 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Hempel (US 2008/0211804 Al, Sept.
4, 2008), McCombe (US 2010/0073369 Al, Mar. 25, 2010), and Gautron
(US 2012/0001911 Al, Jan. 5, 2012). Final Act. 5-6.
2. Claims 2, 13, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Hempel, McCombe, Gautron, and Laine, S. et al., Soft
Shadow Volumes for Ray Tracing, 24 ACM Transactions on Graphics 1156—
1165 (July 2005). Final Act. 26-27.
3. Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable
over Hempel, McCombe, Gautron, Schmidt (US 2004/0239673 Al, Dec. 2,
2004). Final Act. 28.
DISCUSSION
Examiner’s Findings and Appellants ’ Contentions
The Examiner finds the combination of Hempel and McCombe
teaches or suggests the disputed limitation of “providing a sample pattern,
wherein each sample of the sample pattern is associated with a respective
ray direction determined for sampling occlusion of light, originating from an
area light, on the identified visible surface.” Final Act. 6. Specifically, the
Examiner finds Hempel teaches or suggests “providing a sample pattern,
wherein each sample of the sample pattern is associated with a respective
ray direction.” Final Act. 6 (citing Hempel 32—33). The Examiner finds
McCombe teaches or suggests “determined for sampling occlusion of light,
3
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
originating from an area light, on the identified visible surface.” Final Act. 7
(citing 11115, 135).
Appellants take issue with the fact that the Examiner relies upon two
references for teaching the disputed limitation, which Appellants contend,
must be considered as a single, whole, claim limitation. See App. Br. 6.
Because the Examiner does not rely on Hempel alone as teaching the
entirety of the disputed claim limitation, Appellants argue “no prima facie
case of unpatentability has been shown.” App. Br. 6.
Turning to the Examiner’s reliance on McCombe for teaching or
suggesting the second half of the disputed limitation (relating to the
occlusion of light) Appellants argue the Examiner has not “adequately
established how one or ordinary skill in the art would have ‘combined and
modified Hempel in view McCombe to include the above features of claim
1.”’ App. Br. 7. Specifically, Appellants argue, “The rejection has not
explained or established any correspondence or correlation of the term
‘colorl ’ as used in McCombe with the array of directional rays from a
virtual camera created from the generation of a rasterized image in
paragraph 0032 of Hempel.” App. Br. 7.
Finally, Appellants argue, “Gautron relates to a method of shadowing,
but as with Hempel and McCombe, Gautron does not disclose the unique
features of using a ray direction sample pattern to trace rays for an area light
source and shade occluded pixels by blending with ray tracing results of
surrounding pixels corresponding to the pattern.” App. Br. 7.
Analysis
We are unpersuaded by Appellants’ arguments. Hempel relates to a
method for hybrid rasterization and raytracing. See Hempel Title. Hempel
4
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
explains that although rasterization may be faster, it has the disadvantage of
not being able to effectively compute non-local effects such as “reflections,
refractions, and indirect (global) illumination.” Hempel 1 5. Hempel
explains that raytracing may be more flexible and better suited for indirect
illumination and also for calculating accurate soft shadows. Hempel 19.
Thus, Hempel proposes a “[a] hybrid method that uses mainly rasterization
but invokes raytracing when necessary would address the needs of many
practical applications.” Hempel 111. As part of this hybrid method,
Hempel teaches generating an image using rasterization with polygon
vertices but then also creating an array “that contains a directional vector
from a virtual camera that is associated with each polygon vertex.” Hempel
132. For foreground polygon vertices, “a secondary ray is generated . . .
using the directional vector associated with the polygon vertex.” Hempel
132. The Examiner, thus, accurately finds Hempel’s array of directional
vectors teaches or suggests “providing a sample pattern, wherein each
sample of the sample pattern is associated with a respective ray direction.”
See Ans. 3 (finding Hempel’s array of directional vectors, as the claimed
sample pattern associated with respective ray directions).
Hempel explains that this hybrid rasterization/raytracing technique
may be used for reflections, refractions (Hempel 132), indirect illumination,
and soft shadows (Hempel 133). Although Hempel describes using its
hybrid method for indirect illumination and for soft shadows, it does not
explicitly mention that these soft shadows are created from occlusion of the
indirect illumination (i.e., occlusion of an area light). The Examiner thus,
relies upon McCombe’s occlusion rays as teaching that raytracing can be
applied to occlusion. Final Act. 7 (citing McCombe Tflf 115, 135). The
5
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
Examiner finds the combination teaches or suggests the entirety of the
disputed limitation where the sample pattern associated with a ray direction
of Hempel contains occlusion information of McCombe that can be used for
sampling occlusion of light. Final Act. 7. We find no error in the
Examiner’s findings and conclusions.
We agree with Appellants that the claims must be read as a whole, but
disagree that doing so precludes the Examiner from relying on more than
one reference for teaching the disputed limitation. Appellants have not
provided sufficiently persuasive evidence of a claim interpretation requiring
the disputed limitation to be read as an indivisible limitation that cannot be
taught by multiple references, nor have Appellants pointed to any case law
requiring such a result.
Appellants’ argument that the combination of Hempel and McCombe
is improper because it does not explain how McCombe’s “color 1” attribute
would be combined with Hempel’s hybrid method, misunderstands the
combination and assumes bodily incorporation of McCombe’s technique
into Hempel. “The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the
primary reference. . . . Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of
those references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art.”
In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981) (citations omitted). As the
Examiner explains, the rejection does not rely on incorporating the colorl
attribute from McCombe into Hempel. Ans. 5—7. Rather the rejection relies
upon Hempel’s own suggestion that its hybrid rasterization/raytracing
method may be used for indirect global illumination and soft shadows, with
McCombe’s explicit teaching that rays can include occlusion information,
6
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
thus teaching to the ordinary artisan that Hempel’s hybrid method may be
used for soft shadows created by occlusion of the indirect global
illumination (“area light”). This is similar to Appellants’ description of their
own invention. Spec. 120 (“An area light is a light that is not modeled as a
single point in 3-D space. . . . Faithfully representing occlusion from an area
light involves modeling soft shadows”); 121 (“Some aspects of the
disclosure relate to techniques for rendering images that include soft
shadows caused by objects occluding surfaces.”)
Appellants’ argument that “Gautron does not disclose the unique
features of using a ray direction sample pattern to trace rays for an area light
source and shade occluded pixels by blending with ray tracing results of
surrounding pixels corresponding to the pattern” (App. Br. 7) attacks the
references individually. The Examiner does not rely on Gautron for
teaching “a ray direction sample pattern to trace rays for an area light source
and shade occluded pixels” (App. Br. 7) but rather, relies on Hempel and
McCombe. Final Act. 6—8. To the extent Appellants argue that Gautron
does not teach “blending with ray tracing results of surrounding pixels
corresponding to the pattern,” this argument, without more, is conclusory
and unpersuasive.
Conclusion
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3—8,
10-12, 14—18, and 20 which were argued together as a group. See App.
Br. 4. We also sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 2, 13, and 19 for
which Appellants do not present arguments of separate patentability. See
App. Br. 7 (arguing only that Laine does not cure the deficiencies of
7
Appeal 2017-008705
Application 14/644,557
Hempel, McCombe, and Gautron). Finally, we summarily sustain the
Examiner’s rejection of claim 9, for which Appellants present no arguments.
DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—20 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.50(f).
AFFIRMED
8