Ex Parte Price et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 30, 2018

13018620 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 30, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/018,620 02/01/2011 Stephen G. Price
76073 7590 11/01/2018
lnfoPrint Solutions/ Blakely
1279 Oakmead Parkway
Sunnyvale, CA 94085-4040
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.
8185Pl08 8861
EXAMINER
LAM, ANDREW H
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2675
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/01/2018 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):
april.piepenburg@jwmhlaw.com
mark. watson@jwmhlaw.com
eofficeaction@appcoll.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte STEPHEN G. PRICE,
JAMES T. AIROLA, and SAMUEL N. HOPPER
Appeal2017-007737 1
Application 13/018, 620
Technology Center 2600
Before: MAHSHID D. SAADAT, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and
STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges.
KUMAR, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
Final Rejection of claims 1, 3, 5-17, and 20-27, which are all the pending
claims in this application. 2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We AFFIRM.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Ricoh Company, Ltd.
App. Br. 3.
2 Claims 2, 4, 18, and 19 are canceled. App. Br. 3.
Appeal2017-007737
Application 13/018,620
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants' disclosure relates to image processing in printing systems.
See Spec. ,r 1.
Claim 1 is illustrative and reads as follows:
1. A printer comprising:
a control unit, including:
a head node to receive print job data;
a plurality of compute nodes to rasterize the print job
data to produce rasterized bitmap data, compress the bitmap
data, partition each sheetside of the compressed bitmap data
into bitmap subcomponents and transmit the bitmap
subcomponents, wherein the bitmap subcomponents are
compressed;
a plurality of buffers, including:
a first buffer having a first identification number to
temporarily store a first bitmap subcomponent; and
a second buffer having a second identification number to
temporarily store a second bitmap subcomponent; and
an end node to receive the first and second bitmap
subcomponents from the compute nodes and to separately
validate the accuracy of the first and second bitmap
subcomponents by analyzing the first buffer identification
number and the second buffer identification number to verify
that the first bitmap subcomponent and the second bitmap
subcomponent were received from [sic] in a proper sequence.
App. Br. (Claims Appendix i).
The Examiner's Rejections
Claims 1, 3, 5-12, 17, 20-22, and 27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Gaebel (US 2008/0117462 Al, May 22, 2008)
and Klassen (US 2009/0161163 Al, June 25, 2009). See Final Act. 3-8.
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Application 13/018,620
Claims 13-16 and 23-26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over the Gaebel, Klassen, and Abe (US 7,715,055 B2, May 11,
2010). See Final Act. 8-10.
Prior Board's Decision on Appeal
In the Decision on Appeal dated December 16, 2015 ("Decision"), we
affirmed the rejection of claims 1 and 3-27 as being unpatentable over
Gaebel and Klassen alone or in combination with Abe. The discussion of
the teachings and the combination of Gaebel in view of Klassen, as applied
to claim 1 on appeal is substantially similar to those presented for claim 1 in
the prior Decision. To the extent Appellants' arguments are similar to those
presented in the prior Decision, we will not repeat our analysis and will refer
to the prior Decision.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellants'
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We adopt as our own ( 1) the
findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this
appeal is taken and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the
Examiner's Answer in response to Appellants' Appeal Brief. We concur
with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. We highlight and address
specific findings and arguments for emphasis as follows.
Appellants contend
the validated bitmap stored in the buffer disclosed in Gaebel is NOT
compressed. Gaebel explicitly discloses that the bitmap data is
compressed after sending the bitmap to the marking engine.
Moreover, Gaebel discloses that a buffer manager may be configured
to first determine if the requested bitmap is located in one of the
bitmap buffers and, if not, to decompress or regenerate the requested
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Application 13/018,620
bitmap stored as compressed bitmap data. See Gaebel at paragraph
[0021].
Based on the above-disclosure, Gaebel teaches away from transferring
compressed data to a print/marking engine since bitmap data is
compressed after sending the bitmap to the marking engine and
compressed data must be decompressed prior to transmission if not
stored in the buffers in an uncompressed format.
App. Br. 10-11 (hereinafter "teaching away argument)."
The Examiner responds that
paragraph 21 of Gaebel, clearly states that "bitmap data may also be
compressed. The compressed digital data requires less bytes of
storage than the bitmap". Because, the data stored in buffers of fig.2
are bitmap, this term that "bitmap data may also be compressed. The
compressed digital data requires less bytes of storage than the bitmap"
clearly can referring to the bitmap stored in the buffers of fig. 2.
Furthermore, in order to save storage in the buffer of fig. 2, it would
still have been obvious to a person with ordinary skill in the art to
store the bitmap in compressed form in the buffer of Gaebel as
suggested in paragraph 21 of Gaebel.
Ans. 10.
We agree with the Examiner. "A reference may be said to teach away
when a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference, would be
discouraged from following the path set out in the reference, or would be led
in a direction divergent from the path that was taken by the applicant."
Ricoh Co., Ltd. v. Quanta Computer Inc., 550 F.3d 1325, 1332 (Fed. Cir.
2008) ( citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Teaching an
alternative or equivalent method, however, does not teach away from the use
of a claimed method. See In re Dunn, 349 F.2d 433, 438 (CCPA 1965). A
reference does not teach away if it merely expresses a general preference for
an alternative invention from amongst options available to the ordinarily
skilled artisan, and the reference does not discredit or discourage
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Application 13/018,620
investigation into the invention claimed. In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1201
(Fed. Cir. 2004).
Appellants also contend
Figure 5 of Gaebel, and the corresponding description, discloses a
flow diagram for managing buffer allocation. Moreover, none of the
other Figures disclosed in Gaebel disclose[ s] or suggest[ s] a printer
having an end node. Figure 2 of Gaebel discloses a system including
a print controller, marking engine and data compression module.
Nonetheless, there is no disclosure or suggestion of an end node
within a printer.
App. Br. 13 (hereinafter "end node" feature.)
The Examiner responds that
Gaebel in teaches fig. 5 and [0037] at operation 550 (end node), a
request is received including the bitmap identifier, such as bitmap
identifier 15 of FIG. 1. The request may be made to the buffer
manager 1 by the caller 40 of FIG. 2. The buffer manager 1 may
locate buffer sections associated with the bitmap identifier 15. For
example, if the caller 40 requests the buffer or buffers associated with
bitmap 5, the buffer manager 1 may search table 70 in FIG. 2 for all
those buffer sections 11-13 that are identified by the bitmap identifier
15 for bitmap 5. Therefore, the buffer manager can be read as the
end node as claimed.
Ans. 11 ( emphasis ours).
Appellants did not explicitly define the term "end node" in the
Specification. We thus agree with the Examiner (Ans. 11) that Gaebel's
"buffer manager 1" may be reasonably equated to the claimed "end node."
Also, Appellants do not point to anything in the claims or Specification or
present persuasive evidence or argument that precludes this interpretation.
Appellants present no arguments for claims 13-16 and 23-26 and the
corresponding rejection. We refer to the above discussion and further adopt
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the Examiner's findings and conclusion concerning the rejection of these
claims.
We have considered Appellants' arguments in the Reply Brief but find
them unpersuasive to rebut the Examiner's responses. Consequently, we
conclude there is no reversible error in the Examiner's rejections of claims 1,
3, 5-17, and 20-27.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejections of claims 1,
3, 5-17, and 20-27.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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