Ex Parte QI

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 30, 2016

12915652 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 30, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/915,652 10/29/2010
23696 7590 04/01/2016
QUALCOMM INCORPORATED
5775 MOREHOUSE DR.
SAN DIEGO, CA 92121
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
YINGYONGQI
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.
102300 8040
EXAMINER
CHOI, TIMOTHY WING HO
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2665
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/01/2016 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):
us-docketing@qualcomm.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte YINGYONG QI
Appeal2014-006398
Application 12/915,652
Technology Center 2600
Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, JON M. JURGOV AN, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal2014-006398
Application 12/915,652
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1--40. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
The application is directed to "systems, apparatus, and methods to
improve feature generation for object recognition." (Abstract.) Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative:
1. A method for generating features, performed on at least one
processor, compnsmg:
associating a dispersion value with at least a portion of an
image; and
excluding at least a part of the at least a portion of the image
from at least a portion of a feature generation process if the
dispersion value indicates that dispersion in the at least a portion
of the image exceeds a threshold.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Gokturk et al. US 2009/0196510 Al Aug. 6, 2009
Brian Ayers & Matthew Boutell, Home Interior Classification Using
SIFT Keypoint Histograms, IEEE International Workshop on
Semantic Leaming Applications in Multimedia (June 2007) ("Ayers")
1 Appellant identifies QUALCOMM Incorporated as the real party in
interest. (See App. Br. 2.)
2
Appeal2014-006398
Application 12/915,652
Paul J. Gemperline & Laurie D. Webber, Raw Materials Testing
Using Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy Analysis of Near-
Infrared Reflectance Spectra, ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, 61: 13 8--44
(1989) ("Gemperline")
THE REJECTIONS
Claims 1--40 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Ayers, Gemperline, and Gokturk. (Final Act. 7-18.)
APPELLANT'S CONTENTIONS
Appellant argues that the rejections were improper for the following
reasons:
1. "Gemperline does not qualify as prior art to the present
invention under 35 U.S.C. § 103 because its disclosure is not analogous to
the invention of Applicant's claims nor the subject matter disclosed by the
cited Ayers and Gokturk references." (App. Br. 8.)
2. "[E]ach of Ayers and Gemperline ... fail to provide any
teaching, suggestion, or other motivation to apply their respective teachings
to the technical area of the other reference, and ... the alleged 'motivation'
provided by the Examiner in the Final Office Action ... is nowhere to be
found in either Ayers or Gemperline." (App. Br. 10.)
ANALYSIS
Analogous Art
While Appellant characterizes Gemperline as disclosing "a method for
testing raw materials" (App. Br. 9), a review of the reference shows that it
actually concerns the use of pattern recognition in the analysis of near-
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Application 12/915,652
infrared reflectance ("NIR") spectroscopy. (See Gemperline 138-39 (e.g.,
"This paper reports the application of pattern recognition analysis ofNIR
spectra to test pharmaceutical raw materials.").) Ayers is also directed to
pattern recognition. (See Ayers, Abstract ("Semantic scene classification,
the process of categorizing photographs into a discrete set of classes using
pattern recognition techniques, is a useful ability for image annotation,
organization and retrieval.").) Because Appellant identified "machine
vision" as the technical field of the invention, and because the Specification
acknowledges that pattern or object recognition is a machine vision
technique,2 we find that both Ayers and Gemperline are within the scope of
Appellant's "field of endeavor." See Apple Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., No.
2015-1171, 2016 WL 761884, at *9 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 26, 2016) (relying on,
among other things, the patent's identification of the relevant technical field
to determine the field of endeavor); Wyers v. Master Lock Co., 616 F .3d
1231, 1237-38 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (explaining that "[t]he Supreme Court's
decision in [KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)], directs us
to construe the scope of analogous art broadly").
Moreover, even if Gemperline' s title was somehow controlling with
regard to the field of endeavor, its disclosures regarding particular statistical
techniques to improve pattern recognition would still be analogous as
"reasonably pertinent to" the pattern recognition problems confronting the
2 See Spec. i-f 1 ("The present embodiments relate to machine vision, and in
particular, to methods, apparatus and systems for improved feature
generation.") & i-f 2 (explaining that machine vision techniques include
object recognition). The claims are directed to "feature generation," where
the features that are identified are compared to features from a training
image (i.e., a pattern) in an effort to recognize objects. See Spec i-f 3.
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Appeal2014-006398
Application 12/915,652
Appellant. See, e.g., Wyers, 616 F.3d at 1238. We note that Appellant does
not argue that Ayers is non-analogous, meaning that the issue boils down to
whether one of skill in the art considering Ayers would look to Gemperline.
Because Ayers uses Linear Discriminant Analysis ("LDA") to reduce the
size of the dataset, and Gemperline explains that LDA is unable to recognize
outliers and also suggests the "F test" as a way to overcome that same
problem in Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy ("SIM CA"), we
find Gemperline to be directly pertinent. (See Ans. 3.)
For these reasons, we agree with and adopt the Examiner's findings
and the conclusion that Gemperline is analogous art.
Motivation to Combine
Appellant argues that "the disclosures of Ayers (which, like the
present invention, pertain to image processing) do not even begin to
contemplate the use of techniques applicable to the non-analogous art area of
Gemperline (i.e., testing raw materials using SIM CA analysis of near-
infrared reflectance spectra), nor vice versa." (App. Br. 10.) We do not
agree. As explained above, Ayers uses LDA and Gemperline teaches that
LDA has a shortcoming in that it does not recognize outliers and suggests
the "F test" as a way to address the outlier problem. Thus, a person of skill
in the art would have been motivated by Gemperline to use the F test to
improve Ayers' LDA. The Examiner did not employ improper hindsight
because the combination is supported by an articulated reasoning with a
rational underpinning. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
Nor do we agree that the age of Gemperline is material, as there is no
evidence that anyone tried and failed to solve the problem addressed in the
claims, and the presumption of knowledge is not itself sufficient to make the
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Application 12/915,652
required showing. See Nike, Inc. v. Adidas AG, 812 F.3d 1326, 1338 (Fed.
Cir. 2016) ("The mere age of the references is not persuasive of the
unobviousness of the combination of their teachings, absent evidence that,
notwithstanding knowledge of the references, the art tried and failed to solve
the problem." (quoting In re Wright, 569 F.2d 1124, 1127 (CCPA 1977).)
Because we find Gemperline analogous and that the Examiner did
articulate a proper motivation, we sustain the rejections of claims 1--40
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
DECISION
The rejections of claims 1--40 are 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)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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