Ex Parte Tischer et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 19, 2013

11267092 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 19, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
11/267,092 11/04/2005 INV001Steven N. Tischer 01238CIP 1438
38516 7590 03/20/2013
AT&T Legal Department - SZ
Attn: Patent Docketing
Room 2A-207
One AT&T Way
Bedminster, NJ 07921
EXAMINER
GUERRA-ERAZO, EDGAR X
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2659
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/20/2013 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte STEVEN N. TISCHER, ROBERT A. KOCH, and DALE MALIK
____________

Appeal 2010-007731
Application 11/267,092
Technology Center 2600
____________

Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and
JOHN A. EVANS, Administrative Patent Judges.

SMITH, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2010-007731
Application 11/267,092

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1-20, which are all the claims pending in the application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

Representative Claim
1. A method of translating text to speech, comprising:

receiving content for translation to speech;

identifying a textual sequence in the content;

correlating the textual sequence to a phrase;

accessing a mean characteristic voice file storing voice
characteristics that are common to a population of different speakers;

accessing a speaker’s delta voice file storing unique voice
characteristics that differentiate the speaker from mean values of the
populations;

accessing the speaker’s voice file storing multiple phrases, the
speaker’s voice file mapping each phrase to a corresponding
sequential string of phonemes stored in the voice file;

retrieving the sequential string of phonemes corresponding to
the phrase; and

processing the sequential string of phonemes using the mean
characteristic voice file and the speaker’s delta voice file when
translating the textual sequence to speech.

Appeal 2010-007731
Application 11/267,092

3
Prior Art
Stylianou US 6,266,638 B1 Jul. 24, 2001
filed Mar. 30, 1999
Strom US 2003/0004714 A1 Jan. 2, 2003
Freeland US 2003/0028380 A1 Feb. 6, 2003
Parham Mokhtari et.al., Toward an Acoustic-Articulatory Model of
Inter-Speaker Variability, Proc.of the 6th Int’l Conf. on Spoken Language
Processing, ICSLP 16-20 (2000).

Examiner’s Rejections
Claim 15 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, for
failing to comply with the written description requirement.
Claims 1-4, 7-11, and 14-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Freeland and Mokhtari.
Claims 5 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Freeland, Mokhtari, and Strom.
Claims 6 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Freeland, Mokhtari, Strom, and Stylianou.

ANALYSIS
Section 112 rejection of claim 15
To comply with the “written description” requirement of 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, first paragraph, an applicant must convey with reasonable clarity to
those skilled in the art that, as of the filing date sought, he or she was in
possession of the invention. The invention is, for purposes of the “written
description” inquiry, whatever is now claimed. Vas-Cath, Inc. v. Mahurkar,
935 F.2d 1555, 1563-64 (Fed. Cir. 1991). The invention claimed does not
have to be described in ipsis verbis in order to satisfy the written description
Appeal 2010-007731
Application 11/267,092

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requirement. Union Oil Co. of Cal. v. Atl. Richfield Co., 208 F.3d 989, 1000
(Fed. Cir. 2000). However, one skilled in the art, reading the original
disclosure, must be able to immediately discern the limitations now claimed.
See Waldemar Link v. Osteonics Corp., 32 F.3d 556, 558 (Fed. Cir. 1994).
Claim 15 recites “concatenating each phoneme identifier in the string
of phonemes to produce a sequence of phoneme identifiers with each
phoneme identifier separated by a comma.” The Examiner finds that
Figures 5 and 6 of Appellants’ Specification show phoneme identifiers
separated by semicolons, and speech samples separated by commas. Ans.
18-20. Appellants contend that Figures 5 and 6 expressly, inherently, or
implicitly support “each phoneme identifier separated by a comma.” Br. 9.
The Examiner has not provided persuasive evidence or explanation to
show that one skilled in the art, after reading the original disclosure, would
not able to immediately discern “each phoneme identifier separated by a
comma.” We do not sustain the rejection of claim 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 112.

Section 103 rejection of claims 1-4, 7-11, and 14-20
Appellants contend that Mokhtari applies selective linear prediction to
speech waveforms, but Freeland converts text messages to speech.
According to Appellants, if the teachings of Freeland are combined with the
teachings of Mokhtari, then Freeland’s principle of operation must be
changed to accept speech waveforms instead of text. Br. 10-21. The
Examiner finds that Freeland teaches accepting speech inputs, such as the
speech waveforms taught by Mokhtari, as well as text inputs. The Examiner
concludes that including the teachings of Mokhtari in the teachings of
Freeland does not change the principle of operation of Freeland. Ans. 21-30.
Appeal 2010-007731
Application 11/267,092

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We agree with the Examiner. Further, Appellants’ contentions are
inconsistent with section 4 of Mokhtari, which suggests that a goal of the
acoustic-articulatory model of inter-speaker variability is integrating the
modeling methodology with a speech synthesizer, such as that of Freeland.
Appellants contend that the “mean characteristic voice file” and the
“speaker’s delta voice file” recited in claim 1 are not equivalent to the mean
and standard deviation of vocal tract lengths taught by Mokhtari. Br. 21.
However, Appellants have not provided persuasive evidence or argument to
distinguish the “mean characteristic voice file” and the “speaker’s delta
voice file” recited in claim 1 from the speaker variability parameters,
including the mean and standard deviation of vocal tract lengths taught by
Mokhtari.
We adopt the Examiner’s findings of facts in the Final Rejection and
Examiner’s Answer as our own. We concur with the conclusions made by
the Examiner for the reasons given in the Examiner’s Answer. We sustain
the rejection of claims 1-4, 7-11, and 14-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Section 103 rejection of claims 5 and 12
Appellants rely on arguments for the patentability of claims 5 and 12
similar to those presented for claim 1 which we find unpersuasive. We
sustain the rejection of claims 5 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Section 103 rejection of claims 6 and 13
Appellants rely on arguments for the patentability of claims 6 and 13
similar to those presented for claim 1 which we find unpersuasive. We
sustain the rejection of claims 6 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Appeal 2010-007731
Application 11/267,092

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DECISION
The rejection of claim 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, for
failing to comply with the written description requirement is reversed.
The rejection of claims 1-4, 7-11, and 14-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Freeland and Mokhtari is affirmed.
The rejection of claims 5 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Freeland, Mokhtari, and Strom is affirmed.
The rejection of claims 6 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Freeland, Mokhtari, Strom, and Stylianou 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

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