Ex Parte Fursund et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 14, 2018

14644830 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 14, 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.
14/644,830 03/11/2015 Jens Fursund 070852.000104 6463
125968 7590 03/16/2018
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
03/16/2018 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 JENS FURSUND and LUKE T. PETERSON
Appeal 2017-009637
Application 14/644,8301
Technology Center 2600
Before NATHAN A. ENGELS, JAMES W. DEJMEK, and
MICHAEL M. BARRY, Administrative Patent Judges.
BARRY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1—29, which constitute all of the pending claims. App. Br. 13—19
(Claims App’x). We have jurisdiction over the pending claims under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 Appellants identify Imagination Technologies Limited as the real party in
interest. App. Br. 1.
Appeal 2017-009637
Application 14/644,830
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants describe the invention as relating to a 3-D rendering
system that performs asynchronous and concurrent hybridized ray tracing
and rasterization-based 3-D rendering. Spec. 12. In a disclosed
embodiment, “a viewpoint 60 and a frame of pixels define a view frustrum
[sic (recte, frustum)] 63 into a 3-D scene 65.” Fig. 2, items 60, 62, 63, 65,
Spec. 138. Visible surfaces (e.g., surfaces of objects) may be determined
(e.g., by rasterization) for the pixels in the frame from the viewpoint. Spec.
1 5, Fig. 7, items 205, 232. Further, the pixels may be shaded, for at least
some of which, shading involves sampling a texture that may be mapped to
one or more of the visible surfaces. Spec. 1 5, Fig. 7, item 240. Concurrent
with determining the visible surfaces and/or shading the pixels, the texture
may be maintained such that selected texture elements are updated by
tracing rays from the elements’ locations. Spec. H 57, 66, 68, 69, Fig. 6,
items 148, 168, Fig. 7, item 236, Fig. 8, item 405, Fig. 9, item 430.
Claim 1 is illustrative of the claimed invention:
1. A 3-D rendering process, comprising:
determining, for each frame of a sequence of frames,
visible surfaces for pixels in the frame, from a respective
viewpoint;
shading the pixels, the shading for at least some of the
pixels comprising sampling a texture, the texture mappable to a
surface visible at one or more of the pixels; and
concurrently with one or more of the determining of the
visible surfaces and the shading, maintaining the texture by:
selecting elements of the texture to be updated;
tracing rays from locations corresponding to the
selected elements of the texture; and
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Appeal 2017-009637
Application 14/644,830
updating elements in the texture based on results of
the tracing of the rays.
App. Br. 13 (Claims App’x).
References
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims is:
Jenkins US 6,111,582 Aug. 29, 2000
Hempel et al. (“Hempel”) US 2008/0211804 Al Sept. 4, 2008
Peterson et al. (“Peterson ’789”) US 2009/0096789 Al Apr. 16, 2009
Peterson et al. (“Peterson ’752”) US 2009/0322752 Al Dec. 31,2009
Zhang et al. (“Zhang”) US 2010/0329358 Al Dec. 30, 2010
Gautron et al. (“Gautron”) US 2012/0001911 Al Jan. 5, 2012
Steed et al. (“Steed”) US 2014/0125668 Al May 8,2014
Ren et al. (“Ren”) US 2014/0267346 Al Sept. 18, 2014
McGuire et al. (“McGuire”) US 2014/0327690 Al Nov. 6, 2014
Montrym et al. (“Montrym”) US 9,013,498 B1 Apr. 21,2015
Rejections
1. Claims 1, 6, 13, 14, 28, and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as unpatentable over Hempel and McGuire. Final Act. 5—11.
2. Claims 2, 5, 20, 23, 25, and 27 stand rejected under § 103 as
unpatentable over Hempel, McGuire, and Peterson ’752. Id. at 12—22.
3. Claims 3, 8, 24, and 262 stand rejected under § 103 as
unpatentable over Hempel, McGuire, Peterson ’752, and Peterson ’789. Id.
at 23—25.
2 The Final Office Action addresses claim 8 in the § 103 rejection over
Hempel, McGuire, and Peterson ’789, finding Peterson ’789 teaches the
additionally recited elements of this claim. See Final Act. 29. Claim 8,
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Application 14/644,830
4. Claim 4 stands rejected under § 103 as unpatentable over
Hempel, McGuire, and Steed. Id. at 26—27.
5. Claims 7, 9, 11, and 17—19* * 3 stand rejected under § 103 as
unpatentable over Hempel, McGuire, and Peterson ’789. Id. at 28—34.
6. Claim 10 stands rejected under § 103 as unpatentable over
Hempel, McGuire, Peterson ’789, and Gautron. Id. at 35—36.
7. Claim 12 stands rejected under § 103 as unpatentable over
Hempel, McGuire, Peterson ’789, and Zhang. Id. at 37—38.
8. Claims 15 stands rejected under § 103 as unpatentable over
Hempel, McGuire, and Jenkins. Id. at 39-40.
9. Claims 16 and 22 stand rejected under § 103 as unpatentable
over Hempel, McGuire, and Montrym. Id. at 41—43.
10. Claims 21 stands rejected under § 103 as unpatentable over
Hempel, McGuire, and Ren. Id. at 44.
ANALYSIS4
In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner finds Hempel teaches “determining
visible surfaces for pixels, from a respective viewpoint.” Final Act. 6 (citing
however, depends from claim 3, which stands rejected under § 103 over
Hempel, McGuire, Peterson ’752, and Peterson ’789. See id. at 23—25.
Accordingly, because the Final Office Action relies on findings from
Hempel, McGuire, Peterson ’752, and Peterson ’789 to satisfy the elements
of claim 8 (including all of the elements of parent claim 3), along with a
rationale to combine these references, we consider claim 8 to stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Hempel, McGuire, Peterson
’752, and Peterson ’789. We treat this irregularity in the record as harmless
error.
3 See n.2, supra.
4 Because we have identified an issue that is dispositive for our decision, we
do not address all of Appellants’ arguments.
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Application 14/644,830
Hempel 32, 41) (emphasis omitted). The Examiner then finds McGuire
teaches the remaining elements of claim 1, including “shading the pixels . . .
comprising sampling a texture” and “concurrently with one or more of the
determining of the visible surfaces and the shading, maintaining the texture
by: selecting elements of the texture . . . ; tracing rays . . . ; and updating
elements in the texture.” Id. at 6—7 (citing McGuire ^fl[ 36, 45, 64, 65, 74,
77,81-84, 89, 99).
Appellants assert “[tjhere is nothing in McGuire, Hempel, Peterson or
any of the other cited prior art references, to suggest updating the texture at
the same time as rasterizing the image.” Reply Br. 5. Appellants argue the
Examiner errs because “[tjhere is in the present record no articulated reason,
purpose or rationale for one skilled in the art to have sought to combine the
teachings of these prior art documents ... in a manner that would have
resulted in the claimed subject matter.” Id.
The Examiner responds by explaining McGuire “teaches that parallel
and concurrent processing is known, and does not limit its teachings to one
type of graphics processing.” Ans. 5 (citing McGuire Tflf 27, 33, 45; Final
Act. 3, 6—7) (emphasis omitted) (discussing McGuire’s parallel processing
unit (“PPU”) that includes streaming multi-processors (“SMs”)); see also
Ans. 3. Accordingly, the Examiner finds “[pjrocessing graphics and
primitive data . . . , shader programs . . . , texture processing . . . , and
indirect lighting . . . are examples of threads that can be implemented to run,
concurrently, in multiple SMs, in PPUs.” Id. at 5 (citing McGuire ]Hf 33—36,
45, 51). The Examiner concludes “[i]t would have been obvious for one of
ordinary skill in the art to have combined and modified Hempel and
McGuire, to have obtained the above feature of Appellant’s [sic] claim 1. . . .
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Application 14/644,830
to provide parallel processing of graphics data.” Id. at 6 (citing Final Act. 2—
4, 6-7).
Certainly it is appropriate for an obviousness rejection to “take
account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in
the art would employ,” because the skilled artisan “is also a person of
ordinary creativity, not an automaton.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550
U.S. 398, 418, 421 (2007). An obviousness rejection, however, “cannot be
sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be some
articulated reasoning with a rational underpinning to support the legal
conclusion of obviousness.” In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
An obviousness rejection must explain the reasoning by which those
findings support the Examiner’s conclusion of obviousness. Perfect Web
Techs., Inc. v. InfoUSA, Inc., 587 F.3d 1324, 1328-30 (Fed. Cir. 2009).
Although we agree with the Examiner that the irradiance map
updating performed by McGuire’s cloud server teaches “maintaining the
texture,”5 the Examiner neither points to a passage in the cited prior art nor
provides an adequate rationale that explains why an ordinary skilled artisan
would have configured the cloud server to perform such irradiance map
updates at the same time as—or “concurrently with’ '’—the PPU’s processing
of graphics primitives, execution of a shader program, and/or sampling of
textures, as recited by claim 1.
5 We disagree with the Examiner that McGuire’s disclosure of texture unit
caches teaches “maintaining the texture,” as recited in claim 1. See Final
Act. 3, 7; Ans. 5 (citing McGuire 145). The caches of McGuire’s texture
unit can store textures for selection and sampling, but we find no evidence
that the texture unit caches themselves select textures to be updated or trace
rays as required by the three steps of claim 1 ’s “maintaining” requirement.
See, e.g., McGuire 145.
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The mere fact that McGuire teaches a PPU that can perform
parallel/concurrent processing of threads and programs does not mean that
applying such concurrent processing to any two particular elements would
have been obvious. As Judge Learned Hand long ago explained, simply
finding prior art disclosures of the claimed elements is insufficient:
machines are made up of the same elements; rods, pawls,
journals, toggles, gears, cams, and the like, all acting
their parts as they always do and always must. All compositions
are made of the same substances, retaining their fixed chemical
properties. But the elements are capable of an infinity of
permutations, and the selection of that group which proves
serviceable to a given need may require a high degree of
originality. It is that act of selection which is the invention ....
B.G. Corp. v. Walter Kidde & Co., 79 F.2d 20, 21—22 (2d Cir. 1935); accord
KSR, 550 U.S. at 418.
The Examiner’s rationale for combining the teachings of Hempel and
McGuire—“to provide parallel processing of graphics data”—is conclusory.
The Examiner does not sufficiently articulate why an ordinarily skilled
artisan would have maintained the texture concurrently with determining the
visible surfaces and/or shading the pixels (including the sampling of
textures), as recited in claim 1.
Thus, we do not sustain the Examiner’s § 103 rejection of claim 1.
For the reasons stated above, we also do not sustain the rejections of
independent claim 23 and dependent claims 2—22 and 24—29, each of which
includes a similar deficiency that the Examiner has not cured with either
Peterson ’752, the remaining prior art, or an adequate rationale. See App.
Br. 11; Final Act. 7^44.
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DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting
claims 1—29 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
REVERSED
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