Ex Parte Kasahara

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 17, 2016

13689228 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 17, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/689,228 11129/2012
20277 7590 11/21/2016
MCDERMOTT WILL & EMERY LLP
The McDermott Building
500 North Capitol Street, N.W.
WASHINGTON, DC 20001
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Yuki KASAHARA
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.
050083-0329 2035
EXAMINER
ZHANG, FAN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2674
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/21/2016 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):
ipdocketmwe@mwe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte YUKI KASAHARA
Appeal2016-002049 1
Application 13/689,228
Technology Center 2600
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, ERIC B. CHEN, and MICHAEL J. ENGLE,
Administrative Patent Judges.
HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
1 Appellant identifies the real party in interest as PFU LIMITED. App.
Br. 1.
Appeal2016-002049
Application 13/689,228
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
Final Rejection of claims 1 and 4-12, which constitute all of the claims
pending in this appeal. Claim 2 has been canceled. Claim 3 has been
objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would
otherwise be allowable if rewritten in independent form to include the
limitation of the base claim and any intervening claims. App. Br. 2. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We affirm.
Appellant's Invention
Appellant invented an overhead scanner device that captures two
images of a document, each image including a point indicated on the
document by the user such that the subsequent detection of the two points
provided in the document specifies the boundary of a region to be cropped.
Spec. 20:9--22:7, Figs. 1, 15.
Illustrative Claim
Independent claim 1 is illustrative and reads as follows:
Claim 1. An overhead scanner device comprising:
an imager placed above a document and configured to scan the
document from above for reading an image of the document; and
a controller including:
an image acquiring unit that controls the imager to acquire the image
of the document including at least an indicator provided by a user indicating
directly one point on the document;
a specific-point detecting unit that detects two specific points each
determined based on the distance from the gravity center of an indicator to
the end of the indicator, from the image acquired by the imager; and
2
Appeal2016-002049
Application 13/689,228
an image cropping unit that crops the image acquired by the imager
into a rectangle with opposing comers at the two points detected by the
specific-point detecting unit, wherein
the image acquiring unit controls the imager to acquire twice
the image of the document to obtain two images of the document,
each image including the indicator provided by the user, in response
to an acquisition trigger, and
the specific-point detecting unit detects the two points, one of
which is detected from one of the two images, another of which is
detected from another one of two images.
Prior Art Relied Upon
Robbins US 2006/0001650 Al Jan.5,2006
Tossing US 2010/0149211 Al June 17, 2010
Saito JP 7-162667 A June 23, 1995
Fukushima JP 2002-290702 A Oct. 4, 2002
Morichika JP 2004-363736 A July 5, 2006
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