Ex Parte Subbian et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 26, 2017

13777320 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 26, 2017)

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.
13/777,320 02/26/2013 Deepakumar Subbian H0037748/4874/116405 4379
92556 7590
HONEYWELL/HUSCH
Patent Services
115 Tabor Road
P.O.Box 377
MORRIS PLAINS, NJ 07950
EXAMINER
MCINNISH, KEVIN K
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2483
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/30/2017 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):
patentservices-us @ honey well, com
amy. hammer @ hu schblackwell .com
pto-chi@huschblackwell.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte DEEPAKUMAR SUBBIAN, DEEPAK SUNDAR
MEGANATHAN, and MAYUR SALGAR
Appeal 2016-005491
Application 13/777,320
Technology Center 2400
Before BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, AMBER L. HAGY, and
KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judges.
BAUMEISTER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejections of claims 1—10 and 12—20. Claim 11 is cancelled.1 App. Br. 2.2
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm.
1 Appellants state that the rejections of claims 1—20 are appealed. App.
Br. 2; see also id. at 7 (asserting the claims 1—7 and 9—16 are not
unpatentable over the cited prior art). However, Appellants further clarify
that claim 11 is, in fact, canceled. Claim App’x. 16.
2 Rather than repeat the Examiner’s positions and Appellants’ arguments in
their entirety, we refer to the following documents for their details: the Final
Office Action (mailed October 2, 2015) (“Final Act.”); the Appeal Brief
(filed November 5, 2015) (“App. Br.”); the Examiner’s Answer (mailed
March 16, 2015) (“Ans.”); and the Reply Brief (filed April 26, 2016)
(“Reply Br.”).
Appeal 2016-005491
Application 13/777,320
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants describe the present invention as follows:
A method and apparatus. The method includes the steps
of a security camera capturing a panoramic field of view of a
secured area, separating portions of the panoramic field of view
into a plurality of sub-views that each depict at least some time-
related portion of an event detected within the secured area and
simultaneously displaying the plurality of sub-views within
separate respective windows of a display.
Abstract.
Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the appealed
claims:
1. A method comprising:
a security camera capturing a panoramic field of view of a
secured area;
a user interface receiving a designation of a respective
pixel group for each of a plurality of different sub-views within
the panoramic field of view from an authorized person, each
respective pixel group being surrounded by a bounding box
drawn by the authorized person around the respective pixel
group, the drawn bounding box defining the respective pixel
group of the sub-view;
a location processor determining respective pan-tilt-zoom
(PTZ) coordinates of each of the plurality of sub-views based
upon the pixel groups defined by the bounding boxes;
a clip processor saving video information of the panoramic
field of view as a video clip, including a sequence of frames of
the panoramic field of view and a set of PTZ coordinates of each
of the plurality of sub-views; and
simultaneously displaying the plurality of sub-views
within separate respective windows of a display.
Claims 1—7, 9, 10, and 12—16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as obvious over Jones et al. (US 2011/0234807 Al; published Sept. 29,
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Appeal 2016-005491
Application 13/777,320
2011) (“Jones”) and McCormack (US 2011/0175999 Al; published July 11,
2011). App. Br. 2.
Claims 8 and 17—20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
obvious over Jones and McCormack and Ahiska et al.
(US 2007/0124783 Al; published May 31, 2007) (“Ahiska”). Id.
Appellants argue the rejection of claims 1—7, 9, 10, and 12—16 as a
group. App. Br. 7—12. In relation to claims 8 and 17—20, Appellants only
argue that Ahiska does not cure the deficiency of the rejection that is based
upon Jones and McCormack (App. Br. 9-10). Accordingly, we primarily
focus on the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1.
Turning to that rejection, the Examiner finds that Jones teaches almost
every limitation of claim 1 (Final Act. 5—6), including “saving the video data
to memory including the zoomed in portions” {id. at 6), but Jones does not
explicitly teach saving “a sequence of frames of the panoramic field of view
and saving a set of PTZ coordinates of each of the plurality of sub-views”
{id. at 6—7). The Examiner relies upon McCormack for teaching this
additional feature, and the Examiner finds that motivation existed to
combine this teaching of McCormack into Jones’s panoramic recording
system. Id.
Appellants present various arguments to this rejection. App. Br. 7—
12; Reply Br. 2—\. We address these arguments below seriatim. In so
doing, we review the appealed rejections for error based upon the issues
identified by Appellants, and in light of the arguments and evidence
produced thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010)
(precedential).
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Application 13/777,320
CONTENTIONS AND ANALYSIS
/.
Appellants contend that Jones fails to disclose saving video clips of
panoramic fields of view along with PTZ information. App. Br. 7.
Appellants argue that Jones, instead, “is merely directed to the real time
control of pan and tilt of the composite camera as a whole.” Id. In
Appellants’ view,
Jones et al. processes video in an entirely different way than that
of the claimed invention. For example, rather than saving a
single panoramic image with multiple PTZ coordinates (as under
the claimed invention), the Jones et al. “processor may composite
together the low resolution images to create a single digital image
frame that contains multiple views of the scene for display on a
monitor.”
Id. (citing Jones 1 6).
This argument is unpersuasive. Claim 1 recites, inter alia, “a security
camera capturing a panoramic field of view of a secured area,” and “a clip
processor saving video information of the panoramic field of view as a video
clip” (emphasis added). No language of claim 1 sets forth any details of
how the panoramic-field-of-view video information of the video clip is
saved. Claim 1 is written broadly enough to read on saving the video
information in the manner taught by the cited prior art. See Jones 140.
Restated, Appellants’ arguments are not commensurate in scope with the
claim language.
Appellants argue that “Jones . . . receives PTZ commands from a
user[,] but does not save PTZ coordinates in the video data stream.”
App. Br. 8. This argument is unpersuasive because the Examiner relied
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Application 13/777,320
upon McCormack for teaching this feature—not Jones. See Final Act. 4,
6-7.
Appellants argue that “McCormack merely saves a record of PTZ
coordinates along with each [of the] video images obtained under those PTZ
coordinates.” App. Br. 8. This argument is unpersuasive because the
argument appears to be directed to the teachings of McCormack alone—not
the combined teachings of Jones and McCormack, which is the basis of the
appealed obviousness rejection.
II.
Appellants argue that Jones’s steering window is not a bounding box
drawn by a user, as claimed. App. Br. 9. In Appellants’ view, Jones’s
steering window is merely a utility that is used to zoom in on features of an
image. Id. (citing Jones H 76—'77). Appellants further contend that Jones
“merely discloses the use of only a single steering window.” App. Br. 9.
These arguments are unpersuasive because Appellants do not address
the full scope of Jones that the Examiner cites in the rejection. In addition to
citing paragraphs 76 and 77 of Jones (Final Act. 5—6), the Examiner also
relies upon the passages associated with Figures 11, 12A, and 12B of Jones
(Final Act. 6 (citing Jones H 110-13)). These latter passages discuss a
touch screen television monitor that allows the user to drag and zoom on
desired areas to produce plural magnification windows 1356 overlaid on
panoramic view 1354. Jones 1113. We agree with the Examiner that such
disclosure teaches or suggests the claimed bounding box.
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Application 13/777,320
III.
Appellants argue that, even assuming for the sake of argument that the
cited references could be combined,
there is no teaching or suggestion whatsoever in . . . Jones et al.,
McCormack and Ahiska of “a user interface receiving a
designation of a respective pixel group for each of a plurality of
different sub-views within the panoramic field of view from an
authorized person, each respective pixel group being surrounded
by a bounding box drawn by the authorized person around the
respective pixel group, the drawn bounding box defining the
respective pixel group of the sub-view.”
App. Br. 12.
This argument is unpersuasive because it merely constitutes a
restatement of the claim language without sufficiently presenting any
substantive arguments. “A statement which merely points out what a claim
recites will not be considered an argument for separate patentability of the
claim.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
IV.
Appellants argue that there is no reason to combine any of Jones,
McCormack, and Ahiska because, in Appellants’ view, these three cited
references “are not directed to the problem solved by the claimed invention.”
App. Br. 12. According to Appellants, none of these references recognizes
solving the problem of “providing the ability of simultaneously displaying
subviews without substantially increasing the memory requirements of a
main view of video.” Id.
This argument is unpersuasive. The Examiner has set forth a rationale
for why it would have been obvious to combine the cited references.
Final Act. 7 (concluding that incorporating McCormack’s teaching into
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Application 13/777,320
Jones would have reduced a period of time used for review of surveillance
data). Appellants do not dispute these cited reasons. See generally App. Br.
The fact that Appellants may have recognized that their claimed
invention solves a different problem or provides some additional benefit
does not rebut the Examiner’s conclusion of obviousness. See e.g., In re
Kemps, 97 F.3d 1427, 1430 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (“Although the motivation to
combine here differs from that of the applicant, the motivation in the prior
art to combine the references does not have to be identical to that of the
applicant to establish obviousness.”); In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013, 1016
(CCPA 1972) (noting “[t]he fact that appellant uses [a chemical] for a
different purpose does not alter the conclusion that its use in a prior art
composition [would have been] prima facie obvious from the purpose
disclosed in the references”).
V.
Appellants argue in the Reply Brief that claim 1 recites “a video clip”
and that language means only one single video clip. Reply Br. 2.
Appellants further contend that “McCormack fails to teach saving its video
frames and its metadata and telemetry data in a single video clip.” Id.
We will not consider this argument because it was raised for the first
time in Appellants’ Reply Brief, and, therefore, the argument is not timely.
See 37 C.F.R. § 41.41(b)(2) (stating that “[a]ny argument raised in the reply
brief [that] was not raised in the appeal brief, or is not responsive to an
argument raised in the examiner’s answer, including any designated new
ground of rejection, will not be considered by the Board for purposes of the
present appeal”). “[I]t is inappropriate for appellants to discuss in their reply
brief matters not raised in . . . the principal brief[]. Reply briefs are to be
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Application 13/777,320
used to reply to matter[s] raised in the brief of the appellee.” Kaufman Co.,
Inc. v. Lantech, Inc., 807 F.2d 970, 973 n.* (Fed. Cir. 1986). “Considering
an argument advanced for the first time in a reply brief... is not only unfair
to an appellee,. . . but also entails the risk of an improvident or ill-advised
opinion on the legal issues tendered.” McBride v. Merrell Dow and
Pharms., Inc., 800 F.2d 1208, 1211 (D.C. Cir. 1986) (internal citations
omitted).
CONCLUSIONS
Appellants have not persuaded us of error in the Examiner’s
obviousness rejection of independent claim 1 over the combination of Jones
and McCormack. Accordingly, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
that claim, as well as the rejection of claims 2—7, 9-10, and 12—16, which
are not separately argued.
We, likewise, sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims
8 and 17—20. Appellants have not particularly pointed out errors in the
Examiner’s reasoning regarding the additional teachings of Ahiska, but
merely argue that Ahiska does not cure the alleged deficiencies of Jones and
McCormack. App. Br. 9—10.
DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—10 and 12—20 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)(1). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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