Ex Parte Vainio et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardNov 27, 201311274612 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 27, 2013) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte JANNE VAINIO, HANNU J. MIKKOLA, and JARI M. MAKINEN ____________ Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, and CATHERINE SHIANG, Administrative Patent Judges. MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1-9, 11-16, 18-23, and 25. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. THE INVENTION Appellants’ claimed invention is directed to locating a preferable playback start location after a winding or rewinding action in an audio playing device. Abstract. Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A method, comprising: in response to a winding or a rewinding of an audio content in an audio playing device resulting in a change in the playing location of the audio content to a desired playing position outside of a non-speech segment of at least a predetermined duration, determining whether at least one non- speech period of at least the predetermined duration exists within a time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position; and in response to determination of existence of at least one non-speech period of at least the predetermined duration within the time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position, automatically adjusting the desired playing position to fall within one non-speech period. Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 3 REFERENCES and REJECTIONS 1. The Examiner rejected claims 1-4, 7-9, 11-16, 18-23, and 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Wightman (US 6,161,087, Dec. 12, 2000) in view of Schylander (US 5,530,686, Jun. 25, 1996).1 2. The Examiner rejected claims 5 and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Wightman in view of Schylander and further in view of Maybury (US 6,961,954 B1, Nov. 1, 2005). THE ISSUE The issue is whether the Examiner erred in finding that Wightman in view of Schylander teaches the limitations of “determining whether at least one non-speech period of at least the predetermined duration exists within a time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position” and “in response to determination of existence of at least one non-speech period of at least the predetermined duration within the time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position, automatically adjusting the desired playing position to fall within one non-speech period,” as recited in claim 1. ANALYSIS Claims 1-4, 7-9, 11-16, 18-23, and 25 Appellants assert that Wightman describes an operator who may fast forward or rewind the audio to hear different sections of the content (App. Br. 7 (citing col. 9, ll. 9-12)). Appellants further assert that Wightman also 1 We note that the Examiner did not include the reference of Schylander in the statement of the rejection (Ans. 4). However, we treat this as an inadvertent error because the reference is addressed in the body of the rejection (Ans. 6-8). Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 4 describes certain pause intervals in an audio content may be identified (App. Br. 7-8 (citing col. 2, ll. 18-25 and Figure 4)). Appellants argue that there is no teaching or suggestion in Wightman that, when a desired playback position is selected, the position is automatically adjusted to fall within a non-speech period as required by claim 1 (App. Br. 8). Appellants further argue that Wightman teaches away from this concept since Wightman’s disclosure advocates skipping the silent segments as the default option (App. Br. 8 (citing Abstract and col. 2, ll. 18-23)). We do not agree with Appellants’ argument. We agree with the Examiner’s finding (Ans. 26) that Wightman discloses a method of playing back speech audio in an audio recording environment that involves performing speech recognition on the audio to determine the locations of filled pauses (i.e., no meaningful/useful speech for transcription) and silent pauses (i.e., non-speech segments) as well as portions of the audio that contains speech (Abstract; col. 1, ll. 33-45). We further agree with the Examiner that Wightman discloses performing suppression of filled and silent pauses during playback of the audio, with the term suppressing used to indicate skipping/fast forwarding or adjusting the playback of the audio to fall in another location during playback (Ans. 26 (citing col. 3, ll. 59-66)). A transcriptionist using the system can rewind the audio during playback to disable the suppression and listen to the pauses if he/she wishes by observing a user interface which provides visual signals to the location of the audio segments (col. 4, ll. 10-22). The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Wightman teaches enabling a transcriptionist to use the system to fast forward or rewind the audio to hear different areas of the audio during playback, perform suppression (i.e., Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 5 skipping or jumping or fast forwarding), perform disabling of the suppression (i.e., playing an normal mode including playing the pauses), and beginning or stopping of the audio playback (Ans. 27; col. 9, ll. 6-18). The Examiner further finds that the different areas of the audio in which the transcriptionist can hear include audio uttered by a user “lab test um” (col. 6, ll. 48-57), which is displayed as a speech waveform in Figure 4A of Wightman, and contains speech segment area “LAB,” Silent Pause segment area “SP,” speech segment area “TEST,” and Filled Pause segment area “FP” shown in Figure 4C (Ans. 27). The LAB and TEST segments correspond to speech segments, while the SP and FP segments correspond to either non-speech segments or non-meaningful speech segments, respectively (Ans. 27). The transcriptionist has the capability of hearing any of these segments as disclosed by Wightman (col. 9, ll. 6-18). Therefore, the transcriptionist can rewind or wind the playing position of the audio to listen to LAB (i.e., desired speech position outside of a non- speech segment), determine the existence of a non-speech period/segment (i.e., SP) which is in the vicinity of the speech segment LAB by providing the user with a visual or audio signal to alert speech suppression, allowing the transcriptionist to listen to the suppressed portion and determine if it contains useful speech (Ans. 27 and col. 4, ll. 10-22). Accordingly, we agree with the Examiner that Wightman teaches the limitations of “‘in response to a winding or a rewinding of an audio content in an audio playing . . . determining whether at least one non-speech period of at least the predetermined duration exists within a time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position’” (Ans. 27-28). We note that, contrary to Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 6 Appellants’ argument (App. Br. 8), Wightman dos not teach away from listening to the suppressed portion of the audio. The Examiner relied on Schylander for teaching the limitation of “in response to determination of existence of at least one non-speech period of at least the predetermined duration within the time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position, automatically adjusting the desired playing position to fall within one non-speech period,” as recited in claim 1 (Ans. 28-29). Schylander teaches that during playback, the system automatically identifies audio parts/segments and digital silence parts/segments, and further, automatically adjusts the audio track to jump/skip to land within a digital silence (DS) segment located directly before the start of a desired audio segment (Ans. 29 (citing col. 5, ll. 25-33)). Thus, we agree with the Examiner that Schylander was relied upon for the well-known teaching of automatically adjusting the desired playing position to fall within one non-speech period in response to a determination of the existence of the one non-speech period in the vicinity of the playing position (Ans. 4). Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claim 1 and, for the same reasons, the rejections of claims 2-4, 7-9, 11-16, 18-23, and 25, which were not separately argued. Claims 5 and 6 We also affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 5 and 6, which were not separately argued. Appeal 2011-010226 Application 11/274,612 7 CONCLUSION The Examiner did not err in finding that Wightman in view of Schylander teaches the limitations of “determining whether at least one non- speech period of at least the predetermined duration exists within a time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position” and “in response to determination of existence of at least one non-speech period of at least the predetermined duration within the time interval in the vicinity of the desired playing position, automatically adjusting the desired playing position to fall within one non-speech period,” as recited in claim 1. DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-9, 11-16, 18-23, and 25 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)(iv). AFFIRMED msc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation