Ex Parte Vainio et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 27, 2013

11274612 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 27, 2013)

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

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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

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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).
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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.,
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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
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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

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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

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