Gary J. Pitcher

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 27, 2019

15285290 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 27, 2019)

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.
15/285,290 10/04/2016 Gary J. PITCHER 44000560.1016CON 5898
23280 7590 09/27/2019
Davidson, Davidson & Kappel, LLC
589 8th Avenue
16th Floor
New York, NY 10018
EXAMINER
TRUONG, NGUYEN T
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2486
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/27/2019 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):
ddk@ddkpatent.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte GARY J. PITCHER
____________

Appeal 2018-008274
Application 15/285,2901
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, and
ALEX S. YAP, Administrative Patent Judges.

YAP, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of
claims 13–23, which are all the claims pending in this application. (See
Final Office Action (mailed August 24, 2017) (“Final Act.”) 1.) We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b)
We reverse.

1 According to Appellant, the real party in interest is Framatome Inc. (App.
Br. 2.)
Appeal 2018-008274
Application 15/285,290

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
According to the Specification, Appellant’s invention “relates
generally to nuclear power plants, and more particularly to the visual
inspections of nuclear power plants.” (October 4, 2016 Specification
(“Spec.”) 1.) Claim 13 is illustrative, and is reproduced below (with minor
reformatting):
13. A method for filtering radiation on a CCD based camera
inspection video, the method comprising:
providing the CCD based camera in a nuclear power
plant;
capturing video signals in the nuclear power plant
via the camera;
converting the video signals to a plurality of digital
video frames;
checking pixels in each of the digital video frames
and comparing an intensity level for each pixel to
pixel intensity levels of a plurality of surrounding
pixels;
identifying each pixel as being a radiation bright
spot caused by interference from radiation in the
nuclear power plant if the pixel is brighter than the
surrounding pixels;
creating a filtered video without effects of the
radiation by replacing the radiation bright spots and
surrounding pixels with intensity values of
corresponding pixels of another of the frames to
create a filtered frame; and
displaying the filtered video via a computer.

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Application 15/285,290

3
Prior Art and Rejections on Appeal
The following table lists the prior art relied upon by the Examiner in
rejecting the claims on appeal:
Van Tyne, Sr.
(“Van”) US 5,153,924 Oct. 6, 1992
Chugg US 7,145,150 B2 Dec. 5, 2006
Kravis et al.
(“Kravis”) US 7,965,816 B2 June 21, 2011
Cho, J. W., Lee, J. K., Hur, S., Koo, I. S., Hong S. B., A CCD Camera Lens
Degradation Caused by High Dose-Rate Gamma Irradiation. Trans. KIEE
(2009), 58(7), 1450–1455. (“Cho.”).
Claims 13–19, 21, and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Chugg in view of Kravis. (See Final Act. 4–10.)
Claim 20 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Chugg in view of Kravis and Van. (See Final Act. 10–11.)
Claim 23 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Cho in view of Chugg. (See Final Act. 11–13.)

ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellant’s
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We are persuaded the Examiner
erred in rejecting the claims on appeal.2

2 Because we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejections for the reasons
discussed herein, we need not address Appellant’s further arguments. See
Beloit Corp. v. Valmet Oy, 742 F.2d 1421, 1423 (Fed. Cir. 1984) (finding an
administrative agency is at liberty to reach a decision based on “a single
dispositive issue”).
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“checking pixels in each of the digital video frames and comparing an
intensity level for each pixel to pixel intensity levels of a plurality of
surrounding pixels”
Independent claims 13, 21, and 23 recite the above limitation. With
regard to claim 13, the Examiner finds Chugg teaches “checking pixels in
each of the digital video frames; determining if the pixel is brighter than the
surrounding pixels; comparing an intensity level for each pixel to pixel
intensity levels of a plurality of surrounding pixels (col. 4, lines 65–67; col.
6, lines 3–22).” (Final Act. 5; see also id. at 9–10 (regarding claim 21), 12
(regarding claim 23).) Appellant disagrees and contends that the cited
portions of Chugg “merely states that the signal level each of the pixels in a
10x10 area is compared to a pre-defined threshold, not the signal levels of
the surrounding pixels.” (App. Br. 8.) We agree.
Column 4 lines 65 to 67 of Chugg states that “[t]he radiation signal
intensities among the CCD pixels will have the statistics of a compound
Poisson distribution for both the proton/ion flux and the electron flux.”
Column 6, lines 3 to 22 states the following:
There is also a requirement for radiation images for both
the proton and the electron radiation fields to be generated. Since
each image requires about 100 bytes, the data is reduced to
around 2 kbytes per second for a 0.1 second or 10 Hz frame rate.
Furthermore, occasional ion strikes should be discernible in the
proton field image as RIE’s with exceptional proton counts since
it is known that ions produce large comet-like clusters of
saturated pixels.
A relatively simple algorithm was utilised for the analysis
of test pixel data to generate the proton and electron RIE’s shown
at FIGS. 5 and 6. The assumption was made that very few pixels
see proton hits that would be seen within any single integration
time. Firstly the number of pixels in each RIE which record a
signal level above a pre-defined Proton Counting Threshold
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(PCT) were counted. This count in itself provides a good
measure of the proton radiation intensity and was used directly
to generate the proton RIE shown at FIG. 5. The average excess
signal (i.e. above the mean noise) in the remaining pixels was
then used to define the electron RIE shown at FIG. 6.
(Emphasis added.) These portions of Chugg at most identify pixels above “a
pre-defined Proton Counting Threshold” and do not mention comparing the
intensity of a pixel to its surrounding pixels.
We are similarly not persuaded by the Examiner’s reliance on Kravis:
It is noted that Kravis discloses [“]checking pixels in each of the
digital frames and comparing an intensity level for each pixel to
pixel intensity levels of a plurality of surrounding pixels and
identifying each pixel as being a radiation bright spot caused by
interference from radiation if pixel is brighter than the
surrounding pixels” (col. 21, line 40 to col. 22, line 24), where
white dots corresponds to radiation bright spots and the dark
background corresponds to the plurality of surrounding pixels.
By comparing the intensity of each pixel to its surrounding pixels
(i.e. the bright spots are brighter than the dark background), the
bright spots (i.e. pixels caused by radiation) can be identified
against the dark background (i.e. pixels not caused by radiation)).
(Ans. 12–13.) The relevant portion of Kravis column 21, line 40 to
column 22, line 24 is reproduced below:
Cosmic ray interactions can deposit very large amounts of
energy in the scintillator, thereby creating very large signals that
can saturate or overload the PMT and/or the detector electronics.
Cosmic ray events in the scatter image may appear as white dots
in the dark background (low scatter region) and as white dots in
parts of the transmission image that have attenuating objects,
making a dark background for the white cosmic ray pixel. . . . In
some implementations cosmic ray events are detected by
monitoring the signal from the detector system or the PMT
output. Any pixel in which the signal exceeds a preselected
threshold is marked for modification. It is preferable that several
adjacent pixels, usually 3 to 4, also be marked to account for the
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likelihood that the recovery time of the PMT detector system after
a given cosmic ray event affects more than just a single pixel.
(Emphasis added.) We agree with Appellant that the cited portion of
Kravis “merely states that to determine whether pixels are skewed, the
signal of each of the pixels is compared to a preselected threshold, and
that surrounding pixels, without considering their intensity levels, are
automatically marked for modification.” (App. Br. 9.) The Examiner
does not respond to Appellant’s contention. (See generally Ans. 12–
13.)
For the foregoing reasons, we are persuaded of Examiner error in the
rejection of claim 13 and do not sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of
claim 13. The Examiner relies on the same arguments for the rejection of
claims 14–23; therefore, we also do not sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103
rejections of claims 14–23.

DECISION
We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 13–23.

REVERSED