Laurent Desforges et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 6, 2019

12748278 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 6, 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.
12/748,278 03/26/2010 Laurent Desforges HEXTC.058A 4835
64970 7590 09/06/2019
KNOBBE, MARTENS, OLSON & BEAR, LLP
LECIA GEMOSYSTEM
2040 MAIN STREET
FOURTHEENTH FLOOR
IRVINE, CA 92614
EXAMINER
DESTA, ELIAS
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2857
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/06/2019 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):
efiling@knobbe.com
jayna.cartee@knobbe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte LAURENT DESFORGES, HEINZ LIPPUNER,
KNUT SIERCKS, THIBAULT DUPORTAL,
DENNY ROUX, and JEAN-LUC FAMECHON
____________

Appeal 2017-009067
Application 12/748,278
Technology Center 2800
____________

Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, CARL L. SILVERMAN, and
LILAN REN, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL1

Appellants2 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 5–14 and 21–28, which are all the claims pending
in this Application.3 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

1 An oral hearing was held for this Appeal on August 15, 2019.
2 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Hexagon Metrology
AB. App. Br. 3.
3 Claims 1–4 and 15–20 have been canceled previously.
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants’ Specification describes “articulated arms” and
“coordinate measurement machines.” See Spec. ¶ 2.
Exemplary claims 5 and 24 under appeal read as follows:
5. An articulated arm coordinate measuring machine
comprising:
an articulated arm comprising a plurality of articulated
arm members, a coordinate acquisition member at a distal end,
and a base at a proximal end;
wherein at least one of the articulation members
comprises an absolute encoder comprising at least one readhead
and at least one encoder disk, the readhead configured to read a
face of the encoder disk, the readhead producing an image
having a unique pattern.
24. An articulated arm coordinate measuring machine
comprising:
an articulated arm comprising a plurality of articulated
arm members, a coordinate acquisition member at a distal end,
and a base at a proximal end;
wherein at least one of the articulation members
comprises an absolute encoder comprising at least one readhead
and at least one encoder disk, the readhead configured to read a
face of the encoder disk, the encoder disk including only a
single track such that position is measured by only reading from
the single track.
Claims 5, 9–14, 21–26, and 28 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Raab (US 2004/0103547 A1; pub. June 3,
2004) and Bacchi (US 5,852,413; iss. Dec. 22, 1998). See Final Act. 2–7.
Claims 6–8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Raab, Bacchi, and van Zon (US 5,426,667; iss. June 20, 1995). See
Final Act. 7–8.
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Claim 27 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Raab, Bacchi, and McFarland (US 2009/0025463 A1; pub. Jan. 29,
2009). See Final Act. 8–9.

ANALYSIS
Claim 5
In rejecting claim 5, the Examiner relies on Raab as disclosing the
recited articulated arm coordinate measuring machine including a plurality
of articulated arm members and a coordinate acquisition member which
comprises a readhead and at least one encoder disk, but not an absolute
encoder including a “readhead configured to read a face of the encoder disk
with an absolute encoder disk.” Final Act. 3 (citing Raab, Abstract, Figs. 1–
7, 9, 9A–9E, 10). The Examiner finds Bacchi discloses an absolute type
positional detection encoder which performs “positional detection by
reading a code formed on the face of the rotary disc.” Final Act. 3 (citing
Bacchi, col. 2, ll. 65–67, col. 3, ll. 11–25). The Examiner concludes it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
teachings of Raab and Bacchi because it
provides a better and precise way to find the position of the
CMM after the off-power state or sleep mode in order to
identify the actual position without having to deal with
additional computation, furthermore, the surface of the disk
encoding method would provide an easier and faster seek time
in order to obtain the necessary data.
Final Act. 3–4.
Appellants contend Bacchi does not disclose or suggest “an absolute
encoder” because Bacchi “requires rotation to determine position,” or
“requires movement of the rotary disk to measure position” and “Bacchi
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does not teach a true absolute encoder, only a virtual one.” App. Br. 5.
Appellants also argue Bacchi fails to disclose a “unique pattern” and one of
ordinary skill in the art would not understand the need for motion to
determine the absolute position in Bacchi “to mean that multiple images are
needed to read a complete unique pattern from Bacchi’s bar code, and thus
also to identify an absolute position.” App. Br. 5–6.
In response, the Examiner explains that, as recognized by Appellants,
Bacchi explicitly states that an “‘object of this invention is to provide a
simple and compact absolute position encoder’ (col. 2, lines 65–66),” which
“would suggest that Bacchi considers its own device to be a kind of absolute
encoder, and therefore within the scope of the recited term ‘absolute
encoder’.” Ans. 2. The Examiner further finds Appellants’ Specification
describes absolute and incremental encoders in general terms as
“determin[ing] a unique position on the encoder by only reading a limited
portion of the encoder’s coded surface” and as requiring “a return to a
uniquely identified home position to re-index and determine the incremental
positions away from the home position,” respectively. Ans. 3–4 (citing
Spec. ¶¶ 63, 65). The Examiner explains, to the extent Appellants’
Specification provides no detail regarding the “absolute encoder” to
distinguish it over a “virtual absolute encoder,” the sensor in Bacchi meets
the recited “absolute encoder” because the disclosed encoder needs “to
rotate a short distance, namely 0.66°, so that the sensor can read off the
unique position information.” See Ans. 7.
Appellants have not persuaded us that the Examiner erred in reading
the claimed “absolute encoder” on Bacchi’s encoder. Bacchi is directed to
“a simple and compact position encoder that has a high encoder resolution
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requiring very little wasted motion to determine an absolute angular or linear
position.” Bacchi, col. 2, ll. 54–57; see also col. 2, ll. 65–67. Contrary to
Appellants’ discussion that “Bacchi, . . ., requires rotation to determine
position” (App. Br. 5), the 0.66 degree rotation is the level of accuracy or
granularity of the detection which Bacchi uses “to sense and confirm the
absolute angular position of the rotary stage.” See Bacchi, col. 3, ll. 19–25.
That is, using the term “angular increments” in the context of the position
encoder of Bacchi relates to the resolution by which a precise position is
determined. Additionally, we disagree with Appellants that Bacchi’s bar
code scale 110, as shown in Figure 4, is not an image having a unique
pattern because the disclosed encoding format of Bacchi provides the
absolute angular position by reading all three sectors having unique and
specific positional information coded therein. See Bacchi, col. 7, l. 65–col.
8, l. 2, col. 8, ll. 19–24. Therefore, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of claim 5.
Claim 24
In rejecting claim 24, the Examiner finds Raab discloses the recited
articulated arm coordinate measuring, but not “an absolute encoder with a
single track, with the readhead configured to read a face of the encoder
disk.” Final Act. 6. The Examiner further finds Bacchi discloses the
missing limitations as the absolute encoder which reads the code from a disc
having a single track. Final Act. 6 (citing Bacchi, Fig. 3, col. 2, ll. 65–67,
col. 3, ll. 10–25).
Appellants contend the cited portion of Bacchi in column 3, lines 1–
25 does not recite the term “single-track” and instead discloses two tracks
described as “‘encoder disk 106 includes an incremental encoder scale 108
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and a bar code scale 110 that are formed as radially adjacent annular
tracks.’ (Col. 6, Lines 9-11, emphasis added).” App. Br. 6. According to
Appellants, elements 108 and 110 in Figure 4 refer to different tracks
“because Bacchi describes two different scales and the scales are formed as
radially adjacent tracks (plural).” App. Br. 6.
As discussed above, Appellants’ arguments have not persuaded us that
the Examiner erred with respect to the “absolute encoder” limitation.
Regarding the recited term “a single track,” we agree with the Examiner that
Bacchi discloses
[t]he angular increments are determined to a 2,400 arc-second
absolute resolution by a compact, single-track, continuously
coded bar code scale and to a 0.125 arc-second relative
resolution by interpolating interference patterns generated by a
diffraction grating-based incremental encoder scale. The
absolute and relative scales are each sensed by fixed-beam
optical sensors.
See Bacchi, col. 3, ll. 13–19. Therefore, although the encoded information
has two parts, Bacchi’s disclosure implies reading them in one pass.
Additionally, Bacchi discloses “the absolute sector-identifying bar
code scale may be used without an incremental encoder scale in some
applications, and the incremental encoder employed is not limited to the
diffraction grating-based interpolation technique.” See Bacchi, col. 9, l. 67–
col. 10, l. 4. That is, the two patterns are read together which meets the
broadest reasonable interpretation of the term “single track” consistent with
the broad disclosure in Appellants’ Specification. See Spec. ¶ 63 (“Each
encoder can consist of a single serialized disk that is read by one or more
read-heads that can be, e.g., CCD imagers.”). Therefore, we sustain the
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claim 24.
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CONCLUSION
For at least the reasons discussed above, we sustain the Examiner’s
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of independent claims 5 and 24, as well as
dependent claims 6–14, 21–23, and 25–28, which are not argued separately
with sufficient particularity. App. Br. 6–7.

DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 5–14 and 21–28 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