Appeal No. 1997-4121
Application No. 08/427,272
connected. Rather, it is a matter of whether continuous matching using a plurality of candidate feature
vectors is made or not.” Mr. Shinoda also explains the “optional dwell time” of Bahler which is only
related to how long each pattern in Bahler is permitted to be. “This has nothing to do with whether the
recognition is ‘word spotting’ or not because the difference between ‘word spotting’ and ‘non-word
spotting’ is not a matter of how long each pattern is permitted to be, rather it is a matter of whether or not
continuous matching using a plurality of candidate feature vectors is made.”
The examiner’s response is merely to contend that Mr. Shinoda’s declaration “clearly contradicts
the plain teachings of patent 4,783,802...” (Answer-page 9). When we weigh the evidence provided by
the references and by Mr. Shinoda’s declaration against the examiner’s opinion that the cited references
clearly teach a word spotting scheme, we find for appellants.
Even if, arguendo, Bahler is somehow construed to disclose a word spotting scheme, it is not at all
apparent to us, how or why the artisan would have combined such a teaching with Takebayashi to arrive at
the instant claimed subject matter.
Moreover, even if a word spotting scheme was incorporated into Takebayashi, it is still not clear
how the limitation requiring the learning means to have a means for extracting feature vectors for learning
from the recognition results...” is met. Clearly, this limitation refers to the connection, in Figure 2, of the
similarity decision unit, 8, to word feature vector extraction unit, 14. Yet, Takebayashi, in Figure 1, shows
no such connection from the pattern matching section 18 to the learning section 22. Accordingly, we find
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