Appeal No. 1998-0643
Application 08/196,028
OPINION
Grouping of claims
Appellants state that for each ground of rejection, the
claims stand or fall together (Br15). This is logical for the
group consisting of claims 1 and 12, because claim 12 depends
on claim 1. This grouping does not make sense for the group
consisting of claims 2-5, 8-11, 19, 21, 22, and 26-30 because
there are two different inventions claimed. Claim 19 contains
the same limitations as claim 1 plus another limitation about
skew and is directed to the idea of identifying boundaries
between word objects and isolating word objects. Claims 26-28
are directed to methods for determining the text baseline,
topline, and separation between topline and baseline pairs
after determining skew. Thus, claims 26-28 are considered
separately from claims 2-5, 8-11, 19, 21, 22, 29, and 30.
Claims 1 and 12
The Examiner finds that Bloomberg teaches the limitations
of claim 1 except for the step of identifying the boundaries
about each group of connected symbols and, in particular, that
figure 14B discloses producing a second image in which a word
object is represented as a set of connected symbols (Paper
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