Appeal No. 2001-2620
Application No. 09/110,613
differences in each partition which, as discussed above with
respect to claim 1, are absent in Hirata. Accordingly, since the
Examiner has failed to meet the burden of providing a prima facie
case of anticipation, the 35 U.S.C. § 102 rejection of claims 1
and 7 as well as their dependent claim 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 11-14
over Hirata cannot be sustained.
Turning now to the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 4, 10
and 15-20, we note that the Examiner further relies on Hiroaki
for teaching the step of determining a set of color centers and
the use of a sorter (answer, pages 7 & 8). Hiroaki relates to a
method for image retrieval wherein color, shape and positional
relationship of regions in images are compared (abstract).
However, similar to Hirata, the color comparison in Hiroaki is
performed using the RGB encoding and values (page 6, lines 25-
33). Therefore, since the Examiner has not pointed to any
disclosure in Hiroaki that relates to the similarity measures
determined by the proportions of similar colors and the color
differences in each partition, as recited in claim 15, the
deficiencies of Hirata as discussed above with respect to claims
1,7 has not been overcome. Accordingly, we do not sustain the 35
U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 4, 10 and 15-20 over Hirata and
Hiroaki.
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