Appeal No. 2003-0261
Application No. 09/126,203
“destroy the operation of the disclosed embodiment.” The rationale provided by the
examiner is that such a modification would require attaching an infrared filter with
screws. Further, the examiner states, “there can be no suggestion of making the
attached NIR-blocking filter movable … in view of the ‘no-mechanical inertia’
embodiment of Fig. 6.”
The examiner’s rationale of attaching an infrared filters with screws is speculative
and is not supported by evidence on the record. Fontenot et al. disclose the Varispec
™ filter as used in conjunction with “the slide discussed above”, see Fontenot et al.
page 9 lines 12-21. This section refers to the slide of figure 3 embodiment, which
contains a color pass filter, which as discussed above is considered to also function as
an infrared blocking filter. We note, Fontenot’s discussion of the Varispec ™ filter only
mentions filtering red, green and blue, unlike the embodiment of figure 6 in which the
LCD filter uses an infrared pass, red, green and blue. As such, we do not see
Fontenot’s discussion of the Varispec ™filter as directed to the embodiment of figure 6
but rather as a modification the embodiment shown in figure 3. Accordingly, we find
that the Fontenot’s disclosure of the use of a Varispec ™ filter does not contradict the
teaching that the LCD filter in figure 6 “passes only the color for which it is designed”,
and thus we find that there is no teaching in Fontenot that the color pass filters pass
infrared light.
Appellants argue on pages 8 and 9 of the brief, that Yamakawa and Dillon do not
teach that the filters of Fontenot transmit both visible and infrared light.
-9–
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007