Appeal No. 2006-1618
Application No. 10/046,797
points detected by the first contour unit. Therefore, according to appellant,
operations of the second detection unit do not "take user input each time a
contour is detected" as the examiner alleges [brief, page 13]. The examiner
responds that if the invention of Suzuki were restarted, a second contour would
be selected with different user input [answer, page 9].
We will sustain the examiner's rejection of claims 25, 29, and 34. The
scope and breadth of the claim language does not preclude the collective
teachings of Kim and Suzuki. Certainly, when a user manually selects a different
contour (e.g., when Suzuki's invention is restarted), the user input would be
different for that contour. In that case, the user input would be different for
individual ones of the contours (i.e., multiple contour selections). The rejection is
proper and therefore sustained.
Regarding dependent claim 35, the examiner indicates that Suzuki
discloses extracting the graphical information defined by boundary information
from the image [non-final rejection, page 8]. Appellant argues that no motivation
exists to combine the references since Kim is concerned with data compression
including previously-defined contours and encoding entire frames. Kim,
however, is not concerned with extracting graphical information defined by
boundary information from the image as claimed [brief, page 15; reply brief, page
8]. The examiner responds that the combination is proper since Kim pertains to
fitting and encoding contours in addition to compressing data [answer, pages 11
and 12].
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