Appeal 2007-1864
Application 10/100,717
Despite our general agreement with the Examiner regarding certain
limitations of claim 1 noted above, we nevertheless conclude that the
Examiner has failed to make a prima facie case of anticipation for all
limitations of independent claim 1. We therefore will not sustain the
Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 or dependent claims 2-12.
Claims 27-35
We will also not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent
claim 27. Claim 27 calls for, in pertinent part, selecting a time constant from
a group of time constants that have been trained using constructed speech.
The Examiner provides no separate discussion of this limitation, but rather
refers generally to the reasons provided in connection with the rejection of
claims 1-12 as justification for the rejections of claims 13-35 (Final
Rejection 4; Answer 8). We therefore presume that the Examiner’s position
with respect to claim 10 (calling for the articulatory dynamics value to
depend on a time constant) was intended to also apply to claim 27.
The Examiner’s argument in connection with claim 10 in the Answer
does not address how the time constant limitation is met by Hutchins
(Answer 7). Turning to the Final Rejection, the Examiner indicates that
Hutchins’ articulatory dynamics value depends on a time constant as
evidenced in column 9, lines 28-37 of the reference.
Hutchins bases the decision to select a particular segment, at least in
part, on whether the energy level rises for at least four sample periods
(Hutchins, col. 8, ll. 46-68). As shown in Table 1, the rise time is
determined in this selection decision (Hutchins, col. 9, ll. 1-26; Steps 113-
120).
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