Appeal No. 96-0113
Application 07/848,779
generated by computer simultaneously." The examiner further
stated (final rejection at 3); "It would have been obvious to
generate the patterns simultaneously by a computer as recited in
the claims." Evidently, the rationale is the following, as is
stated at pages 6-7 of the answer:
Sullivan et al '517 disclose at column 6 lines 23-28
that "A computer program written in FORTRAN for
implementing the minimization process is included in
Appendix A. This program was executed on a CRAYX-MP/48
supercomputer to produce a set of 256 correlated
minimum visual noise binary bit patterns, corresponding
to 256 density levels." Since Sullivan et al show in
figures 3 and 6 the pattern generation, and the use of
"correlated" or "simultaneously" generation function
provides the same result; it would have been obvious to
use the supercomputer to perform the simultaneously
generation function by minimizing an ensemble cost
function as recited in the claims.
Directly addressing the foregoing points made by the
examiner is the inventor's affidavit under 37 CFR § 1.132. The
inventor Lawrence A. Ray is also a named co-inventor in Sullivan
'517. The affidavit discusses facts which tend to undermine the
examiner's conclusion that it would have been obvious to one with
ordinary skill in the art from Sullivan '517 to generate the
correlated patterns simultaneously. The affidavit further
discusses matters which tend to contradict the conclusory
statement in the protest that the sequential nature of bit
pattern generation in Parker is merely routine optimization for
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