Appeal No. 96-2281
Application No. 08/061,225
The examiner responds to appellants' argument (Answer,
paragraph bridging pages 3 and 4) by reasoning that
Asada has all the functional blocks such as shadow
setting circuit 4, basic masking circuit 5, a color
correction circuit 6, a gradation setting circuit 7
and an output correction circuit 8. With a central
processing unit 11, it is obvious that any one of
these functional blocks can be changed when the
original color image is not mapped correctly to the
output image. (underlining added for emphasis)
However, the standard for obviousness is not what can be done,
but rather what would have been obvious in view of the
teachings and suggestions from the prior art. Even if it
would have been obvious to change the masking coefficients
based on the mere existence of a masking circuit, Asada still
does not disclose a correspondence between the masking
coefficients and the gradation curve, and the examiner has
provided no evidence that there is such a correspondence. The
examiner has made unsupported and contradictory assertions,
has ignored claim limitations for some claims, and has failed
to give any motivation for modifying the device of Asada (the
primary reference relied upon) to change or set the masking
coefficients according to the gradation curve. Clearly the
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