Appeal No. 96-3254
Application 07/991,019
hindsight gleaned from appellants’ disclosure, for combining these teachings in a manner to arrive at the
claimed invention. Thus, even if Foley suggested extracting surfaces at equal intervals along a viewing
ray, and even if Winget mentions “isosurfaces” in generating volumetric data, and even if Glassner
shows concentric spherical isosurfaces, the examiner has provided us with no convincing rationale as to
why the skilled artisan would have merged such teachings, without some suggestion for doing so, to
miraculously arrive at the claimed subject matter wherein a group of concentric spherical isosurfaces
containing sampling points positioned in equal intervals along a viewing ray are extracted.
Further, we do not find the examiner’s observations regarding the obviousness of cartesian
coordinate systems versus polar coordinate systems to be convincing of the obviousness of the claimed
subject matter.
While, in our view, neither the examiner nor appellants has explained the instant invention with
any degree of clarity, leaving some confusion in our minds as to the exact nature of the invention even
after reading the specification, the initial burden, at least, is on the examiner to present a prima facie
case of obviousness of the claimed subject matter, within the
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007