Appeal No. 97-3749
Application 08/360,069
rejection separately because the examiner modified the rationale for combining these
teachings in the examiner’s answer and because appellant did not additionally respond to
this new ground of rejection.
Although this new rejection relies on only two of the three references considered
above, it actually appears as a stronger rejection because it does not appear to be based
on hindsight as much as the earlier rejection. Additionally, Yip appears to be a better
primary reference because Figure 10 at least shows a system for modifying image data
(LUT 28) before the data is employed by optical means for carrying out exposure of the
1
image data. However, Yip does not teach a recording medium indicating means nor an
optimized data storing means.
The examiner considers the lookup table 28 in Yip to be the optimized data storing
means, but as argued by appellant, this position cannot meet the claimed invention. Claim
1 recites that the image data is modified and stored as optimized data. Since the lookup
table in Yip is the only means available for implementing the claimed modification function,
it cannot also be the optimized data storing means because this storing means must store
the data after it is modified and not before the modification takes place. In other words,
the output of Yip’s lookup table 28 is the modified data in Yip, and there is no further
storage of optimized data suggested in Yip.
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007