Appeal No. 1996-3638
Application 08/169,681
Turning first to the rejection of claims 1 through 3, 6 and 7 as being unpatentable under 35
U.S.C. § 103 based on Melnychuck in view of Adelson, Appellants argue on pages 10 through 12 of
the appeal brief that neither Melnychuck nor Adelson teaches or suggests multiple perspective views or
generating a depth image as required by the claims. In particular, Appellants disagree with the
Examiner's interpretation that the difference in focus required in Adelson was equivalent to viewing the
image from different distances, so that the change in focus is in fact a change in perspective. Appellants
point out that the term "perspective" as defined by the common usage requires a technique or process
of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the
eye. Appellants argue that to have different perspectives which will show different spatial relations of
objects, one must change their viewing angle with respect to the object. Appellants argue that a change
of focus is not a change in perspective because a change of focus does not require different spatial
relations of objects. Appellants further argue that Adelson's teaching of a change of focus would not
result in multiple perspective views nor in generating a depth image.
We note that Appellants' claim 1 recites a decomposition means for decomposing a set of
original images of a scene comprising a depth image, each original image being captured from a different
perspective. Appellants' claim 1 further recites a depth image production means for combining the
reconstructed original images into a depth image and display means for displaying the depth image.
Similarly, we note that Appellants' claim 6 recites a depth image capture system for capturing multiple
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