Appeal No. 1997-0012
Application No. 08/174,901
Appellants argue that the examiner has misread the Radl
reference. It is appellants’ position that:
[I]n Radl there is clearly no need to extract the exact
content of the text information. All that is required is
that the contrast intensity signals associated therewith
be canceled out so that the remaining edge signals can be
clearly determined. Accordingly, the Examiners’ position
that the text information must be extracted out is not
correct. Therefore, since the extracting of the exact
text information is not required there would simply be no
motivation for one possessing ordinary skill in the art
to combine the teachings of Radl and Pizano as the
Examiners have stated (Brief, pages 5-6).
We agree with appellants. The purpose of Radl’s invention
is to determine the locations of the address labels and
apertures for optical character reading (column 1, lines 10-
11), not “to extract the addresses in order to perform optical
character reading on them,” as asserted by the examiner
(Answer, page 10). Radl discloses the conventional procedure
of eight-connectedness criteria (column 8, lines 38-39), which
procedure has been determined by the examiner as an art-
recognized equivalent of those of Pizano and appellants’
claimed steps, and appellants have not disputed such a
determination. Radl, however, utilizes this procedure not to
read address characters or contents, but “[t]o better
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