Appeal No. 1997-0401
Application 08/305,262
examiner relies upon the secondary reference to Keith to teach
or suggest a dithering process used to prevent contouring in
an image. We agree with appellant that the primary issue
before us on appeal "is whether Keith discloses or suggests a
dithering method or apparatus which applies a different
dithering matrix (dithering values) to identically located
groups of pixel values over sequential frames of digital
video" (Brief, page 5). We are in agreement with appellant
(Brief, pages 5 to 7) that Keith fails to teach or suggest the
recited feature of representative claim 1
of applying different dithering values to pixels in sequential
frames such that the time-averaged value of the dither values
at a given pixel location is zero.
Appellant argues (Brief, page 5) that Keith fails to
teach or suggest applying different dithering matrices to a
sequence of digital video frames over time, as is done in
claim 1 on appeal. We agree, and we find that this zero time-
averaging dithering feature is neither taught nor would have
been suggested by Keith. Although we agree with the examiner
that Keith teaches adding random noise in the form of a dither
matrix to each of three-component data, we find that Keith
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