Appeal No. 1998-0426
Application No. 08/307,028
The prior art references of record relied upon by the examiner in rejecting the
appealed claims are:
Sakas et al. “Sampling and Anti-Aliasing of Discrete 3-D Volume Density
Textures”, Computers & Graphics: Eurographics '91 Award Paper, pgs.
121-134, published by Pergamon Press (1992).
Gardner, “Visual Simulation of Clouds,” Computer Graphics, Vol. 19, No. 3,
pgs. 297-303, (July 1985).
Claims 1-5 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Gardner in view of Sakas.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and the
appellant regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the examiner's
answer (Paper No. 24, mailed Aug. 28, 1997) for the examiner's reasoning in support of
the rejections, and to the appellant's brief (Paper No. 23, filed June 16, 1997) for the
appellant's arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
Appellant argues that Gardner does not disclose the use of a sphere in the
simulation of the clouds. Rather Gardner uses ellipsoidal surfaces with texturing applied
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