Appeal No. 1998-0610
Application 08/584,726
apparent belief, allophones and phonemes are not the same, nor are they equivalents. As
is explained in Parsons on page 94, lines 6-8, a “phoneme” is a set of phonetically similar
sounds which are accepted by speakers of the language as the same sound, and
members of the set are called allophones. In that regard, note also that even Parsons
(page 281) describes the selection of proper allophones as a task to be performed during
the second stage process of converting phonemes to speech. Consequently, allophones
and phonemes are clearly not the same. A “phoneme” constitutes a genus. Allophones
are species within the genus. Transmission of genus information does not satisfy the
appellants’ claimed feature of broadcasting more detailed species information. The
examiner has not pointed to any prior art which reasonably would have suggested
broadcasting digitally coded speech allophone information. We agree with the appellants
that punctuation symbols and accent symbols within the transmitted written text of
Yamaguchi cannot be regarded as “allophones” as that term is known to those with
ordinary skill in the art. Note that those symbols are also themselves a part of the original
expression of Yamaguchi’s written text.
CONCLUSION
The rejection of claims 1-3 and 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Yamaguchi and Parsons is reversed.
The rejection of claim 4 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Yamaguchi, Parsons, and Freeman is reversed.
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