Appeal No. 1998-2556
Application 08/571,044
the examiner indicates how he perceives the claimed invention
to be fully met by the disclosure of Grotz [answer, pages 4-
5]. Appellants respond that Grotz has no “means for
estimating noise” as recited in claim 1. Since there is no
means for estimating noise in Grotz, appellants also argue
that Grotz has no nonlinear processing means with a transfer
function which is responsive to the noise estimate [brief,
pages 5-7]. The examiner responds that the MCFE circuit of
Grotz inherently functions to estimate noise since Grotz
reduces small noise-like disturbances through errors in the
motion-compensated prediction and the DCT coding [answer,
pages 13-14].
After a careful consideration of the Grotz disclosure,
we agree with appellants that Grotz does not anticipate the
invention of claim 1. Although Grotz does disclose that his
system can reduce small noise-like disturbances, Grotz does
not achieve this function by controlling a nonlinear
processing means as a function of a determined noise estimate
signal. As pointed out by appellants, there is no disclosure
in Grotz of estimating noise and using that estimate as a
control parameter. Grotz estimates the picture information
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