Appeal No. 1998-2557
Application No. 08/335,550
the final rejection does not even address the specific
limitations of steps (c) and (d) of claim 40. Appellant also
argues that there is no suggestion for applying the
coefficient weighting of Sugiyama to the Gerard system for1
encoding data blocks as a skipped region [brief, pages 9-10].
The examiner responds that Gerard’s fixed mode reads on
appellant’s skipped coding mode, and that the quantization in
Gerard is weighted. The examiner also notes that Sugiyama
teaches an additional reason for using weighted sums in
Gerard [answer, pages 8-9].2
We agree with appellant that Gerard provides no teaching
in support of the obviousness of the step of generating a
composition-change measure as a weighted sum of the quantized
transform signal differences as recited in claim 40. Gerard
indicates how fixed (skipped) regions are handled at column
10, lines 31-57. The formula in Gerard indicates that the
1We note that Sugiyama was not applied against claim 40
although claim 40 has limitations similar to claims 23 and 24
for which the examiner did use the teachings of Sugiyama.
2Since Sugiyama was not applied against claim 40, we
will not consider this particular argument. Note In re Hoch,
428 F.2d 1341, 1342 n.3, 166 USPQ 406, 407 n.3 (CCPA 1970).
9
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