Appeal No. 1997-1586
Application No. 08/183,671
sound feature including articulation mode and its duration of each phoneme from a train of
phonemes. (See brief at page 11.) We agree with appellants. While we agree with the
examiner that Harrison teaches the basics of image simulation/synthesis of a mouth from a
spoken input, Harrison does not teach or suggest the invention pertaining to the
determination of the duration of the phoneme for a more realistic speech synthesis.
Harrison teaches that the user can adjust the settings of potentiometers, etc. (see Harrison
at col. 6) to adjust the desired animating effects. While it appears that the examiner
implies that the system of Harrison would be updated to use a computer in a digital
environment (see answer at pages 3-4), the examiner does not come to grips with the
language of claim 1 with respect to the determination of the duration of the phonemes for
more realistic speech correlation.
Appellants argue that Barnett is not relevant to the invention. (See brief at page 16.)
We disagree with appellants. We agree with the examiner that the skilled artisan would
have found it obvious that either sound or text may have been used equivalently as and
input to the system and that the teachings of Barnett or admitted prior art in Figure 6 of
appellants’ specification would have taught artisans how to carry out the basic conversion
for text into phonemes.
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