Appeal No. 1998-2989
Application No. 08/566,987
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.
With respect to claims 1-3, 5-7 and 12, appellant argues that Bhargava is directed to
techniques of compression used to refresh the image thereby minimizing the amount
refreshed. Appellant further argues that Bhargava is directed to multi-bit digital words
representing color and that the rectangular tiling is with respect to where change has
occurred. (See brief at page 15.) Appellant argues that the teachings of Bhargava have
been mischaracterized and that the patent does not teach the application of coding
techniques to binary image bitmaps and that Bhargava fails to teach partitioning based
upon the common state of the binary pixels. Id. We agree with appellant that Bhargava
does not explicitly teach these features as recited in claim 1, but note that the rejection is
based upon obviousness and not anticipation. The test is what the teachings of Bhargava
would have fairly suggested to one skilled in the art. Here, we agree with the examiner that
it would have been obvious to skilled artisans to extend the teachings of Bhargava to the
well known binary images. (See answer at page 5 and appellant’s specification disclosing
various publications concerning binary image coding and compression.) The examiner
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