Appeal No. 1998-2989
Application No. 08/566,987
NEW GROUND OF REJECTION under 37 CFR § 1.196(b)
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bhargava.
Due the similarity in claims 15-20 to claims 1-14, we do not see the examiner’s rationale in
not applying the teachings of Bhargava and Lund to the remainder of claims 15-20. As an
example we will address claim 15 alone under 35 USC § 103(a) and leave it to the
examiner’s discretion to consider dependent claims 16-20.
As discussed above with respect to claims 1 and 13, the methodology of Bhargava
applied to binary image data would have suggested the invention as recited in steps (a) -
(f) to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention. Bhargava would have
suggested the identification of orthogonal shaped regions with common state with binary
image data. Bhargava discloses the determination and encoding of the dimensions or
size of the region. The encoded shape and size would then be stored as a
precompressed image and then the image would be compressed again when it is
Huffman encoded for transmission.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1-8, 12-14 and 21 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 is affirmed and the decision of the examiner to reject claims 9-11 and 15-
20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
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