Appeal No. 2000-1498
Application No. 08/721,623
the output of the activity detector 6 (column 8, lines 57 through
64). The output M from the LPF 22 is a mean value of an activity
value of an object block and those of blocks in the vicinity
therewith, and the output from the HPF 23 indicates the degree of
the change in the activity relative to adjacent blocks. Based
upon these teachings, and the fact that appellants’ disclosed
invention uses either a two-dimensional multi-tap spatial filter
or a median filter (specification, page 7, lines 27 through 29),
we agree with the examiner that the filter in this embodiment
filters “said detected image activity values to reduce the
variation in image activity values between groups of adjacent
regions of said image.” Although this filtered activity value is
thereafter converted to class value C, this converted value is
still a representation of the “image activity value for each
region,” and this value is used by adaptive quantizer 3 and
variable-length encoder 4 to compress the regions of the image by
a degree of data compression that is dependent on the image
activity value for each region.
In summary, the 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) rejection of independent
claims 1, 13 and 17 is sustained. The 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
rejection of dependent claims 3, 5, 6 and 9 is likewise sustained
because appellants have chosen to let these claims stand or fall
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007