Appeal No. 2000-1499
Application No. 08/825,474
OPINION
We REVERSE.
The examiner has not presented a prima facie case of
obviousness, in our view, because a portion of the examiner’s
case is based on speculation as to what is disclosed or suggested
by Yamaoka.
Each of the independent claims 1, 7 and 12 requires, in some
way, a perceptual metric generator, using a just noticeable
difference map representing the fidelity of the image wherein the
perceptual metric represents a “prediction as to how a human eye
would perceive a reconstructed image of said encoded image.”
Yamaoka causes a change in a compression factor in
accordance with a “block noise.” While Yamaoka does not appear
to disclose the claimed “perceptual metric,” the examiner
contends that Yanaoka does, indeed, suggest this claim limitation
through the recitation of “block noise” because “at least noise
is unquestionably perceptual, and is the metric by which Yamaoka
uses for compression” [answer-page 8]. The examiner further
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