Appeal No. 2000-1540
Application No. 09099,617
macroblocks within the frame. Thus, argue appellants,
Nickerson’s block bit rate allocation is “completely different
from Appellants’ invention because Nickerson’s invention is
addressing the criticality of uniform bit rate” [brief-page 8],
teaching away from the instant claimed invention which allocates
the available frame bits in accordance with the content of each
block as reflected in a measurement of the mean absolute
difference of each block.
We agree with appellants and will not sustain the rejection
of the claims under 35 U.S.C. 102(b). More specifically, we
agree that Nickerson discloses the use of a mean absolute
difference only as a measure to scale the selected quantization
level for a macroblock and this is not the same as using the mean
absolute difference to directly allocate bits to a block, as
disclosed and claimed by appellants. From our review of
Nickerson, appellants appear to be accurate when they indicate
that Nickerson is mainly concerned with a uniform bit rate,
wherein the mean absolute difference is used only as a modifying
factor after both the macroblock bit rate and the quantization
level have already been selected, in contrast to the instant
claimed invention wherein the rate control is based on the mean
absolute difference to allocate bits to each block, from which
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