Appeal No. 2001-0338
Application No. 08/932,953
Therefore, we agree that Appellants' claim 5 does require an
eyetracker to provide a signal to indicate where the user's eyes
are looking.
Tonosaki teaches several embodiments, one embodiment does
indeed teach detecting whether the user's eyes are open or
closed. However, another embodiment teaches use of eyetrackers
to indicate where a user's eyes are looking to. In particular,
Tonosaki teaches in column 4, lines 9-15 that the visual axis
detection means 15, 16 in the present embodiment employs a method
of detecting the visual axis, for example, as disclosed in
Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 4-138431, in which
infrared light is projected into the eyeball of the information
viewer and reflected light by the cornea thereof is detected,
thereby detecting the visual axis. Thus, Tonosaki is teaching
the use of "an eyetracker providing a signal indicating where a
user's eyes are looking to said processor; and a control for
changing intensity of said display based on said signal" as
recited in Appellants' claim 5. We agree that Tonosaki also
teaches another embodiment in which you would not have to use
sophisticated equipment in which you do not have to detect the
visual axis but you could simply detect whether the eyes are open
or closed. See column 4, lines 15-17 of Tonosaki. However, this
1010
Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007