Appeal No. 2002-1657
Application No. 09/134,981
correspond to the claimed interrelating of skeletal and edge
contour data.
In view of the above discussion, since the Examiner’s prima
facie case of anticipation has not been overcome by any convincing
arguments from Appellant, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
rejection of claim 1 based on Futamura, is sustained.
For at least the above reasons, we also sustain the Examiner’s
35 U.S.C. § 102(e) rejection of independent claim 12. As
previously discussed, Futamura processes edge contour data to
produce skeletal data by selectively removing pixels between the
outer and inner edges. In our view, Futamura provides a clear
teaching of utilizing this pixel deletion process to classify
objects according to thickness. For example, Futamura discloses at
column 6, lines 54-56 that “[w]hen only a small number of pixel-
deletion processes N were performed, this indicates that the
original line corresponding to the value N had a narrow width.”
Turning to a consideration of dependent claims 3 and 18,
argued together by Appellant (Brief, page 13), we sustain the
Examiner’s anticipation rejection of these claims as well.
Appellant’s arguments notwithstanding, we reiterate our previous
finding of clear teaching in Futamura of line fitting using both
edge and skeletal contour data. Similarly, we sustain the
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