Appeal No. 2003-0774
Application 09/841,764
generated. At the time silence is first detected, the operation
in Delargy is to code the frame as a single output byte. This
coding is not based on the manner in which the previous speech
frame was coded and is, therefore, independent of the coding used
for the speech signal. If the first segment of representative
claim 34 is defined as the last frame of speech before silence in
Delargy and the second segment of claim 34 is defined as the
first frame of silence, then the operation of Delargy appears to
meet the claimed invention. In other words, the single output
byte in Delargy is a silence description coding mode which is
independent of the speech coding mode used for the immediately
preceding speech signal segment. Even if one argues that all the
segments in Delargy may not meet the claimed invention, it is
enough for a rejection on prior art that the claimed invention is
met at some instant by the prior art. The claimed invention
merely requires that two segments be identified in which the
independency exists. As noted above, we find that Delargy
teaches this independence at least for the two segments defined
in the manner discussed above.
With respect to the combination of Delargy with Rapeli,
we agree with the examiner that it would have been obvious to the
artisan to use the silence description coding mode of Delargy in
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