Appeal No. 2003-1816 Page 5
Application No. 09/195,593
cells." Accordingly, the independent claim requires storing fill-in indices for addressing
the cells of a stoclustic or stochastic halftone screen.
2. OBVIOUSNESS DETERMINATION
Having determined what subject matter is being claimed, the next inquiry is
whether the subject matter would have been obvious. "In rejecting claims under 35
U.S.C. Section 103, the examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie
case of obviousness." In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed.
Cir. 1993) (citing In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992)). "'A prima facie case of obviousness is established when the teachings from the
prior art itself would . . . have suggested the claimed subject matter to a person of
ordinary skill in the art.'" In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed.
Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA
1976)).
Here, Chang's "invention . . . provide[s] a method and apparatus for storing
halftone cells in the minimum amount of memory space." Col. 4, ll. 14-15. "To minimize
the amount of memory needed to store a half-tone cell and still provide a quick and
simple method to access the threshold values during the rendering process, the tiles are
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007