Appeal No. 2006-1448
Application No. 10/444,868
“whole masked area” proposed by appellants appears only in the brief [answer, page 16].
Appellants respond that they are not relying on the type of processing for patentability. They
reiterate that the teachings of Strnatka fail to meet the recitations of the claimed invention
[reply brief, pages 2-3]. They also respond that the meaning of the term “whole masked
area” is contained in the specification and is not met by Strnatka [reply brief, page 4].
We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 9, 11, 14, 16
and 19 for essentially the reasons argued by appellants in the briefs. Independent claims 1,
11 and 16 recite that an area of the display is first selected and that the image after processing
is then displayed in that selected area. Strnatka does not meet this claim language because
the area selected corresponds to element 30 whereas the image after processing appears in a
different area of the display. As noted above, the claims require that the image after
processing, element 34 in Strnatka, appear in the selected area which is area 30 in Strnatka.
Independent claims 9, 14 and 19 all recite acquiring a “whole masked area.” Appellants’
specification recites the following:
Furthermore, a part generated by combining a “display area of
an image before processing” with a “display area of an image
after processing” is called a “display area of a whole image,”
and a part generated by combining a “masked area of the image
before processing” with a “masked area of the image after
processing” is called a “whole masked area” [page 7, lines 9-
13].
Thus, appellants’ specification clearly provides a specific definition for the claim term
“whole masked area.” There is nothing on this record to show that the examiner has ever
interpreted this phrase in accordance with the definition set forth in the specification.
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