Appeal No. 2006-1618
Application No. 10/046,797
practically identical intensities [Makram-Ebeid, col. 1, lines 43-45]. The
examiner's rejection of claim 20 is proper and is therefore sustained.
Likewise, we will sustain the examiner's rejection of dependent claims 21-
23, 31, and 32 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the
teachings of Catros and Makram-Ebeid. We find that (1) the examiner has
established at least a prima facie case of obviousness for these claims on pages
17-20 of the non-final rejection, and (2) appellant has not persuasively rebutted
the examiner's prima facie case. The rejection is therefore sustained.
We next consider the examiner's rejection of claim 24 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Catros in view of Makram-Ebeid and further
in view of Luo. The examiner's rejection finds that Catros and Makram-Ebeid
disclose essentially all of the claimed subject matter except a user interface for
selecting a width parameter and the two vertices [non-final rejection, pages 20
and 21]. The examiner cites Luo as teaching enabling the user to determine the
width and height of a search stripe for video object segmentation. The examiner
further notes that Luo teaches that the user can define a video object by
specifying its contour [non-final rejection, page 21]. The examiner concludes that
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
invention to modify Catros and Makram-Ebeid to include a user interface to
simplify video object segmentation [id.].
Appellant argues that no motivation exists to combine the references
[brief, page 19]. Specifically, appellant emphasizes that Catros uses a square
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