Appeal No. 2006-2345
Application No. 10/366,458
cases, from the nature of the problem to be solved. See In re
Dembiczak, 175 F.3d 994, 999, 50 USPQ2d 1614, 1617 (Fed. Cir.
1999); Pro-Mold & Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d
1568, 1573, 37 USPQ2d 1626, 1630 (Fed. Cir. 1996). Therefore,
motivation or suggestion is not merely what the references
disclose, but whether a person of ordinary skill in the art,
possessed with the understandings and knowledge reflected in the
prior art, and motivated by the general problem facing the
inventor, would have been led to make the combination recited in
the claims. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329,
1337 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
We further disagree with Appellant’s arguments (brief, page
14) with respect to lack of recognition by Nakamura of the
problem of obtaining reliable distance data. As discussed above,
the Examiner relies on Nakamura for teaching a moveable infrared
sensor in response to variations in the focal position whereas
processing the images to obtain the distance information is
taught by Bilbrey where the obtained image is processed on a
pixel-by-pixel basis for generating the depth information (col.
27, lines 7-10 and 37-43). We note that this finding is
consistent with Appellant’s own disclosure related to processing
the image information from the visible and the infrared cameras
7
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