Appeal No. 2006-3032 13
Application No. 09/969,040
motivates a combination of teachings from different references are questions
of fact.” In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1199-1200, 73 USPQ2d 1141, 1144
(Fed. Cir. 2004) (internal citations omitted).
In the instant case, we acknowledge that the examiner has relied upon
analogous references taken from the same field of endeavor as the instant
invention and we also acknowledge that the examiner has taken the
motivation to modify Smith directly from the Oyama reference at col. 7, lines
43-47 [answer, page 7]. However, after careful consideration of all the
evidence before us, we agree with appellants that the examiner has failed to
provide a convincing line of reasoning as to why an artisan having
knowledge of Smith would have found the claimed invention obvious in light
of the teachings of Oyama.
In particular, we agree with appellants that there is no explicit or
implicit deficiency found within Smith’s disclosure that would have suggested
to an artisan that a difference signal to distinguish motion from flicker noise
was required. Indeed, we note that Smith is silent with respect to any
mention of “motion noise.” Significantly, we note that Smith determines the
frequency of illumination using image data from a single frame or multiple
frames only once. See e.g., Smith at col. 7, lines 13-15:
As the detection only has to be done once to
determine the initial lighting conditions, it may be
acceptable to use a more computationally intensive
algorithm [emphasis added].
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