Appeal No. 2006-2156
Application No. 09/790,296
second language” as claimed. We do not find this persuasive. As pointed out by
the Examiner (Answer, page 5), Yuen discloses at section 2.3, column 1, the
mapping of phonemes from a second language, i.e., English, with the phonemes
of the first language, i.e., Chinese. As explained by the Examiner, and we find
no convincing arguments to the contrary from Appellants, the output confusion
matrix discussed by Yuen provides an initial candidate mapping which enables
the determination as to which Chinese phonemes are most similar to which
English phoneme set.
Appellants further attempt (Supplemental Brief, pages 7 and 8; Reply
Brief, pages 2 and 3) to capsulize the distinction between the claimed invention
and Yuen by contending that, in the claimed invention, mapping is used to obtain
alignment, but, in Yuen, alignment is used to obtain mapping. In our view, to
whatever extent this contention may be correct, it is not commensurate with the
scope of the claims. We simply find no error in the Examiner’s position (Answer,
pages 5 and 6) which concludes that the output of the previously discussed
confusion matrix in Yuen is subjected to an alignment process, as claimed, to
produce a final mapping (Yuen, section 2.4). Further, we also agree with the
Examiner (id., at 6) that the claimed realigning feature is disclosed by Yuen at
section 2.5.
We also find to be without merit Appellants’ contention (Supplemental
Brief, page 6) that the Examiner has not established proper motivation for
modifying the Yuen reference. In our view, however, we find no error in the
Examiner’s assertion of obviousness to the ordinarily skilled artisan of applying
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