Appeal No. 2006-3077
Application No. 09/911,912
To determine whether Farnung anticipates claim 5, we must first
determine the scope of the claim. We note that claim 5 reads in part as
follows:
[M] odifying the color component of the pixel to smooth
the transition between color components of adjacent pixels.
We note at page 6, Appellant’s specification states the following:
A sharp transition between output pixels that are tone
mapped and output pixels that are in the dark areas may create
image artifacts. It may be desirable to blend or smooth the
transition between the dark area pixels and the pixels modified
by the tone map (see figure 3). When a color component is in a
light area of the image (304) the tone map is used (306). If the
color component is in a transition area (308) the color
component may be blended or smoothed (310). When the color
component is in a dark area of the image the raw color
component may be used (312). There are many ways to define
which color components are in a transition area.
Thus, representative claim 1 does require that the color component of
a pixel be modified to smooth the transition between color components of
adjacent pixels.3
3 We note that the Examiner’s rejection improperly omitted this
limitation from the claim. Even under a reasonably broad construction of
claim 5, the cited limitation would be given patentable weight. We therefore
interpret the claim as follows: the color component of the pixel would be (1)
transformed if the pixel is greater than the lower threshold, (2) preserved if
the pixel is less than the upper threshold, (3) modified if the pixel falls
outside of the upper and lower thresholds.
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