Appeal 2007-0337
Application 09/996,200
The Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claim 6 is therefore reversed.
Since claim 6 is representative of the group comprising claims 6 and 21,9 we
likewise reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claim 21.
We next consider the Examiner’s rejection of claims 12, 27, and 3310
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Thomas in view of Choi.
Regarding representative claim 12, the Examiner finds that Thomas
discloses all claimed subject matter except for the user selecting the area for
applying by the location of a virtual brush. The Examiner cites Choi as
disclosing such a feature and concludes that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to incorporate
such a teaching in Thomas to select a desired amount of transformation area
(Answer 15). Appellant argues that Choi does not disclose a virtual brush
that enables the user to select the area to which the extracted component is
applied (Br. 17). The Examiner responds that since both a conventional
computer mouse and a virtual brush are used for pointing purposes, it would
have been obvious to the skilled artisan to replace the mouse with a virtual
brush for pointing purposes (Answer 20).
We will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 12, 27, and 33. At
the outset, we note that the term “virtual brush” is extremely broad. In
interpreting the term “virtual brush,” we note that Appellant’s Specification
states that virtual brush shapes can be a circle, square, or a single pixel
(Specification 3:16-19; emphasis added). In our view, a computer mouse,
9 Appellant indicates that claim 6 is representative of the group consisting of
claims 6 and 21 (Br. 15).
10 Appellant indicates that claim 12 is representative of this claim grouping
(Br. 16).
14
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