Appeal 2007-0664
Application 09/794,420
separate screens 10 and 11 of Suso permit this as relied upon by the
Examiner and the parts of figure 2. Moreover, within a single screen 11
there are clearly shown in figure 3b a plurality of images placed upon the
background image as well. Corresponding renderings are shown in the
various parts of figures 5 through 8 of Suso. In any event, the artisan would
well appreciate that Suso’s teachings expand upon and embellish Smith’s
teachings of overlaying images in background and foreground formats to
achieve a composite screen by superposing them. In these respects then, it
clearly would have been obvious for the artisan to have combined the
teachings of both references as well.
Lastly, the features of dependent claim 13 are argued by Appellant.
This claim requires that the display of a background screen be degraded such
that the degradation of the image data is lowered one level. Once again, it
appears clear to us that the artisan would have well appreciated that with
respect to the teachings associated with figure 10 of Smith, the discussion at
column 8, lines 4 through 9, clearly would have indicated the ability of the
artisan to choose to degrade an image by use of the erase button 1011 or
draw button 1012 such that the user may turn off or on selectively each bit of
an icon image simply by touching each block of the icon shown within the
editing screen 1010. Thus, choosing fewer pixels as the Examiner expresses
at page 6 of the Answer degrades the image of either the foreground or
background images according to the teachings in Smith. Appellant’s
argument at the bottom of page 7 of the principal Brief on appeal and at page
5 of the Reply Brief that degradation is intended to mean changing the
contrast among levels of tone or shade of the image is not supported by the
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