Appeal 2007-1809
Application 09/774,013
at 1396 (quoting In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336
(Fed. Cir. 2006)).
If the Examiner’s burden is met, the burden then shifts to the
Appellant to overcome the prima facie case with argument and/or evidence.
Obviousness is then determined on the basis of the evidence as a whole and
the relative persuasiveness of the arguments. See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d
1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
Regarding the independent claims, the Examiner's rejection essentially
finds that Stavely teaches an image processing method for photoelectrically
reading an image on a film with every claimed feature except for the
preprocessing step to comprise edge enhancement processing. The
Examiner cites Yajima as teaching this feature and concludes that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
invention to modify Stavely’s preprocessing method to enhance edges as
well as detect them to make such boundaries of the defective portions more
recognizable (Answer 3-4).
Appellant argues that Stavely does not perform preprocessing for the
blemish elimination processing on the defective image while reading
photoelectrically the image as claimed (Br. 10) (emphasis in original).
Appellant emphasizes that image processing in Stavely is not preprocessing,
but rather obtains an actual image free of low intensity areas (Br. 10; Reply
Br. 4).
Appellant adds that Stavely’s image processing is not performed on a
defective image, but rather on an actual image. According to Appellant,
Stavely merely uses an infrared image as a template or guide to correct the
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