Appeal 2007-1864 Application 10/100,717 Despite our general agreement with the Examiner regarding certain limitations of claim 1 noted above, we nevertheless conclude that the Examiner has failed to make a prima facie case of anticipation for all limitations of independent claim 1. We therefore will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 or dependent claims 2-12. Claims 27-35 We will also not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 27. Claim 27 calls for, in pertinent part, selecting a time constant from a group of time constants that have been trained using constructed speech. The Examiner provides no separate discussion of this limitation, but rather refers generally to the reasons provided in connection with the rejection of claims 1-12 as justification for the rejections of claims 13-35 (Final Rejection 4; Answer 8). We therefore presume that the Examiner’s position with respect to claim 10 (calling for the articulatory dynamics value to depend on a time constant) was intended to also apply to claim 27. The Examiner’s argument in connection with claim 10 in the Answer does not address how the time constant limitation is met by Hutchins (Answer 7). Turning to the Final Rejection, the Examiner indicates that Hutchins’ articulatory dynamics value depends on a time constant as evidenced in column 9, lines 28-37 of the reference. Hutchins bases the decision to select a particular segment, at least in part, on whether the energy level rises for at least four sample periods (Hutchins, col. 8, ll. 46-68). As shown in Table 1, the rise time is determined in this selection decision (Hutchins, col. 9, ll. 1-26; Steps 113- 120). 9Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013