Appeal 2007-1864
Application 10/100,717
Certainly, determining rise time necessarily involves determining a
corresponding time constant: the two values are merely proportional.9 But
Hutchins’ segment selection that is based, in effect, on a time constant
clearly does not involve training a time constant through a variety of
articulation styles as claimed, let alone selecting a time constant from a
group of such trained time constants. At best, Hutchins merely determines
rise time (and therefore a time constant) which forms the basis for segment
selection.
For this reason alone, we will not sustain the Examiner’s anticipation
rejection of independent claim 27 and dependent claims 28-35.
Independent claim 13
We will, however, sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent
claim 13. At the outset, we note an ambiguity in the claim language with
respect to lines 5 and 6 of the claim pertaining to the acoustic environment
value. Specifically, it is unclear whether the phrase “that depends in part on
an acoustic environment value” modifies the preceding “articulatory value”
limitation or the “predicted acoustic value” limitation.
That is, the claim could be construed as follows:
(1) determining a predicted acoustic value for a phonological unit and
the predicted acoustic value depends in part on an acoustic environment
value; or
9 See First-Order RC and RL Circuits, UCSB ECE2A, Spring 2007 Lab #6,
at
http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/courses/ECE002/2A_S07Banerjee/ECE2A%20lab
%206.pdf (noting that rise time can be expressed as 2.2 x the time constant).
10
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