Conduent Business Services, LLC

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Oct 20, 2021

2020004796 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 20, 2021)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/161,016 01/22/2014 Wencheng Wu 20130371USNP-
CNDT3037US01
9707
144578 7590 10/20/2021
FAY SHARPE LLP / CONDUENT
1228 Euclid Avenue, 5th Floor
The Halle Building
Cleveland, OH 44115
EXAMINER
DEMOSKY, PATRICK E
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2486
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/20/2021 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
Conduent.PatentDocketing@conduent.com
USPTO@faysharpe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
_____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
_____________

Ex parte WENCHENG WU, EDGAR A. BERNAL,
YAO RONG WANG, ZHIGANG FAN, and
ROBERT P. LOCE
______________
Appeal 2020-004796
Application 14/161,016
Technology Center 2400
______________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, CATHERINE SHIANG, and
JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges.

CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 3, 5, 9–14, 18, 20, 22, 24–30, and
32–36.2 See Final Act. 1, 19. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

1 We use the term “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.42 (2018). Appellant identifies CONDUENT BUSINESS SERVICES,
LLC as the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 1.
2 Claims 2, 4, 6–8, 15–17, 19, 21, 23, and 31 were cancelled. Appeal Br. 24–
29 (Claims App.).
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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to a system and method for determining
double parking violations by confirming the occurrence of an event relative
to a detected vehicle that is parked in an enforcement area. Spec. ¶ 1. Claim
1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A computer-implemented method for detecting a double-
parked vehicle, the method comprising:
at a server computer, executing instructions for:
identifying a parking region in video data received from
an image capture device monitoring the parking lane;
defining an enforcement traffic lane at least partially
surrounding the parking lane;
detecting a stationary candidate double-parked vehicle in
the enforcement lane, the detecting including:
detecting a presence of vehicles in a difference image
formed between a selected frame and a background estimate,
generating a binary image using the difference image,
and
determining if each detected vehicle is moving or
stationary using the binary image and a current frame, wherein
the current frame is different from the selected frame;
in response to the detected vehicle being stationary,
performing a normalized cross-correlation between a first frame
where the vehicle was detected and subsequent frames to
determine a duration the detected vehicle remains stationary,
the determining including:
in response to the cross-correlation meeting or exceeding
a predetermined threshold for a given frame, determining that
the detected vehicle has not moved away from a location where
it was originally detected and is a candidate violator, and
calculating the duration based on a number of frames that
the detected vehicle remained stationary;
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in response to the duration meeting a predetermined time
threshold, determining whether hazard lights are operating on
the candidate violator; and,
in response to the hazard lights operating on the
candidate violator, classifying the detected vehicle as being
double-parked.
Appeal Br. 23–24 (Claims App.).
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner as evidence is:
Name Reference Date
Auty et al. (“Auty”) US 5,809,161 Sept. 15, 1998
Yeredor et al. (“Yeredor”) US 2009/0033745 A1 Feb. 5, 2009
Mauderer et al. (“Mauderer”) US 2012/0044066 A1 Feb. 23, 2012
Nerayoff et al. (“Narayoff”) US 2014/0036076 A1 Feb. 6, 2014
Beaurepaire et al. (“Beaurepaire”) US 2015/0039173 A1 Feb. 5, 2015
REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 3, 5, 9–13, 27–30, and 32–363 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor, and
Mauderer. Final Act. 3–19.
Claims 14, 18, 20, 22, and 24–26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as unpatentable over Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor, Mauderer, and Beaurepaire.
(Final Act. 19–21).
ANALYSIS

3 The Examiner included canceled claim 31 in the rejection heading, but did
not address canceled claim 31 in the body of the rejection. See Final Act. 3,
16. For clarity, we omit claim 31 from the claim listing here.
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We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections (Final Act. 3–21) in light
of Appellant’s arguments (Appeal Br. 10–21) that the Examiner has erred, as
well as the Examiner’s response to Appellant’s arguments in the Appeal
Brief (Ans. 23–29) and Appellant’s reply in the Reply Brief (Reply Br. 2–7).
With regard to the Examiner’s obviousness rejection based on
Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor, and Mauderer, we agree with Appellant’s
contentions (Appeal Br. 10–13; Reply Br. 2–6) that the Examiner erred in
rejecting claims 1, 3, 5, 9–13, 27–30, and 32–36 because the Examiner has
not shown sufficiently that Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor, and Mauderer
collectively teach or suggest all of the recited elements.
Based on our review of the record, we agree with Appellant that the
Examiner erred in finding that the cited portions of Yeredor teaches or
suggests the limitation:
in response to the detected vehicle being stationary,
performing a normalized cross-correlation between a first frame
where the vehicle was detected and subsequent frames to
determine a duration the vehicle remains stationary,
as recited in independent claim 1 and similarly recited in independent claims
14 and 27. See Appeal Br. 10–21; Reply Br. 2–6. The Examiner has not
sufficiently identified where Yeredor teaches “a normalized cross-
correlation,” let alone a normalized cross-correlation that determines a
duration that a previously identified vehicle remains stationary, as claim 1
requires.
The Examiner relies on paragraphs 39 and 40 of Yeredor as teaching
that “cross-correlation is performed between a current frame and reference
image (subsequent frame) to extract ‘in-place’ reference images for tracked
objects—hence, the cross-correlation enables object tracking (as opposed to
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frame offsets) by identifying a region defining in-place objects to be
tracked.” Ans. 23–24. We agree with Appellant that, in the paragraphs cited
by the Examiner, Yeredor employs cross-correlation to compensate for
potential camera movements between the capture of reference images and
the capture of the current frame. See Appeal Br. 11 (citing Yeredor ¶ 39). In
other words, the cited portions of Yeredor teach determining an estimation
of the relative overall frame movement between a current frame and
reference images (frame offsets). See id. at 12. Although the Examiner finds
that “the cross-correlation enables object tracking” (Ans. 24), the Examiner
has not clearly identified where Yeredor teaches or suggests “performing a
normalized cross-correlation between a first frame where the vehicle was
detected and subsequent frames to determine a duration the detected vehicle
remains stationary,” as recited in claim 1.
The Examiner also relies on paragraph 24 of Yeredor, which
“explicitly recites a use case involving the detection of a vehicle parked in a
forbidden zone, or an extended-period presence of a non-moving vehicle in a
restricted-period parking zone.” Id. That Yeredor teaches a general example
(Yeredor ¶ 24) related to detection of non-moving vehicles parked in certain
zones is not sufficient, however, to support a finding that the specific cross-
correlation technique taught in paragraphs 39 and 40 teaches making such a
determination.
For these reasons, on the record before us, we are persuaded that the
Examiner erred in finding that the combination of Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor,
and Mauderer teaches or suggests the disputed limitation of independent
claim 1. For similar reasons, we are persuaded that the Examiner erred in
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finding that the combination of Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor, and Mauderer
teaches or suggests the disputed limitation of independent claim 27.
Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of
independent claims 1 and 27, as well as dependent claims 3, 5, 9–13, 28–30,
and 32–36.
With regard to the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent
claim 14 and dependent claims 18, 20, 22, and 24–26, the Examiner has not
shown that Beaurepaire teaches the disputed limitation missing from
Nerayoff, Auty, Yeredor, and Mauderer. Accordingly, on the record before
us, we reverse the Examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 14, 18, 20, 22, and
24–26.
Because we agree with at least one of the dispositive arguments
advanced by Appellant, we need not reach the merits of Appellant’s other
contentions. See Beloit Corp. v. Valmet Oy, 742 F.2d 1421, 1423 (Fed. Cir.
1984) (finding an administrative agency is at liberty to reach a decision
based on “a single dispositive issue”).
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 3, 5, 9–14, 18,
20, 22, 24–30, and 32–36.
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DECISION SUMMARY
Claim(s)
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 3, 5, 9–13,
27–30, 32–
36
103 Nerayoff, Auty,
Yeredor, Mauderer
1, 3, 5, 9–13,
27–30, 32–
36
14, 18, 20,
22, 24–26
103 Nerayoff, Auty,
Yeredor, Mauderer,
Beaurepaire
14, 18, 20,
22, 24–26
Overall
Outcome
1, 3, 5, 9–14,
18, 20, 22,
24–30, 32–
36

REVERSED