Google Animation Tech Patent Application Revived by Tribunal

Google LLC successfully appealed a patent examiner’s rejection of claims related to a patent application for a system that has an animated character reflect images of a person in motion.

Google’s patent application No. 17/039,538 isn’t obvious based on prior art because the system’s machine-learned models can detect bodily “landmarks” like elbows, eyes, and eyebrows, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board said on Tuesday. One of the pieces of prior art cited by the examiner, application No. 2019/0381404, teaches generating a predicted trajectory for a character but doesn’t receive or process image frames, nor output landmarks positions within a frame. ...