Ex Parte 7321937 et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jan 17, 2012

95000466 (B.P.A.I. Jan. 17, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
95/000,466 05/07/2009 7321937 2855.003REX7 6927
26111 7590 01/18/2012
STERNE, KESSLER, GOLDSTEIN & FOX P.L.L.C.
1100 NEW YORK AVENUE, N.W.
WASHINGTON, DC 20005
EXAMINER
HENEGHAN, MATTHEW E
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3992
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/18/2012 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

BLUE COAT SYSTEMS, INC.
Respondent
v.

REALTIME DATA LLC.
Patent Owner, Appellant
____

Appeal 2011-013438
Inter partes Reexamination Control No. 95/000,466
United States Patent 7,321,937 B2
Technology Center 3900
____________

Before RICHARD TORCZON, ALLEN R. MacDONALD, and
STEPHEN C. SIU, Administrative Patent Judges.

SIU, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
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Reexamination Control 95/000,466
Patent 7,321,937 B2

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This proceeding arose from a third party request on behalf of Blue Coat
Systems, Inc. for an inter partes reexamination of U. S. Patent 7,321,937 B2
(the ‘937 patent), entitled “System and Methods for Accelerated Data
Storage and Retrieval,” assigned to Realtime Data LLC and issued to James
J. Fallon (January 22, 2008). Claims 17-20 presently stand rejected. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. §§ 134(b) and 306.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The ‘937 patent describes “data storage and retrieval bandwidth
utilizing lossless data compression and decompression” (col. 4, ll. 46-47).
Claim 17 on appeal reads as follows:
17. A method comprising:
receiving a data stream over an input having a first bandwidth;
compressing, in at least real-time, said received data stream using a
plurality of encoders to provide a compressed data stream;
transmitting said compressed data stream over an output having a
second bandwidth, wherein said first bandwidth is substantially greater than
said second bandwidth and said transmitting said compressed data stream
effectively increases said second bandwidth; and
wherein said compressing and said transmitting of said compressed
data stream over said output occurs faster than a transmission of said data
stream in uncompressed form over said output.
(App. Br. 41, Claims Appendix.)

The Examiner relies upon the following prior art references:
Elgamel US 5,410,671 Apr. 25, 1995
Franaszek US 5,870,036 Feb. 9, 1999
Dye US 7,190,284 B1 Mar. 13, 2007

Baker, K., et al., “Lossless Data Compression for Short Duration 3D
Frames in Positron Emission Tomography,” IEEE, 1994 (“Baker”).
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Bassiouni, M.A., et al., “A Scheme for Data Compression in
Supercomputers,” IEEE, 1988 (“Bassiouni”).

IBM Microelectronics, “ALDC1-40S, Adaptive Lossless Data
Compression,” IBM Microelectronics Total Technology Solutions, Data
Compression Technologies, IBM Corporation, 1994 (“ALDC”).

Rejections

Claims 17-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being
anticipated by either Baker or Elgamal, under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being
anticipated by Dye, and under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Bassiouni and Baker;
Claims 17-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bassiouni and ALDC; and
Claim 20 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bassiouni, Baker, and Franaszek.

PRINCIPLES OF LAW
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102, “[a] single prior art
reference that discloses, either expressly or inherently, each limitation of a
claim invalidates that claim by anticipation.” Perricone v. Medicis Pharm.
Corp., 432 F.3d 1368, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (citation omitted).
The question of obviousness is resolved on the basis of underlying
factual determinations including (1) the scope and content of the prior art,
(2) any differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art, and
(3) the level of skill in the art. Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City,
383 U.S. 1, 17-18 (1966).
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“The combination of familiar elements according to known methods
is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.”
KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007).

DISCUSSION
Claim 17 recites receiving a data stream over an input having a first
bandwidth, compressing (in real-time) the received data stream, and
transmitting the compressed data stream over an output having a second
bandwidth, the first bandwidth being substantially greater than the second
bandwidth (App. Br. 41, Claims App’x).
Appellant argues that “Baker does not disclose a first bandwidth
substantially greater than a second bandwidth” (App. Br. 18). However, as
the Examiner points out, Baker discloses a system for compressing data (Fig.
3) in which uncompressed data is received at one rate, compressed according
to a compression ratio, then output in compressed form at another rate that is
lower than the rate at which the uncompressed data was received. The rate
at which the uncompressed data is received is substantially greater than the
rate at which the compressed data is output (see, e.g., p. 1833, col. 1, section
3). In one example of Baker, uncompressed data is received at an effective
disk throughput of 10 megabytes per second (i.e., at a “first bandwidth” of
10 Mb/sec), compressed at a compression ratio of 5 to 1, then output at a rate
of 2 megabytes per second (i.e., at a “second bandwidth” of 2 Mb/sec)
(Baker, p. 1833, col. 1, section 3, first paragraph). One of ordinary skill in
the art would have considered Baker’s “first bandwidth” of 10 Mb/sec to be
“substantially greater than” the ‘second bandwidth” of 2 Mb/sec since 10
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Mb/sec is 5 times greater than 2 Mb/sec, which one of ordinary skill in the
art would have considered to be a substantial difference.
Appellant argues that data in Baker “is both input to its compression
card and output from its compression card over the same VMEbus” (App.
Br. 17) and therefore, according to Appellant, “the input into Baker’s
compression card must be the same as the bandwidth of the output from
Baker’s compression card” (App. Br. 18, citing Declaration of Dr. George T.
Ligler under 37 CFR § 1.132, ¶¶ 20-22).
However, Appellant does not sufficiently demonstrate that claim 17
requires that the input bus and the output bus have different capacities or that
the Specification discloses such a requirement. Rather, under a broad but
reasonable interpretation, claim 17 merely requires that a data stream having
a first bandwidth is received and a compressed data stream having a second
bandwidth is transmitted. This broad but reasonable interpretation comports
with the Specification, which discloses that the system “receives and
processes data blocks from an input data stream” (col. 5, ll. 28-29),
compresses “a given input data block at a rate that is equal to or faster than
receipt of the input data” (col. 5, ll. 34-35), then sends the compressed data
to a “data retrieval accelerator” (col. 6, l. 1) that “is configured to
decompress each compressed data block which is received” (col. 6, ll. 8-9).
Since claim 17 does not require input or output busses or that any
such busses, if provided, have different transmission capacities and since
Appellant has not demonstrated any such requirement, we cannot agree with
Appellant’s contention that Baker fails to disclose the first and second
bandwidths as claimed.
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Appellant also argues that “Baker does not show ‘receiving a data
stream’” because “Baker’s compression card retrieves data through memory
access rather than receiving a data stream” and that “[o]ne of ordinary skill
in the art would consider a received ‘data stream’ to include a stream of data
transmitted from a source (whose characteristics are therefore not controlled
by the data storage accelerator 10)” (App. Br. 19, citing Declaration of Dr.
George T. Ligler under 37 CFR § 1.132, ¶¶ 9-10). We disagree with
Appellant’s contention.
Even assuming that Baker discloses receiving data from a memory
that stores the data as Appellant argues, Appellant has not sufficiently
demonstrated how “receiving a data stream” of such stored data is different
from “receiving a data stream” from a source other than the memory which
stores the data. In any event, claim 17 does not require that the data stream
must be received from a source other than a memory that stores the data.
Rather, claim 17 recites receiving a data stream and does not recite
restrictions as to the source of the data stream. As previously described,
Baker discloses this feature.
Appellant also argues that “Baker does not show real-time
compression of a ‘received data stream’” (App. Br. 20). We disagree with
Appellant’s contention for at least the reasons set forth by the Examiner
(Ans. 10-11). For example, as the Examiner points out, data received at the
compression system of Baker at 4Mbit/sec with a capacity to compress the
received data of at least 4 Mbit/sec would compress the data as the data is
received (at a rate of 4Mbit/sec) since the system is capable of doing so –
i.e., in “real time.” Appellant has not sufficiently demonstrated that Baker’s
system would compress data at a lower rate than the system is capable of
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compressing data. Nor has Appellant demonstrated that Baker discloses that
the system performs at a rate that is lower than the system’s capacity.
Appellant does not provide additional arguments in support of claims
18-20. Therefore, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 17-20 as
being anticipated by Baker.
Affirmance of the rejection of claims 17-20 as being anticipated by
Baker renders it unnecessary to decide the adopted rejections based on Dye,
Elgamal, Bassiouni, ALDC, or Franaszek. Cf. In re Gleave, 560 F.3d 1331,
1338 (Fed. Cir. 2009).

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 17-20 is affirmed.
Requests for extensions of time in this inter partes reexamination
proceeding are governed by 37 C.F.R. § 1.956. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.79.

AFFIRMED
rvb

Patent Owner

STERNE, KESSLER, GOLDSTEIN & FOXX P.L.L.C.
1100 NEW YORK AVENUE, NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20005

Third Party Requester

MCDERMOTT WILL & EMERY LLP
600 13TH STREET, NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20005-8087