Ex Parte Amini et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardFeb 13, 201512533643 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 13, 2015) Copy Citation 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. 12/533,643 07/31/2009 Lisa D. Amini YOR920030061US3 7981 48063 7590 02/17/2015 RYAN, MASON & LEWIS, LLP 48 South Service Road Suite 100 Melville, NY 11747 EXAMINER TRAN, TONGOC ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2434 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/17/2015 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 PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte LISA D. AMINI, PASCAL FROSSARD, CHITRA VENKATRAMANI, OLIVIER VERSCHEURE, and PETER WESTERINK ____________ Appeal 2012-006901 Application 12/533,643 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, BRUCE R. WINSOR, and JOHN P. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judges. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL SUMMARY Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1–26, which constitute all the claims pending in this application.1 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 The real party in interest identified by Appellants is International Business Machines Corporation. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2012-006901 Application 12/533,643 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants describe the claimed invention as follows: Techniques for securely and adaptive1y delivering multimedia content are disclosed in which a set of alternate access units for each time slot is obtained. Then, the encryption stream index of each access unit from the set of alternate access units of the previous time slot are obtained. An encryption stream index is then assigned to each access unit in the set of alternate access units in the current time slot, such that the encryption index increases over time. Thus, the invention overcomes the problem of encrypting a multimedia stream that may have multiple access units for each time slot by selecting the encryption index for each access unit such that the encryption index increases, regardless of which access unit the delivery system (e.g., server) selects for transmission. See Abstract. Claims 1, 13, 25, and 26 are independent claims. Illustrative Claim Claim 1, which is illustrative,2 reads as follows: 1. A method of processing content for delivery in an information system, wherein the content is representable as access units, the method comprising steps of: obtaining a set of alternate versions of an access unit for a current time slot associated with the content; and assigning, by a processor of the information system, an encryption index to each access unit in the set of alternate versions of the access unit in the current time slot such that an encryption index increases over time. 2 Appellants argue claims 1–26 together. See Appeal Br. 7–8, 14. Appeal 2012-006901 Application 12/533,643 3 References Rudrapatna US 5,592,470 Jan. 7, 1997 Fenner US 6,819,670 B1 Nov. 16, 2004 Rejections on Appeal Claims 1–26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Rudrapatna and Fenner. Issues on Appeal Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief3 and Reply Brief present us with the following dispositive issue: 4 Did the Examiner err in finding Rudrapatna teaches “obtaining a set of alternate versions of an access unit for a current time slot associated with the content,” as recited in claim 1? ANALYSIS Appellants contend the portion of the disclosure of Rudrapatna relied on by the Examiner, column 7, line 60 through column 8, line 19, does not teach the limitation at issue because it fails to teach “that a given video stream (each of smaller portions of a given video stream) are encoded into different bit rate channels at the same time so as to obtain a set of alternate version[s] of the same video content stream for the given time . . . .” Appeal 3 Our decision refers to Appellants’ Appeal Brief, filed on Sept. 28, 2011 (“Appeal Br.”), the Examiner’s Answer, mailed on Mar. 9, 2012 (“Ans.”), Appellants’ Reply Brief, filed on Mar. 29, 2012 (“Reply Br.”), and the original Specification, filed on July 31, 2009 (“Spec.”). 4 Appellants’ arguments raise additional issues, but we do not reach them because the identified issue is dispositive of the appeal. Appeal 2012-006901 Application 12/533,643 4 Br. 9–10; Reply Br. 3. Appellants also assert that, at most, Rudrapatna discloses “that a given video content stream can be encoded with a desired one of a plurality of available bit rates for delivery.” Id. The Examiner quotes column 7, line 60 through column 8, line 19 of Rudrapatna and finds “Radrapatna (sic) mentioned that MPEG II standard operates over a broad range of encoding rates” and “[d]ifferent program content is encoded optimally at different rates depending on the type of program (i.e. movie or sport).” Ans. 20. Based on a Webopedia definition of MPEG, the Examiner also finds “MPEG achieves its high compression rate by storing only the changes from one frame to another, instead of each entire frame, thus suggests the frame by frame process according to MPEG Standard.” Id. The Examiner, therefore, finds Rudrapatna teaches the “obtaining” limitation. Id. We agree with Appellants. Although we agree with the Examiner’s findings that Rudrapatna teaches video content can be encoded at different rates using MPEG II and different program content is optimally encoded at different rates (Rudrapatna 7:60–8:4), these findings fail to establish that Rudrapatna teaches or suggests obtaining alternate versions of small portions or frames of video content for a current time slot, as required by claim 1. That is, Rudrapatna does not teach obtaining alternate or multiple versions of frames of video content for a given time slot, but only one version per time slot encoded at a selected one of the MPEG II encoding rates. Thus, we conclude the Examiner erred by finding Rudrapatna teaches the limitation “obtaining a set of alternate versions of an access unit for a current time slot associated with the content.” Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 as being obvious over the combination of Rudrapatna Appeal 2012-006901 Application 12/533,643 5 and Fenner. For the same reasons, we also do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 13, 25, and 26, as well as the rejection of dependent claims 2–12 and 14–24. DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–26 is reversed. REVERSED msc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation