Ex Parte Ansari

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 30, 2015

11616988 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 30, 2015)

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.
11/616,988 12/28/2006 Furquan Ahmed Ansari Ansari 6 (LCNT/128194) 3475
46363 7590 04/30/2015
WALL & TONG, LLP/
ALCATEL-LUCENT USA INC.
25 James Way
Eatontown, NJ 07724
EXAMINER
PREVAL, LIONEL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2475
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/30/2015 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 FURQUAN AHMED ANSARI
______________

Appeal 2012-007186
Application 11/616,988
Technology Center 2400
______________

Before JEFFREY S. SMITH, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and
MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judges.

KUMAR, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING
Appeal 2012-007186
Application 11/616,988

2
Appellant filed a Request for Rehearing under 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1)
(“Request”) on February 11, 2015, for reconsideration of our Decision
mailed December 18, 2014 (“Decision”).1 The Decision affirmed the
Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–10, 12–14, 17, 18, 20–23, and 25. We
reconsider our decision in light of Appellant’s Request for Rehearing, but
we decline to change the decision.
We find Appellant’s arguments unpersuasive for the reasons given in
our prior Decision. For the reasons given in the Non-Final Rejection and
Examiner’s Answer, we agree with the Examiner’s findings (Ans. 4–22) that
(1) Pancholi anticipates claims 1, 3–5, 10, 22, and 25; (2) Mirtorabi
anticipates claims 12 and 13; and (3) claims 2, 6–9, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, and
23 are obvious over Pancholi and Mirtorabi (and Katz for claim 9). We
highlight the following for emphasis.
Appellant contends:
1. At least for these reasons as well as the reasons previously
presented in Appellant’s Appeal and Reply Briefs, Appellant
maintains that the cited portions of Pancholi fail to teach or suggest
the features of “determining, at the router, a minimum Media
Transmission Unit (MTU) size of the expected path using a
respective plurality of MTU sizes of the links of the expected path”
and “in response to a determination that the packet size is greater
than the minimum MTU size of the expected path, propagating,
from the router toward the sending device, a message for causing

1 “The request for rehearing must state with particularity the points believed
to have been misapprehended or overlooked by the Board.”
37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1).
Appeal 2012-007186
Application 11/616,988

3
the sending device to constrain packet sizes of subsequent packets
transmitted by the sending device to be less than or equal to the
minimum MTU size of the expected path.” Request 2–4, 6
(Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 22; Point 1; claim 25, Point 1).
2. Pancholi still would fail to teach or suggest a router that
determines a minimum MTU size of an expected path using a
respective plurality of MTU sizes of the links of the expected path.
Request 4 (Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 22; Point 2).
3. Appellant maintains that the cited portions of Pancholi fail to teach
or suggest the feature of “in response to a determination that the
packet size is greater than the minimum MTU size of the expected
path, propagating, from the router toward the sending device, a
message for causing the sending device to constrain packet sizes of
subsequent packets transmitted by the sending device to be less
than or equal to the minimum MTU size of the expected path.”
Request 5–6 (Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 22; Point 3).
4. Appellant maintains that the PMTU value of an end-to-end path as
disclosed in Pancholi is not MTU value of a link as recited in
Appellant’s claim 25 and, thus, that the cited portions of Pancholi
fail to teach or suggest the features of a processor configured for
“receiving, at a router, a status message associated with a link,
wherein the status message comprises an MTU size of the link,”
“identifying, in the MTU size table, a table entry associated with
the link," and "updating the identified table entry of the MTU size
table to include the MTU size of the link.” Request 6–7 (Claim 25,
Point 2).
Appeal 2012-007186
Application 11/616,988

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5. Appellant maintains that the cited portion of Mirtorabi fails to
teach or suggest the feature of “wherein the link TLV comprises a
sub-TLV including MTU information associated with the link,” as
recited in Appellant’s claim 12. Request 8 (claims 12, 13).

Appellant’s contentions (1–5) are restatements of the arguments
presented in Appellant’s briefing as to alleged errors in the Examiner’s fact
finding. Appellant’s arguments were addressed in our decision (Decision 4–
8) and will not be repeated here. We find that the Appellant’s restatements
of arguments are addressed to the Examiner’s application of the references
rather than to the points believed to have been misapprehended or
overlooked by the Board. Based on the Examiner’s claim construction, we
agreed with findings and conclusions made by the Examiner (see Ans. 4–
22). Appellant has failed to show any matter that was misapprehended or
overlooked by the Board in rendering this Decision.
We decline to change our prior Decision.

CONCLUSION
In view of the foregoing discussion, we grant Appellant’s Request for
Rehearing to the extent of reconsidering our decision, but we deny
Appellant’s request with respect to making any change thereto.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

REHEARING DENIED