Ex Parte BeckerDownload PDFBoard of Patent Appeals and InterferencesJan 7, 201110975760 (B.P.A.I. Jan. 7, 2011) 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. 10/975,760 10/28/2004 Burkhard Becker L0099.0015 7520 38881 7590 01/07/2011 DICKSTEIN SHAPIRO LLP 1633 Broadway NEW YORK, NY 10019 EXAMINER TSAI, SHENG JEN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2186 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/07/2011 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 ____________________ Ex parte BURKHARD BECKER ____________________ Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,7601 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JAY P. LUCAS, and JAMES R. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judges. LUCAS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL2 1 This Application was filed on October 28, 2004. It is a continuation of PCT/DE03/01170, filed April 9, 2003. The real party in interest is Infineon Technologies, AG. 2 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, or for filing a request for rehearing, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 41.52, begins to run from the “MAIL DATE” (paper delivery mode) or the “NOTIFICATION DATE” (electronic delivery mode) shown on the PTOL-90A cover letter attached to this decision. Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant appeals from a final rejection of claims 1 to 11 and 14 to 26 under authority of 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). The Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) has jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). The Examiner objects to the form of claims 12 and 13 (Ans. 13, top). The Examiner states that the claims would be allowable if rewritten in independent form, including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims (id.). The Examiner has not made a formal rejection of claims 12 and 13. We thus do not have a rejection on those claims that can be properly appealed to this tribunal, and thus we cannot rule on those claims. We affirm. Appellant’s invention relates to a method for efficiently managing data block versions obtained from repeat transmissions of a data block to be decoded in a receiver such that the method permits powerful decoding with low memory space requirement (Spec. ¶ [0010]). In the words of Appellant: Further measures permitting more detailed management of stored data block versions and increasing the size of the parameter set which taken as a basis for making the decision to store or not to store a data block version in the memory area involve the management information comprising information which indicates the channel code used and/or the puncturing pattern used for the data block versions stored in the memory area. Preferably, the inventive method is carried out on the basis of the following steps: if free memory space is available in the memory area, a 2 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 received data block version is stored there. Otherwise, a decision is made regarding whether the received data block version can be stored by overwriting a data block version of the same data block. If this is not possible, a decision is made regarding whether the received data block version can be stored by overwriting a data block version of a different data block. If this is not possible either, the received data block version is rejected. … [T]his implementation of the method also permits data block versions which cannot be attributed to the data block in the currently received data block version to be overwritten. (Spec. ¶¶ [0023] and [0024]). The following claim illustrates the claims on appeal: Claim 1: 1. A method for managing data block versions obtained from repeat transmissions of a data block which is to be decoded in a receiver, the data block to be transmitted being subjected to channel coding and puncturing in the transmitter, comprising the steps of: providing a memory area for storing received data block versions in punctured form; and making a decision regarding whether or not a received data block version for a data block whose decoding in the receiver has failed to date and is also unsuccessful when the received data block version is taken into account is stored as a punctured data block version in the memory area. 3 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 The Examiner prior art relied upon the following prior art in rejecting the claims on appeal: Lou US 5,657,325 Aug. 12, 1997 Hassan US 5,968,198 Oct. 19, 1999 Furuskar US 6,704,898 B1 Mar. 09, 2004 (filed Oct. 19, 1999) Garani EP 1,168,702 A1 Jun. 30, 2000 REJECTIONS The Examiner rejects the claims as follows: R1: Claims 1, 3, 4, 15, 17, 18, and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) for being anticipated by Lou. R2: Claims 2, 5, 6, 14, 16, 19, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for being obvious over Lou in view of Furuskar. R3: Claims 7 to 113, 14 and 21 to 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for being obvious over Lou in view of Garani. R4: Claim 26 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for being obvious over Hassan. 3 We treat the Examiner’s omission of dependent claim 11 from the rejection R3 as merely a typographical error. Appellant’s footnote on page 5 of the Brief makes a mere dependency argument for claim 11 by virtue of its indirect dependency from claim 1. However, mere allegations of patentability based on dependency, such as those presented by Appellant, are not considered a persuasive form of argumentation. (See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii); 37 C.F.R. § 1.111(b).) Accordingly, we find no error in the rejection. 4 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 We have only considered those arguments that Appellant actually raised in the Briefs. Arguments Appellant could have made but chose not to make in the Briefs have not been considered and are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). ISSUE The pivotal issue before us in the present appeal involves whether Appellant has shown4 that the Examiner erred in rejecting the claims under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(b) and 103(a). The issue specifically turns on whether Lou teaches Appellant’s claim limitation “making a decision regarding whether or not a received data block version … is stored as a punctured data block version in the memory area” (claim 1). FINDINGS OF FACT The record supports the following findings of fact (FF) by a preponderance of the evidence. Disclosure 1. Appellant has invented an apparatus and method of deciding whether to store a received data block version as a punctured data block version in a memory area. (See claim 1.) Lou 2. The Lou reference teaches a method of deciding where and in what format to store a received information packet. (See Abstract and col. 5, ll. 4 Appellant has the burden on appeal to the Board to demonstrate Examiner error. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 985-86 (Fed. Cir. 2006). 5 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 12 to 17.) Lou’s packet may be stored as either a punctured packet or a recoverable packet (col. 5, ll. 35 and 38). Lou’s punctured packet contains a partially decipherable section and an error information section, which may remain undecipherable. (See col. 5, ll. 33 to 40). In addition, Lou discloses a means for reading the undecipherable error information and combining that information with a punctured packet stored in a memory (id.). Lou further discloses recovering undecipherable information via a self-decoding process and then storing the packet in a data sink (col. 5, ll. 33 to 38). When self-decoding fails, Lou’s system stores the packet in a memory (id.). ANALYSIS Arguments with respect to the rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, 15, 17, 18, and 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) [R1] The Examiner has rejected the noted claims for being anticipated by the Lou reference, pages 3 to 7 of the Examiner’s Answer. Appellant argues that when errors cannot be corrected, Lou fails to teach making a decision as to whether to store the received data block version (App. Br. 7, bottom). Rather, Appellant argues that such packets containing errors are always stored in Lou’s memory (id.). Since Lou teaches that as long as the packet contains an error, then the packet is stored, the patent’s teachings do not anticipate exemplary claim 1 (id.). We disagree with Appellant for the following reasons. We construe Appellant’s claimed “decision” to be no different from the choice of where and in what format to store an information packet, as Lou teaches. We find that Appellant has invented an apparatus and method of deciding whether to 6 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 store a received data block version as a punctured data block version in a memory area (FF#1). In comparison, we find that the Lou reference teaches a method of deciding where and in what format to store a received information packet (Appellant’s claimed “received data block version”) (FF#2). Lou’s packet may be stored as either a punctured packet or a recoverable packet (id.). A punctured packet contains a partially decipherable section and an error information section, which may remain undecipherable (id.). Lou discloses recovering undecipherable information via a self-decoding process and then storing the packet in a data sink (id.). When self-decoding fails, Lou’s system stores the packet (Appellant’s punctured packet”) in a memory (Appellant’s claimed “memory area”). To be clear, we find that Appellant’s claim limitation “making a decision regarding whether or not a received data block version … is stored as a punctured data block version in the memory area” (claim 1) reads on Lou’s decision regarding a received packet’s destination (i.e., a data sink or a memory). (See FF#1 and FF#2.) The decision in Lou determines the received packet’s destination. (See FF#2.) Lou’s teachings suffice to anticipate claim 1, in that Lou teaches a “decision,” as claimed, which sends a received packet (the claimed “received data block version”) to either of these two distinct locations (id.). For the above-stated reasons, we read Appellant’s claimed “decision” as being be no different from the choice of where and in what format a packet is stored, as Lou teaches. Accordingly, we find Appellant has not demonstrated error in the rejection R1 in this regard. 7 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 Next, Appellant argues that in Lou, data blocks are not analyzed before deciding whether each data block should be stored (App. Br. 8, bottom). We agree with the Examiner’s finding that claim 1 fails to specify the timing of the claimed “decision” to either store or not to store “a received data block,” as claimed (Ans. 16, middle). Reading the claim language broadly but reasonably, see In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321 (Fed. Cir. 1989), we find that Appellant’s claimed step of “making a decision regarding whether or not a received data block version … is stored as a punctured data block version in the memory area” reads on Lou’s decision concerning which location (i.e., a memory or a data sink) to send a received data block (FF#2). Accordingly, we find Appellant has not shown error in the rejection R1. Argument with respect to the rejection of claims 2, 5, 6 to 11, 14, 16, 19, 20 to 24, and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) [R2 to R4] The Examiner has rejected the noted claims for being obvious over various prior art references, pages 7 to 13 of the Examiner’s Answer. Appellant provides no separate argument in accordance with 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). We thus affirm the rejections R2 to R4. CONCLUSION OF LAW Based on the findings of facts and analysis above, we conclude that Appellant has not shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1 to 11 and 14 to 26. 8 Appeal 2009-007069 Application 10/975,760 DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s rejections R1 to R4 of claims 1 to 11 and 14 to 26. 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). AFFIRMED peb DICKSTEIN SHAPIRO LLP 1633 BROADWAY NEW YORK, NY 10036-2714 9 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation