Ex Parte Bush et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Mar 26, 2007

09697562 (B.P.A.I. Mar. 26, 2007)

The opinion in support of the decision being entered today was not written
for publication and is not binding precedent of the Board
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UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte STEPHEN FRANCIS BUSH
and JOHN ERIK HERSHEY
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Appeal 2007-0015
Application 09/697,5621
Technology Center 2100
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Decided: March 26, 2007
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Before LEE E. BARRETT, ALLEN R. MacDONALD, and JEAN R. HOMERE,
Administrative Patent Judges.

BARRETT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final
rejection of claims 1-14.
We reverse.

1 Application for patent filed October 26, 2000, entitled "Communications
Network for Dynamic Reprioritization," which claims the benefit of Provisional
Application 60/162,901, filed November 1, 1999.
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BACKGROUND
The invention relates to active network management which determines a
merit value for received messages and dynamically reprioritizes the received
messages for relay based upon the merit value.
Claim 1 is reproduced below.
1. A communications network, comprising:

at least one source unit configured to generate messages for relay;

a smart node capable of storing programming instructions, receiving
messages for relay from said source unit, determining at least a merit value
for said received messages, dynamically reprioritizing the received messages
for relay based upon said merit value, and transmitting the reprioritized
received messages; and

at least one portal node adapted to receive said reprioritized received
messages transmitted from said smart node.

THE REFERENCES

The Examiner relies on the following references:

Tonchev 6,324,570 B1 Nov. 27, 2001
(filed Feb. 25, 1997)
Aimoto 6,570,876 B1 May 27, 2003
(filed Mar. 30, 1999)

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THE REJECTIONS
Claims 1-6, 9, and 11-14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being
anticipated by Aimoto.
Claims 7, 8, and 10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Aimoto and Tonchev.
The final rejection of claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, has
been overcome by amendment.

DISCUSSION
The issues
The issues are whether Aimoto teaches: (1) assigning a merit value to
messages; and (2) dynamically reprioritizing messages based upon the merit value.
These limitations are found in all independent claims 1, 4, and 9.

Arguments
Appellants argue that Aimoto does not teach the two limitations noted in the
statement of the Issues. Appellants argue that Aimoto does not teach the
communications network of claim 1 because the "merit value" in claim 1 is
different from the "priority value" in Aimoto (Br. 7). In particular, it is argued that
the communications network of the invention has a smart node that receives
messages and "then determines a merit value for each of the received messages and
dynamically reprioritizes the received messages based on the determined merit
values" (Br. 7); i.e., it "determines a merit value dynamically" (Br. 7). It is argued
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that Aimoto controls transmission of packets according to priority information
already contained in the packets (Br. 8).
The Examiner responds that (Answer 13 and 16):
Aimoto discloses determining priority value as merit value in the header of
the packet [see Aimoto, Fig. 3 and Col. 5, Lines 42-58]. Also, Aimoto
further teaches dynamically reprioritizing the received messages for relay
based upon said merit value. That is, the transmission priority control unit
(5) performs storing packets received from the relaying unit in a
transmission buffer memory (83) and classifying packets into a plurality of
groups and queuing those packets according to the priority for each group
[see Aimoto, Col. 6, Lines 1-10 and Col. 6, Lines 15-22].

Appellants reply that while Aimoto does discuss a "relaying priority," this
does not appear to be anything similar to a "merit value" (Reply Br. 2). It is argued
that the relaying priority is not a merit value, but appears simply to be a priority
that is established by Aimoto's transmission priority control unit 5 when messages
are received, based on information in the message data string (Reply Br. 2).
Appellants argue that, at best, Aimoto teaches prioritization, but no reprioritization
is performed by the control unit because once Aimoto establishes a prioritization,
this prioritization is never changed (Reply Br. 3). It is argued that even the
prioritization is not based upon any parameter such as a merit value, as claimed,
and the relaying priority in Aimoto is never used for reprioritization (Reply Br. 3).

Content of Aimoto
Aimoto relates to a method for switching variable length packets according
to their priority and transmitting variable length packets by controlling a bandwidth
thereof (col. 1, ll. 8-15). Aimoto has a packet switch 1 comprising a plurality of
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control boards 10-1 to 10-L, a packet relaying unit 4 for relaying packets between
those control boards 10, and a management unit 9 connected to each of the control
boards 10, where each control board comprises an input port interface 20 and an
output port interface 21 (Figure 1; col. 5, ll. 16-22).
In the input port interface 20, "the relaying priority control unit 3 determines
a relaying priority based on the management information (packet priority
information, protocol information, network address, etc., which will be described
later with reference to FIG. 3) and stores the received packet in a queue Qi
corresponding to the determined relaying priority" (col. 5, ll. 50-56) and "packets
are read out by the packet read-out circuit 71 sequentially from the queues formed
in the receiving buffer memory 72 according to the order of descending priority,
then output to the packet relaying unit 4" (col. 5, ll. 59-63).
In the output port interface 21, "the transmission priority control unit 5
forms a multidimensional queue structure in the transmission buffer 83 by
classifying transmission packets into a plurality of groups base[d] on the header
information of each of those packets and queuing those transmission packets
according to the transmission priority for each group" (col. 6, ll. 4-10). There are
j queue groups 83-1 to 83-j (Figure 1), each of which have a plurality of queues
(e.g., Qi0 to Qi7 in queue group 83-i in Figure 6 or Q10 to Q1n in queue
group 83-1 in Figure 1) corresponding to the transmission priority in the mapping
table 40. Packets are queued and transmitted according to a communication
service contract which guarantees a certain bandwidth (col. 6, ll. 47-58). A
packet 30 shown in Figure 3 comprises a header which includes packet priority
information 33 indicating the processing priority of the packet (col. 8, ll. 26-31).
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Transmission priorities among a plurality of packet flows transmitted under
different service contracts are determined by a mapping table 40 (Figure 4),
"wherein a value is assigned to indicate the transmission priority corresponding to
each combination of the priority information 33 and the protocol 35" (col. 9,
ll. 5-7); e.g., a value 0 to 7 is assigned to put the packet in one of the priority
queues of a contract queue 83-i (Figure 6). A mapping table 50 (Figure 5)
specifies a queue group 83-1 to 83-j corresponding to the contract for a source
address and a destination address (col. 9, ll. 34-48). Thus, the transmission priority
is fixed based on the packet priority information 33, protocol 35, source address 36,
and destination address 37 in the packet header in Figure 3.

Analysis
The first issue is whether Aimoto discloses assigning a merit value to
received messages. The Examiner finds that the "priority value" in Aimoto
corresponds to the "merit value," but does not address Appellants' arguments that
they are not the same thing. First, we must interpret "merit value."
The Specification discloses Position Dilution of Precision (PDOP) as an
example of a merit value (page 5), but the claims are not limited to PDOP and the
term "merit value" is not defined. "Merit" is defined, inter alia, as "a praiseworthy
quality: VIRTUE," Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (G.&C. Merriam Co.
1977). It is not clear that "merit value" has to be computed from the message
contents, as with PDOP, or could be based on something else about the packet that
carries the message. Nevertheless, "merit value" implies a value based on some
quality of the received message, either of the message content or the packet which
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carries the message, and "determining at least a merit value" implies that the merit
value is computed and not just fixed in the incoming message.
"Determines a relaying priority" in Aimoto sounds somewhat like the
claimed "determining at least a merit value" inasmuch as something is determined.
However, it does not appear that the relaying priority is based on any "merit" or
quality of the packet. Aimoto states that control unit 3, which is in the input port
interface 20, "determines a relaying priority based on the management information
(packet priority information, protocol information, network address, etc. . . .)"
(col. 5, ll. 51-54), but never actually discloses how it is determined. Aimoto only
describes how the transmission priority in output interface port 21 is determined
with respect to Figure 3. The transmission priority is determined based on the
packet priority information 33 and the protocol information 35 in Figure 3 using
the mapping table 40 in Figure 4, and the source address 36 and destination
address 37 in Figure 3 using the mapping table 50 in Figure 5. No figure of merit
is computed since the priority is predetermined from the information in the packet
header of Figure 3 using the mapping table. Nevertheless, since the definition of
"merit" is not totally clear, we do not rest our decision only on this finding.
The second issue is whether Aimoto discloses reprioritizing messages based
upon the determined merit value. The transmission priority in Aimoto is
determined based on the packet priority information 33, the protocol
information 35, the source address 36, and destination address 37 in the packet
header of Figure 3, using mapping table 40 in Figure 4 and mapping table 50 in
Figure 5. We assume, for purposes of discussing this limitation, that the
"transmission priority" is a "merit value." Aimoto puts packets in specific queues
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to implement transmission which guarantees the bandwidth assigned to the queue
group. The transmission priority is not changed from the priority of the incoming
packet, which is fixed by the header information, i.e., Aimoto does not
"dynamically reprioritize" the packets based on the merit value. The Examiner's
rejection does not explain how the packets come into the switch in Aimoto with
one priority and are reprioritized into another priority based on a merit value.
Therefore, even if Aimoto discloses determining a merit value, which it does not,
Aimoto does not disclose reprioritizing the messages based on the merit value.
For the reasons stated above, the rejection of independent claims 1, 4, and 9,
and their dependent claims 2, 3, 5, 6, and 11-14 is reversed. Tonchev is applied to
the rejection of claims 7, 8, and 10 for its teaching of a prioritization heuristic.
Tonchev does not cure the deficiencies of Aimoto with respect to the independent
claims from which they depend and, so, the rejection of claims 7, 8, and 10 is also
reversed.

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Application 09/697,562

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REVERSED

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