Ex Parte Chen et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 31, 201411121877 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2014) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte PI-CHUN CHEN and ZHANG QINQING ____________ Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,8771 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before MARC S. HOFF, CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., and JAMES R. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judges. HOFF, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1–23. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm-in-part. 1 The real party in interest is Alcatel-Lucent. Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants’ invention is a call admission module that determines whether to admit a new call based upon a flow of the new call. In one example, the call admission module predicts a loading of a sector resulting from admission of the new flow. If the flow will fit within a sector capacity, or sufficient resources can be reallocated within the sector to accommodate the new flow and satisfy quality of service requirements for the new flow and existing flows, the new call will be admitted (Abstract). Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A method of communicating, comprising: using a base station for serving at least one sector; and determining whether to admit a new call to the sector based on a flow of the new call. REFERENCES Scholefield US 6,216,006 B1 Apr. 10, 2001 Bergqvist US 2001/0005359 Al June 28, 2001 Bourlas US 2002/0119783 Al Aug. 29, 2002 Chen US 2003/0064730 Al Apr. 3, 2003 Norrgard US 2004/0082338 Al Apr. 29, 2004 Aalto US 6,975,879 B1 Dec. 13, 2005 Yuan Sun, Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer, Xia Gao & James Kempf , A Priority-based Distributed Call Admission Protocol for Multi-hop Wireless Ad hoc Networks (July 2004) (“Kempf”). REJECTIONS Claims 1, 17, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas. Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 3 Claims 2–4, 14, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas and Scholefield. Claim 5 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas, Scholefield, and Chen. Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas, Scholefield, Chen, and Aalto. Claims 7 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas and Aalto. Claim 8 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas, Aalto, and Chen. Claims 9–11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Scholefield. Claim 12 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Scholefield and Norrgard. Claim 15 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas, Scholefield, and Chen. Claim 16 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Norrgard. Claim 18 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Bourlas and Bergqvist. Claims 21 and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Scholefield. Claim 23 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kempf in view of Scholefield and Chen. Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 4 ISSUES With respect to claim 1, Appellants argue that the Examiner may not combine Kempf with Bourlas, because the proposed modification of Kempf changes its principle of operation. Appellants reason that because Kempf is exclusively directed to ad hoc networks, which lack a base station or a sector served by a base station, it would change the principle of operation of Kempf to add a base station such as that employed in Bourlas (App. Br. 8). With respect to claim 9, Appellants argue that Scholefield does not disclose “determining a long term and short term predicted total loading,” as recited in the claim. Appellants further argue that adding long term or short term load totals would not have any usefulness in Kempf, which simply waits until a channel is idle for a specified time (App. Br. 14). With respect to claim 16, Appellants contend, similar to claim 1, that modification of the ad hoc network system of Kempf in view of the infrastructure network system of Norrgard would impermissibly change the principle of operation of Kempf (App. Br. 17–18). With respect to claim 21, Appellants assert that Scholefield does not disclose the “merge threshold for at least one low priority flow” that is claimed (App. Br. 19). Appellants’ arguments present us with the following issues: 1. Would the proposed combination of Kempf with Bourlas change the principle of operation of Kempf? 2. Does Scholefield disclose determining a long term and a short term predicted total loading? Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 5 3. Would the person having ordinary skill in the art have been motivated to combine Kempf with Scholefield to achieve the invention recited in claim 9? 4. Would the proposed combination of Kempf with Norrgard change the principle of operation of Kempf? 5. Does Scholefield disclose the “merge threshold for at least one low priority flow” recited in claim 21? PRINCIPLES OF LAW If the proposed modification or combination of the prior art would change the principle of operation of the prior art invention being modified, then the teachings of the references are not sufficient to render the claims prima facie obvious. See In re Ratti, 270 F.2d 810, 813 (CCPA 1959). ANALYSIS CLAIMS 1, 17, AND 19 Claim 1 requires “using a base station for serving at least one sector.” We are persuaded by Appellants’ argument that it would not have been obvious to combine Kempf with Bourlas to achieve the invention under appeal (App. Br. 8). It is not sufficient for the Examiner merely to cite Kempf’s discussion that wireless networks of all types (i.e., ad hoc and infrastructure) “have limited resources which are protected from saturation by restricting calls with rigid QoS requirements” (Ans. 30; Kempf 1). We agree with Appellants that Kempf is entirely concerned with a call admission protocol for wireless ad hoc networks, which operate without a base station (or a sector served by a base station) (App. Br. 8). Combining Kempf with Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 6 Bourlas, which is directed to an infrastructure network having a base station (Fig. 1, 102), would impermissibly change the principle of operation of Kempf. The teachings of these references are not sufficient to render claim 1 prima facie obvious. See Ratti, 270 F.2d at 813. We conclude that the Examiner erred in combining Kempf with Bourlas. We do not sustain the § 103 rejection of claim 1, or of claims 17 and 19 dependent therefrom. CLAIMS 2–4, 14, AND 20 Each of these claims depends from independent claim 1, the rejection of which we do not sustain. We have reviewed Scholefield and we find that it does not remedy the deficiencies of the combination of Kempf and Bourlas. Therefore, we do not sustain the § 103 rejection of claims 2–4, 14, and 20, for the same reasons expressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1, supra. CLAIMS 5–8 AND 13 Each of these claims depends from independent claim 1, the rejection of which we do not sustain. We have reviewed Scholefield, Chen, and Aalto, and we find that they do not remedy the deficiencies of the combination of Kempf and Bourlas. Therefore, we do not sustain the various § 103 rejections of claims 5–8 and 13, for the same reasons expressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1, supra. CLAIMS 9–11 We do not agree with Appellants that Scholefield does not teach determining long term and short term loading as recited in claim 9, and that Scholefield’s approach provides no benefit to Kempf. As found by the Examiner, Scholefield discloses determining the load on an element of the Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 7 network in two ways: “(1) by looking at the accumulation of the previously granted service requests; and (2) by measuring the real load on the network” (col. 1, ll. 62–65). We agree with the Examiner that (1) corresponds to the claimed long term loading and (2) corresponds to the claimed short term loading (Ans. 19). We agree with the Examiner’s conclusion that modifying Kempf in view of this teaching would enable the system to ensure service levels are adequately provided, and would allow the system to be responsive to fluctuations (due to the short term load) and perform historical analysis (due to the long term load) (Ans. 19). We further agree with the Examiner that Appellants present an unpersuasive bodily incorporation argument (Ans. 36). As noted above, we agree with the Examiner’s reasoning concerning the suggestion provided by the combined teachings of the references. We conclude that the Examiner did not err in combining the teachings of Kempf and Scholefield to achieve the invention recited in claims 9–11. We sustain the § 103 rejection. CLAIM 12 Claim 12 depends from independent claim 9. Appellants’ only argument concerning claim 12 is that the additional reference (Norrgard) fails to remedy the deficiencies of Kempf in combination with Scholefield. As we find no such deficiencies, we will sustain the rejection of claim 12 for the same reasons given with respect to the rejection of claim 9, supra. CLAIMS 15 AND 18 Each of these claims depends from independent claim 1, the rejection of which we do not sustain. We have reviewed Scholefield, Chen, and Bergqvist, and we find that they do not remedy the deficiencies of the Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 8 combination of Kempf and Bourlas. Therefore, we do not sustain the various § 103 rejections of claims 15 and 18, for the same reasons expressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1, supra. CLAIM 16 We find Appellants’ remarks persuasive to show that the Examiner erred. We agree with Appellants that ad hoc networks do not have soft handoffs, which occur between base stations or sectors. Neither of these items is present in an ad hoc network. We therefore agree with Appellants that the proposed modification of Kempf, directed to ad hoc networks, to include the soft handoffs disclosed in Norrgard’s infrastructure network system, would change the principle of operation of Kempf (App. Br. 17–18). Because we find error in the Examiner’s combination of Kempf with Norrgard, we do not sustain the § 103 rejection of claim 16. CLAIMS 21 AND 22 We agree with Appellants that Scholefield fails to disclose “setting a merge threshold for at least one low priority flow to a high value that ensures that the low priority flow will not interfere with an ability to satisfy the quality of service requirement of at least one other higher priority flow if the new call is admitted,” as recited in independent claim 21. Column 3 of Scholefield only discloses estimating effective bandwidth that must be reserved to meet quality of service requirements. We find that the combination of Kempf and Scholefield does not disclose all the elements of the invention of claims 21 and 22. We do not sustain the § 103 rejection. Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 9 CLAIM 23 Claim 23 depends from independent claim 21, the rejection of which we do not sustain. We have reviewed Chen, and we find that it does not remedy the deficiencies of the combination of Kempf and Scholefield. Therefore, we do not sustain the § 103 rejection of claim 23, for the same reasons expressed with respect to the rejection of claim 21, supra. CONCLUSIONS 1. The proposed combination of Kempf with Bourlas would change the principle of operation of Kempf. 2. Scholefield discloses determining a long term and a short term predicted total loading. 3. The person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Kempf with Scholefield to achieve the invention recited in claim 9. 4. The proposed combination of Kempf with Norrgard would change the principle of operation of Kempf. 5. Scholefield does not disclose the “merge threshold for at least one low priority flow” recited in claim 21. DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 9–12 is affirmed. The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–8 and 13–23 is reversed. 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-IN-PART Appeal 2012-003885 Application 11/121,877 10 msc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation