Ex Parte Drevon

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 2, 2016

10509852 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 2, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
10/509,852 0913012004
59978 7590 11/04/2016
Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC (ALU)
Attn: Jeffrey M. Weinick
One Boland Drive
West Orange, NJ 07052
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Nicolas Drevon
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
104606-US-NP 4310
EXAMINER
CAI, WAYNE HUU
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2644
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/04/2016 ELECTRONIC
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.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
patent@csglaw.com
ipsnarocp@nokia.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte NICOLAS DREVON
Appeal 2015-007478
Application 10/509,852
Technology Center 2600
Before JASON V. MORGAN, IRVINE. BRANCH, and
DANIEL J. GALLIGAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
GALLIGAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant 1 seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner's rejection of claims 1-16. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We AFFIRM. 2
1 The Appeal Brief identifies Alcatel Lucent as the real party in interest.
App. Br. 1.
2 Our Decision refers to Appellant's Appeal Brief filed March 23, 2015
("App. Br."); Appellant's Reply Brief filed August 14, 2015 ("Reply Br.");
Examiner's Answer mailed June 19, 2015 ("Ans."); Non-Final Office Action
mailed August 27, 2014 ("Non-Final Act."); and original Specification filed
September 30, 2004 ("Spec.").
Appeal2015-007478
Application 10/509,852
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Claims on Appeal
Claims 1, 11, 13, and 16 are independent claims. Claim 1 is
illustrative and is reproduced below:
1. A method for controlling access rights in a cellular
mobile radio system, comprising transferring roaming
agreement information from a core network to a radio access
network of said cellular mobile radio system,
wherein said roaming agreement information includes
information transferred independently of messages linked to
calls or user equipments.
Examiner's Rejection
Claims 1-16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Applicant's Admitted Prior Art and Willars et al. (U.S.
2003/0013443 Al, Jan. 16, 2003). Non-Final Act. 4--12.
ANALYSIS
Claims 1-6 and 8-16
Appellant contends Willars does not teach or suggest that "said
roaming agreement information includes information transferred
independently of messages linked to calls or user equipments," as recited in
independent claim 1 and similarly recited in independent claims 11, 13, and
16. App. Br. 5-10; Reply Br. 2--4. In particular, Appellant argues that the
"MCC [mobile country code] and MNC [mobile network code] in the cited
portions of Willars are transferred with the IMSI (international mobile
subscriber identity) as part of the Common ID" and that "[a] message
containing the IMSI is a message linked to calls or user equipments." App.
Br. 6.
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Application 10/509,852
Appellant's arguments are not commensurate with the scope of the
claims. The disputed recitation in claim 1 describes a characteristic of
"roaming agreement information," namely, that it "includes information
transferred independently of messages linked to calls or user equipments."
It does not recite affirmatively the transfer of information itself. By contrast,
Appellant's original claim 1, filed with the application, recited:
A method of controlling access rights in a cellular mobile radio
system, including transfer of roaming agreement information
from a core network to a radio access network of said system, in
which method said roaming agreement information is
transferred independently of the management of radio access
bearers at the interface between the core network and the radio
access network.
Spec. 19 (emphasis added). Thus, original claim 1 affirmatively recited that
the "roaming agreement information is transferred independently." Present
claim 1, however, merely requires transferring roaming agreement
information that itself "includes information transferred independently of
messages linked to calls or user equipments." This recitation does not limit
what portion of the "roaming agreement information" must have been
transferred independently, nor when or between which entities such a
transfer must have happened.
The Examiner found that Table 2 in Willars teaches roaming
agreement information that is transferred independently of messages linked
to calls or user equipment. Non-Final Act. 5 (citing Willars i-f 70, Table 2).
Willars discloses:
Regardless of where the allowed areas are determined, the
determination may be performed as described below with
reference to Table 2. Table 2 shows IMS! number series ranges
as entries, e.g., in the RNC. The first part of the IMS!, i.e., the
MCC+MNC (mobile country code+mobile network code), may
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Application 10/509,852
be used. For each entry in Table 2, a number ofMCC/MNCs are
listed, indicating the networks to which the corresponding
subscribers are allowed to make handover, e.g., operators A and
B share a network with MCC/MNC=C.
Willars i-f 70 (emphases added).
Thus, Willars teaches that roaming agreement information is common
to a subset of subscribers rather than specific to a particular subscriber. This
is consistent with Appellant's Specification, which states that "the present
invention proposes that transferred roaming agreement information be
common to a subset of the international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI)
number, in particular a subset including the mobile country code (MCC)
field and/or the mobile network code (MNC) field." Spec. 11. Another
portion of Appellant's Specification, which Appellant cites as support for the
disputed recitation, states:
One aspect of the invention proposes that access rights
information that corresponds to semistatic information, such as
roaming agreement information in particular, be transferred
independently of the management of radio access bearers at the
interface between the core network and the radio access network,
or in other words that this information not be linked to a
particular user.
Spec. 10 (emphasis added) (cited at App. Br. 2). As discussed above,
Willars teaches roaming agreement information that is not linked to a
particular user.
Appellant argues that "the MCC/MNC in Willars cannot be
'transferred independently' of the IMSI, since the MCC/MNC and the IMSI
are transferred together as part of the COMMON ID." Reply Br. 3. This
argument fails to appreciate that, even if the MCC/MNC data are transferred
from the core network to the access network as part of a message linked to a
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Application 10/509,852
call or user equipment, the MCC/MNC information had previously been
determined by reference to the table of allowed networks, as described in
Willars and discussed above. Willars i-f 70. Information contained in that
table, by virtue of having been transferred to that table, pertains to a subset
or range of subscribers and, therefore, is independent of messages linked to
calls or user equipment. That certain information from the table is then
transmitted from the core network to the access network as part of a message
linked to a call or user equipment is not prohibited by the claim.
We are not persuaded of error in the Examiner's conclusion of
obviousness, and, therefore, we sustain the rejection of claim 1 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a), as well as the rejection of claims 2-6 and 8-16, for which
Appellant does not present additional persuasive arguments for patentability.
Claim 7
Appellant contends Willars does not teach or suggest that "the
information transferred independently of messages linked to calls or user
equipments is transferred in the event of modification of said information in
the core network," as recited in dependent claim 7. App. Br. 1 O; Reply Br.
4--5. Appellant's arguments suggest that claim 7 requires the modification
of the information to cause or result in transfer of the information. We do
not agree. Rather, claim 7 generally recites transferring "in the event of
modification" of the information. In the system of Willars, any information
that is modified would be transferred at least, for example, when the
information is required to be transferred, such as during call setup. See
Ans. 8; Willars i-fi-1 67, 70, Figs. 5A, 5B.
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As such, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner's conclusion
of obviousness, and, therefore, we sustain the rejection of claim 7 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a).
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-16.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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