Ex Parte Goossen et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 15, 2016

13391544 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 15, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/391,544 05/11/2012
65913 7590 09/19/2016
Intellectual Property and Licensing
NXPB.V.
411 East Plumeria Drive, MS41
SAN JOSE, CA 95134
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Jack Alexander Goossen
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.
81051417US04 9059
EXAMINER
COX,BRIANP
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2474
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/19/2016 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):
ip.department.us@nxp.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JACK ALEXANDER GOOSSEN and
BERNARDUS ADRIANUS CORNELIS VAN VLIMMEREN
Appeal2015-004707
Application 13/391,544 1
Technology Center 2400
Before JOHN P. PINKERTON, NATHAN A. ENGELS, and
MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges.
ENGELS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a non-final rejection
of claims 1-24. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Appellants identify NXP B. V. as the real party in interest. App. Br. 1.
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Application 13/391,544
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject
matter:
1. A method, comprising:
processing an application which uses at least one resource;
creating at least one proxy depending on the application;
the at least one proxy claiming at least two substantially
similar resources, wherein the claiming is delayed until either a
partial configuration or a final configuration is known, and an
actually used resource for processing the application 1s
determined depending on at least one predefined criterion.
THE REJECTIONS
Claims 1-6, 9, 10, 15, 18, and 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) as being anticipated by Jackson (US 8,321,871 Bl; Nov. 27, 2012).
Claims 7, 8, 11-14, 16, 17, and 19-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable in view of various combinations of Jackson,
Rattner et al. (US 2009/0158292 Al; June 18, 2009), Todorova (US
2009/0282401 Al; Nov. 12, 2009), and OPENMAXâ„¢INTEGRATIONLAYER
APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE SPECIFICATION, 8-326 (2005) (The
Khronos Grp., Inc.).
ANALYSIS
Appellants contend the Examiner erred finding Jackson discloses "the
claiming is delayed until either a partial configuration or a final
configuration is known," as recited in claim 1 and similarly recited in claim
18. App. Br. 5. Specifically, Appellants argue "Jackson fails to disclose
either a partial configuration or a final configuration" and thus cannot delay
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Application 13/391,544
the claiming until either a partial configuration or a final configuration is
known. App. Br. 5. Further, Appellants argue "[c]onfiguration in the
claimed context has a well-established meaning that would be understood by
one having ordinary skill in the art" and "Jackson's disclosure cannot be
regarded as equivalent to a configuration because Jackson only discloses a
transaction identification." Reply Br. 2. Appellants do not, however,
support these arguments with a limiting definition from Appellants'
Specification or other evidence defining the term configuration.
We disagree with Appellants. The Examiner cites Appellants'
Specification to support an interpretation of "configuration" to include the
setup of a system and finds Jackson's disclosures of available resources and
their characteristics satisfy the claimed configuration. Ans. 3--4 (citing Spec.
9 ("determining means 36 are provided for determining the configuration or
setup of the system"). Further, in contrast to Appellants' argument that
"Jackson only discloses a transaction identification" (Reply Br. 2), Jackson
provides that a transaction identification associated with a request for
resources may be a textual or graphical presentation of cluster resources that
can satisfy the request. See Ans. 4 (citing Jackson col. 6, 11. 57---64); accord
Jackson col. 3, 11. 26-29 ("A transaction ID is used to identify resources
within a cluster environment that can meet a submitters [sic] request for
cluster resources.").
Moreover, we agree with the Examiner that Jackson discloses
"wherein the claiming is delayed until either a partial configuration or a final
configuration is known," as claimed. As cited by the Examiner (Ans. 4),
Jackson states the following:
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Application 13/391,544
After presenting the information and associated transaction
identification to the submitter, the system can then receive
instructions from the submitter to commit the request for cluster
resources .... The system then reserves the compute resources
associated with the presented information or commits the request
for resources with reference to the transaction identification.
Jackson col. 7, 11. 2-9 (emphasis added).
Appellants additionally argue "a proxy is a representative of an active
component performing a possibly continuous task which can be controlled
by a proxy" (App. Br. 6) and that the Examiner misinterprets the claimed
proxy (App. Br. 6-7; Reply Br. 3). Appellants again do not provide any
evidentiary support for the proposed interpretation.
The Examiner cites Appellants' Specification, which provides
"[ w ]hen a request of the application is received, at least one proxy defining
the received application may be generated," to support a broad but
reasonable interpretation of "proxy" as including Jackson's disclosure of
"receiving a request for resource availability in a compute environment ...
[and] associating transaction identification with the request and resources
within the compute environment." Ans. 4--5 (quoting Jackson col. 4, 11. 49-
56; additionally citing Jackson col. 5, 11. 5-8). Appellants do not
substantively rebut the Examiner's interpretation and findings beyond mere
attorney argument, and we agree with the Examiner that Jackson's
disclosures fall within a broad but reasonable interpretation of the claimed
proxy.
Having considered each of Appellants' arguments, we disagree with
Appellants that the Examiner erred in the rejection of independent claims 1
and 18. We adopt as our own the Examiner's findings, interpretations, and
reasons and sustain the Examiner's rejections of claims 1 and 18, as well as
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their respective dependent claims 2-12, 15, 22, and 24, for which Appellants
do not advance separate arguments (see App. Br. 8, 11, 12).
Appellants additionally argue, without substantive analysis, that the
Examiner "failed to provide articulated reasoning to support" the
obviousness rejections of claims 13, 14, 16, 17, 19-21, and 23. App. Br. 9.
Claim 13 recites, for example, "[ t ]he method according to claim 9, further
comprising: storing at least one of the actually used resources, and an order
of connected resources," and claim 14 adds the following to claim 13:
"wherein the at least one predefined criterion depends on stored
information." App. Br. 16 (Claims App'x). Notably, Appellants do not
argue that any limitation of these claims is missing from the prior art. The
cited references are each from the same field of endeavor as Appellants'
invention, and Appellants do not substantively address the Examiner's
reasons for combining the teachings. See, e.g., Non-Final Act. 12 (stating
that combining Jackson and Rattner would allow for the selection of
resources in a grid or cluster environment based on predefined needs of the
host application). Further, as evidenced by the Examiner's findings, the
combined teachings represent a combination of familiar elements according
to known methods. See KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416
(2007) (holding the combination of familiar elements according to known
methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable
results). Accordingly, we disagree with Appellants that the Examiner failed
to adequately articulate reasons for combining the references, and we sustain
the Examiner's rejections of claims 13, 14, 16, 17, 19-21, and 23.
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DECISION
For the above reasons, we affirm the Examiner's rejections of claims
1-24.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended. 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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