Ex Parte Gupta et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 25, 2014

11241684 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 25, 2014)

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.
11/241,684 09/30/2005 Piyush Gupta LUCW:0022/Gupta 4-11 5694
48671 7590 11/26/2014
FLETCHER YODER (LUCENT)
P.O. BOX 692289
HOUSTON, TX 77069
EXAMINER
CEHIC, KENAN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2479
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/26/2014 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 PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte PIYUSH GUPTA and ALEKSANDR STOLYAR1
____________________

Appeal 2012-003288
Application 11/241,684
Technology Center 2400
____________________

Before DEBORAH KATZ, HUNG H. BUI, and NATHAN A. ENGELS,
Administrative Patent Judges.

ENGELS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1, 3–5, and 13–21. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm-in-part.

STATEMENT OF CASE
The claims are directed to method and apparatus for managing a
random access communication system by adjusting transmission attempts of
one node in a network based in part on congestion created by transmission

1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Alcatel-Lucent USA,
Inc.
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attempts of other nodes in the network. Abstract.2 Claim 1, reproduced
below, is exemplary of the claimed subject matter:
1. A system comprising:

a plurality of network nodes of a local contention
neighborhood of a random access network, wherein a first node
is configured to transmit to a second node at an access attempt
percentage,

wherein the first node is configured to receive an indicia
of inter-node interference between the first node and a third
node and a measurement of transmission success rate of the
third node; and

wherein the first node is configured to adjust the access
attempt percentage to transmit to the second node based on the
measurement of transmission success rate of the third node.

Claims 1, 3–5 and 13–21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first
paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement.
Claims 1, 13, 16, 18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Yeh (US 2005/0058151 A1, pub. Mar. 17, 2005) in
view of Belcea (US 2006/0268792 A1, pub. Nov. 30, 2006). Claim 3 stands
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Yeh in view of
Belcea and further in view of Foster et al. (US 2002/0181395 A1, pub. Dec.
5, 2002). Claim 14 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Yeh in view of Belcea and further in view of Souissi et al.
(US 2002/0142721 A1, pub. Oct. 3, 2002). Claim 17 stands rejected under

2Throughout this opinion, we refer to the Appeal Brief filed April 4, 2011
(“App. Br.”), the Reply Brief filed September 6, 2011 (“Reply”), the
Examiner’s Answer filed July 5, 2011 (“Ans.”), the Final Office Action filed
October 4, 2011, and the Original Specification filed September 30, 2005
(“Spec.”).
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35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Yeh in view of Belcea and
further in view of Guo et al. (US 2006/0264229 A1, pub. Nov. 23, 2006).
The Examiner withdrew the rejections of claims 4 and 21 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a). Ans. 4.

ISSUES
1. Did the Examiner err in rejecting the Appellants’ claims as
failing to comply with the written description requirements of 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, first paragraph?
2. Did the Examiner err in rejecting the Appellants’ claims as
obvious in view of the prior art of record?

ANALYSIS
1. Rejection Under 35 U.S.C. § 112, First Paragraph
The function of the written description requirement of the first
paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 is to ensure that the inventor has possession, as
of the filing date of the application, of the specific subject matter claimed.
In re Wertheim, 541 F.2d 257, 262 (CCPA 1976); Vas-Cath, Inc. v.
Mahurkar, 935 F.2d 1555, 1563 (Fed. Cir. 1991). In establishing a basis for
a rejection under the written description requirement of the statute, the
Examiner has the initial burden of presenting evidence or reasons why
persons skilled in the art would not recognize in an applicant’s disclosure a
description of the invention defined by the claims. Wertheim, 541 F.2d at
265.
Regarding claim 1, the Examiner finds that the limitation “wherein the
first node is configured to receive an indicia of inter-node interference
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between the first node and a third node and a measurement of transmission
success rate of the third node” lacks adequate support in Appellants’
Specification. Ans. 16–17. Specifically, the Examiner finds that the
claimed “indicia of inter-node interference” equates to the “indicia of
throughput” described in the Specification, but that the indicia of throughput
also putatively equates to the “measurement of transmission success rate.”
Ans. 17. The Examiner finds that claim 1 requires reception of two different
items—“an indicia of inter-node interference” and “a measurement of
transmission success rate of the third node”—but that the Specification
defines those terms to be the same. Ans. 17–18.
Appellants argue that the Specification discloses multiple types of
“indicia of throughput.” App. Br. 6–7. Specifically, Appellants argue that
the Specification provides, for example, that one indicia of throughput is the
successful data transmission from one node to an access point, and each
node’s measurement of a transmission success rate is another indicia of
throughput. App. Br. 6–7; Reply 2. The Specification also states, among
other things, that the claimed invention mitigates interference “by basing the
access attempt percentage of one node on one or more indicia of inter-node
interference, such as throughput, transmission success rate, and the like.”
Spec. at 11. Accordingly, we conclude that the “indicia of inter-node
interference” limitation includes “throughput” and “transmission success
rate,” among other similar indicia.
The examiner correctly notes that claim 1 requires two things; (1) an
indicia of inter-node interference and (2) a measurement of transmission
success rate. More precisely, though, claim 1 requires: (1) an indicia of
inter-node interference “between the first node and a third node,” and (2) a
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measurement of transmission success rate “of the third node.” Thus, while
the Examiner is correct that the indicia of inter-node interference and the
transmission success rate can be the same thing, we find that the modifiers
included with those limitations in claim 1 indicate that they are not the same
pieces of information and that the claim limitations are adequately supported
by the Specification.
We also disagree with the Examiner’s finding that the Specification
fails to provide written description support for “measurement of
transmission success rate.” Appellants argue that the following provides
written-description support for the “measurement of transmission success
rate” limitation:
computing an indicia of the throughput of the ith node, which
reflects successful data transmissions by the ith node to one of
the access points 12a-c. . . . That is, the specification discloses
that an indicia of throughput reflects successful data
transmissions of a node (i.e., the transmission success rate of
the node).
App. Br. 6 (quoting Spec. at 12).
The Specification also describes computing the indicia of throughput
based “on whether the last transmission from the ith node to one of the access
point[s] . . . was a success” (Spec. at 12), suggesting that the system can also
identify a transmission that was not a success. While the Examiner is
correct that the Specification does not describe how to perform the
mathematical calculation or measurement of a transmission success rate, we
find a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize a system that
collects or recognizes successful data transmissions would implicitly support
the calculation or measurement of a transmission success rate. See
Hybritech, Inc. v. Monoclonal Antibodies, Inc., 802 F.2d 1367, 1379–80,
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(Fed. Cir. 1986) (information well known in the art need not be described in
detail in the specification).
Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 under 35
U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph. Further, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection
of claims 3–5 and 13–21 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph for similar
reasons; while the Specification’s descriptions are minimal, the claim
limitations at issue are directed to calculations and concepts well known to a
person of ordinary skill in the art.

2. Rejection Under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
A. Independent Claim 1
Appellants argue that Belcea fails to teach or suggest the limitations
“a measurement of transmission success rate” and “adjusting the access
attempt percentage to transmit to the second node based on the measurement
of transmission success rate of the third node” in claim 1. App. Br. 12–13.
According to Appellants, Belcea only teaches a system in which nodes
broadcast information about utilization of resources between neighboring
nodes, but “there is no teaching of any measurement of the rate of success
that any node has or will experience, let alone adjusting an access rate
‘based on’ that measured rate.” App. Br. 12–13.
Belcea discloses a system that includes transmission times divided
into timeframes, with each timeframe divided into timeslots. Belcea ¶ 53.
The Examiner finds Belcea’s disclosure of nodes that assess and broadcast
indications of available and used timeslots is a “measurement of
transmission success rate” as claimed in claim 1. Ans. 23–24 (citing Belcea
¶¶ 53, 135–138). According to the Examiner, if a timeframe includes 10
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timeslots and a node successfully uses one timeslot, that node’s transmission
success rate would be 1/10. Ans. 23–24 (citing Belcea ¶¶ 53, 135–138).
We agree with the Examiner’s findings. Similar to the Specification’s
support for the “measurement of transmission success rate” limitation, we
find Belcea teaches that limitation with the following:
Each node selects one or many Time Slots and transmits only
during the selected Time Slots. Between transmissions, the
node listens to neighbors and collects information about the
resource utilization and data traffic at neighbors.

Each node broadcasts information about its perception of
utilization of resources by itself and neighbors. While listening
to transmissions of neighbors, a node identifies “used” and
“unused” Time Slots and then it broadcasts the collected
information to neighbors, which in turn can identify those Time
Slots that are contention free and could be used when needed. . .

Belcea ¶¶ 135–136. Consistent with the Appellants’ argument that
calculation of information reflecting successful transmissions discloses to a
person of ordinary skill in the art “measurement of transmission success
rate,” we find Belcea teaches that limitation with its disclosure of used and
unused timeslots within a timeframe. See App. Br. 6 (citing Specification at
12 (“one or more of the nodes . . . computing an indicia of the throughput of
the ith node, which reflects successful data transmissions by the ith node to
one of the access points 12a-c”)).
Belcea also teaches that when two nodes signal the intent to use the
same time slot, the system will broadcast interference information and the
nodes must choose different timeslots in the timeframe. Belcea ¶¶ 137–139.
The Examiner finds that Belcea thus teaches “adjust[ing] the access attempt
percentage to transmit to the second node based on the measurement of
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transmission success rate of the third node,” as required by claim 1. Ans.
23–24 (citing Belcea ¶¶ 137–139). Appellants do not offer independent
evidence or arguments to rebut the Examiner’s finding, beyond Appellants’
argument that Belcea does not disclose the measurement of a transmission
success rate, which we find unpersuasive as explained above. See App. Br.
14. Accordingly, Appellants have not advanced persuasive arguments that
the Examiner erred in concluding that claim 1 is unpatentable in view of Yeh
and Belcea, and we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1.

B. Independent Claim 13
Repeating the arguments addressed above regarding claim 1,
Appellants argue that Belcea does not teach “a measurement of transmission
success rate of the second node,” as required by claim 13. App. Br. 14.
Appellants do not raise additional persuasive arguments or cite new
evidence regarding the patentability of claim 13. Accordingly, we find the
Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive and affirm the Examiner’s rejection for
the reasons discussed above.

C. Dependent Claims 3, 14, and 17
Claim 3 depends from claim 1, and claims 14 and 17 depend from
claim 13. Appellants argue that claims 3, 14, and 17 are patentable based on
each claim’s dependency on its independent claim. App. Br. 3, 17.
Appellants do not raise any independent persuasive arguments or evidence
for the patentability of these claim, and we therefore affirm the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 3, 14, and 17 for the reasons discussed above.

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DECISION
For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3–5 and
13–21 under 35 U.S.C. §112 first paragraph are reversed, and the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3, 13, 14, 16–18, and 20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) is affirmed.
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) (2009).

AFFIRMED IN PART

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