Ex Parte KirshenbaumDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardFeb 24, 201612618569 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 24, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 12/618,569 11113/2009 Evan R. Kirshenbaum 56436 7590 02/26/2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise 3404 E. Harmony Road Mail Stop 79 Fort Collins, CO 80528 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. 82248491 6908 EXAMINER HAILU, KIBROM T ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2461 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/26/2016 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): hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com mkraft@hpe.com chris.mania@hpe.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte EV AN R. KIRSHENBAUM1 Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 Technology Center 2400 Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, BARBARA A. BENOIT, and JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's final rejection of claims 1-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellant identifies The Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP as the real party in interest. App. Br. 3. Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 INVENTION According to Appellant, the claims disclose a communication system adapted for communicating data in nestable delimited streams with support for abort and overlays. Abstract. Claim 1, reproduced below with key limitations emphasized, is illustrative: 1. A method for communicating data between devices in a data communication system comprising: generating a delimited-stream-specific delimiter, wherein the delimited-stream-specific delimiter is a randomly generated byte sequence specifically associated with a delimited stream; indicating a beginning of the delimited stream in a data stream by writing in the data stream the delimited-stream-specific delimiter; writing content of the delimited stream to the data stream, compnsmg: checking if a byte sequence to be written to the data stream contains the delimited-stream-specific delimiter; and terminating the delimited stream by writing in the data stream the delimited stream-specific delimiter followed by an indicator of end of the delimited stream. REJECTIONS The Examiner rejects claims 1-2 and 18-19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gleason (US 5,966,663; issued Oct. 12, 1999) and Kothandaraman (US 2009/0031135 Al; published Jan. 29, 2009). Final Act. 2-6. The Examiner rejects claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Heng et al. (US 2008/0080619 Al; published Apr. 3, 2008) and Kothandaraman. Final Act. 6-7. 2 Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 The Examiner rejects claim 3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gleason, Kothandaraman, and Shibuya (US 2009/0100081 Al; published Apr. 16, 2009). Final Act. 7. The Examiner rejects claims 4 and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gleason, Kothandaraman, and Heng. Final Act. 8- 9. The Examiner rejects claims 5-7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gleason, Kothandaraman, and Gupta et al. (US 2007 /0271572 Al; published Nov. 22, 2007). Final Act. 9-11. The Examiner rejects claim 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gleason, Kothandaraman, Diab et al. (US 2011/0019685 Al; published Jan. 27, 2011), and Wilhelmsson (US 5,654,969; issued Aug. 5, 1997). Final Act. 11-12. The Examiner rejects claim 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gleason, Kothandaraman, Heng, and Hirashima et al. (US 2005/0058071 Al; published Mar. 17, 2005). Final Act. 12-13. The Examiner rejects claims 11-13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Heng, Kothandaraman, and Diab. Final Act. 13-15. The Examiner rejects claims 14-16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Heng, Kothandaraman, Diab, and Gupta. Final Act. 15- 16. The Examiner rejects claim 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Heng, Kothandaraman, Diab, Gupta, Wilhelmsson, and Hirashima. Final Act. 16-18. 3 Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 ANALYSIS Claims 1-20 On the record before us, we are not persuaded of reversible error in the Examiner's findings and conclusions that claims 1-20 are obvious over the prior art. In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner finds that Gleason discloses "generating a delimited-stream-specific delimiter" that is "specifically associated with a delimited stream," as recited in claim 1. Final Act. 2 (citing Gleason col. 7, 11. 29-48; col. 7, 1. 64-col. 8, 1. 16). The Examiner further finds that Kothandaraman teaches that "the delimited-stream-specific delimiter is a randomly generated byte sequence," as recited in claim 1. Id. at 3 (citing Kothandaraman i-fi-123-27, 30). The Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to an artisan of ordinary skill "to use the delimited-stream-specific delimiter is a randomly generated byte sequence as taught by Kothandaraman into Gleason in order to reduce time wastage of generating the delimiter, and to enhance security of the frame." Id. Appellant contends that the Examiner errs because Gleason and Kothandaraman do not teach or suggest "a delimited-stream-specific delimiter that is a randomly generated byte sequence specifically associated with a delimited stream," as claimed. App. Br. 9. Appellant argues that Kothandaraman discloses randomly selecting a delimiter from a table containing a fixed set of delimiters, which is not the same as generating a delimiter comprising a randomly generated byte sequence. Id. at 9-10. We do not find Appellant's arguments persuasive of error. Appellant presents no persuasive argument or evidence to rebut the Examiner's finding that Kothandaraman teaches or suggests randomly generating the delimiters 4 Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 because "randomization of the delimiters is performed by assigning integers as identifiers, by labeling the total number of data elements, and by randomly generating a random integer value." See Reply 2-3; Ans. 2-3 (citing Kothandaraman i-f 24); Final Act. 3. Moreover, Appellant presents no rebuttal to the Examiner's finding that paragraph 64 of Appellant's Specification explains random generation of the delimiters in terms of randomly selecting the delimiter. See Reply 5---6; Ans. 3. For these reasons, we are not persuaded that the Examiner errs in finding that the combination of Gleason and Kothandaraman teaches or suggests "generating a delimited-stream-specific delimiter, wherein the delimited-stream-specific delimiter is a randomly generated byte sequence specifically associated with a delimited stream," as recited in claim 1. Appellant also contends that the Examiner errs in concluding that it would have been obvious to combine the Gleason and Kothandaraman references. App. Br. 10. Appellant argues that modifying the communication protocol in Gleason to include the random selection of keys and delimiters as disclosed in Kothandaraman "would fundamentally change the principle operation of Gleason and/or render Gleason unsatisfactory for its intended purpose." Id. In particular, Appellant argues that the principle of operation and/or intended purpose of the communication protocol in Gleason is "easy decoding by humans," and combining Gleason with Kothandaraman would "make decoding more difficult for humans." Id. (citing Gleason col. 6, 11. 60---61 ). We do not find Appellant's arguments persuasive of error. The Examiner provides articulated reasoning with a rational underpinning as to why an ordinarily skilled artisan would have modified the data 5 Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 communication method in Gleason with the teachings and suggestions of Kothandaraman. Final Act. 2. Moreover, Appellant does not persuasively rebut the Examiner's finding that Kothandaraman does not "show implementing a protocol that would render Gleason's Computer Access Protocol (CAP II) unsatisfactory for its intended purpose (making encoding/decoding easy)." See Reply 6-7; Ans. 4. The Examiner explains that Kothandaraman discloses encoding/decoding ASCII formats in a manner similar to the portion of Gleason on which Appellant's argument relies. Ans. 4 (citing Gleason col. 7, 1. 24---col. 8 1. 16; Kothandaraman i-fi-1 17, 32, and 39). For these reasons, we are unpersuaded that the Examiner errs in concluding that it would have been obvious to an artisan of ordinary skill to modify the data communication method in Gleason to use the randomly generated delimited-stream-specific delimiter as taught by Kothandaraman. Accordingly, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of independent claim 1, as well as the Examiner's 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of independent claims 10 and 18, for which Appellant refers to arguments made for claim 1 and does not present additional persuasive arguments for patentability. See App. Br. 10-11. We also sustain the Examiner's rejection of dependent claims 3-9, 11-17, and 20, for which Appellant makes no arguments other than those for the independent claims on which those claims depend. See id. at 11-13. We also sustain the Examiner's rejection of dependent claims 2 and 19, not argued separately. 6 Appeal2014-003365 Application 12/618,569 DECISION The Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-20 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)(l )(iv). AFFIRMED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation