Ex Parte Lakkis et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 23, 201712483987 (P.T.A.B. May. 23, 2017) Copy Citation 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. 12/483,987 06/12/2009 Ismail Lakkis 090424U2 1385 23696 7590 05/25/2017 OTTAT mMM TNmRPORATFD EXAMINER 5775 MOREHOUSE DR. SAN DIEGO, CA 92121 CEHIC, KENAN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2479 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/25/2017 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): us-docketing@qualcomm.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ISMAIL LAKKIS and VERED BAR BRACHA Appeal 2017-002905 Application 12/483,9871 Technology Center 2400 Before JASON V. MORGAN, JON M. JURGOVAN, and JOHN F. HORVATH, Administrative Patent Judges. JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL 1 Appellants identify QUALCOMM Incorporated as the real party in interest. (App. Br. 4.) Appeal 2017-002905 Application 12/483,987 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1—38. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. CLAIMED INVENTION The claims are directed to directional channel access in a wireless communications system. (Spec. 13.) Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method for wireless communications comprising: detecting at least a portion of a preamble of a packet transmitted by a first device by sweeping over a plurality of receive directions; receiving and decoding a header of the packet based on a first receive direction to identify that the first device transmitted the packet, wherein a second receive direction is incorporated in the header; and completing reception of the packet based on the second receive direction.2 REJECTIONS Claims 1—7, 9, 12—18, 20, 23—30, 32, and 35—38 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on Proctor (US 2004/0196822 Al, published Oct. 7, 2004) and Park (US 2008/0153502 Al, published June 26, 2008). (Final Act. 2—6.) 2 Appellants and the Examiner should examine the claims for compliance with 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. It is unclear what connection or relationship, if any, the “detecting” limitation has to the remaining “receiving” or “completing” limitations. 2 Appeal 2017-002905 Application 12/483,987 Claims 8, 19, and 31 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on Proctor, Park, and Nakabayashi (US 2003/0112810 Al, published June 19, 2003). (Final Act. 6-7.) Claims 10, 21, and 33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on Proctor, Park, and Hoffmann (US 2005/0075142 Al, published April 7, 2005). (Final Act. 7-8.) Claims 11, 22, and 34 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on Proctor, Park, and Wang (US 2008/0187067 Al, published August 7, 2008). (Final Act. 8-9.) ANALYSIS Appellants argue the cited combination of references, Proctor and Park, fail to teach or suggest the claimed limitation of “receiving and decoding a header of the packet based on a first receive direction to identity that the first device transmitted the packet, wherein a second receive direction is incorporated in the header” and “completing reception of the packet based on the second receive direction,” as recited in independent claims 1, 12, 23, 24, and 35. (App. Br. 9-12.) In particular, Appellants argue that Proctor, the reference relied upon by the Examiner to teach this feature (Final Act. 2), is silent as to the contents of the header and thus necessarily fails to disclose “a second receive direction is incorporated in the header” of the packet as claimed. {Id. at 10-11 citing Proctor H 41—43.) Proctor receives and examines the header of a signal to determine if the node that sent the signal is identified therein. (141.) If the node is identified, then Proctor’s access point uses the node identification (ID)3 to 3 The Final Office Action refers to a “packet ID” of which we find no mention in Proctor. {See, e.g., Final Act. 2—3.) Appellants contend what is 3 Appeal 2017-002905 Application 12/483,987 look up the last known angle of that node from a table, and uses this angle to steer the antenna array toward the last known position of the identified node. (143.) Thus, Proctor indirectly identifies node angle by referencing a table with the node ID from the header, whereas the claimed invention directly identifies the “second receive direction” in its header. The Examiner’s findings hinge upon the broadest reasonable interpretation of “incorporate,” which the Examiner finds synonymous with “embody.” (Final Act. 10 citing Dictionary.com Unabridged, Random House, “incorporate” means “to embody”.) The Examiner finds that “embody” means “to represent something in a clear and obvious way,” or “to include something as part of a feature.” (Final Act. 10-11 citing Merriam-Webster Dictionary “embody” http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/embody.) Applying these definitions to Proctor, the Examiner states that the node ID is the representation of the known angle saved in the table, and thus matches the argued claim language under broadest reasonable interpretation. (Ans. 4.) Appellants contend the Examiner’s definitions actually support their argument because a node ID does not identify a receive direction in a clear and obvious way or include a receive direction as part of a packet ID. (App. Br. 11—12.) Appellants also contend that the word “incorporate” means “to include (something) as part of something else.” (Reply Br. 3 citing Merriam-Webster Dictionary “incorporate” http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/incorporate). Appellants assert that the plain meaning of the claimed phrase “a second receive direction is incorporated in contained in the header of a packet is more accurately a “node ID” and not a “packet ID.” (App. Br. 11—12.) The Examiner appears to acquiesce in this assertion. (Ans. 3—5.) 4 Appeal 2017-002905 Application 12/483,987 the header” should be construed as meaning the second receive direction is included in the header of the received and decoded packet. (Id.) Claims are interpreted according to their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the Specification. In re Am. Acad, of Sci. Tech. Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2004). The words of the claim must be given their plain meaning unless the plain meaning is inconsistent with the specification. In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (discussed below); Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb- Weston, Inc., 358 F.3d 1371, 1372, 69 USPQ2d 1857 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (Ordinary, simple English words whose meaning is clear and unquestionable, absent any indication that their use in a particular context changes their meaning, are construed to mean exactly what they say. Thus, “heating the resulting batter-coated dough to a temperature in the range of about 400°F to 850°F” required heating the dough, rather than the air inside an oven, to the specified temperature.). See MPEP §2111.01. The word “incorporate” is used relevantly only once in the Specification as follows “In one aspect of the disclosure, the transmitting DEV (e.g., DEV-1) can incorporate the best receive direction of DEV-2 in a header 1240 of the packet 1200.” (Spec. 1118.) We find this usage of the term in the Specification supports the definition urged by Appellants. In addition, Appellants cite directly to the definition of “incorporate,” which is more persuasive of the term’s plain and ordinary meaning as compared to stringing together the definitions of “incorporate” and “embody,” as the Examiner has done. Even if we adopted the Examiner’s proposed definition, Appellants have presented plausible arguments that the Examiner’s definition actually supports their argument that the claimed language distinguishes over Proctor. 5 Appeal 2017-002905 Application 12/483,987 Thus, having considered Appellants’ arguments and the Examiner’s findings, we find that the broadest reasonable interpretation of “incorporate” means that the “second receive direction” is included in the header of the received and decoded packet, as Appellants propose. Accordingly, the claimed invention distinguishes over the cited combination because Proctor’s node ID is not itself a “second receive direction,” but instead merely identifies a node (notwithstanding that Proctor uses the node ID as a reference to look-up the corresponding node angle or second receive direction from a table). The Examiner has not established that despite this difference the claimed invention would have been obvious over the combination of Proctor and Park. See Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17—18 (1966) (the obviousness determination requires ascertaining the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art.) Accordingly, on the record before us, we do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 1, 12, 23, 24, and 35, or the remaining claims, which incorporate their limitations by virtue of their dependency. Our decision on this basis is fully dispositive of the issues in this case. For the reasons of efficiency, expediency, and to conserve the Board’s limited resources, we exercise our discretion and decline to address the remaining arguments in this case. DECISION We reverse the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1—38 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). REVERSED 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation