Ex Parte Lee et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 12, 2012

10891423 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 12, 2012)

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.
10/891,423 07/15/2004 Woo-suk Lee 1793.1361 8331
21171 7590 12/12/2012
STAAS & HALSEY LLP
SUITE 700
1201 NEW YORK AVENUE, N.W.
WASHINGTON, DC 20005
EXAMINER
NEWAY, SAMUEL G
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2657
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/12/2012 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 LEE WOO-SUK LEE, HO-CHONG PARK and
CHANG-YONG SON
____________

Appeal 2010-010170
Application 10/891,423
Technology Center 2600
____________

Before ALLEN R. MACDONALD, KRISTEN L. DROESCH and
MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judges.

DROESCH, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2010-010170
Application 10/891,423

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of a final rejection
of claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 251. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We
REVERSE. An oral hearing was held on December 03, 2012.
BACKGROUND
Appellants’ disclosed invention relates to a wide-band speech signal
compression apparatus to compress a speech signal in a scalable bandwidth
structure, and wide-band speech signal decompression apparatus to
decompress the compressed speech signal, and corresponding methods for
compression and decompression. Spec. 1.
Claim 1 is illustrative and is reproduced below (disputed limitations in
italics):
1. An apparatus to compress a wide-band speech signal, the
apparatus comprising:
a narrow-band speech compressor to compress a low-
band speech signal of the wideband speech signal and output
the compressed low-band speech signal as a low-band speech
packet; and
a high-band speech compressor to compress a high-band
speech signal of the wideband speech signal using energy
information of the low-band speech signal provided from the
narrow-band speech compressor, and output the compressed
high-band speech signal as a high-band speech packet,
wherein the high-band speech signal compressor
comprises:

1 Claims 4, 27, 38, 41 and 48-69 have been cancelled. Claims 7-24 were
objected to as dependent from a rejected claim, but including allowable
subject matter. Final Office Action (“FOA”) 8. Claims 26, 28-37, 39, 40 and
42-47 were allowed. Id.

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a filter bank to split the high-band speech signal of
the wide-band speech signal into a plurality of band signals
with different frequency bands;
an RMS calculator to calculate RMS values for
each of the band signals transmitted from the filter bank;
a band priority decision unit to determine priorities
of the band signals split by the filter bank based on the RMS
values calculated by the RMS calculator;
a band signal quantization module to quantize the
band signals split by the filter bank and output a quantization
index for each of the bands using band priority information
determined by the band priority decision unit and the energy
information of the low-band speech signal; and
a packetizer to packetize the band priority
information and the quantization index for each band output
from the band signal quantization module and output the
packetized result as the high-band speech packet,
wherein the band signal quantization module
performs quantization operations to quantize different numbers
of sub-vectors according to the band priority information.

Rejection
Claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Epps et al., A New Very Low Bit Rate Wideband Speech
Coder with a Sinusoidal Highband Model, ISCAS 2001, Proceedings of the
2001 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Vol. 1 of 5,
May 6, 2001, pp. 337-340, (“Epps”), Koh (4,949,383), Matsumoto
(6,353,808 B1) and Dunlop et al., A Packet Based System for Cellular
Digital Mobile Radio Applications, Proceedings of the IEEE International
Conference on Selected Topics in Wireless Communications, 1992, pp. 27-
30 (“Dunlop”).

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ISSUE
Did the Examiner err in finding that Koh teaches or suggests the
disputed limitations of claim 1?
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellants’
arguments in the Appeal Brief presented in response to the Final Office
Action. We agree with Appellants’ conclusions. We highlight and address
specific findings and arguments for emphasis as follows.
The Examiner relies upon Koh for describing a band signal
quantization module to quantize the band signals split by the filter bank and
output a quantization index for each of the bands using band priority
information determined by the band priority decision unit. FOA 4; Ans. 5
(citing Fig. 1, element 6 and related text). The Examiner finds that Koh
describes a sub-band quantizer 6 which quantizes according to band priority
information (band bit allocation number). Ans. 9-10 (citing Fig. 1). In
support of the findings, the Examiner directs attention to Koh’s description
that “[t]he resulting allocated numbers of bits are then output … to control
the appropriate quantizers 6,” and “a quantizer 6 which encodes them using
the desired number of bits.” Ans. 10 (citing col. 6, ll. 20-24 and col. 3, ll. 30-
34).
Appellants argue that Koh does not teach or suggest the disputed
claim limitations. Br. 11. Specifically, Appellants argue that in Koh, the
method of quantization is not affected by the number of allocated bits (i.e.,
the band priority information). Br. 12. We agree with Appellants’ argument.
Although the Examiner directs attention to Koh’s description of the resulting

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allocated numbers of bits being output to control the appropriate quantizers
6, and the quantizer 6 encoding normalized samples Skj using the desired
number of bits BK, the Examiner does not sufficiently explain how the
description of the control of the quantizers 6, or the description of encoding
by the quantizers 6 also teach or suggest that the quantizers 6 quantize the
signals using the bit allocation numbers, or perform quantization operations
according to the bit allocation numbers, as recited in claim 1.
We further agree with Appellants’ argument that Koh does not teach
or suggest a band signal quantization module to quantize the band signals
split by the filter bank and output a quantization index for each of the bands
using band priority information determined by the band priority decision
unit and the energy information of the low-band speech signal. Br. 11-12
(emphasis in original). The Examiner’s rejection is silent with respect to any
of the applied references teaching or suggesting the band signal quantization
module using the energy information of the low-band speech signal. FOA 2-
5; Ans. 4-7.
For at least these reasons, we cannot sustain the Examiner’s rejection
of claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 25 as unpatentable over Epps, Koh, Matsumoto and
Dunlop.
DECISION
We REVERSE the rejection of claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 25 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Epps, Koh, Matsumoto and Dunlop.
REVERSED

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