Ex Parte Mentze et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 23, 2017

13980901 (P.T.A.B. May. 23, 2017)

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.
13/980,901 07/22/2013 Duane Mentze 83271701 7104
56436 7590 05/25/2017
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
EXAMINER
ASEFA, DEBEBE A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2476
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):
hpe.ip.mail@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 DUANE MENTZE, MARK GOOCH, and
STEVEN GLEN JORGENSEN
Appeal 2016-004577
Application 13/980,901
Technology Center 2400
Before BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and
NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
BAUMEISTER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejections of claims 1—10 and 12—20. App. Br. 2.1 We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse.
1 Rather than repeat the Examiner’s positions and Appellants’ arguments
their entirety, we refer to the following documents for their respective
details: the Final Action mailed May 19, 2015 (“Final Act.”); the Appeal
Brief filed October 7, 2015 (“App. Br.”); the Examiner’s Answer mailed
January 29, 2016 (“Ans.”); and the Reply Brief filed March 28, 2015
(“Reply Br.”).
Appeal 2016-004577
Application 13/980,901
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The Claimed Invention
Appellants describe the present invention as “[a] method for handling
of conflicts in a multicast routing election in a multicast network .... The
multicast network includes a plurality of multicast network devices. A
conflict is detected in a Designated Forwarder (DF) election for a link.”
Abstract.
Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the appealed
claims:
1. A method for handling of conflicts in a multicast routing
election in a multicast network, the multicast network including
a plurality of multicast network devices, the method comprising:
receiving a packet by a first network device of the plurality
of multicast network devices;
determining whether the packet is a Designated Forwarder
(DF) election winner message;
in response to determining that the packet is the DF
election winner message, determining, by the first network
device, whether a conflict in a DF election is detected for a link,
wherein determining that the conflict in the DF election is
detected for the link comprises:
comparing information in the DF election winner
message with information stored in the first network
device,
indicating the conflict in the DF election in response
to a match between the information in the DF election
winner message and the information stored in the first
network device; and
disabling a DF routing capability of the first network
device in response to detecting of the conflict.
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Appeal 2016-004577
Application 13/980,901
The Appealed Rejections
Claims 1, 3—10, 16—20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Kouvelas (US 7,644,177 B2; issued Jan. 5, 2010) and
M. Handley et al., ""Bidirectional Protocol Independent Multicast (BIDIR-
PIMf The IETF Trust (October 2007) (“Handley”).2
Claim 2 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Kouvelas, Handley, and Wang (US 8,218,429 B2; issued July 10, 2012).
Claims 12—15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Kouvelas, Handley, and Dholakia (US 2011/0229770 Al;
published Sept. 22, 2011).
We review the appealed rejections for error based upon the issues
identified by Appellants, and in light of the arguments and evidence
produced thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010)
(precedential).
FINDINGS AND CONTENTIONS
The Examiner finds that Handley teaches the limitations of claim 1
relating to determining whether a conflict in a Designated Forwarder (DF)
election exists (Final Act. 4—5) and further concludes that motivation existed
to combine these teachings with those of Kouvelas {id. at 5—6). Towards
this end, the Examiner, as best as we can understand, seemingly interprets
“conflict in the DF election” to mean that there is some dispute as to the
2 The heading of the rejection, as it appears in the Final Action alternatively
states that claims 1—10 are rejected over Kouvelas and Handley. Final
Act. 4. However, the body of the rejection renders it reasonably clear that
the heading includes a clerical error intending to read claims 1, 3—10, and
16-20. Id. at 4-22.
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Appeal 2016-004577
Application 13/980,901
accuracy of an election result, or possibly that a request exists for a new
election:
[The Examiner] takes conflict to mean when competing
for one spot to be a DF among two or more routers, and this
[sic: ?], the so call[ed] conflict does not happen because a router
with the best parameter is selected as a DF. If two or more
routers have same parameter value of the metric used to select a
DF, the first router that announced first with the better parameter
value than the old DF is selected, after a selection of a DF is made
that no router with equal parameter as the existing DF is able to
take over the role of a DF because the rule indicates a router with
the best parameter value among the candidate group and a router
with a better parameter than the existing DF will be selected as
a DF.
Ans. 3^4.
Appellants assert, inter alia, that the Examiner’s interpretation of
“conflict” is inconsistent with the language of claim 1 when interpreted in
light of the Specification (Reply Br. 2—3) and that the cited references fail to
teach detecting a conflict in a DF election (App. Br. 8; Reply Br. 3—5).
Appellants urge that
A person of ordinary skill in the art would clearly understand that
a conflict in a DF election occurs when multiple routers are
elected as a DF for a link, which is consistent with the discussion
in | [0015] of the present application. As stated in | [0015] of
the present application, a “conflict with the DF election may
occur whereby multiple routers behave as the DF for a single
link.”
Reply Br. 3 (citing Spec. 115).
PRINCIPFES OF FAW
Appellants’ disclosure may determine the proper meaning of the terms
used in the claims. Markman v. WestviewInstruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967,
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Appeal 2016-004577
Application 13/980,901
979—80 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (en banc). “[Interpreting what is meant by a word
in a claim is not to be confused with adding an extraneous limitation
appearing in the specification, which is improper.” In re Cruciferous Sprout
Litigation, 301 F.3d 1343, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (internal quotation marks
and citations omitted; emphasis in original).
ANALYSIS
In the present case, Appellants’ Specification reasonably describes a
conflict in a DF election is a situation in which “multiple routers behave as
the DF for a single link.” Spec. 115. In fact, this particular situation is
exactly what leads to the problem of multicast traffic route looping that
Appellants’ invention is primarily designed to solve. See Spec. 1. That is,
Appellants’ Specification renders it reasonably clear that in the present
context, a “conflict” refers to a lack of clarity in the DF election result—not
in the accuracy of the DF election result.
To be sure, dependent claim 2 further sets forth “[t]he method of
claim 1, wherein detecting the conflict comprises determining that more than
one network device of the plurality of multicast network devices are
identified as a DF for the link.” As such, the requirement of 35 U.S.C.
§ 112,14 (pre-AIA), that a dependent claim “specify a further limitation of
the subject matter claimed,” does imply that claim 1 must be somehow
broader than claim 2. But we need not determine the precise metes and
bounds of claim 1 relative to claim 2. We need only find that the Examiner
has provided insufficient evidence that it is reasonable to interpret the cited
art’s disclosure of dissatisfaction or disagreement with a clear election result
(see Ans. 3 4) as constituting a “conflict” in the DF election, as claimed.
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Appeal 2016-004577
Application 13/980,901
For the foregoing reasons, Appellants have persuaded us of error in
the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claim 1, as well as
independent claim 6, which recites commensurate language. Accordingly,
we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of those independent claims or of
claims 3—5 and 7—10, which depend from claims 1 and 6.
With respect to the remaining rejections of claims 2 and 12—15, the
Examiner does not rely on Wang or Dholakia to cure the deficiency of the
obviousness rejection explained above. Accordingly, we likewise do not
sustain the obviousness of these rejections for the reasons set forth above.
DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—10 and 12—20 is reversed.
REVERSED
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