Ex Parte Nagarajan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 22, 2017

13935172 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 22, 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.
13/935,172 07/03/2013 Srividhya Nagarajan 03919.0589
(983861-US.01)
9751
86421 7590 06/26/2017
Patent Capital Group - Cisco
Attention: Roseanne Cisneros de Chairez
2609 Dove Meadow Drive
Garland, TX 75043
EXAMINER
BOLOURCHI, NADER
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2631
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/26/2017 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):
peggsu @ cisco, com
PAIR_86421 @patcapgroup.com
eofficeaction @ appcoll.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SRIVIDHYA NAGARAJAN, WEI-MIN CHENG,
LALIT KUMAR, and DEEPAK S. MAYYA
Appeal 2017-003455
Application 13/93 5,1721
Technology Center 2600
Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, SCOTT B. HOWARD, and
JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges.
HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants file this appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1, 3—6, and 8—22. Claims 2 and 7 are
cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse.
THE CLAIMED INVENTION
Appellants’ claimed invention relates to “communication networks
and, more particularly, to . . . back channel support in a
serializer/deserializer (SERDES) interface with split lane swaps.” Spec. 11.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Cisco Technology,
Inc. App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2017-003455
Application 13/935,172
Claim 1 is illustrative of the subject matter of the appeal and is reproduced
below.
1. A method, comprising:
determining information for a configuration of an
interface of a first crossbar switch including a plurality of
serializer/deserializer (SERDES) slices having a plurality of
connections to a second crossbar switch over the interface;
configuring a back channel layer associated with the first
crossbar switch to form a back channel path to carry a first
message to a first transmitter from a first receiver of the first
crossbar switch based on a configuration of the plurality of
connections to the second crossbar switch, wherein the first
transmitter is in a first SERDES slice of the plurality of
SERDES slices, and the first SERDES slice is assigned a lane
ID;
receiving, at the first receiver, a second message on a
serial link, wherein the first receiver is in a second SERDES
slice of the plurality of SERDES slices, and the back channel
layer inserts a recipient ID in the second message to produce
the first message; and
determining, with an interface layer, whether the
recipient ID in the first message matches the lane ID, wherein
the interface layer interfaces to the first SERDES slice.
REJECTION2 ON APPEAL
The Examiner rejected claims 1, 3—6, and 8—22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as being unpatentable over Gui et al. (US 8,218,537 Bl; issued July 10,
2012).
2 The Examiner withdrew the § 112 rejection of claims 1, 3—6, and 8—22.
Ans. 12.
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Appeal 2017-003455
Application 13/935,172
ISSUE
The dispositive issue for this appeal is whether Gui teaches or
suggests that “the first SERDES slice is assigned a lane ID,” as recited in
independent claims 1 and 18, and similarly recited in claim 9.
ANALYSIS
We find Appellants’ arguments persuasive with respect to the cited
portions of Gui failing to teach or suggest the above dispositive, disputed
limitation.
Appellants argue Gui fails to teach or suggest, inter alia,3 the disputed
limitation. App. Br. 11—14. Rather than teaching using IDs (e.g., lane IDs)
to route messages (e.g., for configuration) amongst varied SERDESs,
Appellants argue Gui, at best, teaches or suggests that a backchannel arbiter
operates to facilitate such communications without teaching how. App. Br.
13. Appellants argue the Examiner speculates that one of ordinary skill in
the art would have contemplated using lane IDs to route messages between
SERDESs on a backchannel path without offering evidence (i) “to support
that position,” (ii) “of the scope of the customary practice of skilled
artisans,” (iii) that “the achieved advantages were known,” or
(iv) “establishing the possibilities from which the skilled person would
select.” App. Br. 14.
3 Appellants argue Gui also fails to teach or suggest inserting a recipient ID
and determining whether the recipient ID matches the lane ID, to facilitate
routing messages between SERDESs via a back channel path. See App. Br.
12—13. We choose the first of these limitations relating to IDs to focus our
decision.
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Appeal 2017-003455
Application 13/935,172
The Examiner finds that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
found the disputed limitation obvious in light of Gui’s teachings. See Ans.
12—14. The Examiner finds Gui teaches or suggests:
Each quad input block/output block QIBi/QOBi supports
the routing of backchannel data between the channels of its
attached quad serdes QSi. Optionally, each quad input
block/output block also communicates over a backchannel
share bus with a backchannel arbiter BCH ARB. The optional
backchannel arbiter allows backchannel information received
on any deserializer to be passed to any serializer, and
backchannel information requested by any deserializer to be
transmitted out any serializer.
Ans. 12—13 (citing Gui col. 6,11. 45—53) (bold emphasis omitted).
The Examiner finds that this teaching from Gui (i.e., “allowing]
backchannel information received on any deserializer to be passed to any
serializer,” and vice versa) “indicates] that Gui is making [a] similar
determination [to the claims], in order for [the] backchannel arbiter [to]
perform proper routing of information, as it does.” Ans. 13. The Examiner
finds the claimed lane ID and checking the recipient ID is “similar to adding
hardware source and destination [addresses] to [a] header and/or trailer of [a]
data packet for routing data packets from their source toward their ultimate
destination.” Id. The Examiner concludes the disputed limitation is “a
slight constructional change that comes within the scope of the customary
practice followed by persons skilled in the art, [because] it merely define [s]
one of several straightforward possibilities which the skilled person would
select, depending on the circumstances, in order to solve the problem
posed.” Id. at 13—14.
We agree with Appellants that the cited portions of Gui fail to teach or
suggest the disputed limitation to one of ordinary skill in the art. Although
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Appeal 2017-003455
Application 13/935,172
Gui teaches allowing backchannel information received on any deserializer
to be passed to any serializer, and vice versa, the cited portions of Gui fail to
explain how this is accomplished by the backchannel arbiter. See Gui col. 6,
11. 45—53. The Examiner’s findings of the scope of the customary practice
followed by persons skilled in the art, and having only a small number of
“straightforward possibilities [from] which the skilled person would select”
(id.), are unsupported by the record evidence (see also In re Warner, 379
F.2d 1011, 1017 (CCPA 1967) (“The Patent Office has the initial duty of
supplying the factual basis for its rejection. It may not, because it may doubt
that the invention is patentable, resort to speculation, unfounded assumptions
or hindsight reconstruction to supply deficiencies in its factual basis.”)).
Accordingly, we are constrained on this record to reverse the
Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 9, and 18, which each recite
the aforementioned contested limitation in similar or commensurate form.
Because we have reversed the Examiner’s rejection of each
independent claim on appeal, we also reverse the Examiner’s rejection of
each associated dependent claim.
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 3—6, and 8—22.
REVERSED
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