Ex Parte Oja et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 31, 2012

10882674 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte SAKU OJA, SIMO HYYTIA,
PAAVO HELENIUS, BERT HOLTAPPELS,
ANDREW REBEIRO-HARGRAVE, and ILKKA WESTMAN
____________

Appeal 2010-005367
Application 10/882,674
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, THU A. DANG, and
JAMES R. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

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Application 10/882,674

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1-35. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
The claims are directed to establishing a real-time multimedia session.
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method, comprising:

receiving, in a server, a request for session initiation,
wherein the session is a session of a real-time media
communication service;

detecting, in the server, that a terminating subscriber does
not belong to a same subsystem as an originating subscriber;

maintaining, in the server, transit server information that
associates a group of subscribers with a transit server, wherein
the association is based on identification information of the
subscriber and said transit server has access to a subscriber
database of a subsystem of the associated terminating
subscriber;

determining, in the server, in response to detecting that
the terminating subscriber does not belong to the same
subsystem as the originating subscriber, with identification
information on the terminating subscriber included in the
request for session initiation, the transit server associated with
the terminating subscriber;

querying subscriber information related to the requested
session with a first control message from the server to the
transit server, wherein the first control message comprises
parameters of the requested session; and

initiating, in the server, the requested session according
to the queried subscriber information.
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REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Khello

Gallant

Black

Bleckert
US 7,027,582 B2

US 7,042,871 B2

US 7,130,282 B2

US Pat. Pub. 2007/0097879 A1
Apr. 11, 2006
(filed July 6, 2001)

May 9, 2006
(prov. app. filed July
23, 2003)

Oct. 31, 2006
(filed Sept. 20, 2002)

May 3, 2007
(PCT filed Dec. 30,
2003)

REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 12-15, 20-22, 26, 28, 33, and 34 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being unpatentable over Khello.
Claims 3, 4, 11, 16, 17, 23, 29, and 30 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Khello and Bleckert.
Claims 9, 27, and 35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Khello and Black.
Claims 5, 6, 18, 19, 24, 25, 31, and 32 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Khello, Bleckert, and Gallant.

Appeal 2010-005367
Application 10/882,674

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ANALYSIS
The Anticipation Rejection
The Examiner finds that Khello discloses all the limitations of claim
1, including “initiating, in the server, the requested session according to the
queried subscriber information” (Ans. 3-4, 11-12). The Examiner relies on
Khello’s “Secondary DNS” server in the “Originating Network” in Figure 6
to meet the limitation of “a server” (Ans. 3). Appellants contend that
Khello’s session establishment does not involve the DNS server system, but
rather it is a separate procedure from the IP address resolution performed by
the DNS servers (App. Br. 14). We agree with Appellants.
Khello discloses the following with respect to Figure 6:
The IP address is returned to the secondary DNS server in the
originating network (reference numeral 8). That corresponding
IP address is forwarded from the secondary DNS server to the
local DNS server (reference numeral 9), and from the local
DNS to the application user A’s equipment (reference numeral
10). With that IP address, A’s user equipment can then
establish a multimedia session with remote entity B using both
B’s E.164 telephone number and B’s IP address.

(Khello, col. 10, ll. 55-63). Khello does not specifically disclose how the
multimedia session is established. However, Khello’s Figure 8 and the
accompanying description indicate that the multimedia session is established
through a GPRS (general packet radio service) mobile data network, not the
DNS network. For example, Khello discloses that after an IP address is
forwarded to A’s user equipment through the DNS network, “A’s user
equipment can run a game by establishing an IP data link with B’s user
equipment using the IP address 445.334.332.220 via the GPRS nodes SGSN
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and GGSN in ‘A’ and B’s GPRS networks.” (Khello, col. 12, ll. 49-52)
(emphasis added).
While the Examiner responds that “the server and/or SGSN have to
make a connection and/or session initiation and this is understood in the art
(col. 12, lines 17-44),” (Ans. 12) (emphasis added), we see no evidence that
a DNS server can initiate a multimedia session in Khello. Therefore, we
cannot say that Khello’s DNS server establishes multimedia sessions, in
contrast to claim 1, which recites “initiating, in the server, the requested
session according to the queried subscriber information.”
We are therefore constrained by the record to find that the Examiner
erred in rejecting independent claim 1, independent claims 10, 15, 21, and
22 which recite commensurate limitations, and claims 2, 7, 8, 12-14, 20, 26,
28, 33, and 34 for similar reasons.

The Obviousness Rejections
Claims 3-6, 9, 11, 16-19, 23-25, 27, 29-32, and 35 depend from
claims 1, 10, 15, and 21, and we do not sustain the rejections of these claims
for the reasons discussed above.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 12-15, 20-22,
26, 28, 33, and 34 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e), and claims 3-6, 9, 11, 16-19,
23-25, 27, 29-32, and 35 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the rejections of claims 1-35.
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REVERSED

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