Ex Parte Pande

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jul 22, 2009

10692957 (B.P.A.I. Jul. 22, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE

__________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
__________

Ex parte ANAND PANDE
__________

Appeal 2008-002572
Application 10/692,957
Technology Center 2100
__________

Decided1: July 23, 2009
__________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JOHN A. JEFFERY, and
STEPHEN C. SIU, Administrative Patent Judges.

SIU, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

1 The two month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, begins to run from the decided date
shown on this page of the decision. The time period does not run from the
Mail Date.
Appeal 2008-002572
Application 10/692,957

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-19, 23, and 24. Claims 20-22 have been
cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm.

The Invention
The disclosed invention relates generally to designing data structures
including reducing a first Gray-code sequence into a second Gray-code
sequence by removing pairs of mirrored Gray-codes from the first Gray-
code sequence (Spec. 3.)
Independent claim 1 is illustrative:
1. An asynchronous first-in-first-out (FIFO) data structure,
comprising:

a FIFO memory having a depth d in which d is an integer; and

a code generator coupled to the FIFO memory and providing a
first code sequence of length 2d, the first code sequence having a
circular property and a Hamming length of one for any two
consecutive codes of the first code sequence, the first code sequence
being generated from a second code sequence by removing one or
more pairs of mirrored codes of the second code sequence.

The References
The Examiner relies upon the following references as evidence in
support of the rejections:
Pontius US 6,337,893 B1 Jan. 08, 2002
Appeal 2008-002572
Application 10/692,957

3
Yi US 6,703,950 B2 Mar. 09, 2004
(filed Sep. 14, 2001)
Miyamoto US 6,810,468 B2 Oct. 26, 2004
(filed Dec. 04, 2001)

The Rejections
1. The Examiner rejects claims 1-4, 12, 13, 16, 23, and 24 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Pontius and Yi.
2. The Examiner rejects claims 5-11, 14, 15, and 17-19 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Pontius, Yi, and Miyamoto.

ISSUE #1
Appellant asserts that “Pontius and Yi were improperly combined”
(App. Br. 9) because “modifying the teachings of Pontius by the teachings of
Yi leads to a modified invention in Pontius that is rendered unsatisfactory
for its intended purpose” (id.).
Did Appellant demonstrate that the Examiner erred in finding that it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
Pontius and Yi disclosures in arriving at the claimed invention?

ISSUE #2
Appellant asserts that “the combination of Pontius and Miyamoto or
the combination of Yi and Miyamoto cannot be maintained” (App. Br. 13)
because “[t]he teachings of Pontius and Yi teach away from the teachings of
Miyamoto” (id.).
Appeal 2008-002572
Application 10/692,957

4
Did Appellant demonstrate that the Examiner erred in finding that it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have combined
the Pontius and Yi references with the Miyamoto reference in arriving at the
claimed invention?

FINDINGS OF FACT
The following Findings of Facts (FF) are shown by a preponderance
of the evidence.
1. Pontius discloses “a first-in-first-out (FIFO) device” and a “data unit
is stored at a FIFO address indicated by a write pointer” (col. 1, ll.
27-31).
2. Pontius discloses that “[t]he counters are modulo in that they wrap to
zero when a maximum count is reached” (col. 1, ll. 38-39).
3. Pontius discloses that “Gray codes can readily be constructed for any
bit length” (col. 2, ll. 11-12) and that an “algorithm can be iterated to
yield gray codes of any desired bit length” (col. 2, ll. 22-23).
4. Pontius discloses “an n-bit modulo-M gray-code counter in which the
distribution of M gray-codes among N=2**n possible n-bit gray
codes has bilateral symmetry . . . [that is] translational, but it can also
be reflective or both” (col. 3, ll. 11-15).
5. Pontius discloses that “[a] suitable gray code can be constructed for
any selected modulo number that is divisible by four” (col. 3, ll. 21-
22). In one example of Pontius, “[s]tart with a power-of-two gray
Appeal 2008-002572
Application 10/692,957

5
code for the next larger power of two . . . if ½N