Ex Parte Patil et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardFeb 27, 201714274040 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 27, 2017) Copy Citation 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. 14/274,040 05/09/2014 Abhishek P. Patil 200802300.02 1050 36738 7590 03/01/2017 ROrTTT7 fr ASSOPTATRS EXAMINER 750 B STREET CHAU, PETER P SUITE 3120 SAN DIEGO, CA 92101 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2476 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/01/2017 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): Noelle@rogitz.com eofficeaction @ appcoll.com John@rogitz.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ABHISHEK P. PATIL, XIANGPENG JING, AIXIN LIU, and DJUNG N. NGUYEN Appeal 2016-007875 Application 14/274,040 Technology Center 2400 Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, LINZY T. McCARTNEY, and JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges. McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims 9 and 13. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. Appeal 2016-007875 Application 14/274,040 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The present patent application relates to “the field of wireless communication, and more specifically, to mesh network[s].” Spec. 1 1. Claim 9 illustrates the claimed subject matter: 9. An article of manufacture comprising: a non-transitory machine-accessible storage medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising: responding to a request for local information, the request being sent by a remote node in a network; querying a first node in the network for node information of the first node; expanding querying to a second node in the network using a node network capability, a node power attribute, or both the node network capability and node power attribute, second node being a neighbor of the first node. REJECTION Claims 9 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Flammer III et al. (US 5,453,977; Sept. 26, 1995) and Evans et al. (US 7,953,083 Bl; May 31, 2011).1 ANALYSIS Appellants argue the Examiner erroneously found Evans teaches or suggests “a node network capability” as recited in claim 9. See App. Br. 6— 7; Reply Br. 2—3. According to Appellants, Evans teaches a filter, not a 1 The Examiner withdrew the non-statutory double patenting rejection of claims 1—20 and the indefmiteness rejection of claims 1—8 and 14—20. See Ans. 2. 2 Appeal 2016-007875 Application 14/274,040 “capability.” See Reply Br. 2—3. Moreover, Appellants contend Evans’s filter limits the number of queries from a node and therefore teaches away from the recited “expanding querying to a second node in the network using a node network capability” as required by claim 9. See App. Br. 7. Finally, Appellants argue the Examiner failed to articulate a rational basis for the Examiner’s combination of Flammer and Evans. See id. at 7—8; Reply Br. 3^4. Appellants argue Evans does not suggest that Evan’s filter will improve querying and “it is not technically apparent why query propagation would be improved by throttling queries.” App. Br. 9. Appellants also contend the Examiner improperly found that because the cited references are analogous art, one of skill in the art would have been motivated to combine them. See Reply Br. 3. We find Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive. The Examiner concluded the term “node network capability” encompasses the ability of Evans’s nodes to either filter excessive queries or instead queue the queries and then multi-cast them at a desired rate. See Final Act. 8; Ans. 2—3; see also Evans 4:53—64 (discussing filtering and queuing queries). This construction is consistent with the broadest reasonable interpretation of “node network capability.” See In re Am. Acad, of Sci. Tech Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (“During examination, claims ... are to be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification.” (quotation marks omitted)). The plain and ordinary meaning of the word “capability” means, among other things, “ability.” See Capability, Merriam-Webster.com, https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/capability; Capability OED Online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27353?redirectedFrom=capability&. Thus, 3 Appeal 2016-007875 Application 14/274,040 a “node network capability” encompasses an ability of a node network. The power of Evan’s node network to either filter or queue excessive queries is clearly an “ability” of a node network. The Examiner’s construction is consistent with the claims and the written description. Both the claims and the written description indicate the term “node network capability” includes certain abilities such as “multi channel capability,” “Quality of Service (QoS) capability,” and “QoS priority,” but neither source limits the term to these abilities. See, e.g., App. Br. 9 (claim 1 reciting “the node network capability includes at least one of multi-channel capability, Quality of Service (QoS) capability, and QoS priority” (emphasis added)); Spec. 112 (“a node network capability (e.g., multi-channel capability or QoS capability/priority)” (emphasis added)). These disclosures indicate the broadest reasonable interpretation of “node network capability” includes not only the identified abilities but also other, unspecified abilities of a node network. The ability of Evan’s node network to either filter or queue queries does not teach away from the claimed invention as argued by Appellants. Claim 9 recites in relevant part “expanding querying to a second node in the network using a node network capability.” The cited portions of Evans do not require stopping or reducing the claimed “expanding querying” but instead simply disclose a mechanism for handling excessive queries. See Evans 4:53—64. Although the disclosed mechanism may “filter the queries from” a node such that “only a desired number of queries per second are multicast” to other nodes, id. at 4:57—59, that does not preclude nodes from receiving additional queries. Indeed, Evan’s invention concerns query propagation, not limiting query expansion. See id. at 1:7—9 (“The present 4 Appeal 2016-007875 Application 14/274,040 invention relates to ... a query propagation scheme for a P2P network.”). Moreover, the cited portions of Evans disclose that instead of filtering queries, Evan’s invention may simply “queue the queries . . . and multicast the queries to the other . . . nodes at a desired rate.” Id. at 4:61—63. Finally, the Examiner explained why Evan’s mechanism for handling excessive queries would improve query expansion: the mechanism avoids the problems caused by system congestion. See Ans. 6 (“By use of a permissible number of queries per second in a network/system, congestion of the network/system is reduced/limited or avoided altogether and thus transmission of a query/queries is not negatively affected.”). Although Appellants contends this rationale “is not in evidence” and “is not why Evans uses its filter,” Reply Br. 3—4, the Examiner was not limited to the express teachings of the art when determining if it would have been obvious to combine the cited art in the claimed manner. Instead, the Examiner was free to rely on the “logic, judgment, and common sense available to the person of ordinary skill that do not necessarily require explication in any reference or expert opinion.” Perfect Web Techs., Inc. v. InfoUSA, Inc., 587 F.3d 1324, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2009). See also KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (explaining that an obviousness “analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ.”). For the above reasons, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 9. Because Appellants have not presented separate, persuasive patentability arguments for claim 13, we also sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 13. 5 Appeal 2016-007875 Application 14/274,040 DECISION For the above reasons, we affirm the rejection of claims 9 and 13. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation