Ex Parte Reunamaki et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 21, 2014

11071677 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 21, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
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Ex parte JUKKA REUNAMAKI and JUHA SALOKANNEL
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Appeal 2011-011591
Application 11/071,677
Technology Center 2600
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Before JOHN A. JEFFERY, STEPHEN C. SIU, and ERIC B. CHEN,
Administrative Patent Judges.

JEFFERY, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
decision to reject claims 1-33. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants’ invention reserves a portion of a medium to transmit
wireless signals in a format different from that used in a different network,
where the reservation ensures that respective wireless signals do not
interfere with each other. In one implementation, a reservation signal is sent
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to devices in one network indicating that reservation of a portion of the
medium has already been established to prevent negotiating the reservation
in that network. See generally Abstract; Spec. ¶¶ 0049-51; Fig. 3. Claim 1
is illustrative:
1. A method, comprising:
(a) exchanging by a wireless device, wireless signals in a
first wireless communications network, in a first format
associated with the first wireless communications network via a
transmission medium, wherein all devices in the first network
share control by transmitting and receiving beacons within the
wireless network to at least negotiate reserving portions of the
transmission medium;
(b) reserving by the wireless device, a portion of the
transmission medium for the transmission of wireless signals in
a second format associated with a second wireless network, the
reservation to ensure that wireless signals transmitted in the
second format do not interfere with transmissions in the first
format, the reservation being accomplished by transmitting a
reservation signal in the first format to a plurality of devices in
the first network, which indicates to the plurality of devices that
the reservation of the portion of the medium has already been
established by the wireless device to prevent negotiation of the
reservation in the first network;
(c) transmitting by the wireless device, one or more
wireless wake-up/activation signals in the second network, in
the second format to a remote wireless communications device,
the one or more signals in the second format for waking
up/activating a radio/radio interface of the remote device to join
the first network; and
(d) receiving by the wireless device, a beacon from the
remote wireless device, including control information to further
share control with all devices in the first wireless network.

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THE REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejected claims 1-4, 6, 13-16, 20, 24-26, 29, and 31-33
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Appellants’ admitted prior art
(“AAPA”), Sugaya (US 2003/0148767 A1; published Aug. 7, 2003), and
McCorkle (US 7,346,120 B2; issued Mar. 18, 2008; filed Dec. 13, 2002).
Ans. 4-8.1
The Examiner rejected claims 5, 17-19, and 30 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as obvious over AAPA, Sugaya, McCorkle, and Danon (US
2005/0249183 A1; published Nov. 10, 2005; filed Jan. 25, 2005). Ans. 8-9.
The Examiner rejected claims 7-12, 21-23, 27, and 28 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over AAPA, Sugaya, McCorkle, and Kim
(US 2005/0063331 A1; published Mar. 24, 2005; filed Sept. 20, 2004). Ans.
9-11.

THE REJECTION OVER AAPA, SUGAYA, AND MCCORKLE
The Examiner finds that Appellants’ Specification admits that
exchanging wireless signals in a first wireless communication network by a
wireless device, where all network devices share control by transmitting and
receiving beacons within the network to negotiate reserving portions of a
transmission medium, is known in the art. Ans. 4-5, 13-14 (citing Spec.
¶¶ 0002-04, 0007-08). The Examiner acknowledges that AAPA does not
explicitly reserve a portion of the medium to transmit wireless signals in a
second format associated with a second network by transmitting a

1 Throughout this opinion, we refer to (1) the Appeal Brief filed February
23, 2011 (“App. Br.”); (2) the Examiner’s Answer mailed May 12, 2011
(“Ans.”); and (3) the Reply Brief filed May 23, 2011 (“Reply Br.”).
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reservation signal in the first format to devices in the first network indicating
that the reservation has been established to prevent negotiating the
reservation, but cites Sugaya as teaching this feature. Ans. 5-6, 14-16, 18-
24. In view of these collective teachings, combined with McCorkle, which
is said to teach the recited wake-up/activation signal transmission, the
Examiner concludes that claim 1 would have been obvious. Ans. 4-7, 11-24.
Appellants argue that the cited prior art does not teach or suggest
transmitting a reservation signal to devices in a first network indicating that
a reservation has been established in a second format associated with a
second network to prevent negotiating the reservation in the first network, as
claimed. App. Br. 22-49; Reply Br. 2-4. According to Appellants, not only
does AAPA’s beacon-based, reservation-negotiation scheme fail to prevent
negotiation via a reservation signal as claimed, but Sugaya and McCorkle
are likewise deficient in this regard, for they both pertain to master-slave
arrangements that do not involve negotiation at all, let alone preventing such
negotiation. App. Br. 22-39, 41-46. Appellants add that combining the
slave devices of Sugaya or McCorkle with AAPA, as proposed by the
Examiner, would be inoperable to achieve the results of the claimed
invention due to the slaves’ inability to share control or negotiate for
reservations with other wireless devices. App. Br. 39-41, 47-49.

ISSUES
1. Under § 103, has the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 by
finding that AAPA, Sugaya, and McCorkle collectively would have taught
or suggested transmitting a reservation signal to plural devices in a first
network indicating that a reservation has been established in a second format
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associated with a second network to prevent negotiating the reservation in
the first network?
2. Is the Examiner’s combination of the cited references supported by
articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to justify the
Examiner’s obviousness conclusion?

ANALYSIS
On this record, we find no error in the Examiner’s obviousness
rejection of representative claim 1. First, there is no dispute that AAPA
teaches negotiating reservations among networked devices via beacons, and
that the devices recognize these beacons as indicating ongoing negotiations.
See App. Br. 32 (describing the negotiating functionality of conventional
MBOA2-capable devices using beacons); see also Ans. 14 (“MBOA
provides for the negotiation and reservation of portions of the transmission
medium through beacon communications.”).
The question, then, is whether it would have been obvious to provide
a reservation signal indicating to these devices that a reservation was
established in another format associated with a different network to prevent
negotiating the reservation in the first network. We see no error in the
Examiner’s reliance on Sugaya in this regard, and in particular, the
Examiner’s mapping the recited “reservation signal” to Sugaya’s (1)
utilization request 22 sent to a control station, and (2) resulting network
synchronization information 23 sent by that station to the other devices on
the network responsive to the request. Ans. 16 (noting that Sugaya teaches a

2 MBOA stands for “MultiBand Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
Alliance.” Spec. ¶ 0003.
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reservation request signal that is first sent to a control device (citing
numeral 22 in Figure 4), and then sent to plural devices in a first network
“informing of the reservation” (citing numeral 23)); see also Sugaya
¶¶ 0072-75.
Even assuming, without deciding, that the devices 1-6 that receive this
“reservation signal” from the master control station 7 in Sugaya are “slaves”
to that station as Appellants contend (App. Br. 34-38; Reply Br. 3-4), this
signal’s associated synchronization information nevertheless indicates to
receiving devices that a different communication system has been allocated
responsive to an associated request from a particular device. See Sugaya
¶ 0074; Figs. 1-4. We see no reason why such a signal-based notification
technique could not be applied to AAPA’s beacon-based reservation
negotiation scheme as the Examiner proposes, for such a modification would
predictably yield a system where the MBOA-capable devices would be
notified of an established “reservation” in connection with allocating a
different communication system responsive to a device’s request. Such a
notification would at least contribute to preventing negotiating that
reservation by the other devices, for this notification at least suggests that
such a negotiation would be futile in view of the already-established
reservation indicated by the received signal.
We emphasize claim 1’s “to prevent negotiation” limitation here, for
the claim does not recite an active prevention step, but rather that the
transmitted reservation signal’s indication of an already-established
reservation is to prevent negotiating the reservation in the first network—a
desired result that need not occur. In any event, we see no reason why
providing a reservation signal such as that disclosed by Sugaya in AAPA as
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the Examiner proposes would not at least contribute to achieving that desired
prevention result as noted above.
We reach this conclusion even assuming, without deciding, that
Sugaya’s system involves no negotiation due to a master-slave arrangement
as Appellants contend. As the Examiner indicates (Ans. 12-13), the
Examiner’s rejection is not based on bodily incorporating or physically
substituting Sugaya’s teachings into AAPA, but rather based on their
collective teachings. See Ans. 12-13; see also In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,
425 (CCPA 1981); In re Mouttet, 686 F.3d 1322, 1332 (Fed. Cir. 2012)
(“[A] determination of obviousness based on teachings from multiple
references does not require an actual, physical substitution of elements.”)
(citations omitted).
Nevertheless, even assuming, without deciding, that the combined
AAPA/Sugaya system requires a control device to receive requests from,
and transmit reservation signals to, other devices, nothing in the claim
precludes such a control device as the Examiner indicates. Ans. 16 (“[T]he
claim language does not limit the reservation request [from] being
transmitted to a control device prior to being sent to the plurality of
devices.”). Nor do we see any reason why such a control device could not
be provided in the AAPA system even assuming, without deciding, that at
least some of Sugaya’s devices immediately implement received scheduling
information to function as “slave” devices as Appellants contend. Reply Br.
4. Even assuming, without deciding, that all devices receiving this
information are so configured, that too would prevent negotiating that
particular reservation, namely by the automatic, immediate configuration
resulting from the established “reservation.” To the extent that Appellants
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contend that the proposed enhancement to AAPA would somehow destroy
its principle of operation or render it unsuitable for its intended purpose (see
App. Br. 39-41, 47-49; Reply Br. 4-6), we disagree. Not only have
Appellants failed to provide persuasive evidence on this record to prove such
unsuitability, nothing in the claim precludes providing at least a temporary
“master-slave” arrangement for certain devices under the particular
conditions recited in the claim, namely when reservations made in
connection with a different network.
Nor do we find error in the Examiner’s reliance on McCorkle for the
limited purpose for which the reference was cited, namely merely to show
that transmitting wireless wake-up activation signals to devices are known in
the art, and that providing such a feature in the AAPA/Sugaya system would
have been obvious. Ans. 6-7, 24. Such an enhancement predictably uses
prior art elements according to their established functions—an obvious
improvement. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007).
Appellants’ arguments regarding the cited references’ individual
shortcomings (App. Br. 27-28, 31-39, 41-44) are unpersuasive where, as
here, the obviousness rejection is based on the cited references’ collective
teachings. See Keller, 642 F.2d at 426. The Examiner’s combining the
teachings of the cited references is, therefore, supported by articulated
reasoning with some rational underpinning to justify the Examiner’s
obviousness conclusion.
Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in
rejecting representative claim 1, and claims 2-4, 6, 13-16, 20, 24-26, 29, and
31-33 not argued separately with particularity.

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THE REMAINING OBVIOUSNESS REJECTIONS
We also sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of (1) claims
claims 5, 17-19, and 30 over AAPA, Sugaya, McCorkle, and Danon, and (2)
claims 7-12, 21-23, 27, and 28 over AAPA, Sugaya, McCorkle, and Kim.
Ans. 8-11. Despite nominally arguing these claims separately, Appellants
reiterate similar arguments made in connection with claim 1 and allege that
the additional cited references fail to cure those purported deficiencies,
including transmitting the recited wake-up signal in a second network to
initiate joining the remote device to the first network. App. Br. 49-52. We
are not persuaded by Appellants’ arguments, however, for the reasons
previously discussed and by the Examiner. Ans. 8-11, 24-26.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-33 under § 103.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-33 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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