Ex Parte Tjandra et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 31, 201713723792 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 31, 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. 13/723,792 12/21/2012 PAULA TJANDRA PATCM15635-US-PRI 1336 22917 7590 02/02/2017 MOTOROLA SOLUTIONS, INC. IP Law Docketing 500 W. Monroe 43rd Floor Chicago, IL 60661 EXAMINER NOWLIN, ERIC ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2474 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/02/2017 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): U S Adocketing @ motorolasolutions. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte PAULA TJANDRA and STEPHEN S. GILBERT Appeal 2016-001442 Application 13/723,792 Technology Center 2400 Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and JON M. JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judges. SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1—18, which are all the claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Motorola Solutions, Inc. (App. Br. 2). Appeal 2016-001442 Application 13/723,792 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants’ invention relates to scheduling of bearers in a wireless communication system (Spec. 1:5—6). Exemplary claim 1 under appeal reads as follows: 1. A method for admission control in an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing communication system, the method comprising: receiving a bearer request associated with a user equipment (UE); determining a number of bearers currently allocated to the UE, wherein the UE is limited to a maximum number of bearers; when the UE currently is allocated its maximum number of bearers: determining a priority associated with the bearer request; comparing the determined priority to a priority associated with each bearer currently allocated to UE to produce one or more comparisons; and based on the one or more comparisons, determining whether to preempt a currently allocated bearer to admit the requested bearer. REFERENCES and REJECTION Claims 1—18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Tine et al. (US 2012/0100879 Al; published Apr. 26, 2012) and 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project, Technical Specification 36.413, vl0.3.0, 2-254 (Sept. 2011)) (See Final Act. 10-22). 2 Appeal 2016-001442 Application 13/723,792 ANALYSIS Independent Claims 1 and 9 First Issue — The Tine Reference Appellants contend Tine’s allocating, rescinding, and reinstating of bearers based upon the cumulative load on the system does not teach a bearer preemption that is triggered by a receipt of a bearer request and a determination that a particular subscriber device is currently allocated its maximum number of bearers (App. Br. 8—10; Reply Br. 5—6). Appellants argue Tine’s determination of network capacity is not the same as determining that an individual subscriber device has maxed out its bearer allocation, and Tine’s bearer reinstatement when network conditions have improved sufficiently to admit that bearer does not teach preemption in order to reinstate (Reply Br. 6). Appellants’ contention that Tine does not teach an individual subscriber device is allocated its maximum number of bearers is not commensurate with the scope of the claims, which do not require an “individual subscriber device.” See In re Self 671 F.2d 1344, 1348 (CCPA 1982) (stating that limitations not appearing in the claims cannot be relied upon for patentability). Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 1184 (Fed. Cir. 1993). The broadest reasonable interpretation of “a user equipment,” consistent with Appellants’ disclosure, does not preclude Tine’s group of user equipment that receives broadcast or multicast traffic (see Final Act. 10—11 (citing Tine 124)). See In re Am. Acad, of Sci. Tech Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (“[T]he PTO is obligated to give claims their 3 Appeal 2016-001442 Application 13/723,792 broadest reasonable interpretation during examination”). Therefore, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that Tine teaches allocating the maximum number of bearers available to a group of user equipment (Final Act. 10-11; Ans. 3^4 (citing Tine 24 and 34: “Please note that the desired number of bearers versus the allocated number of bearers may not be equal, dependent on network capacity at the time the user plane reservation request is processed”)), receiving a request to allocate a bearer for user plane data, and determining, based on priority of the currently assigned bearers, whether to preempt a lower priority bearer of one user plane data to admit that bearer for another user plane data request within the user equipment group (Ans. 3— 4 (citing Tine 30—31: “Other secondary, tertiary, and lower priority bearers may be marked as being vulnerable to preemption (i.e. [,] indicating that the first bearers of other user plane data may preempt this bearer, if necessary)”)). Second Issue — The 3 GPP Reference Appellants contend the 3GPP technical specification does not teach determining that the user equipment is allocated its maximum number of bearers, and does not teach preempting of bearers already allocated to the user equipment in order to allocate other bearers to the user equipment (App. Br. 10). The Examiner properly relies on In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981) and In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (Ans. 5), and states that nonobviousness cannot be established by attacking the 3GPP reference individually when the rejection is predicated upon a combination of prior art disclosures {id.). As discussed supra, we agree that Tine teaches preempting of bearers already allocated to the user 4 Appeal 2016-001442 Application 13/723,792 equipment in order to allocate other bearers to the user equipment (see Final Act. 10—11; Ans. 3—4), and we further agree with the Examiner’s finding that the 3 GPP technical specification teaches the number of bearers that can be allocated to user equipment in a 3 GPP network is limited to a maximum number of bearers (Final Act. 11—12 (citing 3GPP p. 72)). Third Issue — The Combination of Tine and 3 GPP Appellants contend the combination of Tine and 3GPP is improper, because Tine solves the problem of system congestion by reducing a number of overall bearers or bearer bit rates, and there is no problem suggested by Tine that would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to use 3GPP to attempt to formulate a solution (App. Br. 11; Reply Br. 6—7). We are unpersuaded of error, and agree with the Examiner’s finding that Tine uses the 3GPP standard for the user equipment network (Ans. 6—7 (citing Tine 14)), therefore, a skilled artisan would have looked to the 3GPP technical specification to determine the maximum number of bearers allowed in the network of Tine while maintaining interoperability with the 3 GPP standard {id.). For the reasons stated above, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1 and 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Tine and 3GPP. Claims 4 and 12 Appellants contend Tine teaches a preemption trigger that is, itself, a determination that an air interface is congested, and, thus, Tine does not teach preemption of a bearer associated with a lower priority “even though 5 Appeal 2016-001442 Application 13/723,792 the air interface associated with the preempted bearer is not congested” (App. Br. 12; Reply Br. 7). We disagree with Appellants’ contention, and agree with the Examiner’s finding that Tine teaches preemption of a bearer associated with a lower priority based on quality of service (QoS) parameters other than bit rate (i.e., not based on congestion), such as packet loss rate, latency, and incident type (Final Act. 13 (citing Tine Tflf 24 and 38)). Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 4 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Tine and 3GPP. Remaining Claims No separate arguments are presented for the remaining dependent claims (see App. Br. 12), therefore, we sustain their rejection for the reasons stated with respect to independent claims 1 and 9. DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). 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