10741304 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 25, 2013)

Ex Parte Vandanapu et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 25, 2013

10741304 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 25, 2013)

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. 10/741,304 12/18/2003 Naveen Kumar Vandanapu 42P17107 4359 8791 7590 03/25/2013 BLAKELY SOKOLOFF TAYLOR & ZAFMAN 1279 Oakmead Parkway Sunnyvale, CA 94085-4040 EXAMINER JEANGLAUDE, JEAN BRUNER ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2819 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/25/2013 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte NAVEEN KUMAR VANDANAPU and SRINIVAS REDDY BHAVANAM ____________________ Appeal 2010-009173 Application 10/741,304 Technology Center 2800 ____________________ Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, JUSTIN BUSCH, and GEORGIANNA W. BRADEN, Administrative Patent Judges. BUSCH, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2010-009173 Application 10/741,304 2 Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1, 2, 4-7, and 9-20. Claims 3 and 8 have been indicated as containing allowable subject matter. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. Introduction According to Appellants, the invention relates to a bit allocation for encoding starting track information in order to reduce the number of bits required per frame. Spec. § Abstract. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Exemplary Claim Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method for encoding data, comprising: encoding a first and a second subframe of a frame of data, each subframe having multiple tracks; identifying one of the multiple tracks for each subframe; and generating a track indicator to indicate to a decoder the identified track for both subframes. References Benno US 6,728,669 B1 Apr. 27, 2004 Adil Benyassine et al., ITU-T Recommendation G.729 Annex B: A Silence Compression Scheme for Use with G.729 Optimized for V.70 Digital Appeal 2010-009173 Application 10/741,304 3 Simultaneous Voice and Data Applications, IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 64-73, September 1997 (hereinafter “Benyassine”). Rejections Claims 1, 4, 6, 7, and 9-20 1 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as anticipated by Benno. Ans. 3-11. Claim 5 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious in view of Benno and Benyassine. Ans. 12. Claim 2 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious in view of Benno. Ans. 12-13. ISSUE Appellants argue that Benno does not disclose a “track indicator,” as recited in the claims. App. Br. 4-5. 2 Appellants assert that neither the pulse positions identified by the Examiner nor any other matter in Benno discloses this limitation. App. Br. 4. Issue: Does Benno disclose “generating a track indicator to indicate to a decoder the identified track for both subframes,” as recited in claim 1 and similarly recited in independent claims 9, 13, and 17? 1 The Examiner omits claim 16 when identifying which claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e). Ans. 3; Final Office Action mailed August, 1, 2005 (“FOA”), p. 3. However, the Examiner later includes claim 16 when also explaining the rejection of claims 7, 12, and 20. Ans. 11; FOA 9. Therefore, we will treat claim 16 as included in the rejection. 2 All references to Appellants’ Brief (abbreviated as App. Br.) herein are references to Appellants’ Appeal Brief, filed on November 20, 2006. Appeal 2010-009173 Application 10/741,304 4 ANALYSIS The Examiner points to the identification of pulse positions in Benno as meeting the limitation of the recited “track indicator.” Ans. 14. Specifically, the Examiner finds that “[t]he positions of the pulses are the track indicators (see Benno, col. 2, lines 29 – 44).” Ans. 15. The Examiner reproduces the pulse position lookup tables of Benno, pointing to the “TRACK” column and the “POSITION” row and further identifying a first and second track (labeled as “Track 1” and “Track 2” by the Examiner) in support of this finding. Ans. 16. The Examiner then states that the “track positions are or reads on the track indicators.” Ans. 14, 16. Appellants argue that the Examiner’s interpretation of the pulse positions (the positions of the pulse within a track) misinterprets Benno. App. Br. 4. Appellants argue that the lookup tables referenced by the Examiner “display how the pulses are distributed” and that Benno “merely discusses the use of lookup tables to determine where pulse positions are located within a track.” App. Br. 4; see Reply 2. We agree with Appellants that the location of the pulse positions within a track of Benno, which are what the Examiner identifies as “track positions,” are not the same as the recited “track indicators.” The differences are seen when reviewing the claims in light of Appellants’ Specification. Appellants’ Specification states that a “track indicator is sent at the beginning of each subframe, using 3 bits each to indicate one of the five tracks.” Spec. ¶ 7. The Specification also states that “the encoder should include an indication of which track(s) include extra pulse(s) in the frame sent to the decoder . . . The track indicator may be a set of bits sent with each subframe indicating which track in the subframe is the starting track.” Spec. Appeal 2010-009173 Application 10/741,304 5 ¶ 18. Figures 2A and 2B of Appellants’ Specification show the difference between the prior art and what Appellants view as their invention. Specifically, Figure 2A shows that the prior art includes a “track indicator” for each subframe, whereas Figure 2B (Appellants’ invention) uses a single “joint track indicator” for each frame. See also Spec. ¶¶ 24-26. Importantly, as evident from Figures 2A and 2B, the “body” of each subframe includes the encoded information regarding pulse positions, whereas the “track indicator(s)” include an identification of a certain track, such as a first track that includes extra pulse locations. See Spec. ¶ 24 (emphasis added) (“there is a track indicator 0 211 for subframe 210 to encode the information necessary to indicate to a decoder an identified track”); see also Spec. ¶¶19-20. Thus, in light of Appellants’ Specification, Benno’s identification of position of pulses within a track does not meet the recited “track indicator.” Therefore, we reverse the rejection of independent claims 1, 9, 13, and 17, as well as the claims which depend therefrom. DECISION For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 2, 4-7, and 9-20 is reversed. REVERSED ELD