Ex Parte Venkitaraman

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Dec 13, 2010

10107861 (B.P.A.I. Dec. 13, 2010)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte NARAYANAN VENKITARAMAN
____________

Appeal 2009-006821
Application 10/107,861
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, MAHSHID D. SAADAT,
and THOMAS S. HAHN, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL1

1 The two month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304 or for filing a request for rehearing as
recited in 37 C.F.R. § 41.52, begins to run from the “MAIL DATE” (paper
delivery mode) or the “NOTIFICATION DATE” (electronic delivery mode)
shown on the PTOL-90A cover letter attached to this decision.
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Application 10/107,861

2
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1-13 and 22-29, which constitute all the claims pending in this
application. Claims 14-21 are cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm-in-part.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s invention relates to robust mobility management in a
network having a mobile node (MN), a mobility anchor point (MAP), a
correspondent node (CN1, CN2), a home agent (HA), and an access router
(AR1) and operating under a hierarchical protocol. The MN sends the
address of the MAP to the CN and sends the address (106, 108) of the MN
on the network of the AR to the HA and to the MAP. When failure of the
MAP occurs, the MN recovers from the failure by selecting a new MAP or
operating under a non-hierarchical protocol. Failure is detected by an
intermediate router or by a CN when messages fail to reach the MAP. The
MN detects failure of the MAP when messages unexpectedly arrive via the
HA. (Abstract.) Claim 1, which is illustrative of the invention, reads as
follows:
1. A method for robust mobility management in a network
having a mobile node, a mobility anchor point, a correspondent
node, a home agent and an access router and operating under a
hierarchical protocol, said method comprising:
the mobile node sending an address belonging to the
mobility anchor point to the correspondent node;
the mobile node sending an address of the mobile node
on a network of the access router to the home agent;
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the mobile node sending the address of the mobile node
on the network of the access router to the mobility anchor point;
and
detecting failure of the mobility anchor point.

The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims:
Leung US 6,195,705 B1 Feb. 27, 2001
El-Malki US 6,947,401 B2 Sep. 20, 2005
Claims 1-7, 11-13, 22, and 23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as obvious over El-Malki.
Claims 8-10 and 24-29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
obvious over El-Malki in view of Leung.
Rather than repeat the arguments here, we make reference to the
Briefs (Appeal Brief filed Nov. 11, 2007; Reply Brief filed Apr. 28, 2008)
and the Answer (mailed Feb. 26, 2008) for the respective positions of
Appellant and the Examiner. Only those arguments actually made by
Appellant have been considered in this decision. Arguments that Appellant
did not make in the Briefs have not been considered and are deemed to be
waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).

ISSUES
Claims 1, 22, and 26 are independent claims. The Examiner’s
grounds for rejection of, and Appellant’s arguments for the patentability of,
claim 22 are substantially the same as for claim 1. The patentability of claim
26 is argued separately. The arguments for the patentability of the
dependent claims 2-13, 23-25, and 27-29 rely on the arguments made for the
claims from which they depend, providing no additional substantive
arguments.
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Therefore, we select claims 1 and 26 as the representative claims,
pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). The pivotal
issues are:
1. Would it have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to
modify the mobile node address reporting scheme of the hierarchical
mobility management method of El-Malki’s invention with features selected
from the non-hierarchical mobility management methods described by El-
Malki as background prior art to arrive at the method recited in claim 1?
2. Does Leung disclose or suggest “the intermediate router
determining if the information packet is successfully transmitted to the
mobility anchor point; and if the information packet is not successfully
transmitted to the mobility anchor point, transmitting the information packet
to a next address in a routing header in the information packet,” as recited in
claim 26?

FINDINGS OF FACT (FF)
1. El-Malki discloses a hierarchical mobility management method
in which a roaming MN sends an on-link care-of address (LCOA) derived
from the AR, to which it is currently connected, to a MAP (col. 5, ll. 26-34).
2. El-Malki discloses a hierarchical mobility management method
in which a roaming MN sends a regional care-of address (RCOA) derived
from the MAP to its HA and to each CN with which it communicates (Fig.
3; col. 5, ll. 35-40).
3. El-Malki discloses a prior art non-hierarchical mobility
management method in which a roaming MN sends its care-of address
derived from the AR network to which it is currently connected (analogous
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to LCOA) to its HA and to each CN with which it communicates (Fig. 2;
col. 2, ll. 47-52).

PRINCIPLES OF LAW
“The combination of familiar elements according to known methods
is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.”
KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007). “If a person of
ordinary skill can implement a predictable variation, § 103 likely bars its
patentability.” Id. at 417.

ANALYSIS
Claim 1
The Examiner asserts that it would have been obvious to modify El-
Malki’s hierarchical mobility management method, in which the roaming
MN transmits only its MAP derived care-of address (i.e., “MAP-Addr”) to
the HA and CNs (FF 2), by adopting a portion of the non-hierarchical
mobility management method of El-Malki’s background art (see FF 3), so
that the roaming MN transmits its AR network derived care-of address (i.e.,
“CMN_Addr”) to its HA (Ans. 3-4, 16-17).
Appellant contends El-Malki fails to disclose transmitting the
CMN_Addr (El-Malki’s LCOA) to the HA under a hierarchical protocol as
claimed (App. Br. 10-11). Appellant further contends that El-Malki teaches
away from such a combination, which requires using two care-of addresses
transmitted to the HA and/or CNs, because every embodiment of El-Malki,
whether in the background art or in the disclosed invention, teaches using a
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single care-of address transmitted to both the HA and CNs (App. Br. 11-13;
Reply Br. 5-7).
We agree with the Examiner. Appellant’s claimed invention does
nothing more than substitute one familiar element from a known non-
hierarchical method, the CMN_Addr (FF 3), for another, the MAP_Addr
(El-Malki’s RCOA) (FF 2), as the care-of address which the roaming MN
reports to the HA in a hierarchical method. The substitution as claimed
involves a familiar element which is a predictable variation within the
knowledge of a skilled artisan (see KSR, 550 U.S. at 417) and yields no more
than predictable results (see id. at 416).
We also find Appellant’s argument that El-Malki teaches away from
the substitution to be unpersuasive because we find nothing in El- Malki that
teaches or suggests a disadvantage of such a substitution and also because
El-Malki’s hierarchical system MN utilizes an additional care-of address
(CMN_Addr) for reporting its location to the MAP (FF 1). Accordingly, we
conclude that the Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-13 and 22-25.
Claim 26
The Examiner cites Leung at column 1, lines 6-10, column 4, lines 17-
39, and column 21, lines 60-61, as disclosing the limitations of claim 26
missing from the disclosure of El-Malki, i.e., “the intermediate router
determining if the information packet is successfully transmitted to the
mobility anchor point; and if the information packet is not successfully
transmitted to the mobility anchor point, transmitting the information packet
to a next address in a routing header in the information packet” (Ans. 13-14,
17-18). Appellant contends that the recited limitations, and particularly the
limitation of “if the information packet is not successfully transmitted to the
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mobility anchor point, transmitting the information packet to a next address
in a routing header in the information packet,” is not disclosed by Leung
(App. Br. 15-16; Reply Br. 7).
We agree with Appellant. Although the passages of Leung cited by
the Examiner, and, indeed, Leung’s overall disclosure (see App. Br. 15-17),
are directed to mobility agent standby methods, we find no disclosure or
suggestion of a standby method meeting the above-identified limitations of
claim 26. Therefore, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 26 as well as
claims 27-29 dependant thereon.

ORDER
The decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1-13 and 22-25 is
affirmed. The decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 26-29 is reversed.
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)(v).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART

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