Ex Parte Vijayasankar et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 27, 201614540111 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 27, 2016) 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. 14/540,111 11/13/2014 KUMARAN VIJAYASANKAR TI-71023A 4180 23494 7590 12/29/2016 TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED P O BOX 655474, M/S 3999 DALLAS, TX 75265 EXAMINER MARCELO, MELVIN C ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2463 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/29/2016 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): uspto@ti.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte KUMARAN VIJAYASANKAR, RAMANUJA VEDANTHAM, ANAND G. DABAK, TARKESH PANDE, and IL HAN KIM1 Appeal 2016-003841 Application 14/540,111 Technology Center 2400 Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, MICHAEL M. BARRY, and PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 24-46, which are all of the claimed pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellants’ Brief (Br.) identifies the real party in interest as Texas Instruments Incorporated. Br. 3. Appeal 2016-003841 Application 14/540, 111 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The claims are directed to flow control in powerline communications (“PLC”). Claim 24, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 24. A method of powerline communications in a powerline communications (PLC) network including a first PLC device and at least a second PLC device, comprising: said first PLC device transmitting a data frame to second PLC device over a PLC channel, wherein said second PLC device has a data buffer for storing received information; said second PLC device running a flow control algorithm which determines a current congestion condition or a projected congestion condition of said data buffer based on at least one congestion parameter, said current congestion condition and said projected congestion condition including nearly congested and fully congested; wherein when said current projected congestion condition or said projected congestion condition is either said nearly congested or said fully congested: said second PLC device transmitting a BUSY comprising frame over said PLC channel to at least said first PLC device, and said first PLC device deferring transmitting of any frames to second PLC device for a congestion clearing wait time. App. Br. 19 (Claims App’x). RELERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Sugawara US 2010/0321168 A1 Dec. 23, 2010 Hirota US 2011/0080834 A1 Apr. 7, 2011 REJECTIONS Claims 24, 25, 29, 35—38, 40-44, and 46 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hirota and Sugawara. 2 Appeal 2016-003841 Application 14/540, 111 Claims 24-46 stand rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1—19 ofU.S. Patent No. 8,913,495 B2, issued Dec. 16, 2014. ANALYSIS Double Patenting Rejection Appellants do not present any arguments with respect to the nonstatutory, obviousness-type double patenting rejection of claims 1—18. Arguments not made are considered waived. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). Therefore, we sustain this ground of rejection. Obviousness Rejection We have considered the findings and conclusions of the Examiner set forth in the Final Office Action (Final Act. 2—10) and the Answer (Ans. 2—3) in light of the arguments presented in Appellants’ Brief (Br. 10—17).2 We agree with, and adopt as our own, the findings of the Examiner. We provide the following additional discussion for emphasis. Appellants generally argue the Examiner’s obviousness rejection is unsupported because Hirota and Sugawara are not properly combinable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Appellants present three arguments. First, Appellants argue the Examiner has failed to resolve the level of ordinary skill in the art. Br. 14—15. We do not find this argument persuasive because, as found by the Examiner in the Answer, the level of skill is a skilled artisan familiar with IEEE LAN interface standards. Ans. 2. Moreover, this argument is unpersuasive because, in the absence of other evidence addressing the level of skill, it is presumed to be represented by the references themselves. See, e.g., In re Oelrich, 579 F.2d 86, 91 (CCPA 2 Appellants did not file a Reply Brief. 3 Appeal 2016-003841 Application 14/540, 111 1978) (“the PTO usually must evaluate both the scope and content of the prior art and the level of ordinary skill solely on the cold words of the literature”); see also In re GPACInc., 57 F.3d 1573, 1579—80 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (Board did not err in adopting the approach that the level of skill in the art was best determined by the references of record). Appellants’ second argument asserts that Hirota and Sugawara are not properly combinable because Hirota is directed to a traditional local area network (LAN) environment and Sugawara is directed to a PLC system. Appellants support this argument by submitting a passage from what is purported to be a section of “IEEE Std 1901—2010 [which] was the PowerLine Communication standard (PLC) draft being considered by one of ordinary [skill] in the art.” Br. 14—15. We are unpersuaded by this argument for two reasons. First, we find the submitted passage in what purports to be Section 4.2 of the PLC standard to be of limited evidentiary value because Appellants provide only a very small portion of the document and have not otherwise submitted a complete copy of the document in an evidence appendix or in a properly-submitted Information Disclosure Statement. Even if we ignore the evidentiary issues, we are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument. Although the submitted passage states that PLC is “different from traditional wired LANs,” the differences between PLC and traditional wired LANs described do not relate to how flow control would be implemented. Flow control involves controlling the transmission of data to nodes in the network. See Spec. 14. Rather, the differences described relate to the physical properties of the powerline medium. Nothing in the submitted passage describes any reason why traffic management principles from the LAN context would be inapplicable in a PLC network. Moreover, 4 Appeal 2016-003841 Application 14/540, 111 we agree with the Examiner’s finding that the submitted passage expressly indicates that a network employing PLC stations is properly considered a local area network, and that PLC networks operate within LAN environments. Ans. 3. Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the prior art teaches away from the combination of Hirota and Sugawara. In advancing their third argument, Appellants contend: The Examiner has failed to show how the combination would dynamically sense the current congestion condition of a data buffer or determine the projected congestion level given the node's current congesting level and the node's scheduled net frame flux in a noisy system not an [sic] LAN system. Br. 17. It is not clear to us whether this argument is directed to an alleged inoperability of the combination, or if it is asserting that Hirota is non- analogous art. In either case, this argument is not persuasive because it is not supported by the disclosure of either the cited references or the submitted passage. Rather, the evidence in the record suggests a close interrelatedness between LAN networking and PLC networks. Here, the Examiner found, and we agree, the level of skill in the art to be a person familiar with the relevant IEEE networking standards applicable to the technologies described in the cited documents. Ans. 3. As such, and in the absence of sufficient evidence to the contrary, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that an ordinarily skilled artisan would have been readily able to implement Hirota’s buffer congestion technique in the context of a PLC system operating in a LAN environment. 5 Appeal 2016-003841 Application 14/540, 111 Summary Because Appellants did not contest the Examiner’s rejection of the claims based on nonstatutory obvious-type double-patenting, we affirm that rejection pro forma. Furthermore, Appellants have not persuaded us of Examiner error with respect to the rejections made under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Accordingly, we sustain those rejections.3 DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 24, 25, 29, 35—38, 40-44, and 46 under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) is affirmed. The Examiner’s rejection of claims 24-46 on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting is affirmed pro forma. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 3 Appellants have presented no arguments regarding any particular claims. As such, all pending claims rejected as unpatentable over Hirota and Sugawara fall together. 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation