Ex Parte Wingard et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 29, 2016

12144987 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 29, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
12/144,987 06/24/2008 Drew E. Wingard
34284 7590 03/02/2016
Rutan & Tucker, LLP
611 ANTON BL VD
SUITE 1400
COST A MESA, CA 92626
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
026517-0053P 2558
EXAMINER
LU,KEVINX
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2199
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/02/2016 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):
patents@rutan.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte DREW E. WINGARD, CHIEN-CHUN CHOU,
STEPHEN W. HAMILTON, IAN ANDREW SW ARBRICK,
and VIDA V AKILOTOJAR
Appeal2013-010740
Application 12/144,987
Technology Center 2100
Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and
ERIC S. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judges.
HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner's final decision rejecting claims 1---6, 8-14, and 16-20. The
Examiner indicates claims 7 and 15 include allowable subject matter. (App.
Br. 4.) 1 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 We refer to Appellants' Specification ("Spec.") filed June 24, 2008
(claiming benefit of US 60/946,096 filed June 25, 2007); Appeal Brief
("App. Br.") filed April 8, 2013; and Reply Brief ("Reply Br.") filed
September 5, 2013. We also refer to the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.")
mailed July 5, 2013, and Final Office Action (Final Rejection) ("Final Act.")
mailed December 7, 2012.
Appeal2013-010740
Application 12/144,987
Appellants 'Invention
The invention at issue on appeal concerns integrated circuits utilizing
an interconnect implementing internal controls to maintain transaction path
order to multiple targets. In particular the invention concerns apparatus,
machine-readable media, integrated circuits, and methods for integrated
circuits to communicate transactions between one or more initiator
Intellectual Property (IP) cores and multiple target IP cores coupled through
an interconnect. The interconnect implements logic distributed over the
interconnect which communicates the transactions while maintaining an
expected execution order within the transactions. (Spec. i-fi-13, 7-8;
Abstract.)
Illustrative Claim
Independent claim 1, reproduced below with the key disputed
limitations emphasized, further illustrates the invention:
1. An interconnect, the interconnect configured to allow for
an integrated circuit to communicate transactions between one
or more initiator Intellectual Property (IP) cores and multiple
target IP cores coupled to the interconnect, wherein the
interconnect implements logic distributed over the interconnect
and configured to support multiple transactions issued from a
first initiator IP core to the multiple target IP cores while
maintaining an expected execution order within the
transactions, wherein the logic supports a second transaction to
be issued from the first initiator IP core to a second target IP
core before a first transaction issued from the first initiator IP
core to a first target IP core has completed while ensuring that
the first transaction completes before the second transaction
completes, where the logic does not include any reorder
buffering, and while ensuring the expected execution order
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Application 12/144,987
within the first transaction and second transaction are
maintained.
Rejections on Appeal
1. The Examiner rejects claims 1, 2, 4, and 12 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kok (US 2007/0110052 Al, pub. May
17, 2007).
2. The Examiner rejects claims 3 and 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Kok, Douady (US 7,574,629 B2, iss. Aug. 11,
2009 (filed Feb. 9, 2005)), and Cho (US 6,877,076 Bl, iss. Apr. 5, 2005).
3. The Examiner rejects claims 5, 14, and 19 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kok, Douady, Cho, and MacLaren (US
6,487,621 Bl, iss. Nov. 26, 2002).
4. The Examiner rejects claims 6, 16, 17, and 20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kok, Douady, Cho, MacLaren, and
Weber (US 7,194,561 B2, iss. Mar. 20, 2007).
5. The Examiner rejects claims 9 and 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Kok and Weber.
6. The Examiner rejects claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Kok, Douady, Cho, and Adams (US 2004/0010652
Al, pub. Jan. 15, 2004).
7. The Examiner rejects claim 13 under 3 5 U.S. C. § 10 3 (a) as
being unpatentable over Kok and Tabatabaei (US 7,598,726 B2, iss. Oct. 6,
2009 (filed Aug. 24, 2006)).
8. The Examiner rejects claim 18 under 3 5 U.S. C. § 10 3 (a) as
being unpatentable over Kok, Douady, Cho, MacLaren, and Tabatabaei.
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Appeal2013-010740
Application 12/144,987
ISSUE
Based upon our review of the administrative record, Appellants'
contentions, and the Examiner's findings and conclusions, the pivotal issue
before us follows:
Does the Examiner err in concluding that Kok would have taught or
suggested:
[L ]ogic support[ing] a second transaction to be issued
from the first initiator IP core to a second target IP core before a
first transaction issued from the first initiator IP core to a first
target IP core has completed while ensuring that the first
transaction completes before the second transaction completes,
(hereinafter "disputed limitations") within the meaning of Appellants' claim
1 and the commensurate limitations of claims 12, 14, and 19?
ANALYSIS
The Examiner applies the same reasoning for rejecting independent
claim 1 (Final Act. 3-5; Ans. 3-13) and independent claims 14 and 19 (Final
Act. 9-10; Ans. 15-19). The Examiner rejects representative claim 1 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious in view of Kok. (Final Act. 3-5.)
Appellants contend that Kok does not teach or suggest the disputed features
of representative claim I. (App. Br. 9-18; Reply Br. 6-31.) Essentially,
Appellants contend, inter alia, that Kok fails to teach multiple transactions
issued to multiple target IP cores. (Id.) The entire dispute hedges upon the
Examiner's interpretation of the recited IP cores.
We agree with Appellants that Kok does not teach issuing a second
transaction from an initiator IP core to a second target IP core while ensuring
that a first transaction to a first target IP core completes before the second
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Application 12/144,987
transaction completes and, in particular, that Kok does not teach multiple IP
cores as required by the claim. (See App. Br. 9-18; Reply Br. 6-31 ). As
explained by Appellants, an IP core has "self-contained designed
functionality" (Spec. i-f 15) and target IP cores are discrete memory devices
(App. Br. 14). (See App. Br. 14--18; Reply Br. 20-22.) We agree with
Appellants that the Examiner's interpretation of an IP core conflates IP cores
with Appellants' separately described memory channel -a different
embodiment of Appellants' invention. (Id.) While Appellants' described
memory channels may include IP cores, nothing in Appellants' Specification
describes IP cores as memory channels or, in particular, discrete memory
banks (within a DRAM). (See Spec. i-fi-115, 20, 25.) The Examiner relies on
Kok's individual DRAM memory banks to meet Appellants' recited second
target IP core - "The discrete memory banks are the target IP cores" (Ans.
4). (See Ans. 3--4, 8-10; Final Act. 3-5 (citing Kok Fig. 4).)
Consequently, we are constrained by the record before us to find that
the Examiner erred in concluding Kok teaches the disputed limitations of
Appellants' claim 1. 2 Claims 2---6 and 8-13 depend on claim 1.
Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner's obviousness rejections of
claims 1---6 and 8-13.
With respect to the obviousness rejections of independent claims 14
and 19 and dependent claims 16-18 and 20, rejected as obvious over Kok as
2 Upon further prosecution, we invite the Examiner to consider whether the
limitations of claim 1 implicate 35 U.S.C. § 112, sixth paragraph as reciting
purely functional limitations and 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph as not
providing sufficient structure for such purely functional limitations (see
Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1349 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (en
bane in part)).
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Appeal2013-010740
Application 12/144,987
well as Douady, Cho, MacLaren, Weber, and/or Tabatabaei, we reverse the
Examiner's obviousness rejections for the same reasons set forth with
respect to claim 1 (supra).
Accordingly, we agree with Appellants that the Examiner erred, as the
Examiner's rejection relies on an overly broad definition for the target IP
cores to reject claims 1---6, 8-14, and 16-20 as being obvious in view of
Kok.
CONCLUSION
Appellants have shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-
6, 8-14, and 16-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner's rejections of claims 1-6, 8-14, and 16-20.
REVERSED
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