Ex Parte Xu et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 28, 201613603653 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 28, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 13/603,653 09/05/2012 34814 7590 03/30/2016 NXP-LARSON NEWMAN, LLP 6501 William Cannon Drive West Austin, TX 78735 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Zheng Xu 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. NM45535TH-Cl 8890 EXAMINER IQBAL, NADEEM ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2114 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/30/2016 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): ip.department.us@nxp.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ZHENG XU, SURAJ BHASKARAN, RICHARD G. COLLINS, and JASON T. NEARING Appeal2014-002695 Application 13/603,653 Technology Center 2100 Before JEFFREYS. SMITH, MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, and AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal2014-002695 Application 13/603,653 STATE~vfENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of claims 1-3 and 18-20. Claims 4--17 are indicated to be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. We have jurisdiction over the rejected claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). We affirm. THE INVENTION The claims are directed to generating a trace message in response to an event at an instruction pipeline of a data processing device. Abst. Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method, comprising: generating a first trace message at a data processing device in response to a first trace event; and in response to determining an amount of space used to store trace messages at a buffer is in a first relationship to a threshold amount, including a timestamp in the first trace message. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Edwards Swaine US 6,615,370 Bl US 2009/0125756 Al 2 Sept. 2, 2003 May 14, 2009 Appeal2014-002695 Application 13/603,653 REJECTION1 The Examiner rejected claims 1-3 and 18-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Swaine and Edwards. Ans. 2-5. APPELLANTS' CONTENTIONS 1. Edwards' disclosed responses to a full buffer condition do not include providing a timestamp in a trace message, as required by claim 1. App. Br. 4--5. 2. Because Swaine does not disclose an amount of space used to store trace messages among the events generating the disclosed timestamp, the combination of Swaine and Edwards fails to teach or suggest generating timestamps based on the amount of space used to store trace messages, as required by claim 1. App. Br. 5. 3. Edwards only discloses detecting when a buffer is approaching a full condition, i.e., is less than a threshold, instead of greater than a threshold amount as required by claim 3. App. Br. 6-7. 1 Appellants argue the rejection of claims 1 and 18 collectively, and the rejection of dependent claims 3 and 20 collectively. Separate patentability is not argued for claims 2 and 19. (Merely restating with respect to a second claim an argument previously presented with respect to a first claim is not an argument for separate patentability of the two claims.) Therefore, we decide the appeal of claims 1, 2, 18, and 19 based on claim 1 alone and the appeal of claims 3 and 20 based on claim 3 alone. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). 3 Appeal2014-002695 Application 13/603,653 ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellants' arguments that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants' conclusions. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 2-3) and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner's Answer in response to Appellants' Appeal Brief (Ans. 6-9) and concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. We highlight the following for emphasis. In connection with contention 1, Appellants argue the combination of Swaine and Edwards would not result in responding to buffer fullness with a trace message including a timestamp as required by claim 1 but, instead , would result in a system that discards trace messages and separately provides an indication to a processor when the buffer is full. App. Br. 5. The Examiner responds by finding Swaine teaches including a timing indication (timestamps) added to the stream of trace elements (trace messages), while Edwards teaches a debug module that provides an indication to a processor that the FIFO is approaching a full level, i.e., is within a finite number of storage locations from the full level of the FIFO. Ans. 7. Thus the combination of Swaine and Edwards teaches or suggests that determining an amount of space used to store trace messages at a buffer is in a first relationship to a threshold amount, as required by claims 1 and 18. Id. Appellants' contention is unpersuasive for lack of evidence or reasoning explaining why modifying Swaine to provide a trace message in response to a buffer condition as taught by Edwards would result in the 4 Appeal2014-002695 Application 13/603,653 omission of Swaine's time stamps from the resulting combination. At best, any such argument is improperly based on the failure of Edwards to teach a limitation for which the Examiner relies on Swaine, i.e., provision of a trace message including a time stamp, and is therefore unresponsive to the Examiner's findings. Furthermore, such attacks are unpersuasive because nonobviousness cannot be established by attacking the references individually when the rejection is predicated upon a combination of prior art disclosures. See In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Accordingly, Appellants' contention 1 is unpersuasive of Examiner error. Contention 2 is unpersuasive because, as with contention 1, Appellants' argument is an attack on the references individually instead of the combination, and it therefore fails to address the Examiner's findings. In particular, Appellants' argument that Swaine fails to teach a set of events leading to the generation of a timestamp including an amount of space used to store trace messages ignores the Examiner's finding that Edwards, not Swaine, teaches the argued buffer fullness event. Ans. 3. For the reasons discussed supra, Appellants' arguments in connection with the rejection of claim 1 are unpersuasive of Examiner error. Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of independent claim 1 and, for the same reasons, the rejection of independent claim 18 under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) over Swaine and Edwards, together with the rejection of dependent claims 2 and 19 which are not argued separately. In connection with contention 3, Appellants argue Edwards' determination that a FIFO is within a finite number of locations of being full is a determination that the amount of space at the FIFO is less than a 5 Appeal2014-002695 Application 13/603,653 threshold amount, rather than greater than a threshold amount as required by claim 3. App. Br. 6-7. The Examiner responds by finding that providing an indication to a processor that the FIFO is approaching a full level would have been understood to mean the amount of space needed is greater than a threshold amount because the indication to the processor is provided before the FIFO reaches a full level, thereby teaching the argued limitation. Ans. 9. We agree with the Examiner. By describing an event based on approaching a full level, Edwards teaches or suggests an event wherein the amount of buffer space available is compared to a threshold amount including the claimed relationship of being greater than the threshold amount. Therefore, Appellants' contention 3 is unpersuasive of Examiner error. Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of claim 3 and, for the same reasons, the rejection of claim 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Swaine and Edwards. DECISION The Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-3 and 18-20 is affirmed. 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