Ex Parte Zhu et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 22, 201813519312 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 22, 2018) 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. 13/519,312 06/26/2012 Yuan Zhu P39347/ 111027-186928 8773 31817 7590 01/24/2018 SCHWABE, WILLIAMSON & WYATT, P.C. 1211 SW 5th Avenue, Suite 1600 Portland, OR 97204 EXAMINER ROUDANI, OUSSAMA ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2413 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/24/2018 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): IPDocketing @ S CHWABE.com intelparalegal@ schwabe.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte YUAN ZHU, ALEXEI DAVYDOV, XIAOGANG CHEN, HUANING NIU, and JONG-KAE FWU Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 Technology Center 2400 Before JAMES R. HUGHES, JOHN A. EVANS, and JOHN P. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judges. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judge DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of claims 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17, 19, 20, and 27. Claims 2, 3, 5, 10—15, 18, 22— 26, and 28 are canceled.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellants identify Intel Corporation as the real party in interest. App. Br. 1. 2 Claims 8 and 21 are objected to, but those objections are not before us. Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants’ disclosed and claimed invention is generally directed to “reference signal generation and reference signal resource allocation.” Spec. 1,11. 10-11.3 Claim 1 is representative and reproduced below (with the disputed limitations emphasized)'. 1. An evolved Node (“eNB”) comprising: a processor; memory coupled to the processor; and a control module to be operated by the processor and configured to transmit to a user equipment ("UE") device, through downlink control information ("DCI"), an indication of a reference signal (“RS”) parameter value specific to the UE device and a scrambling identity value that are to be used, by the eNB, to determine an initialization value, Cmit, to generate a user equipment- specific reference signal ("UE-RS") to be sent to the UE device, and the RS parameter value and the scrambling identity value are usable by the UE device to identify the UE-RS to facilitate demodulation by the UE device of multiple-input, multiple-output communications, 3 Our Decision refers to the Final Action mailed July 22, 2016 (“Final Act.”); Appellants’ Appeal Brief filed Feb. 27, 2017 (“App. Br.”) and Reply Brief filed Aug. 4, 2017 (“Reply Br.”); the Examiner’s Answer mailed June 13, 2017 (“Ans.”); and the original Specification filed Dec. 9, 2011 (“Spec.”). 2 Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 wherein the RSparameter value is a sub-cell identifier and the scrambling identity value is determined by a single bit in the DCI. Rejections on Appeal Claims 1,9, 16, and 27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over TS 36.211 V10.1.0 Physical Channels and Modulation (Release 10) (“TS 36.211”) and Chmiel et al. (US 2011/0038310 Al; published Feb. 17, 2011) (“Chmiel”). Claims 4, 6, 17, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over TS 36.211, Chmiel, and Young-Han et al. (US 2011/0103324 Al; published May 5, 2011) (“Young-Han”). Claims 7 and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over TS 36.211, Chmiel, and Qu et al. (US 2012/0176939 Al; published July 12, 2012) (“Qu”). ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’ arguments in the Briefs and are not persuaded the Examiner erred. Unless otherwise noted, we adopt as our own the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Office Action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 3—8) and in the Examiner’s Answer (Ans. 3—5), and we concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. For emphasis, we consider and highlight specific arguments as presented in the Briefs. 3 Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 Rejection of Claims 1, 9, 16, and 27A under § 103(a) In the Final Action, the Examiner finds TS 36.211 teaches a control module transmits to a UE “an indication of a reference signal (RS) parameter value specific to the UE device” because the physical channel identifier NcelliD in Cinit is transmitted to the UE using synchronization signals. Final Act. 4 (citing TS 36.211, §§ 6.10.3.1, 6.11). The Examiner also finds the identifier NcelliD in Cmit is “a sub-cell identifier.” Id. Appellants argue TS36.211 and Chmiel fail to teach or suggest a control module to transmit to a UE device “an indication of [an RS] parameter value specific to the UE device, as recited in claim 1.” App. Br. 4—5. In particular, Appellants argue the Examiner relies on the physical- layer cell ID, NcelliD, from TS 36.211 to teach the RS parameter value, but “the physical layer cell ID is not a ‘value specific to the UE device.’” Id. at 5. According to Appellants, the physical-layer cell ID is common to all UEs of a cell and cannot be said to be specific to any one of them. Id. Appellants also argue TS 36.211 and Chmiel fail to teach or suggest that ‘“the RS parameter value is a sub-cell identifier’ as recited in claim 1.” Id.', Reply Br. 2. Specifically, Appellants argue the prefix “sub” in the term “sub-cell identifier” indicates the identifier corresponds to something smaller than a cell. App. Br. 5—6. In regard to the Examiner’s finding that NcelliD is a unique sub-cell identifier belonging to a group of cell identifiers (see Final Act. 2, Ans. 4—5 (citing TS 36.211, §§ 6.10.3, 6.11)), Appellants 4 Appellants argue these claims as a group, focusing on independent claim 1. App. Br. 3—7. We consider claim 1 to be representative and, therefore, we decide the rejection of these claims on the basis of claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). 4 Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 also argue “it is unclear how a statement that each cell ID belongs to one and only one cell ID group, results in a cell ID corresponding to a sub-cell, rather than a cell.” Id. at 6; Reply Br. 2 (arguing that “a person of ordinary skill in the art would not interpret a physical-layer cell identity group as identifying a cell while a physical-layer cell identity identifies a sub-cell of that cell”). Thus, according to Appellants, “inte[r]preting the language of both TS 36.211 and Chmiel in their proper context results in an NcelliD identifying a cell, not a sub-cell.” App. Br. 6. We are not persuaded by Appellants’ arguments that the Examiner erred. Regarding the claim 1 limitation reciting the RS parameter value is “specific to the UE device,” the Examiner finds: Despite Appellants' arguments to the contrary (Appeal Brief; pages 4-5), (Specification, || 19—20) discloses an initialization sequence Cmit (Specification; Equation 1) identical to the initialization sequence Cmit of TS 36.211 (§ 6.10.3.1). (Specification, 121) discloses that the parameter specific to the UE [used to generate the UE-RS] may include one or more of the parameters of Equation 1. It follows that the physical cell layer identity parameter NceV> in equation 1 and (TS 36.211; § 6.10.3.1) is & parameter specific to the UE. Ans. 3—A. In the Reply Brief, Appellants do not address or respond to these findings. For the reasons stated by the Examiner, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that TS 36.211, § 6.10.3.1, teaches that Ncellio is a RS parameter specific to the UE. Thus, based on the preponderance of the evidence, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that TS 36.211 teaches transmitting an indication of an RS parameter value “specific to the UE device,” as recited in claim 1. 5 Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 Regarding the claim 1 limitation reciting the RS parameter value is a “sub-cell identifier,” the Examiner notes the Specification does not define the term “sub-cell” and that it is used only once to refer to a channel state information-reference signal (“CSI-RS”) parameter value CSI-RSid as a sub cell identifier. Ans. 4; see Spec. 5,11. 9-17. We do not agree with Appellants’ argument the Examiner appears to be reading the CSI-RS parameter into claim 1 to support a finding the term “sub-cell” does not suggest a size or scale of a cell, but we do agree with Appellants’ argument that “sub-cell identifier” is different than a “cell identifier.” Reply Br. 2. We give the limitation “sub-cell identifier” the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the Specification. See In re Morris, 111 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997). Considering the broadest reasonable interpretation of “sub-cell identifier,” consistent with the Specification, we do not agree with Appellants’ argument that the limitation “sub-cell identifier” would not correlate to the physical layer cell ID of TS 36.211. Reply Br. 2. Instead, we agree with the Examiner that “nothing in the claim or the specification precludes using a physical cell layer identity NcelliD for a sub-cell identifier.” Ans. 4. In that regard, the Examiner finds as follows: TS 36.211 (§ 6.10.3 & 6.11) discloses that an eNodeB can support 504 unique physical-layer cell identities (i.e., NceV>), grouped into 168 unique physical layer cell-identity groups. Each physical-layer cell identity is uniquely defined by a number in the range of 0 to 167 and belongs to one and only one physical- layer cell-identity group. Thus Ncellio is a sub-cell identifier for identifying the cell at the physical layer as opposed to a global cell identifier. Id. at 4—5. 6 Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 For the reasons stated by the Examiner, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that the cited portions of TS 36.211 teach or suggest that NceV> is a “sub-cell identifier” because NcelliD identifies the cell at the physical layer and TS 36.211, § 6.11, teaches each eNodeB can support “504 unique physical-layer cell identities” — NceV>. We have considered Appellants’ arguments concerning how a person of ordinary skill in the art would interpret the cited portions of TS 36.211, but are not persuaded by them. In that regard, we find the mere fact that the 504 unique physical-layer identities NcelliD are grouped into 168 unique physical-layer cell identity groups would not cause a person of ordinary skill in the art to conclude that the 504 unique physical-layer identities do not function as “sub-cell identifiers.” Thus, based on the preponderance of the evidence, we agree with the Examiner that TS 36.211 teaches or suggests the RS parameter value is a “sub-cell identifier,” as recited in claim 1. Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in (1) finding TS 36.211 teaches or suggests the disputed limitations of claim 1 and (2) concluding that the combination of the teachings of TS 36.211 and Chmiel renders the subject matter of claim 1 obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Thus, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, as well as independent claim 16 and dependent claims 9 and 27. Rejection of Claims 4, 6, 7, 17, 19, and 20 under § 103(a) Appellants advance no separate, substantive arguments for claims 4, 6, 7, 17, 19, and 20. Instead, Appellants argue the additional references, Young-Han and Qu, fail to correct the deficiencies of the rejection of claim 1 over TS 36.211 and Chmiel. App. Br. 6—7. These arguments are not persuasive because, for the reasons discussed above, there are no 7 Appeal 2017-010496 Application 13/519,312 deficiencies of TS 36.211 and Chmiel in regard to the disputed limitations of claim 1. Therefore, we sustain the rejection of dependent claims 4, 6, 7, 17, 19, and 20 under § 103(a). DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17, 19, 20, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). 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 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation