Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Apr 1, 2021

2019006664 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 1, 2021)

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.
14/592,640 01/08/2015 Imed Bouazizi 2014.01.012.SR0 7343
106809 7590 04/01/2021
Docket Clerk - SAMS
P.O. Drawer 800889
Dallas, TX 75380
EXAMINER
DOAN, HIEN VAN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2449
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/01/2021 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):
munckwilson@gmail.com
patent.srad@samsung.com
patents@munckwilson.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte IMED BOUAZIZI and YOUNGKWON LIM
___________

Appeal 2019–006664
Application 14/592,640
Technology Center 2400
___________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., JEFFREY S. SMITH and
JAMES B. ARPIN, Administrative Patent Judges.

WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Appellant2 is appealing the final rejection of claims 1, 4−11 and 14–
20, all of the pending claims, under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). Appeal Brief 3.
Claims 2, 3, 12 and 13 are cancelled. See Claims Appendix. Claims 1 and
11 are independent. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.

1 Rather than reiterate Appellant’s arguments and the Examiner’s
determinations, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed March 15, 2019), the
Reply Brief (filed September 19, 2019), the Final Action (mailed June 21,
2018) and the Answer (mailed July 10, 2019), for the respective details.
2 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a).
Appellant identifies Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. as the real party in
interest. Appeal Brief 1.

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Introduction
According to Appellant, the “present application generally relates to
steaming DASH [dynamic adaptive streaming over hypertext transfer
protocol] content and, more specifically, to retrieving DASH segments by
identifying DASH segment boundaries.” Appeal Brief 5 (citing
Specification ¶2).
Representative Claim3
1. A user equipment, comprising:
at least one memory; and
at least one processing device coupled to the at least one memory, the
at least one processing device configured to:
receive a data stream over a network, the data stream
comprising un–segmented media data for content;
identify a segment index box in the un–segmented media data,
the segment index box indicating a segment boundary;
identify segment boundaries based on the segment index box in
the un–segmented media data to identify segments;
determine a segment number for each of the identified segments
from a media presentation description (MPD) based on the segment
boundaries;
retrieve a uniform resource locator (URL) associated with each
of a plurality of dynamic adaptive streaming over hypertext transfer
protocol (DASH) segments based on the segment number for each of
the plurality of DASH segments; and

3 “For at least these reasons, Claim 1 and its dependent claims are allowable
over the cited references. For one or more of these reasons, Claim 11 and its
respective dependent claims are also allowable over the cited references.”
Appeal Brief 28. Accordingly, we select independent claim 1 as the
representative claim focusing on subject matter common to independent
claims 1 and 11. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
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provide the URL, and metadata for the URL, associated with each of the
plurality of DASH segments to a client player.
References
Name4 Reference Date
Gillies US 2012/0259994 A1 October 11, 2012
Nagaraj US 2013/0060911 A1 March 7, 2013
Thang US 2013/0124749 A1 May 16, 2013
Zhu US 2014/0337903 A1 November 13, 2014
Rejection on Appeal5
Claims 1, 4−11 and 14–20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Gillies, Nagaraj, Zhu and Thang. Final Action 25–
35.
ANALYSIS
The Examiner determines, “Gillies does not explicitly disclose
identify[ing] a segment index box in the un–segmented media data, as
recited in claim 1. Final Action 26. The Examiner finds Nagaraj addresses
Gillies’ deficiency because:
Nagaraj teaches identify a segment index box in the un–

4 All reference citations are to the first named inventor only.
5 Claims 21–24 were included with the original rejected claims on form
PTOL-2297 (“Notice of Panel Decision from Pre-Appeal Brief Review”)
mailed February 15, 2019, however, claims 21–24 are not rejected in the
Final Action. See Final Action 25, 35; Answer 5–7; see also Appeal Brief
29. Accordingly, claims 21–24 are not before us in this Appeal. See 37
C.F.R. § 41.31(a)(1) (“Every applicant, any of whose claims has been twice
rejected, may appeal from the decision of the examiner to the Board by
filing a notice of appeal accompanied by the fee set forth in § 41.20(b)(1)
within the time period provided under § 1.134 of this title for reply.”). The
Examiner withdraws the 35 U.S.C. § 101 rejection of claims 1–20. See
Answer 5.
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segmented media data (Nagaraj, Fig.4, presentation, segments.
[0141] “... determine the requested segment information ... such
as a segment index box (SIDX)[”]. [0024] “streaming
multimedia data, multimedia content ... multiple representations
of the same multimedia content”; multimedia content= the un–
segmented media data).
Final Action 26.
The Examiner concludes, “It would have been obvious to a person of
ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed
invention to take the teachings of Nagaraj and apply them on the teachings
of Gillies to further implement identify a segment index box in the
un–segmented media data.” Final Action 27.
Appellant argues that in Nagaraj’s Figure 4, the:
multimedia content 100 includes media presentation
description (MPD) 102 and a plurality of representations 110–
120. Representation 110 includes optional header data 112 and
segments 114A–114N (segments 114); while representation
120 includes optional header data 122 and segments 124A–
124N (segments 124). Id. Nagaraj states that, after selecting a
representation, stream management unit 80 may request data unit
information, e.g., segment information (292).
Appeal Brief 27 (footnotes omitted; citing Nagaraj ¶¶99, 141).
Appellant contends, “In Nagaraj, the data is segmented prior to
streaming. Therefore, Nagaraj cannot disclose or suggest identify a segment
index box in the un–segmented media data, where the un–segmented data
was comprised in a data stream received over a network.” Appeal Brief 27,
28. Appellant’s arguments are persuasive of Examiner error for the
following reasons.
Appellant defines a segment in paragraph 18 of the Specification –
“Segment – Refers to a temporal section of representations, which is named
by a unique Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in a particular system layer
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type (such as Transport Stream (TS) or Moving Picture Experts Group
(MPEG)-4 (MP4) Part 14).” Appellant gives an example of “un-segmented
media data” in paragraph 65 of the Specification – “In an embodiment,
media data can include content that is audio or video content. In an
example, un-segmented media data can refer to data that is not segmented
into DASH segments.” Although in giving claims their broadest reasonable
interpretation, we must take into account any definitions given in the
Specification (In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997)), we may
not read into the claims limitations from examples given in the Specification
(In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321–22 (Fed. Cir. 1989)). See also Phillips v.
AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1323 (Fed. Cir. 2005)(“[A]lthough the
specification often describes very specific embodiments of the invention, we
have repeatedly warned against confining the claims to those embodiments
. . . In particular, we have expressly rejected the contention that if a patent
describes only a single embodiment, the claims of the patent must be
construed as being limited to that embodiment”) (citations omitted).
Gillies discloses:
[T]he FLUTE [File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport]
protocol may be used for delivering streaming media content. It
is assumed that media contents are nominally encapsulated in the
ISO Base Media File Format (in accordance with ISO/IEC
14496-12), especially in the form of DASH segments (e.g., in
accordance with TS 27 .24 7), and accompanied by associated
manifest information given by the DASH Media Presentation
Description (MPD). Temporal semantics for ensuring correct
media stream playout may be provided by metadata contained
within the DASH segment format, along with wall clock time
indicators contained in the MPD.
Gillies ¶ 38. Gillies further discloses that each of segments 114, 124 (shown
in Figure 4) may be associated with a URL. Gillis ¶ 114.
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Gillis discloses that media data for content or the metadata is provided
within the DASH segment format, where each DASH segment is associated
with a URL, which is a segment as defined by paragraph 18 of the
Specification. In contrast, claim 1 recites “the data stream compris[es] “un-
segmented media data for content.”
Nevertheless, the Examiner relies upon Nagaraj’s teachings to address
Gillis’ deficiency. See Final Action 26 (citing Nagaraj Figure 4, ¶¶ 24, 141).
Nagaraj discloses in paragraph 141:
After selecting a representation, stream management unit 80 may
request data unit information, e.g., segment information (292).
Source component 90 may acknowledge the request (294) and
determine the requested segment information from the MPD file
or another data structure for the multimedia content, such as a
segment index box (SIDX).
Gillis also discloses using a SIDX that “include information that
describes byte ranges for one or more movie fragments” in paragraph 121.
While both Gillis and Nagaraj disclose using a SIDX to obtain segment
information of a media data stream, both obtain the information within a
segmented media data stream. See Gillis ¶ 11; Nagaraj ¶ 24. Accordingly,
Nagaraj fails to address Gillis’ deficiency because Nagaraj does not disclose
identifying segment boundaries based upon a segment index box in an un-
segmented media data stream as required by claim 1. We find Thang also
fails to address the combination of Gillis and Nagaraj’s noted deficiency.
See Final Action 27, 28; Appeal Brief 28.
The Examiner relied upon the combination of Gillis, Nagaraj, Zhu and
Thang to reject claim 1, as well as, independent claim 11, as obvious. See
Final Rejection 25. However, Appellant proffers no arguments addressing
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the merits of the Zhu reference in regard to the obviousness rejection. See
Appeal Brief 26−29; Reply Brief 2−5.
Accordingly, as we are constrained by the record, we sustain the
Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claims 1 and 11,
commensurate in scope, as well as dependent claims 4−10 and 14−20 not
argued separately. See Appeal Brief 29; see also 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv)
(“The arguments shall explain why the examiner erred as to each ground of
rejection contested by appellant. Except as provided for in
§§ 41.41, 41.47 and 41.52, any arguments or authorities not included in the
appeal brief will be refused consideration by the Board for purposes of the
present appeal.”).
CONCLUSION
Claim(s)
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 4−11,
14–20
103 Gillies, Nagaraj,
Zhu, Thang
1, 4−11,
14–20

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). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(v).

AFFIRMED