Xianghua Wang et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 23, 2020

14713808 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 23, 2020)

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.
14/713,808 05/15/2015 Xianghua Wang HW 81379376US22 3215
74365 7590 03/23/2020
Slater Matsil, LLP/HW/FW/HWC
17950 Preston Road, Suite 1000
Dallas, TX 75252
EXAMINER
ELPENORD, CANDAL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2473
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/23/2020 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):
docketing@slatermatsil.com
uspatent@huawei.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte XIANGHUA WANG and XUAN FENG

Appeal 2019-000637
Application 14/713,808
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., MELISSA A. HAAPALA, and
KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judges.

SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, and 9, constituting all
claims currently pending in the application. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Huawei
Technologies Co., Ltd. Appeal Br. 2.
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s invention generally “relates to radio communication
technologies, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for sending
control signaling.” Spec. ¶ 2. Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative
of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method of signaling comprising:
receiving, by a terminal, control signaling sent from a base station
(BS); and

sending, by the terminal, a packet according to the received control
signaling to the BS,

wherein the control signaling comprises an NDI [New Data
Indicator] field and a field that includes N bits,

wherein a first state of the field indicated by all the N bits is
indicative of a payload size and a second state of the field indicated by all
the N bits is indicative of a Redundancy Version (RV).

REJECTIONS

Claims 1, 5, 8, and 9 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over the combination of Kim et al. (US 7,426,201 B2;
issued Sept. 16, 2008) (“Kim”) and Liu (US 2005/0237932 A1; published
Oct. 27, 2005). Final Act. 3–6.
Claims 2 and 6 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over the combination of Kim, Liu, and Wang et al. (US
2009/021376 A1; published Aug. 27, 2009) (“Wang”). Final Act. 6–7.

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ANALYSIS

Issue: Did the Examiner err in finding the combination of Kim and
Liu teaches or suggests “the control signaling comprises . . . a field that
includes N bits, wherein a first state of the field indicated by all the N bits is
indicative of a payload size and a second state of the field indicated by all
the N bits is indicative of a Redundancy Version (RV),” as recited in
independent claim 1 and commensurately recited in independent claim 5?
The Examiner relies on Kim to teach the disputed limitation. Final
Act. 3–4; Ans. 5–6. Kim is generally directed to transmitting and receiving
control information on a shared control channel. Kim 1:22–23. Kim
discloses that the High Speed-Shared Control Channel (“HS-SCCH”)
delivers control information, including transport block set size (“TBSS”),
transport channel identity (“TrCH ID”), NDI, and redundancy version
(“RV”). Kim 2:37–46. THE HS-SCCH includes Hybrid Automatic
Retransmission Request (“HARQ”) information (which includes RV and
NDI), where “HARQ is a link control scheme for retransmission of an initial
packet having errors in order to compensate for the errors.” Kim 1:42, 2:4–
6, 2:29–33, 2:49–50. Before transmitting data, a HARQ controller
determines an NDI, a HARQ Process ID, and an RV, and a transport channel
& block determiner determines the TrCH ID & TBSS for transmission of the
user data. Kim 8:60–64. The NDI indicates whether a data packet is being
initially transmitted or retransmitted. Kim 8:66–9:2. Different control
information – either RV or TrCH ID & TBSS – will be transmitted,
depending on whether the data packet is initially transmitted or
retransmitted, through the use of a common field. Kim 8:65–67, 10:59–65.
Kim describes
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[a]t an initial transmission, that is, when the NDI 716 is N(l:
true), the HARQ controller 706 determines to transmit the
TrCH ID & TBSS 722 in a common field of the
HS-SCCH. At a retransmission, that is, when the NDI 716 is
C(0: false), the HARQ controller 706 determines to transmit the
RV 720 in the common field of the HS-SCCH. Then, the
HARQ controller 706 controls a switch 724 to switch to the
determined control information. The common field containing
the RV 720 or the TrCH ID & TBSS 722 is a novel field
proposed in the present invention and will be described later
with reference to FIGS. 8A, 8B, and 8C.

Kim 9:2–12; see also Kim 9:34–63. Table 2 of Kim indicates that the
common field, TrCH ID + TBSS or RV, is 6 bits. Kim indicates that
“[s]ince only the 2-bit RV is transmitted at a retransmission of a data packet,
4 bits are saved from the 6-bit common field.” Kim 11:17–19. The
Examiner finds this common field teaches the claimed “field that includes N
bits” and Kim’s TBSS teaches the claimed “first state of the field indicated
by all the N bits is indicative of a payload size.” Final Act. 3–4; Ans. 9.
The Examiner further finds Kim’s RV teaches the claimed “second state of
the field indicated by all the N bits is indicative of a Redundancy Version
(RV).” Final Act. 4; Ans. 9–10.
Appellant argues “the common field of Kim does not use all six bits
of the common field to convey RV.” Appeal Br. 4. Appellant contends that
only “two bits are used to convey RV, and the remaining four bits are
available for another use.” Appeal Br. 5. According to Appellant, there is
no indication that these “dummy bits” should be assigned a particular value
or be used to convey meaningful information. Appeal Br. 5. Appellant
argues:
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Hence, a mobile terminal receiving this common field
cannot discern, based solely on the state of the common field,
whether the information corresponds to TBSS+TrCH ID or
RV+ Extra Bits. In order to understand the meaning of the
common field, the mobile terminal must rely on a separate NDI
field, which indicates whether the common field should be
interpreted as TBSS+TrCH ID or RV+Extra Bits. See, id.,
column 9/lines 58-63 and column 10/lines 46-65. As such, the
common field in Kim does not convey its meaning based solely
on the state of the field itself.

Appeal Br. 6; see also Appeal Br. 7.
Appellant’s arguments are not persuasive. Kim teaches a common
field size of 6 bits, where, for retransmission of a data packet, only the 2 bit
RV is transmitted, and the remaining 4 bits are saved for other purposes,
such as including control information of another field, or a value preset
between a user equipment and Node B. Kim 11:17–22; see also Kim 10:53–
58 (describing additional purposes of “(1) to additionally transmit control
information of another field . . . (2) to increase demodulation performance
by bit insertion; (3) to be DTX-processed; and (4) to be inserted as dummy
bits.”). Appellant’s argues Kim does not “specify the values these four bits
can take,” nor would it, because “a person having ordinary skill in the art
would understand that dummy bits are not used to convey information but
are rather placeholders used to fill up a field that is larger than what is
required to hold the useful data . . . [so] [a]ssigning a particular value to
dummy bits in order to convey information would be the antithesis of the
commonly understood meaning of dummy bits.” Appeal Br. 5–6. However,
we are not persuaded by this argument as it is inconsistent with the
disclosure in Appellant’s Specification (cited in Appellant’s Summary of
Claimed Subject Matter), which provides an example “where the field
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indicative of the payload size occupies 6 bits and the field indicative of the
RV occupies 2 bits.” Spec. ¶ 43; see Appeal Br. 2 (citing Spec. ¶¶ 43–45).
In particular, the Specification states
in a 6-bit field, 4 states whose foremost upper bits are all 0s can
indicate 4 different RVs. That is, the 4 states 000000, 000001,
000010 and 000011 indicate RV1-RV4. Accordingly, the
remaining 60 states (any bit in the 4 foremost upper bits of the
remaining 60 states is non-zero) indicate 60 different payload
sizes. Therefore, when the control signaling is received, it is
practicable to judge whether the field in the control signaling
indicates the payload size or the RV by only detecting the state
code.

Spec. ¶ 44. We discern no meaningful difference between assigning four
leading zeroes to the remaining four bits, as in the example provided in
Appellant’s Specification, or assigning some “value preset between a user
equipment and Node B” or inserting dummy bits to those four bits, as
described in Kim. See, e.g., KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418
(2007) (“[T]he analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the
specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court can take account
of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art
would employ”). Accordingly, Appellant has not persuasively explained
why Kim does not teach or suggest “a second state of the field indicated by
all the N bits is indicative of a Redundancy Version (RV).”
Further, Appellant’s arguments that Kim’s mobile terminal must rely
on a separate NDI field to convey the meaning of the common field, rather
than relying solely on the state of the field itself, are not persuasive. Kim
describes:
It is determined from the NDI preceding the common
field whether the common field contains the TrCH ID & TBSS
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or the RV. If the NDI is N(1: true), indicating initial
transmission, the common field delivers the TrCH ID & TBSS,
and if the NDI is C(0: false), indicating retransmission, the
common field delivers the RV.

Kim 9:58–63; see also Kim 10:48–50 (“if N bits are used to deliver a TrCH
ID & TBSS and M bits are used to deliver an RV . . .”). Kim, therefore,
describes that the value in the NDI field (1 or 0) indicates initial or
retransmission and is used to determine if the common field delivers TrCH
ID & TBSS or RV. Claim 1 recites “a first state of the field indicated by all
the N bits is indicative of a payload size and a second state of the field
indicated by all the N bits is indicative of a Redundancy Version (RV).”
Appeal Br. 10 (emphasis added). The parameter in Kim’s common field
will be either TrCH ID & TBSS or RV, thereby indicating the first or second
state of the field, depending on whether it is an initial transmission or a
retransmission. That the NDI field may also be used to indicate the state of
the field is not precluded by the claim language, which does not require that
the state of the field be indicated solely by all of the N bits indicating
payload size or Redundancy Version (RV).
Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting
independent claims 1 and 5 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). For the same reasons,
we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting dependent claims 2, 6,
8, and 9, which were not separately argued. See Appeal Br. 8.

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CONCLUSION
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C.
§
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 5, 8, 9 103(a) Kim, Liu 1, 5, 8, 9
2, 6 103(a) Kim, Liu, Wang 2, 6
Overall
Outcome
1, 2, 5, 6,
8, 9

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)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED