Apple Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Feb 18, 2022

2022001017 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 18, 2022)

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. 16/711,604 12/12/2019 Farouk Belghoul 8888-79102 8257 81310 7590 02/18/2022 Kowert Hood Munyon Rankin & Goetzel (Apple) 1120 S. Capital of Texas Hwy Building 2, Suite 300 Austin, TX 78746 EXAMINER BOKHARI, SYED M ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2473 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/18/2022 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): patent_docketing@intprop.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ________________ Ex parte FAROUK BELGHOUL, RAFAEL L. RIVERA-BARRETO, KRISZTIAN KISS, ROHAN C. MALTHANKAR, TARIK TABET, and CESAR PEREZ1 ________________ Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 Technology Center 2400 ________________ Before BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, JASON V. MORGAN, and AMBER L. HAGY, Administrative Patent Judges. BAUMEISTER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, 6-8, 10, 11, 21, 22, and 27-31. Appeal Br. 8-18. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). The Board conducts a limited de novo review of the appealed rejections for error based upon the issues identified by Appellant, and in light of the arguments and evidence produced thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential). We reverse. 1 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies Apple Inc. as the real party in interest. Appeal Brief, filed July 30, 2021 (“Appeal Br.”), at 2. Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Appellant describes the presently claimed subject matter as follows: Distributing indications of emergency messages via Wi- Fi. A cellular device may temporarily disable its cellular modem. The cellular device may receive an indication over Wi-Fi that an emergency message has been broadcast. In response, the cellular device may activate its cellular modem and retrieve the emergency message via a cellular network. Spec. Abstr. Independent claim 1, reproduced below, illustrates the subject matter of the appealed claims: 1. An accessory wireless device, comprising: a radio, comprising one or more antennas configured for wireless communication; a cellular modem operably coupled to the radio; and a processor operably coupled to the cellular modem, wherein the cellular modem and the processor are configured to: establish peer-to-peer communication with a companion wireless device; receive, over the peer-to-peer communication from the companion wireless device, an indication of an emergency alert when a wireless cellular network broadcasts emergency information, wherein the indication of the emergency alert is received over the peer-to-peer communication while the cellular modem is not in communication with the wireless cellular network; activate, in response to the indication of the emergency alert, the cellular modem to connect to the wireless cellular network; and retrieve the emergency alert over the wireless cellular network. Appeal Br. 19 (Claims App.). Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 3 STATEMENT OF THE REJECTIONS Claims 1, 3, 6-8, 10, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, and 31 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Cha (US 2014/0315511 A1; published Oct. 23, 2014) and Ballantyne (US 2014/0269465 A1; published Sept. 18, 2014). Final Act. 3-17. Claims 4, 11, and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Cha, Ballantyne, and Thompson (US 2016/0057596 A1; published Feb. 25, 2016).2 Final Act. 18-20. DETERMINATIONS AND CONTENTIONS The Examiner finds that Cha discloses most of the limitations of independent claim 1, but fails to teach the requirement that when the indication of the emergency alert is received over the peer-to-peer communication while the cellular modem is not in communication with the wireless cellular network, the processor will activate, in response to the indication of the emergency alert, the cellular modem to connect to the wireless cellular network, and then retrieve the emergency alert over the wireless cellular network. Final Act. 3-6. The Examiner finds that Ballantyne teaches this functionality and that motivation existed for one or ordinary skill in the art to incorporate this functionality into Cha’s system. Id. at 6-8 (citing Ballantyne ¶¶ 34, 35, 38-43, 65-69, 75; Fig. 2). 2 The heading of this rejection states that the rejection is over the combination of Cha, Ballantyne, and Thompson, but the body of the rejection refers to Jacobs instead of Thompson. Final Act. 18-20. We understand the reference to Jacobs to be an inadvertent clerical error. Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 4 Appellant argues, inter alia, neither of the cited references suggest activating cellular in response to an indication of an alert and retrieving the alert over cellular[,] as recited in claim 1. Cha teaches a “non-cellular device” displaying an alert. Ballantyne describes delaying a switch from cellular to WLAN. These teachings cannot be combined to teach or suggest claim 1. Appeal Br. 14. According to Appellant, Ballantyne. . . illustrat[es] a system including a [user equipment (UE)] 110 [that] may be connected via access point 160 and base station 182. [Paragraph] [0038] describes that “access point 160 is an access point to an available alternate network that is an alternate to cellular networks”. The UE may connect to the alternate network in any of various ways. No suggestion of the UE switching to cellular is found. Id. at 12 (citing Ballantyne ¶¶ 34, 35; Fig. 1). Appellant also presents similar arguments as to why other portions of Ballantyne do not teach or suggest switching to cellular to retrieve the emergency alerts. Id. at 12-15. The Examiner subsequently clarifies that the rejection is based upon Ballantyne’s teachings associated with Figure 5: the examiner has described a method of operation of [Ballantyne’s] user equipment 200 according to a possible embodiment based on fig. 5. Wherein it is described that a cell identifier of the base station can be retrieved by the UE 200 while communicating with the base station before switching operation from the base station to an access point of an alternate network and the retrieved cell identifier can be retained while the user equipment 200 is attached to the alternate network [paragraph] [0070]. Switching operation of the UE 200 includes switching from the cellular network (cellular transceiver 250) to the alternate network by connecting to an access point (WLAN transceiver 290) of the alternate network and disconnecting from a base station of the cellular network (cellular transceiver 250) [paragraph] [0072]. While in communication with WLAN the UE 200 receives the emergency alert message Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 5 [paragraph] [0073]. The UE 200 can extract the emergency alert information by using a modem that is active for switching to the cellular transceiver 250 for communicating with the base station [paragraph] [0073]. Therefore, it clearly teaches that the UE 200 receives the emergency alert while on WLAN transceiver 290 and disconnected from the cellular network, and after receiving the emergency alert while on WLAN the UE 200 switched over to the cellular transceiver 250 to retrieve the emergency alert over the wireless cellular network. Examiner’s Answer, mailed Nov. 10, 2021 (“Ans.”), at 25-26. Appellant responds to the Examiner’s new reliance on Ballantyne’s disclosure relating to Figure 5, inter alia, as follows: [Ballantyne’s paragraph] [0070] introduces Fig. 5, which starts with a UE communicating with a base station of a cellular network (at [step] 520). The UE can retrieve and retain a “cell identifier of the base station”. [Paragraph] [0072] describes [step] 530 where the UE may establish a connection with an alternate network, e.g., by “switching operation of a user equipment from the cellular network to the alternate network by connecting to an access point of the alternate network and disconnecting from a base station of the cellular network”. [Paragraph] [0073] describes [step] 540 where the UE may request “over the alternate network, public warning system messages based on a cellular public warning system message Protocol”. In other words, the UE can request to receive warning messages “over the alternate network” in a way that is similar to receiving the messages over cellular, e.g., a message may be “formatted similarly to those sent by the cellular network”. One way that the UE may request the warning system messages is “sending a query over the alternate network for public warning system messages that correspond to the base station, where the query includes a cell identifier of the base station”. Further, the “query can also include a query address including a country code, and a network operator code, in addition to the cell identifier”. In order to get the information for the query “extract, using a modem that is active for communicating with the base station, values for a current region, such as a Mobile Country Code Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 6 (MCC), a current carrier, such as a Mobile Network Code (MNC), and a cell identifier, such as a Global Cell Identifier (GCI)”. In other words, the UE may use the cellular modem to get information to include in the query so that the alternate network can provide warning system messages that are relevant to the UE's location. Thus, [paragraph] [0073] describes that the UE may request alerts from via the alternate network and may “extract” information using the cellular modem so that relevant alerts (e.g., based on the UE’s location) may be provided. Reply Brief, filed Dec. 3, 2021, at 4. ANALYSIS Appellant’s arguments are persuasive. Ballantyne’s disclosure relating to the flowchart of Figure 5, like Ballantyne’s other cited passages, teaches that the user equipment establishes communication with a network that is an alternative to a cellular network and then requests the public warning system messages over that alternate network-not the cellular network. E.g., Ballantyne ¶¶ 70-79; Fig. 5. The Examiner has not established that the cited art teaches or suggests activating a cellular modem to connect to a wireless cellular network so that the cellular modem can then retrieve the emergency alert over the wireless cellular network, as claimed. Accordingly, we reverse the obviousness rejection of claim 1 and also of claims 3, 6-8, 10, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, and 31, which either depend from or otherwise include these limitations of claim 1. With respect to the remaining rejection of dependent claims 4, 11, and 29, the Examiner does not rely on the additional teachings of Thompson to cure the deficiency of the obviousness rejection explained above. Final Act. 18-20. Accordingly, we reverse the obviousness rejection of these claims for the reasons set forth in relation to claim 1. Appeal 2022-001017 Application 16/711,604 7 DECISION SUMMARY In summary: REVERSED Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/ Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 3, 6-8, 10, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31 103 Cha, Ballantyne 1, 3, 6-8, 10, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31 4, 11, 29 103 Cha, Ballantyne, Thompson 4, 11, 29 Overall Outcome 1, 3, 4, 6-8, 10, 11, 21, 22, 27-31