Ex Parte Cheng et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 29, 201612524801 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 29, 2016) 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. 12/524,801 09/04/2009 Jung-Fu Cheng 4015-6580 / P23539-US1 2252 24112 7590 01/29/2016 COATS & BENNETT, PLLC 1400 Crescent Green, Suite 300 Cary, NC 27518 EXAMINER TORRES, JOSEPH D ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2112 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/29/2016 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE _____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD _____________ Ex parte JUNG-FU CHENG and YI-PIN ERIC WANG _____________ Appeal 2013-010917 Application 12/524,801 Technology Center 2100 ______________ Before ERIC S. FRAHM, LARRY J. HUME, and JOHN P. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judges. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2013-010917 Application 12/524,801 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Final Rejection of claims 23–44. Claims 1–22 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. The Examiner has rejected (i) claims 23, 24, 26, 27, 30–32, 34, 35, 37, 38, and 41–43 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Rydbeck (US 4,047,151; issued Sept. 6, 1977) (Final Act. 2–5; Ans. 3–7); (ii) claims 25, 33, 36, and 44 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rydbeck and “3GPP TSG WG1 Meeting #47bis R1-070493,” FEC Coding of Type-B CQI/PCI Information, pp. 1–6 (Jan. 15–19, 2007) (hereinafter, “R1-070493”) (Final Act. 5–6); (iii) claims 28 and 39 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rydbeck and Roh (US 7,319,718 B2; issued Jan. 15, 2008) (Final Act. 6–7); and (iv) claims 29 and 40 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rydbeck, Roh, and R1-070493 (Final Act. 7–8). We have reviewed Appellants’ arguments in the Briefs (App. Br. 5–14 and Reply Br. 2–6), the Examiner’s rejection (Final Act. 2–8), and the Examiner’s response (Ans. 3–7) to Appellants’ arguments. Claims 23 and 34 on appeal each require: (1) a first limitation of receiving a number of input information bits that are less than a fixed information word length; (2) a second limitation of adding error protection bits to the received input information bits to make an information word length that matches a code Appeal 2013-010917 Application 12/524,801 3 word length; and a third limitation of then (3) coding an information words using the code.1 Based on Appellants’ arguments (App. Br. 5–9; Reply Br. 2–5), we conclude the Examiner erred in applying Rydbeck as an anticipating reference for Appellants’ claims 23 and 34. Specifically, we agree with Appellants (App. Br. 8) that Rydbeck fails to disclose the second step of “adding error protection bits to the received input information bits to make an information word length of the information word match the fixed information word length of the code,” and/or the third step of (3) performing coding subsequent to the adding, as recited in independent claim 23 and similarly recited in remaining independent claim 34.2 Because we agree with Appellants that Rydbeck discloses (i) the input data is an 8 bit source word having a fixed length of 8 (col. 5, ll. 40–42), and (ii) the output data is an encoded 8 bit code word having 6 symbols of information content and 2 symbols for control/error protection/redundancy, 1 Hereinafter, we refer to the three paragraphs and corresponding limitations of claims 23 and 34 as: the first (i.e., “receiving”) limitation, the second (i.e., “adding”) limitation, and the subsequent third (“coding”) limitation. 2 We recognize that Appellants’ arguments present additional issues. Because we were persuaded of error as to the limitations of (i) adding error protection bits to received input information bits to match a fixed length information word length of the code; and (ii) subsequently coding the information word using the code to form a code word as recited in claim 23, commensurately recited in claim 34, and similarly recited in dependent claims 24–33 and 35–44, we do not reach the additional issue as to the first (i.e., “receiving”) limitations of claims 24 and 33, as the error correction and coding issue as to the second (“adding”) and third (“coding”) limitations are dispositive of the appeal. Appeal 2013-010917 Application 12/524,801 4 giving a fixed length of 8 bits (see col. 5, l. 55 to col. 6, l. 19; Fig. 6, data in and data out), we also agree with Appellants that Rydbeck (Fig. 6; see col. 6, ll. 12–19 discussing Fig. 6; see also col. 5, ll. 55–68) discloses adding error protection bits to make a code word a certain length, and not an information word at the input a certain length as recited by Appellants’ claims 23 and 34. See Reply Br. 4 and 6. As a result, Rydbeck fails to anticipate the last two steps of method claim 23, as well as the commensurate limitations recited in claim 34 (i.e., the “adding” and subsequent “coding” limitations). In view of the foregoing, we do not sustain the Examiner’s anticipation rejection of independent claims 23 and 34, as well as dependent claims 24, 26, 27, 30–32, 35, 37, 38, and 41–43 depending respectively therefrom. And, (i) for similar reasons; (ii) because claims 25, 28, 29, 33, 36, 39, 40, and 44 each ultimately depend from respective ones of independent claims 23 and 34 and include similar limitations; and as a result (iii) the Examiner’s obviousness rejections are based on the Examiner’s erroneous anticipation findings with regard to Rydbeck discussed supra, we likewise do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of the remaining dependent claims over the various combinations relying on Rydbeck as the primary reference. CONCLUSION Appellants have persuaded us of error in the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 23–44. DECISION We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 23–44. Appeal 2013-010917 Application 12/524,801 5 REVERSED dw Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation