Ex Parte Elliot

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 29, 2016

12976452 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 29, 2016)

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.
12/976,452 12/22/2010 Jeremiah Elliot JINTE.00002 7493
22858 7590 08/01/2016
CARSTENS & CAHOON, LLP
P.O. Box 802334
DALLAS, TX 75380-2334
EXAMINER
WAQAS, SAAD A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2468
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/01/2016 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 JEREMIAH ELLIOT
____________________

Appeal 2015-002065
Application 12/976,452
Technology Center 2400
____________________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and ERIC S. FRAHM,
Administrative Patent Judges.

HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2015-002065
Application 12/976,452
2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1–4 and 6–9. Claim 5 was cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We affirm.

The invention relates to increasing the speed of content delivery
through the use of caching operations (Spec. 2:4–5). Claim 1, reproduced
below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method for maximum utilization of bandwidth for data
transfer in a local area network (LAN), the method comprising:

(a) providing a local caching system within said LAN;

(b) for data uploads:

(i) uploading data from a client in the LAN to
said caching system at the LAN’s maximum
available bandwidth, wherein said data is
immediately available for access on the LAN,
and

(ii) subsequently uploading said data from the
caching system to a remote server at available
Internet bandwidth, thereby minimizing
upload lag on the client side; and

(c) for data downloads:

(i) pre-caching data from a remote server to said
caching system at available Internet
bandwidth in advance of requests for said
data, wherein pre-caching data from the
remote server is performed in advance of pre-
scheduled data requests based on an
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Application 12/976,452
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appointment or use schedule that identifies
specific matters or client appointments, and

(ii) in response to a request for said data from a
client in the LAN, downloading the data from
the caching system to the client at the LAN’s
maximum available bandwidth.

REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Kalaboukis
Lev Ran
US 2008/0162686 A1
US 2010/0169392 A1
July 3, 2008
July 1, 2010

REJECTION
The Examiner made the following rejection:
Claims 1–4 and 6–9 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Lev Ran and Kalaboukis.

ANALYSIS
Appellant contends that Kalaboukis’s teachings “relating to caching
data to a mobile computing device cannot be obviously incorporated into the
fixed LAN of [Lev] Ran” (App. Br. 7). Appellant also contends there is no
reason to combine Kalaboukis with Lev Ran because “[o]ne skilled in the art
would not look to the Kalaboukis disclosure relating to mobile computing
devices for anything relevant to a local area network, which is generally in a
fixed location” (id.). Further, Appellant contends “[Lev] Ran teaches away
from using the event-based pre-caching disclosed in Kalaboukis” (id.). We
disagree with Appellant.
Appeal 2015-002065
Application 12/976,452
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Lev Ran discloses a virtual file-sharing network (VFN) comprising
two VFN gateways, each of which is connected to a different LAN, and
which communicate with each other over a WAN (Lev Ran, ¶ 21).
In order to serve a resource from a file [server] on a first LAN to
a client on a second LAN, the VFN gateway on the first LAN
fetches the resource from the file server and transmits the
resource over the WAN to the VFN gateway on the second LAN,
which then serves the resource to the client. (The same VFN
gateways may be used to provide resources from another file
server on the second LAN to clients on the first LAN). . . .

Remote resources are efficiently and transparently made
available to clients by a combination of file replicating and
caching, and on-demand retrieval. These functions are
performed by a receiver component of the VFN gateway, which
serves the clients that are located on the same LAN as the
gateway. . . . Selected resources are replicated (“pre-positioned”)
prior to a client request. Policies and algorithms are used to
determine which resources to pre-position and when to pre-
position resources, based on characteristics of the resources and
the availability of bandwidth and local storage. Preferably, the
policies are set so that resources with higher ratios of expected
usage to expected modifications are more likely to be pre-
positioned. Look-ahead fetching is employed by analyzing real-
time file usage patterns to detect sequential access patterns.

(Lev Ran, ¶¶ 22–23). Based on the disclosure quoted above, we agree with
the Examiner that Lev Ran discloses “providing a local caching system
within said LAN,” “uploading data from a client in the LAN to said caching
system . . . and subsequently uploading said data from the caching system to
a remote server,” and “pre-caching data from a remote server to said caching
system . . . and . . . downloading the data from the caching system to the
client” (Final Act. 3–5). The Examiner only relies on Kalaboukis for
disclosing the feature “wherein pre-caching data from the remote server is
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Application 12/976,452
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performed in advance of pre-scheduled data requests based on an
appointment or use schedule that identifies specific matters or client
appointments” (Final Act. 5–6). Kalaboukis teaches “selecting a time to pre-
cache information corresponding to an event” where “the time selected
precedes the event such that the information corresponding to the event may
be pre-cached or stored prior to an occurrence of the event” (Kalaboukis,
¶ 15). Under KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., “if a technique has been used to
improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize
that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is
obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill.” 550 U.S.
398, 417 (2007). Accordingly, we agree with the Examiner’s conclusion
that it would have been obvious to apply Kalaboukis’s event-based pre-
caching technique to Lev Ran’s virtual file-sharing network because such
technique is “device agnostic and applicable to [a] wireline communications
network” (Ans. 6) and it would provide a similar improvement as in
Kalaboukis’s network, namely, having the most relevant information
available at a client when needed and without delay (Kalaboukis, ¶ 2).
We are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that Kalaboukis’s
technique for a mobile device cannot be incorporated into Lev Ran’s fixed
LAN (App. Br. 7; Reply Br. 2) because “[t]he test for obviousness is not
whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated
into the structure of the primary reference . . . . Rather, the test is what the
combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of
ordinary skill in the art.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981).
Here, the question is not whether Kalaboukis’s mobile device could be made
to work in Lev Ran’s LAN, but rather, whether one would have been
motivated to implement Kalaboukis’s technique of event-based pre-caching
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Application 12/976,452
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in Lev Ran’s LAN. As quoted above, Lev Ran discloses “[p]olicies and
algorithms are used to determine which resources to pre-position and when
to pre-position resources” (Lev Ran, ¶ 23). We find Kalaboukis would have
suggested pre-positioning resources ahead of a predetermined event as part
of Lev Ran’s policies and algorithms. As mentioned above, Kalaboukis
provides the motivation for this modification, i.e., providing a client with
relevant information when needed and without delay. We are also not
persuaded by Appellant’s argument that one would not have looked to
Kalaboukis mobile network to provide any relevant teaching related to Lev
Ran’s LAN (App. Br. 7; Reply Br. 2). As discussed above, the technique of
event-based pre-caching is equally applicable to wired or wireless networks.
Further, we are not persuaded by Appellant’s teaching away
argument. Specifically, Appellant argues “the Examiner is proposing to
modify [Lev] Ran to do the opposite of its disclosure, namely, look to the
future in order to pre-position data on the LAN. [Lev] Ran’s disclosure
involving using past usage statistics would lead a skilled artisan away from
using future appointments to pre-position data on a LAN.” (App. Br. 7; see
also Reply Br. 2). However, nothing in Lev Ran discourages against using
different techniques such as considering future appointments as part of the
policies and algorithms for pre-positioning resources. To the contrary, Lev
Ran affirmatively discloses looking to the future for pre-positioning
resources, for example, by considering “expected usage” and performing
“[l]ook-ahead fetching” (Lev Ran, ¶ 23).
We are, therefore, not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting claim
1, and claims 2–4 and 6–9 not specifically argued separately.
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Application 12/976,452
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CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1–4 and 6–9.

DECISION
For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–4 and 6–9
is affirmed.
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)(iv).

AFFIRMED