Ex Parte GhoshDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 30, 201311203593 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 30, 2013) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte MONISHA GHOSH ____________ Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before KRISTEN L. DROESCH, LYNNE E. PETTIGREW, and MIRIAM L. QUINN, Administrative Patent Judges. QUINN, Administrative Patent Judge. Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 2 DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) (2002) from a final rejection of claims 1-3, 6-8, and 11-27. Claims 4, 5, 9, and 10 have been cancelled and claims 11-20 and 22-27 have been withdrawn from consideration, leaving thus subject to this appeal only claims 1-3, 6-8, and 21 (App. Br. 3). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. STATEMENT OF THE CASE According to Appellant, the invention relates to interleaving and parsing in a Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO)-Orthogonal Frequency- Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless multimedia communication system. Spec. 1, ll. 4-5.1 The subject matter on appeal involves a wireless bit-interleaved coded OFDM (BI-COFDM) MIMO system that improves the diversity seen by a convolutional decoder. Spec., Abstract. Details of the appealed subject matter are recited in illustrative independent claim 1, reproduced below from the Claims Appendix of the Appeal Brief:2 1. A wireless multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) apparatus, comprising: a block interleaver that interleaves an input-punctured convolutional bit stream and provides an interleaved output bit stream; 1 References to Appellant’s Specification (“Spec.”) are directed to the specification filed on August 12, 2005. 2 References to the Appeal Brief (“App. Br.”) are directed to Appellant’s Appeal Brief filed on May 14, 2010, and references to the Reply are directed to Appellant’s Reply Brief filed on August 17, 2010. Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 3 a bit-to-symbol mapper to group the interleaved output bit stream of the bit interleaver into output symbols; a parser that sends each of the output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae in a round-robin fashion; and a deinterleaver that performs the inverse transformation of the block interleaver on a bit stream transformed by the block interleaver. As evidence of unpatentability of the claimed subject matter, the Examiner relies on the following references at pages 3 to 10 of the Answer:3 Kumar US 5,949,796 Sept. 7, 1999 Yonge III Chheda US 6,278,685 B1 US 6,704,370 B1 Aug. 21, 2001 Mar. 9, 2004 Dagan US 6,934,901 B2 Aug. 23, 2005 Maltsev US 7,570,695 B2 Aug. 4, 2009 The Examiner provides the following grounds of rejections, of which Appellant seeks review: (1) Claims 1, 3, and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kumar and Chheda (Ans. 4-6); (2) Claims 2, 7, and 8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kumar, Chheda, Yonge III, and Dagan (Ans. 7-9); and 3 References to the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”) are directed to the Answer mailed on June 28, 2010. Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 4 (3) Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kumar, Chheda, Yonge III, Dagan, and Maltsev (Ans. 9-10). ISSUE Based on Appellant’s arguments, the dispositive issue on appeal is whether the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claims 1 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because the combination of Kumar and Chheda fails to teach “a parser that sends each of the output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae in a round-robin fashion.” App. Br. 6-10. ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellant’s contention. Further, we have reviewed the Examiner’s response to Appellant’s arguments. We are persuaded by Appellant’s arguments for the following reasons. Independent claims 1 and 21 recite “a parser that sends each of the output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae in a round- robin fashion.” The Examiner finds the prior art of record teaches the claimed parser by stating that, Together, Kumar and Chheda teach a parser that sends [each] of the output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae (Kumar teaches a separator/parser 69 in Figure 4 of Kumar that sends each of the output symbols of the bit-to-symbol mappers Signal Generators 47 and 49 to one of a plurality of antennae) in a round-robin fashion (Chheda teaches the use o[f] round-robin for distributing data to a plurality of antennae). Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 5 Ans. 6. With respect to the “plurality of antennae” of the disputed limitation, the Examiner finds that Kumar is directed to resolving transmission/reception interference issues for multiple broadcast antennas as described in column 19, lines 46-59 of Kumar. Ans. 11. That passage of Kumar states that “[i]t is also possible to use diversity at the transmitter site by having multiple (at least two) broadcast antennas.” Kumar, col. 19, ll. 46-47. Therefore, the Examiner reasons, the antenna system disclosed in Figure 4 of Kumar can be multiple antennas. Id. Appellant contends that neither Kumar nor Chheda teaches the disputed limitation. First, Appellant contends that the diversity of transmission disclosed in Kumar involves a plurality of antennae transmitting the same signal. App. Br. 7; Reply 4. Accordingly, Kumar teaches “a separator that sends the same output symbols of the mapper to each and every one of a plurality of antennae in order to provide the transmission diversity.” App. Br. 7; Reply. 4. We agree with Appellant. Kumar’s separator does not “send[] each of the output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae,” as recited in claims 1 and 21. The diversity of transmission technique described therein involves transmitting the same signal via each of the plurality of antennas, and Kumar does not teach either altering this technique or configuring the disclosed separator to send different groups of symbols to each of the plurality of antennas. Second, Appellant contends that the Examiner’s reliance on Chheda does not cure the deficiency in Kumar. App. Br. 8. Specifically, Appellant argues that the passage in Chheda the Examiner relies on (column 3, lines 15-20) teaches that “every other bit in the data streams is passed to one Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 6 stream and the remaining bits are passed to another stream for Walsh coding and spreading (column 5, lines 6-12).” App. Br. 8. Therefore, each of the symbol streams is sent to a corresponding antenna. Id. As such, Appellant argues, Chheda also fails to teach or suggest the disputed claim limitation. We agree with Appellant. While Chheda discloses separating a data stream “into two separate streams in a round-robin fashion for transmission over two spatially separated antennas” (Chheda, col. 3, ll. 14-17), that data stream involves bits, not symbols. Chheda discloses transmitting the symbol stream without parsing that symbol stream in any way. See Chheda, fig.1, col. 5, ll. 12-15. In fact, neither Kumar nor Chheda discloses the concept of parsing symbols, much less sending each symbol to a different antenna in a round-robin fashion. Therefore, on the record before us, we are constrained to reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting independent claims 1 and 21 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Kumar and Chheda. CONCLUSION For the foregoing reasons, we conclude the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claims 1 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the combination of Kumar and Chheda. Therefore, we do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 1 and 21. And further, because the rejection of independent claim 1 is not sustained, we also do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2, 3, and 6-8, argued separately but based on the patentability of claim 1 (App. Br. 10-11). DECISION We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1-3, 6-8, and 21. Appeal 2010-011641 Application 11/203,593 7 REVERSED tj Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation