Ex Parte Hardt et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 26, 201712262465 (P.T.A.B. May. 26, 2017) 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. 12/262,465 10/31/2008 Charles R. Hardt BCS04879 6250 43471 7590 05/31/2017 ARRTS2 F.ntp.mrisp.s T ! C EXAMINER Legal Dept - Docketing 101 Tournament Drive HUERTA, ALEXANDER Q HORSHAM, PA 19044 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2427 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/31/2017 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): arris. docketing @ arris .com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte CHARLES R. HARDT, NAVNEETH N. KANNAN, and TERRY L. ZIEGLER Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 Technology Center 2400 Before JEAN R. HOMERE, DEBRA K. STEPHENS, and JOHN A. EVANS, Administrative Patent Judges. STEPHENS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Introduction Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1,3,4, 6—9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, and 20, which constitute all of the claims in this appeal. Claims 2, 5, 10, 12, 15, 16, and 18 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. THE CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER According to Appellants, the claims are directed to a method, a set top box, and at least one non-transitory computer-readable medium to communicate a message over a content delivery system to a headend Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 requesting content not locally available in a live-off-disk (LOD) buffer (Spec., Abstract). Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method of receiving content over a content delivery system, the method comprising: receiving a request to initiate a rewind operation on content associated with an event, wherein the content is received over a content delivery system; determining that at least a portion of the content associated with the event is not available in a local storage, wherein a live-off- disk (LOD) buffer is configured to buffer content previously received over the content delivery system for rendering during rewind operations; communicating a message over the content delivery system to a headend requesting the portion of the content associated with the event that is locally unavailable, wherein the delivery is requested to be in reverse of normal chronological frame order; in response to the message, receiving the requested content in reverse of normal chronological frame order from the headend, wherein the headend spools the requested content for delivery; and rendering the requested content spooled by the headend, in reverse of normal chronological frame order as received during the rewind operation, communicating a message over the content delivery system to the headend to deliver the requested content in normal chronological frame order; and rendering the requested content received from the headend in normal chronological frame order; 2 Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 wherein upon reaching a point in the rendering of the content at which the content is available from the LOD buffer, the source of the content for rendering is switchable from the headend to the LOD buffer such that rendering subsequent content, in normal chronological frame order, is from the LOD buffer. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Patel US 2004/0078829 A1 Apr. 22,2004 Walters US 2007/0009235 A1 Jan. 11,2007 Craner US 7,962,942 B1 June 14, 2011 REJECTION Claims 1,3,4, 6—9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Walters, Patel, and Craner (Final Act. 3—16). ISSUES 35 U.S.C. § 103(a): Claims 1, 3, 4, 6—9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, and20 Appellants contend their invention as recited in claims 1, 3, 4, 6—9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, and 20 is not unpatentable over the combination of Walters, Patel, and Craner (App. Br. 7—12; Reply Br. 2—3).1 The issues presented by the arguments are: Issue 1: Has the Examiner shown the combination of Walters, Patel, and Craner teaches or suggests “in response to the message, receiving the 1 Rather than repeat the arguments here, we refer to the Appeal Brief and Reply Brief for the positions of Appellants and the Final Office Action and Answer for the positions of the Examiner. Only those arguments actually 3 Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 requested content in reverse of normal chronological frame order from the headend,” as recited in claim 1? Issue 2: Has the Examiner shown the combination of Walters, Patel, and Craner teaches or suggests “wherein the delivery is requested to be in reverse of normal chronological frame order,” as recited in claim 1? Issue 3: Did the Examiner improperly combine the teachings of Walters, Patel, and Craner? ANALYSIS Issue 1: Appellants contend the Examiner erred in finding the combination of Walters and Patel teach “in response to the message, receiving the requested content in reverse of normal chronological frame order from the headend,” as recited in claim 1 and commensurately recited in claims 8 and 14 (App. Br. 7—10). Appellants initially argue Walters fails to disclose the disputed limitations {id. at 7—9); however, the Examiner relies on Patel as teaching the limitation (Final Act. 5). Appellants argue Patel teaches providing trick mode functions, such as pause, rewind, and fast-forward, before a network personal video recorder (NPVR) session is established (App. Br. 9 (citing Patel, Abstract)). According to Appellants, Patel teaches creating a rewind trick file which contains only selected I-frames of the content and not the content itself {id. at 10 (citing Patel Tflf 46, 52)). made by Appellants have been considered in this decision. Arguments that Appellants did not make in the Briefs have not been considered and are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). 4 Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 We are not persuaded. Appellants have not addressed persuasively the Examiner’s detailed findings that Patel teaches the disputed limitation (Final Act. 5; Ans. 3—4). The Examiner finds Patel teaches real-time implementation of a rewind trick mode function (Ans. 3—4). In particular, Patel teaches when viewing a program, a user may issue a rewind command to rewind the program (Patel | 67). We agree with the Examiner that Patel’s generation of a trick file before an NPVR session to implement a real-time rewind function when the user issues a rewind command, is not precluded from the claims (Ans. 3^4 (citing Patel 1 67)). Specifically, the claims do not recite a specific element, such as a trick file, performing the “receiving the requested content” limitation. Thus, because Appellants’ arguments are not commensurate with the scope of the claim, we agree with the Examiner that Patel teaches “in response to the message, receiving the requested content in reverse of normal chronological frame order from the headend,” as recited in claim 1 {id. (citing Patel 1 67)). Issue 2: Appellants additionally argue the Examiner erred in finding Craner teaches “wherein the delivery is requested to be in reverse of normal chronological frame order,” as recited in claim 1 (App. Br. 10—12). Appellants assert claim 1 requires the communication of the message to include a request for the delivery to be in reverse chronological order (Reply Br. 3). According to Appellants, Craner teaches that the delivery of a rewind stream may be in any suitable manner (App. Br. 10—11). Appellants contend that the request in Craner does not expressly specify the recited reverse of normal chronological frame order {id. at 11). Appellants assert 5 Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 the server in Craner provides the rewind stream in any suitable manner (id. at 11). According to Appellants, the client of Craner plays the cached rewind stream in reverse chronological order after delivery (id. at 11—12 (citing Craner 7:22—25)). We are not persuaded. The Examiner finds, and we agree, the recited delivery requested to be in reverse of normal chronological frame order is taught in Cramer as the rewind request. Ans. 5. More specifically, Cramer teaches the trick-play client may request the rewind streams in response to a rewind request from the user (Cramer 6:46—51). The Examiner finds Cramer teaches the rewind stream is provided in reverse order bitwise if the user is rewinding (Ans. 6 (citing Cramer 7:17—57)). It follows, contrary to Appellants’ argument, we determine the Cramer disclosure teaches the request specifies delivery of the content stream in reverse of normal chronological frame order, as recited in claim 1. Issue 3: Appellants next assert Patel teaches away from “wherein the delivery is requested to be in reverse of normal chronological frame order,” as recited in claim 1 (App. Br. 10). Appellants contend Patel teaches creating a rewind trick file containing only selected I-frames of the content, but not the content itself (id.). According to Appellants, the rewind trick file of Patel is created before a NPVR session in which delivery might be requested (id.). We are not persuaded. The Examiner explains that the I-frames are content in the MPEG-2 video compression standard (Ans. 3). We agree with the Examiner because the I-frames are sourced from the program (id.). As discussed above, the creation of a rewind trick filed before a NPVR session 6 Appeal 2017-002878 Application 12/262,465 is not recited in the claims (id. ). We agree with the Examiner that the requesting and receiving of content are taught in Patel in a similar real-time sequence (id. (citing Patel 1 67)). Appellants have not proffered sufficient evidence or argument to persuade us Patel criticizes, discredits, or otherwise discourages modifying Walters, Craner, or a combination thereof, to arrive at the recited invention; therefore, Appellants have not persuaded us the Examiner improperly combined the teachings and suggestions of Walters, Patel, and Craner. Summary In light of these findings and conclusions, Appellants have not persuaded us the combination of Walters, Patel, and Craner fails to teaches or suggests the limitations as recited in claim 1, and claims 3, 4, 6—9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, and 20 (App. Br. 12; Reply Br. 3). DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, 6—9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19, and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Walters, Patel, and Craner 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)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation