Ex Parte Balasubramanian

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Feb 8, 2019

12788495 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Feb. 8, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
12/788,495 05/27/2010 Srinivasan Balasubramanian
12371 7590 02/12/2019
Muncy, Geissler, Olds & Lowe, P.C./QUALCOMM
4000 Legato Road, Suite 310
Fairfax, VA 22033
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
QC061571Dl 6769
EXAMINER
NGUYEN, DINH
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2645
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/12/2019 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):
meo.docket@mg-ip.com
meo@mg-ip.com
ocpat_uspto@qualcomm.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SRINIVASAN BALASUBRAMANIAN1
Appeal2018-004997
Application 12/788,495
Technology Center 2600
Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, TERRENCE W. McMILLIN, and
JOHN A. HUDALLA, Administrative Patent Judges.
NAPPI, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's final
rejection of claims 1 through 19. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b ).
We affirm.
INVENTION
The invention is directed to efficiently configuring quality of service
(QoS) and radio resources for a call in a wireless network. Abstract. Claim
1 is representative of the invention and is reproduced below.
1. An apparatus, comprising:
at least one processor configured to detect one or more
access points in a wireless local area network (WLAN), to
1 According to Appellant, QUALCOMM Inc. is the real party in interest.
App. Br. 3.
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Application 12/788,495
determine whether any detected access point is suitable for
receiving service, to perform service registration with a suitable
access point in the WLAN, wherein the service registration is
for only one or more certain services depending on performance
of the access point and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements
of the one or more services, and to establish a communication
call that is supported by the one or more services associated
with the service registration; and a memory coupled to the at
least one processor.
EXAMINER'S REJECTI0NS 2
The Examiner has rejected claims 1, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Hsu et al. (US 2004/0165563 Al,
published Aug. 26, 2004) and Curcio et al. (US 2005/0025180 Al, published
Feb. 3, 2005). Final Act. 4--10.
The Examiner has rejected claims 2, 4, 9, 12, and 15 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as unpatentable over Hsu, Curcio and Jagadeesan et al. (US
2005/0059400 Al, published Mar. 17, 2005). Final Act. 10-12.
The Examiner has rejected claims 3 and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Hsu, Curcio and Sinivaara et al. (US 2004/0137908 Al,
published July 15, 2004). Final Act. 12-14.
The Examiner has rejected claims 5, 6, 10, 13, and 16 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as unpatentable over Hsu, Curcio, Jagadeesan and Love et al. (US
2007/0026810 Al, published Feb. 1, 2007). Final Act. 14--17.
The Examiner has rejected claim 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
2 Throughout this Decision we refer to the Appeal Brief(" App. Br.") filed
December 5, 2017, Reply Brief ("Rep. Br.") filed April 13, 2017, Final
Office Action ("Final Act.") mailed September 18, 2017, and the Examiner's
Answer ("Ans.") mailed March 28, 2018.
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Application 12/788,495
unpatentable over Hsu, Curcio and Shaheen et al. (US 2005/0007984 Al,
published Jan. 13, 2005). Final Act. 18.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed Appellant's arguments in the Brief, the Examiner's
rejection, and the Examiner's response to Appellant's arguments.
Appellant's arguments have not persuaded us of error in the Examiner's
obviousness rejection of independent claim 1.
Appellant argues that the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is in error because: a) the Examiner has not provided
a reasonable basis for combining Hsu, and Curcio, and b) the combined
teaching of Hsu and Curcio do no teach or make obvious performing the
quality of service registration with an access point as recited in
representative claim 1. App. Br. 5-12.
With respect to the first issue, Appellant argues the Examiner has not
established a reasonable basis for combining Hsu and Curcio such that
Curcio's teachings of requesting different QoS for each Packet Data
Protocol (PDP) context into Hsu's teaching of handing over a packet data
session to a WLAN. App. Br. 5. Appellant argues that "the Examiner has
not established that QoS is available on WLAN s at all, let alone tiered QoS
that would be comparable to the tiered QoS that can be obtained via different
PDP context configurations in the UMTS network of Curcio." App. Br. 7.
Further, Appellant argues that the PDP contexts of Curcio are used in a
cellular universal mobile telephone system (UMTS) infrastructure and that:
[E]ven if UMTS networks and WLAN s share the common
characteristic of being able to connect to IP networks, UMTS
networks and WLAN s also include fundamental differences in
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Application 12/788,495
terms of their respective network infrastructures and
how/whether QoS is used to support connections. The mere
fact that UMTS networks can provide tiered QoS levels via
PDP context parameter configurations does not make it obvious
to apply these same QoS protocols to WLAN s.
App. Br. 8.
The Examiner provides a comprehensive response to Appellant's
arguments on pages 3 through 15 of the Answer. We have reviewed the
Examiner's response and the cited teachings of Hsu and Curcio and we
concur with the Examiner's findings and rationale. Specifically, we concur
with the Examiner's finding that Hsu teaches WLANs are used by cellular
carriers to alleviate loading of the cellular system. Answer 3 ( citing Hsu
para. 7). Further, we concur with the Examiner's finding that:
Hsu also discloses ([0073] [t]he cellular network may
then instruct the MS 702 to switch to the WLAN. The decision
to switch from the cellular network 706 to the WLAN is based
on loading of the network, bandwidth of the user, data
requirements, etc.), hence the cellular network includes both
CDMA and GSM-UMTS. And Curcio discloses ([0120] In the
request the wireless communication device MTl includes the
wanted QoS parameters (maximum bit rate of 70 kbps) for all
the media components). That is, as the wireless communication
device requests a PDP context (i.e., application/service with a
certain QoS, it requests a service for only one or more certain
services depending on performance of the access point and
Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Like Hsu, Curcio
discloses in Figure 1 an integrated telecommunication system
comprises of cellular network and WLAN such as IP network 7.
Hence a skilled artisan would "be able to fit the teachings of
multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle" since the
skilled artisan is "a person of ordinary creativity, not an
automaton."
Answer 5. Appellant's Specification states "WLAN 100 may also
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Application 12/788,495
implement IEEE 802 .11 e, which covers QoS enhancements for a Medium
Access Control (MAC) layer;" thus acknowledging that the IEE 802 .11 e
WLAN protocol does use QoS enhancements. See Specification para. 26.
As such we are not persuaded by Appellant's arguments, which are premised
upon the assertion that the Examiner has not shown QoS requirements are
used in WLAN systems. We are similarly not persuaded by Appellant's
augment that Hsu's teaching of handling voice calls after handoff shows that
the WLAN cannot provide the same QoS as the cell network. Reply Br. 2
( citing Hsu para. 86). The cited passage of Hsu does not discuss voice calls
as being of high priority or as requiring high QoS or that the reason they
remain on cellular is for that reason; rather, the paragraph discusses a power
save feature where even after handover to the LAN the mobile station is
monitoring for paging and may receive voice calls on the cellular channels.
Thus, Appellant's arguments have not persuaded us of error in the
Examiner's rationale in combining the teachings of Hsu and Curcio.
With respect to the second issue, Appellant argues the combined
teaching of Hsu and Curcio does not teach or make obvious performing the
quality of service registration with an access point. App. Br. 11.
Specifically, Appellant argues:
In such a combination, the Appellant believes that the WLAN
APs would participate in QoS procedures similarly to the
UMTS BSs in Curcio. In other words, QoS is reserved by a
higher-level network entity analogous to the SGSN/GGSN in
UMTS, and the WLAN APs do their part to support the
reserved QoS level (similar to the UMTS BSs in Curcio). There
would be no particular reason as to why the services requested
from a particular WLAN AP would be restricted to "only one or
more certain services" based on QoS requirements of those
service(s), because the WLAN APs even in this
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hypothetical combination of Hsu and Curcio would not be
distinguished from each other based on their QoS capacity.
App Br. 11.
The Examiner responds on pages 15 through 18 of the Answer. The
Examiner Hsu teaches that the mobile device registers with the WLAN
access point based upon bandwidth and data requirements. Answer 15-16
( citing Hsu para. 85). When combined with Curcio's teaching that different
PDP contexts have different QoS requirements, the mobile station would
register with a suitable WLAN access point based upon the QoS
requirements. Answer 16. We concur with the Examiner and are not
persuaded of error by Appellant's arguments. Representative claim 1 recites
determining whether the detected access point is suitable and performing
service registration with a suitable access point ... depending on the
performance of the access point and the QoS requirements of the services.
Thus, Appellant's argument above is not commensurate with the scope of
the claim as it does not recite where the QoS registered. Accordingly, we
are not persuaded of error by Appellant's arguments directed to the second
lSSUe.
The above two issues are the only issues raised by Appellant's
arguments with respect to representative claim 1. As we are not persuaded
of error by Appellant's arguments with respect to these issues, we sustain the
Examiner's rejection of representative claim 1, and claims 8, 11, 14, 17, and
19 grouped with claim 1 and similarly rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Hsu and Curcio.
Appellant has not presented separate arguments with respect to the
rejections of dependent claims 2 through 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, and 18.
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Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejection of these claims for the
reasons discussed with respect to independent claims 1.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's rejections of claims 1 through 19 under
35 U.S.C. § 103.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal maybe extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv) (2016).
AFFIRMED
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