Ex Parte Chen et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 24, 2014

11719774 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 24, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte YINGWEI CHEN, RICHARD CHEN, RUEDIGER SCHMITT,
and SAISHANKAR NANDAGOPALAN
____________

Appeal 2011-011077
Application 11/719,774
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., BRUCE R. WINSOR, and
J. JOHN LEE, Administrative Patent Judges.

WINSOR, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1-35, which constitute all the claims pending in this application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

1 The real party in interest identified by Appellants is Koninklijke Philips
Electronics N.V. App. Br. 3.
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Application 11/719,774

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants’ disclosure “relates to transmission control in a wireless
multimedia communication system.” Spec. 1:4-5. Claim 1, which is
illustrative, reads as follows:
1. An apparatus for non-TSPEC (traffic specification)
air-time fair transmission control regulation, comprising:
a memory comprising n queues having corresponding
pre-determined scheduling weights qi,old = qi,new, i = 1,2, ... ,n;
a queue-level scheduler to enqueue a received packet and
dequeue for transmission an enqueued packet of at least one
flow in a queue of said n queues respectively according to a
pre-determined queue allocation scheme and a weighted
transmission scheduling scheme using said weights qi,new, i =
1,2, ... ,n; and
a time monitor module for determining if there is an
increase in a transmission time per byte Ti,t,j for each queue of
said at least one flow enqueued therein and adjusting the
corresponding scheduling weights qi,new, i = 1,2, ... ,n according
to a pre-determined weight adjustment scheme.
The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims:
Jones US 5,726,640 Mar. 10, 1998
Thompson US 5,881,245 Mar. 9, 1999
Johansson US 6,473,399 B1 Oct. 29, 2002
Yu US 6,725,270 B1 Apr. 20, 2004
Wu US 2004/0177087 A1 Sept. 9, 2004
Love US 6,822,969 B2 Nov. 23, 2004
Shvodian US 7,088,702 B2 Aug. 8, 2006
Wentink US 7,136,392 B2 Nov. 14, 2006
Claims 1, 3, 20, and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones. Ans. 5-10.
Claims 2 and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones, Johansson, and Wu. Ans. 10-11.
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Claims 4-10 and 23-29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones and Wu. Ans. 11-16.
Claims 11, 12, 30, and 31 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones, Wu, and Thompson. Ans. 16-18.
Claims 13 and 32 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones, Wu, Thompson, and Johansson. Ans. 18.
Claims 14 and 33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones, Wu, Thompson, Johansson, and Wentink. Ans. 19.
Claims 15 and 34 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones, Wu, Thompson, Johansson, and Yu. Ans. 19-20.
Claims 16 and 35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jones, Wu, Thompson, Johansson, Yu, and Wentink.
Ans. 20.
Claim 17 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Jones, Wu, Thompson, Johansson, Yu, Wentink, and Shvodian. Ans.
21.
Claim 18 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Jones, Wu, Thompson, Johansson, Yu, Wentink, Shvodian, and Love.
Ans. 21-22.
Claim 19 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Jones, Wu, Thompson, Johansson, Yu, Wentink, and Love. Ans. 22-
23.
Rather than repeat the arguments here, we refer to the Briefs (“App.
Br.” filed Jan. 17, 2011; “Reply Br.” filed June 2, 2011) and the Answer
(“Ans.” mailed Apr. 5, 2011, supplemented Apr. 22, 2011) for the respective
positions of Appellants and the Examiner. Only those arguments actually
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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)(1)(vii) (2011).

ISSUE
In view of Appellants’ contentions and arguments, we discuss the
Appeal by reference to claim 1. The issue raised by Appellants’ contentions
is as follows: Does Jones teach or suggest “a time monitor module for
determining if there is an increase in a transmission time per byte Ti,t,j for
each queue,” as recited in claim 1?

ANALYSIS
Claim 1
We have reviewed Appellants’ contentions and arguments regarding
claim 1 (App. Br. 7-8; Reply Br. 3-4) in light of the Examiner’s findings
(Ans. 5-7) and explanations (Ans. 23-26). We are unpersuaded of error in
the rejection of claim 1 and adopt the Examiner’s findings and explanations
(Ans. 5-7, 23-26) as our own. The following findings and conclusions are
for emphasis.
The Examiner finds that Jones would have suggested the subject
matter of claim 1 to a person of ordinary skill in the art. Ans. 5-7 (citing
Jones, col. 2, ll. 39-43, 57-61; col. 3, ll. 1-5, 35-39; 57; col. 6, ll. 9-24; col. 7,
ll. 16-34; col. 8, ll. 15-17; Fig. 1); see also Ans. 23-26. More particularly,
the Examiner finds as follows:
Jones discloses . . . a time monitor module for determining if
there is an increase in a transmission time for each queue of at
least one flow enqueued therein and adjusting the
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corresponding scheduling weights q(i,new), i = 1,2, ....n
according to a pre-determined weight adjustment scheme (when
time to transmit a codeword is increased, paging time is
increased. Efficiency is a function of paging time, so efficiency
also is changed. Fairness is a function of age of page;
therefore page transmission weight which is a function of
efficiency and fairness, is to be adjusted based on a pre-
determined weight factor, col. 7, lines 16-34).
Jones does not disclose determining the transmission
time per byte. However, Jones discloses calculating the
transmission time per code word by dividing paging time by the
number of code words (col.8, lines 15-17). Moreover, it is
generally considered to be within the ordinary skill in the art to
adjust, vary, select or optimize the numerical parameters or
values of any system absent a showing of criticality in a
particular recited value. The burden of showing criticality is on
Applicant.
Since Jones discloses calculating the transmission time
per code word by dividing paging time by the number of code
words (col.8, lines 15-17), it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to derive the
time transmission per byte from the transmission time per
codeword, absent a showing of criticality by Applicant.
Ans. 5-7 (citations omitted).
Appellants contend that “[a]lthough Jones appears to determine
whether a page has been stored in a queue longer than a predetermined limit,
this does not indicate or determine if there is an increase in a transmission
time Ti,t,j per bite for each queue.” App. Br. 7.
Although Jones may determine the efficiency of a
particular page in a queue, Jones does not suggest the feature of
determining if there is an increase in transmission time per byte
for a queue. Jones does not discuss or suggest the transmission
time per byte for a paging queue. Instead, Jones teaches
determining the efficiency of the page within the paging queue.
Therefore, Jones does not suggest the feature of determining if
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there is an increase in a transmission time per byte Ti,t,j for each
queue.
Reply Br. 4. We are unpersuaded of error.
The Examiner relies on Jones at column 8, lines 15-17, to teach
calculating the efficiency of page transmission by dividing paging time by
the number of code words. Ans. 6-7, 25. Appellants’ arguments do not
address the Examiner’s reliance on this passage of Jones. To further explain
the passage relied on by the Examiner, we note that Jones, in the same
paragraph, teaches that the efficiency is calculated for the page types. See
Jones, col. 7, ll. 36-38 (“In order to determine the airtime efficiency of a
page type, the processor 14 implements the routine depicted in FIGS. 10-
12.” (emphasis added)). Jones further teaches that paging messages are
stored in paging queues that are associated with the signaling protocol of the
message, which is, in turn, determined by the type of pager for which the
message is intended. See Jones, col. 2, ll. 57-63. We find that one of
ordinary skill in the art would have learned from Jones’ passages that
efficiency, i.e., transmission time per unit of transmitted data, is calculated
for each queue, i.e., the queues associated with the types of messages. The
Examiner concludes (Ans. 7), and we agree that it would have been merely a
matter of obvious design choice to calculate the efficiency in units of
transmission time per byte rather than transmission time per code word. We
further note that because Jones’s scheduling dynamically takes into account
airtime efficiency (Jones, Abstract), when the efficiency Eff is used to
calculate a page transmission weight PTW (Jones, col. 7, ll. 16-21), Jones
necessarily determines that efficiency Eff has increased, decreased, or stayed
the same.
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Appellants have failed to persuade us of error in the rejection of claim
1. Accordingly we sustain the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) of claim 1
over Jones.
Claim 20
Appellants assert that independent method claim 20 must be
interpreted separately from independent apparatus claim 1. App. Br. 8-9.
However, Appellants argue claim 20 by adopting the arguments made for
claim 1. App. Br. 9. We find these arguments unpersuasive for reasons
similar to those discussed supra regarding claim 1. Accordingly we sustain
the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) of claim 20 over Jones.
Dependent Claims
Claims 2-19 and 21-35 depend from claims 1 and 20 respectively and
were not separately argued with particularity. See App. Br. 9-13.
Accordingly, for the reasons discussed supra, we sustain the rejections under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) of claim 2-19 and 21-35 over Jones alone and in various
combinations, as set forth supra, with Johansson, Wu, Thompson, Wentink,
Yu, Shvodian, and Love.

DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-35 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). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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