Ex Parte Conradt et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Mar 30, 2012

10759073 (B.P.A.I. Mar. 30, 2012)

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.
10/759,073 01/20/2004 Michael Conradt 1454.1509 7154
21171 7590 04/02/2012
STAAS & HALSEY LLP
SUITE 700
1201 NEW YORK AVENUE, N.W.
WASHINGTON, DC 20005
EXAMINER
RUTKOWSKI, JEFFREY M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2473
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/02/2012 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 BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
________________

Ex parte MICHAEL CONRADT and JURGEN TOTZKE
________________

Appeal 2009-012817
Application 10/759,073
Technology Center 2400
________________

Before LANCE LEONARD BARRY, SCOTT R. BOALICK, and
BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, Administrative Patent Judges.

BAUMEISTER, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
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SUMMARY
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejections of claims 1-11:
1. Claims 1-5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as obvious over Aoyagi (US 2002/0032761 A1; published Mar. 14,
2002) in view of Case (J. Case et al., Management Information Base
for Version 2 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv2)
(Jan. 1996) [hereinafter RFC 1907]), and McCloghrie (K. McCloghrie
et al., Management Information Base for Network Management of
TCP/IP-based Internets: MIB-II (Mar. 1991) [hereinafter RFC 1213]);
2. Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Aoyagi in view of RFC 1907, RFC 1213, and Fujino (US 5,651,006;
issued July 22, 1997); and
3. Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Aoyagi in view of RFC 1213, RFC 1907, and Fujino.
We reverse.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants describe their invention as follows:
In the method, starting from a central management
component as the basis it is determined in a first step whether a
network component is a management-capable network
component. If this is the case, the management-capable
network component is classified on the basis of services
provided in the past by the management-capable network
component. A classification is made here into the classes host,
router and switch.
(Abstract).
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Independent claim 1 is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method for classifying network components of a
packet-oriented network comprising:
determining, from a central management component,
whether a network component is a management-capable
network component; and
if the network component is a management-capable
network component, determining whether the network
component supports layer 3 of the OSI reference model and
determining whether data packets have already been forwarded
in the past between the interfaces of the management-capable
network component in order to classify the management-
capable network component.

CONTENTIONS
In concluding that the combination of references teaches or suggests
the limitations of claim 1, the Examiner relies, inter alia, on the use of the
sys.Services object defined in RFC 1907 as corresponding to the claimed
step of “determining whether the network component supports layer 3 of the
OSI reference model” (hereinafter “step (1)”) (Ans. 4). The Examiner also
relies on the combination Aoyagi’s ipForwarding Object in a node
classification process (¶ [0154]) and RFC 1213’s IpForwDatagrams object
definition as corresponding to the claimed step of “determining whether data
packets have already been forwarded in the past between the interfaces of
the management-capable network component” (hereinafter “step (2)”) (Ans.
9, 4).
The Examiner’s motivation to use RFC 1907’s sys.Services object to
perform step (1) is to classify network devices service type (Ans. 5). The
Examiner’s motivation to use RFC 1213’s IpForwDatagrams object in
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Aoyagi’s invention to perform step (2) is to provide “a strong indication the
device may [be] categorized as a router” (Ans. 4).
Appellants argue that the Examiner’s motivation is improper for
combining the references to perform both steps of (1) determining layer 3
support (using sys.Services), and (2) determining forwarded packets (using
IpForwDatagrams) (App. Br. 13). This is because one of the two steps
would have been sufficient to properly classify the network component (id.).
The Examiner responds to Appellants’ contentions with the following:
The sysServices object would not be sufficient to classify
network components because the sysServices object only gives
information indicating “ . . . the set of services that [a network
node] potentially offers.” According to the definition of the
sysServices object, a device that supports layer 3 of the OSI
model generically supports Internet Protocol (IP) services.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary
skill in the art at the time of the invention to use other
Management Information Base (MIB) objects, such as the
ipForwDatagrams object, to gather more specific information
about the network node. Aoyagi supports the Examiner's
assertion because the Aoyagi examines multiple MIB values to
determine the type of a particular node [0154].
(Ans. 9 (emphases added) (brackets in original) (ellipsis in original)).

PRINCIPLE OF LAW
The Supreme Court stated that “‘[r]ejections on obviousness grounds
cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be
some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the
legal conclusion of obviousness.’” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S.
398, 418 (2007) (quoting In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006)).

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ANALYSIS
Appellants’ arguments are persuasive. While the Examiner provides
motivation to use each step individually, the Examiner has not articulated
sufficient rational reasoning for combining the references to perform both
steps (1) and (2). That is, the Examiner does not explain why performing
step (2) (using the ipForwDatagrams object) to gather “more specific
information” is needed or is an advantage after classifying the network
components by performing step (1) (using the sysServices object).
The Examiner also reasons that Aoyagi supports the need to use both
claimed steps (1) and (2) because Aoyagi’s classification process (¶ [0154])
examines multiple MIB values to determine the type of a particular node
(Ans. 9). However, this is unconvincing because Aoyagi’s classification
process appropriately determines the class of component (e.g., router,
bridge, switching hub, . . . ), without performing step (1) using sysServices
objects (Aoyagi ¶ [0154]).
For these reasons, we find that the Examiner does not articulate
sufficient reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal
conclusion of the obviousness for the combination of references to perform
both of claim 1 steps of (1) determining whether the network component
supports layer 3 of the OSI reference model, and (2) determining whether
data packets have already been forwarded in the past between the interfaces
of the management-capable network component in order to classify the
management-capable network component. See KSR, 550 U.S. at 418.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, or
of claims 2-5, 7, and 8, which depend from claim 1. We likewise do not
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sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 10 and 11, which have similar
limitations as claim 1.
With respect to the remaining rejections of dependent claims 6 and 9,
the additionally cited reference, Fujino, does not cure the deficiency of the
obviousness rejection explained above. Accordingly, we reverse the
Examiner’s rejections of claims 6 and 9.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-11 is reversed.

REVERSED

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