Ex Parte Miao et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 18, 2013

10952071 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 18, 2013)

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.
10/952,071 09/28/2004 INV001Kai X. Miao P19306 7732
94221 7590 03/18/2013
Buckley, Maschoff & Talwalkar LLC/
Intel Corporation
50 Locust Avenue
New Canaan, CT 06840
EXAMINER
HAILU, KIBROM T
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2461
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/18/2013 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 PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte KAI X. MIAO, SIU H. LAM, and LING CHEN
____________

Appeal 2010-008644
Application 10/952,071
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOHN A. JEFFERY, DENISE M. POTHIER, and
BARBARA A. BENOIT, Administrative Patent Judges.

POTHIER, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 14, 18, 19, and 23.1 Claims 1-13, 15-17, 20-22, and
24-29 have been canceled. App. Br. 2. We have jurisdiction under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse.

1 Throughout this opinion, we refer to the Appeal Brief (App. Br.) filed
November 3, 2009; (2) the Examiner’s Answer (Ans.) mailed February 1,
2010; and (3) the Reply Brief (Reply Br.) filed February 19, 2010.
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Application 10/952,071

2
Invention
Appellants’ invention relates to an improved technique for dropping
packets in telephony applications during periods of silence. See generally
Spec. 2:2-11. Claim 14 is reproduced below with the disputed limitations
emphasized:
14. A method comprising:
receiving at a receiver a voice signal in the form of a sequence of data
packets;
using an automatic level control component of the receiver to detect
that one of the received packets is a silence packet or a noise packet;
receiving at a jitter delay control circuit from the automatic level
control component a signal or signals to indicate that the one of the received
packets is a silence or a noise packet; and
dropping the one of the received packets in response to the signal or
signals received from the automatic level control component;
wherein said automatic level control component includes a gain
adjustment block and a level estimation and active voice detector block, said
gain adjustment block controlled by the level estimation and active voice
detector block to adjust a gain applied by the gain adjustment block to an
audio signal, said level estimation and active voice detector block of said
automatic level control component being used to detect that one of the
received packets is a silence packet or a noise packet.

The Examiner relies on the following as evidence of unpatentability:
Marchok US 6,522,746 B1 Feb. 18, 2003
Kramer US 6,658,027 B1 Dec. 2, 2003

The Rejection
Claims 14, 18, 19, and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Kramer and Marchok. Ans. 3-5.

Appeal 2010-008644
Application 10/952,071

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THE CONTENTIONS
Regarding independent claim 14, the Examiner finds that Kramer
discloses an automatic level control (ALC) circuit (e.g., 150 or 280) but that
Kramer’s ALC does not include the recited gain adjustment and level
estimation blocks, for which the Examiner relies on Marchok. Ans. 3-5.
Among other arguments, Appellants assert that the Examiner is using
impermissible hindsight to combine these teachings to arrive at the claimed
ALC component with its recited structure. App. Br. 9-10.

ISSUE
Is the Examiner’s reason to combine Kramer and Marchok supported
by articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to justify the
Examiner’s obviousness conclusion that these teachings collectively would
have taught or suggested the ALC component includes a gain adjustment
block and a level estimation and active voice detector block?

ANALYSIS
While we disagree with several assertions made by Appellants related
to Kramer and Marchok, we find the evidence of record weighs in favor of
Appellants. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010)
(precedential).
The Examiner finds that Kramer teaches an ALC component (e.g.,
150 or 280). Appellants have not defined the term, “ALC component,” or
demonstrated that this term has a particular meaning to an ordinarily skilled
artisan, such that it requires specific elements. See generally Spec.; see App.
Br. 8-10. Appellants discuss that the ALC component 314 includes a block
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Application 10/952,071

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316 that is a level estimation and active voice detector, which is coupled to
the jitter delay control circuit 310 to provide an output that is used to detect
the presence of speech. Spec. 7:13-17, 20-23; 8:1-4. As such, part of an
ALC’s function is to provide an output to a jitter delay control circuit to
detect speech. Likewise and as noted by the Examiner (Ans. 5-6), Kramer’s
voice activity detector 280 (e.g., an active voice detector) is coupled to a
jitter delay control circuit (e.g., jitter buffer manager 230) and provides an
output to this circuit to detect silence (e.g., no speech). See col. 4, ll. 21-27;
col. 5, ll. 1-3; col. 6, ll. 28-32; Fig. 2. We therefore see no reason why
Kramer’s detector (e.g., 150 or 280) cannot be mapped to an ALC and
disagree with Appellants’ mere assertion that Kramer has no ALC circuit or
lacks the structure of an ALC component that performs its functions. See
App. Br. 9; Reply Br. 2.
Appellants additionally argue that the cited prior art lacks coupling an
ALC circuit to a jitter delay control circuit indicating a packet is a silence
packet. App. Br. 8-9; Reply Br. 2. For the reasons stated above, we
disagree. Also, Appellants disclose that only the level estimation and active
voice detector block (i.e., 316) of the ALC component – not the gain
adjustment block 320 – is coupled to the jitter delay control circuit. Spec.
7:15-17 (stating “the level estimation and active voice detector block 316
may also be coupled to the jitter delay control circuit 310 to provide an
output to the jitter delay control circuit 310”); Fig. 3. In contrast, the gain
adjustment block 320 of the ALC component 314 is coupled to the output of
the decoder 318 and block 316, but not the jitter delay circuit. See arrows in
Fig. 3. Thus, Appellants’ own disclosure does not show that the entire ALC
structure is coupled to the jitter delay circuit.
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Application 10/952,071

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However, as the Examiner admits, the recited ALC component having
both a gain adjustment block and a level estimation block is not taught by
Kramer. Ans. 4, 6. The Examiner turns to Marchok to cure these missing
limitations. See Ans. 4-6. We agree with the Examiner that Marchok
teaches an ALC component having both these missing components. That is,
Marchok teaches an ALC component having a voice activity decoder (VAD)
block, a signal estimator (e.g., SIGNAL ESTIMATE) block, and a gain
adjustment (GAIN CONTROL) block, within a speech decoder system. See
Fig. 2. Yet, the Examiner has not provided an adequate reason with a
rational underpinning for including both these blocks within Kramer. See
Ans. 5 (stating an ordinary artisan would have found it obvious to include
Marchok’s teaching in Kramer “to solve the problem level of background
noise that [is] greatly enhanced under maximum gain conditions and an
annoying large amplitude voice burst developed due to a large audio input
signal arrive while the system is at maximum gain (col. 1, lines 19-23)”).
First, we cannot find a teaching related to solve background noise
problem that enhances maximum gain and a discussion of amplitude bursts
in column 1, lines 19-23, of either Kramer or Marchok. Rather, this
reasoning appears in Maher (US 4,514,703), which is not being relied upon
in the obviousness rejection. Second, Marchok teaches consolidating a
voice activity detector, such as the active voice detector 280 in Kramer, with
a signal estimator (e.g., a level estimator) so as to assist in avoiding false
triggers of detecting activity resulting from noise. Col. 7, ll. 40-52; col. 7, l.
65 – col. 8, l. 6. When combined with Kramer’s teaching to determine when
an output is silence, including comfort noise (col. 4, ll. 21-27; col. 5, ll. 1-3),
we find an ordinary skilled artisan would have recognized Marchok’s
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technique that includes a level estimator (col. 7, ll. 40-52; col. 7, l. 65 – col.
8, l. 6) would equally improve Kramer’s active voice detector to assist in
avoiding detecting false triggers of activity. However, these findings and
reasoning were not made by the Examiner. See Ans. 5-6.
Third, we find no evidence in the record supported by a rational
underpinning as to why one skilled in art would have included a gain
adjustment block to Kramer’s ALC component. As discussed above, the
Examiner’s reasoning (see Ans. 5) is not found in Kramer and Marchok.
The Examiner discusses problems that occur under maximum gain but does
not explain how an ordinary skilled artisan would have recognized a gain
adjustment block would remedy this problem. See id. At best, the Examiner
contends that the inclusion helps detect the presence or absence of
background noise and, like Appellants’ ALC, is coupled to a decoding unit.
See Ans. 6 (citing Marchok, col. 5, ll. 16-21). Yet, the cited passage
discusses only VAD circuitry and not a gain adjustment block. Moreover,
we find the Examiner’s reliance on Figure 2 of the disclosure and how its
ALC is coupled to a speech decoding unit encroaches on impermissible
hindsight and is an insufficient reason to support the inclusion of a gain
adjustment block in Kramer.
Appellants admit ALCs are well known. App. Br. 8; Ans. 5 (noting
the admission). We however do not find that this admission itself teaches or
suggests the inclusion of a gain adjustment block in Kramer’s device. While
including a gain adjustment block to Kramer’s arrangement may have some
recognized benefit to an ordinary skilled artisan, we will not engage in such
an inquiry in the first instance on appeal. On balance, we are constrained to
find that the Examiner has not articulated an adequate reason with some
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rational underpinning to include Marchok’s gain adjustment block with
Kramer’s disclosed detector 280 and arrived at the claimed ALC component
with its recited structure.
For the foregoing reasons, Appellants have persuaded us of error in
the rejection of (1) independent claim 14; (2) independent claims 19 and 23,
which recite commensurate limitations; and (3) dependent claim 18 for
similar reasons.

CONCLUSION
As presented, the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 14, 18, 19, and
23 under § 103.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 14, 18, 19, and 23 is
reversed.

REVERSED

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