Ex Parte Wang et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 13, 2016

12505825 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 13, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO.
12/505,825
93823 7590
BGL/Huawei
P.O. Box 10395
Chicago, IL 60610
FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
0712012009 Chang WANG
06/13/2016
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.
13674-1037 2982
EXAMINER
0 CONNOR, BRIANT
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2475
MAILDATE DELIVERY MODE
06/13/2016 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 CHANG WANG, LI YONG, HUI NI, YUAN RAO,
ZHENGLIANG LI, LEI FAN, XIAOHUI LIU, and QING ZENG
Appeal2014-008687
Application 12/505,825
Technology Center 2400
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, CAROLYN D. THOMAS, and
JOHN R. KENNY, Administrative Patent Judges.
THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner's Final Rejection of claims 1--4, 6, 11, and 12, which constitute all
of the claims pending in this application (App. Br. 1). Claims 5 and 7-10
have been cancelled. Claims App. We have jurisdiction over the appeal
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
Appeal2014-008687
Application 12/505,825
THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to route convergence
performed after a routing device compliant with the requirements of the
Graceful Restart (GR) technology is restarted. See Spec. i-f 2.
Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A method of route convergence, the method
compnsmg:
receiving, by a restarted router, first route
information of a first neighbor routing device belonging to
multiple neighbor routing devices;
selecting, by the restarted router, a first operational
route from received route information comprising the first route
information;
updating, by the restarted router, the first
operational route to a Forwarding Information Base (FIB) of a
main control board instead of an interface board;
determining whether the first operational route is
not a best route selected based on route information of all the
multiple neighbor routing devices;
receiving, by the restarted router, second route
information of a second neighbor device belonging to the
multiple neighbor routing devices, after updating the first
operational route to the FIB and determining the first
operational route is not the best route;
selecting, by the restarted router, a second
operational route from received route information comprising
the first route information and the second route information;
updating, by the restarted router, the second
operational route to the FIB of the main control board;
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Appeal2014-008687
Application 12/505,825
determining whether the second operational route
is the best route;
delivering, by the restarted router, the best route to
the interface board after determining the second operational
route is the best route.
Appellants appeal the following rejection:
Claim 1--4, 6, 11, and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over the combination ofNalawade (US 7,688,714 B2,
Mar. 30, 2010), Frick (US 7,362,700 B2, Apr. 22, 2008), and Ward (US
7,710,899 Bl, May 4, 2010).
ANALYSIS
Claims 1-4, 6, 11, and 12
Issue: Did the Examiner err in finding that Frick teaches or suggests
updating the first operational route to a FIB of a main control board instead
of an interface board, as set forth in claim 1?
Appellants contend that "Frick discloses a 'HW forwarding table
(110)' is also in the I/O modules (104-106) (alleged by the Examiner as
'interface board') rule out ... a Forwarding Information Base (FIB) of the
main control board instead of the Interface board ... [so this] does not
overcome Nalawade's deficiency" (App. Br. 12).
Here, the Examiner admits that "N ala wade does not disclose a FIB of
a main control board instead of an interface board" (see Final Act. 3) but
instead relies upon Frick to disclose such features (id. at 4). As such, we
shall look for error in the Examiner's interpretation of Frick.
Although we agree with the Examiner "that in Frick's (FIGURE 1),
all the management modules and interface modules contain forwarding
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Appeal2014-008687
Application 12/505,825
tables" (see Ans. 7), we highlight that the claims require updating the first
operational route to a FIB of a main control board instead of the interface
board (see claim 1) (emphasis added). In other words, the claimed invention
does not update the route information in the FIB of the interface board.
Contrary to this, Frick discloses that "[h]ardware forwarding table 110 stores
destination addresses of received packets and corresponding forwarding
information. This forwarding table is replicated to input/output modules
101-106 to enable forwarding of packets ... "(4:32-35). Even if Frick's
management module 108 includes a FIB, like N ala wade, Frick also updates
the forwarding information to the FIB of the interface boards 101-106,
something the claimed invention avoids.
Thus, we disagree with the Examiner's finding that Frick makes up
for the deficiency in Nalawade by teaching updating the first operational
route to a FIB of a main control board instead of an interface board, as
recited in each of the independent claims. The Examiner also has not found
that Ward teaches this feature. Because we agree with at least one of the
arguments advanced by Appellants, we need not reach the merits of
Appellants' remaining arguments. Accordingly, we will not sustain the
Examiner's obviousness rejection of claims 1--4, 6, 11, and 12.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1--4, 6, 11, and 12 is
reversed.
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