Ex Parte Weingarten et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 26, 2018

13342946 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 26, 2018)

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.
13/342,946 01/03/2012 Hanan Weingarten 74835-US 1099
144016 7590 02/28/2018
SheriHan Rnsis; P P
EXAMINER
1560 Broadway, Suite 1200
Denver, CO 80202
VALLECILLO, KYLE
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2112
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/28/2018 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):
e-docket @ sheridanross. com
mreno @ sheridanross. com
mells worth @ sheridanross .com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte HANAN WEINGARTEN and AVI STEINER
Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
Technology Center 2100
Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, LINZY T. McCARTNEY, and
JAMES W. DEJMEK, Administrative Patent Judges.
McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1—33. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm-in-part.
Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
BACKGROUND
The present patent application concerns wear estimation of a flash
memory device, where the wear estimation “is responsive to the duration of
a test programming process.” Spec. 1 61, filed January 3, 2012. Claims 1,
27, and 28 are independent. Claim 1 illustrates the claimed subject matter.
1. A method for wear estimation of a flash memory device,
the method comprises:
programming information to a first portion of the flash
memory device during a test programming process; wherein the
programming comprises most significant bit (MSB)
programming and least significant bit (LSB) programming;
measuring a duration of the test programming process; and
estimating a wear characteristic of the first portion of the flash
memory device thereby providing an estimated wear
characteristic, wherein the estimating is responsive to the
duration of the test programming process.
App. Br. 41, filed July 16, 2015 (formatting modified).
REJECTIONS1
Claims Basis Refemice(s)
1,3-13, 16-26 $ 103(a) Goss1 2 and Jo3
2 § 103(a)
Goss, Jo, and Van
Cauwenbergh4
14, 15 § 103(a)
Goss, Jo, Gollub, 5and
Yoon6
27 § 103(a)
Goss, Gollub, and
Yoon
1 The Examiner withdrew the rejection of claims 2, 11, 17, 22, 28, and 29
under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a). Ans. 2, mailed January 14, 2016.
2 Goss et al., US 2012/0124273 Al, published May 17, 2012.
3 Jo et al., US 2011/0093659 Al, published April 21, 2011.
4 Van Cauwenbergh, US 2009/0282185 Al, published November 12, 2009.
5 Gollub, US 2008/0201620 Al, published August 21, 2008.
6 Yoon et al., US 2009/0144598 Al, published June 4, 2009.
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Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
Claims Basis Refemice(s)
28, 29, 32, 33 § 103(a)
Goss and Van
Cauwenbergh
30,31 § 103(a) Goss, Jo, and Singh7
ANALYSIS
Claims 1, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19—26, and 29—32
With respect to claim 1, Appellants contend the Examiner erred
because “Jo teaches away from Goss and should not be combined [with]
Goss.” App. Br. 16. In Appellants’ view, Jo teaches away from the
Examiner’s combination of Jo and Goss because Jo assumes “that
programming operations on worn cells take more time,” whereas Goss
assumes “the completion times for access operations (e.g., programming
operations) is known to decrease as wear increases.” App. Br. 16 (emphases
added).
We disagree. Although Goss discloses “the completion times for
access operations (e.g., programming operations) is known to decrease as
wear increases,” Goss | 61, Goss also discloses the opposite—that in some
circumstances the completion time for access operations was known to
increase as wear increases. Specifically, Goss discloses “[a] solid-state
memory cell may also be considered to be worn out when it takes too long to
program or fails altogether to program” and that this type of failure “might
also be indicative of wear.” Goss 140; see also App. Br. 19 (acknowledging
that “Goss indicates ... in some cases a cell may be deemed to be defective
if it takes too much time to be programmed”).
7 Global Roadmap for Ceramic and Glass Technology, (Stephen Freiman et
al. eds., 2007). The Examiner refers to this reference as “Singh.” We adopt
this naming convention to avoid confusion.
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Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
Appellants contend we should discount this disclosure because Goss
“indicates that such sort of failures are usually disregarded,” does not
disclose how to take into account this type of failure, and “emphasize [s] that
his method for wear measurement is based upon the assumption that the
completion times for access operations ... is known to decrease as wear
increases.” App. Br. 19 (emphasis omitted). But Goss teaches disregarding
this failure if it occurs “suddenly and early” in a product’s life time. Goss
140 (“This mode of failure may sometimes be seen suddenly and early in
the lifetime of the product. . . and if so, may be excluded for purposes of
wear prediction.”). Goss teaches this type of failure “might also be
indicative of wear” outside of this period. Goss 140. And it is clear from
Goss how to take this failure into account—one assumes a cell has
experienced wear if the cell either takes too long to program or fails to
program. See Goss Tflf 37, 40. In any event, Appellants have not established
that it would have been uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary
skill in the art to take this failure into account. See Leapfrog Enters, v.
Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007).
Finally, the fact that Goss teaches more than one assumption about the
relationship between programming duration and wear does not teach away
from the Examiner’s combination of Goss and Jo. [T]he ‘mere disclosure of
more than one alternative’ does not amount to teaching away from one of the
alternatives where the reference does not ‘criticize, discredit, or otherwise
discourage the solution claimed.’” SightSound Techs., LLC v. Apple Inc.,
809 F.3d 1307, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2015) {quoting In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195,
1201 (Fed.Cir.2004)).
For the above reasons, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1.
Claims 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19-26, and 29—32 depend from claim 1. Because
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Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
Appellants have not presented separate, persuasive patentability arguments
for these claims, we also sustain the Examiner’s rejections of these claims.
Claim 10
Claim 10 depends from 1 and recites the following:
programming the non-test information during the test
programming process; storing the non-test information in a
buffer; checking if the programming of the non-test information
succeeded; deleting the non-test information from the buffer if
the programming of the non-test information succeeded; and re­
programming the non-test information if the programming of the
non-test information failed.
App. Br. 42. Appellants contend the PCI Express protocol disclosed by Jo
“does not relate to the success [or] failure of programming” recited in claim
10. App. Br. 34. Moreover, Appellants argue that the PCI Express protocol
does not re-program non-test information as required by the claim. App.
Br. 34.
We disagree. Claim 10 is conditional. If programming the non-test
information succeeds, the method deletes the non-test information from the
buffer. See App. Br. 42. If programming the non-test information fails, the
method reprograms the non-test information. See App. Br. 42. The broadest
reasonable interpretation of claim 10 encompasses situations in which only
one of these two conditional, mutually exclusive steps occur. See Ex parte
Schulhauser, No. 2013-007847, 2016 WL 6277792, at *3-6 (PTAB April
28, 2016) (concluding the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim
encompassed situations in which conditional method steps “need not be
reached”) (precedential). Because the broadest reasonable interpretation of
claim 10 does not require performing both of these conditional steps, the
Examiner was only required to show the cited art teaches or suggests either
the “deleting” step or the “re-programming” step. See Schulhauser, 2016
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Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
WL 6277792, at *4 (“The Examiner did not need to present evidence of the
obviousness of the remaining method steps of claim 1 that are not required
to be performed under a broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.”).
The Examiner found Jo teaches or suggests “deleting the non-test
information from the buffer if the programming of the non-test information
succeeded” because Jo discloses PCI Express. See Final Act. 19. The
Examiner found PCI Express uses a data exchange protocol that overwrites
buffer data the system has successfully written to flash memory. See Final
Act. 19; Ans. 32—33. Although Appellants contend this process is irrelevant
to programming, Appellants’ written description indicates that
“programming” includes writing data. See Spec. 1 5 (explaining “a
programming operation includes” injecting a charge “by applying a voltage
pulse”), 1 83 (explaining “a test programming process can include several
write operations”). And Appellants’ contention that this process does not
teach the recited “re-programming” step is unpersuasive because, as
explained above, the Examiner was only required to establish the cited art
teaches or suggests the “deleting” or the “re-programming” step. We
therefore sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 10.
Claims 2—8, 11, 14, 17, 18, 27, 28, and 33
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections of claims 2—8, 11, 14,
17, 18, 27, 28, and 33 in light of Appellants’ arguments, and we agree with
Appellants that the Examiner erred. The Examiner’s rejections of these
claims lack adequate supporting reasoning and evidence and rely on
conjecture, speculation, and hindsight reconstruction. Accordingly, we are
constrained by the record before us to reverse the Examiner’s rejections of
these claims.
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Appeal 2016-004394
Application 13/342,946
CONCLUSION
Claims Rejected Basis Reference(s) Affirmed Reversed
1,3-13, 16-26 § 103(a) Goss and Jo
1,9, 10, 12,
13, 16, 19-
26
3-8, 11, 17,
18
2 § 103(a)
Goss, Jo, and
Van
Cauwenbergh
2
14, 15 § 103(a)
Goss, Jo,
Gollub, and
Yoon
15 14
27 § 103(a)
Goss, Gollub,
and Yoon 27
28,29, 32,33 § 103(a)
Goss and Van
Cauwenbergh 29, 32 28,33
30,31 § 103(a) Goss, Jo, and Singh 30,31
Summary
1,9,10, 12,
13, 15, 16,
19-26, 29-
32
2-8, 11, 14,
17, 18, 27,
28,33
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED-IN-PART
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