John Anderson Fergus. Ross et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Oct 15, 2019

14299390 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Oct. 15, 2019)

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.
14/299,390 06/09/2014 John Anderson Fergus Ross 240985-7 (GELC:0061-1) 1062
62204 7590 10/15/2019
GE GLOBAL PATENT OPERATION
GE LICENSING (62204)
901 MAIN AVENUE
NORWALK, CT 06851
EXAMINER
LE, KHOI V
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2436
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/15/2019 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):
docket@fyiplaw.com
rlt@zpspatents.com
sml@zpspatents.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JOHN ANDERSON FERGUS ROSS,
MICHAEL JAMES HARTMAN, JOHN ERIK HERSHEY, and
RICHARD LOUIS ZINSER
Appeal 2018-002232
Application 14/299,390
Technology Center 2400
Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, AMBER L. HAGY, and
PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges.
HAGY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 23–27, 29, 30, 32–38, and 45–48, and
50–52. Final Act. 2.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in
37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies the real party in interest as the
applicant, General Electric Company. Appeal Br. 2.
2 The Examiner indicates claims 39–44 are allowed, and claim 28 is objected
to as dependent on a base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in
independent form. Final Act. 23. Claims 1–22 and 31 were canceled. Id. at
2. Claim 49 was also canceled by way of amendment dated Oct. 7, 2016.
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Application 14/299,390

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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
According to Appellant:
The present invention relates generally to the field of
communication systems, and more particularly, to systems and
methods for conducting secure communication between two
devices over cable communication networks. To that end,
embodiments disclosed [in the Specification] . . . include
methods, systems and apparatus that may allow secure
communication by exchange of cryptovariables between two
devices over the cable communication network along the
transmission of intentional noise that may make the recovery of
the cryptovariable by an unauthorized third party challenging.
The claimed embodiments recite, generally, embodiments for
methods, systems and apparatuses that transmit cryptovariables
from a first device to a second device and simultaneous
transmission of broadband noise from the second device to the
first device.
Appeal Br. 3; see also Spec. ¶¶ 3–4.
Claims 23, 30, 45, and 52 are independent. Claim 23, reproduced
below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
23. A method comprising:
transmitting first data comprising a cryptovariable from a
first device to a second device over a cable in a cable
communication network;
receiving the first data comprising the cryptovariable at
the second device;
transmitting second data from the second device over the
cable, wherein transmitting the second data from the second
device comprises transmitting broadband noise from the second
device while the first device transmits the cryptovariable to the
second device; and
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removing the broadband noise from the first data
received at the second device using a division-free duplexing
(DFD) technique to recover the cryptovariable.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:

Name Reference Date
Lin et al. (“Lin”) US 7,082,157 B2 July 25, 2006
Kanter et al.

US 2003/0223579 A1

Dec. 4, 2003
Kennedy et al.

US 2009/0110030 A1 Apr. 30, 2009

S. Chen, M. A. Beach, and J. P. McGeehan, Division-free duplex for
wireless applications, 34 IEEE Electron. Lett. 147–148 (Jan. 1998)
(“Chen”).
REJECTIONS3
Claims 23–27, 30, 32–36, 38, 45–48, and 52 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kennedy, Kanter, and Chen.
Claims 29, 37, 50, and 51 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Kennedy, Kanter, Chen, and Lin.
OPINION
With regard to claim 23,4 the Examiner relies on Kennedy as
disclosing transmitting multiplexed data streams, which the Examiner finds

3 The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”) included revisions to 35
U.S.C. § 103 that became effective on March 16, 2013. Because the present
application was filed before March 16, 2013, the Examiner applies the pre-
AIA version of § 103.
4 Appellant and the Examiner present their arguments as addressed herein
based on independent claim 23, which they address collectively with all of
the independent claims. Appeal Br. 8–14; Ans. 3–5. We select claim 23 as
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teaches transmitting first and second data over a cable in a cable
communication network. Final Act. 6. The Examiner states “Kennedy fails
to explicitly disclose a cryptovariable; broadband noise; [and] removing the
broadband noise from the first data received at the second device . . . to
recover the cryptovariable.” Id. at 7. The Examiner finds Kanter “discloses
[a] secure and linear public-key cryptosystem based on parity-check error-
correcting, comprising a cryptovariable . . . broadband noise . . . [and]
removing the broadband noise from the first data received at the second
device . . . to recover the cryptovariable.” Id. (citing Kanter ¶¶ 114, 136,
209, 249). The Examiner also states “Kennedy and Kanter fail to explicitly
disclose using a division-free duplexing (DFD) technique,” for which the
Examiner relies on Chen. Id. at 7–8 (citing Chen, p. 147).
We are persuaded of error in the Examiner’s rejection. In particular,
we conclude the Examiner’s findings are deficient because the Examiner
does not explain how the cited art teaches or suggests “transmitting
broadband noise from the second device while the first device transmits the
cryptovariable to the second device . . . ,” as recited in independent claim 23
(emphasis added).5 As Appellant notes, the Examiner relies on Kennedy as
generally disclosing simultaneous data transmission between two devices,
but acknowledges that Kennedy does not teach transmitting a cryptovariable
while a broadband noise is being received. See id.; see also Final Act. 7.

the representative claim, pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
5 Appellant’s contentions present additional issues. Because the identified
issues are dispositive of Appellant’s arguments on appeal, we do not reach
the additional issues.

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The Examiner’s findings in the Final Action combining Kanter with
Kennedy do not remedy that deficiency. Although Kanter discusses
cryptographic keys and concealment techniques for these keys, the Examiner
does not explain how Kanter’s concealment technique involves the separate
transmission of broadband noise. See Final Act. 7. Instead, Kanter’s
technique relies on random corruption of the data by using a noise signal to
alter the statistical features of transmitted information for compression of
data. See Kanter, ¶¶ 114, 136. As described in Kanter, “[i]n step 202, the
public-key [Ek] is corrupted (prior to the publication of the public key) by
randomly flipping elements in a fraction, pq, of the public-key rows, to
obtain the corrupted version of the public key, [Ek] (this is an optional step)
. . . . The corrupted public key, [Ek], is now utilized to perform all the
operations required for encryption.” Id. ¶¶ 208, 209 (emphasis omitted).
Thus, in Kanter, a random process is used to flip bits of the cryptovariable at
the sender, and the altered cryptovariable is used for encryption. See id.
Appellant contends:
This concealment technique is entirely distinct from the
transmission of a broadband noise by a device while receiving
. . . a cryptovariable, as recited in the claims. This difference is
reflected in the claim recitations, for example, by the fact that
the source of the noise is a device that is receiving a
cryptovariable. Moreover, in the claims, the cryptovariable is
“covered” by the broadband noise, without any corruption to
the cryptovariable as occurs in Kanter. In Kanter, the
corruption of a cryptographic keys takes place within the sender
of the cryptographic key itself.
Appeal Br. 10 (emphasis omitted). As Appellant further contends, “a
hypothetical combination of Kanter and Kennedy would, at best, lead to a
system distinct from the ones recited in the claims in which a cryptovariable
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and a corrupted cryptovariable [are] . . . sent from the same device.” Id.
(emphasis added).
In the Answer, the Examiner does not counter Appellant’s assertions
regarding the deficiencies of Kanter, but asserts (seemingly contradictory to
the Examiner’s earlier findings) that Kennedy’s high bandwidth data
transport system does include broadband noise. Ans. 4. In particular, the
Examiner finds that, in Kennedy’s system, “ultra wideband pulses or
impulses are transmitted and received near, or in the noise range of the
public switched telephone network (PSTN), cable television (CATV)
network, and broadband power line (BPL) network, which may also be
providing other services such as voice, video, and data, by means other than
the ultra wideband pulses or impulses.” Id. We disagree that this teaching
satisfies the “transmitting broadband noise” limitation of the claims. The
claims do not require merely the adjacent presence of noise, which appears
to be the case in Kennedy’s system as described by the Examiner, but they
require the transmission of noise by a second device while it is receiving a
cryptovariable from a first device. The Examiner does not point to a
corresponding teaching in Kennedy.
Although the Examiner does not expressly address Kanter in the
Answer, the Examiner’s findings in the Final Action regarding Kanter do not
make up for this deficiency of Kennedy. The Examiner’s findings regarding
Kanter relate to the use of noise (random variables) to encrypt data being
transmitted, and the Examiner does not explain how Kanter teaches or
suggests the separate transmission of noise by the second device (much less
the second device simultaneously receiving a cryptovariable from a first
device). See Final Act. 7; Kanter, ¶¶ 114, 136. That is, the Examiner does
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not explain how encrypting a single transmission using noise, as taught in
Kanter, would have rendered obvious using two simultaneous transmissions,
in which a cryptovariable is sent from a first device to a second device,
while broadband noise is transmitted to the first device from the second
device, as recited in claim 23. Nor does the Examiner adequately explain
how or why an ordinarily skilled artisan would have used Kanter’s teachings
regarding a single-stream encrypted transmission to modify Kennedy’s
multiplexed data streams to separately transmit a cryptovariable in one
direction and noise in the other direction, as claimed here.
Also seemingly contrary to the Examiner’s earlier findings, the
Examiner also finds that Kennedy teaches transmitting a cryptovariable
because it discloses that a Fast Fourier Transform (“FFT”) and an Inverse
FFT (“IFFT”) are “applied in the transmitting and receiving data,” which the
Examiner finds corresponds to the disclosure in Appellant’s Specification of
a “cryptovariable” as an “algorithm or key for performing encryption or
decryption of transmitted or received signals.” Ans. at 4–5 (citing Spec.
¶ 30). We disagree. As Appellant contends, and we agree, Kennedy’s FFT
algorithm is not an encryption or decryption technique. See Reply Br. 3–4.
Rather, although Kennedy discloses that a “FFT algorithm may be used to
transform data, data transformed using the FFT algorithm of Kennedy is not
concealed or otherwise encrypted in a reasonable sense.” Id. at 3.
For the foregoing reasons, on this record, we are persuaded of error in
the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of independent claim 23, and
we, therefore, do not sustain that rejection. For the same reasons, we are
also persuaded of error in the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims
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30, 45, and 52 on the same basis. The dependent claims stand with their
respective independent claims.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejections of claims 23–27, 29,
30, 32–38, 45–48, and 50–52 are REVERSED.

Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Basis Affirmed Reversed
23–27, 30,
32–36, 38,
45–48, and
52
103(a) Kennedy, Kanter,
and Chen
23–27, 30,
32–36, 38,
45–48, and
52
29, 37, 50,
and 51
103(a) Kennedy, Kanter,
Chen, and Lin
29, 37, 50,
and 51
OVERALL OUTCOME 23–27, 29,
30, 32–38,
45–48, and
50–52
REVERSED