Ex Parte Kessel

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 28, 2018

14495324 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 28, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
14/495,324 09/24/2014
65913 7590 11/30/2018
Intellectual Property and Licensing
NXPB.V.
411 East Plumeria Drive, MS41
SAN JOSE, CA 95134
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Martin Kessel
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.
81584158US03 4067
EXAMINER
ZHANG, ZHENSHENG
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2474
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/30/2018 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):
ip.department.us@nxp.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex Parte MARTIN KESSEL
Appeal 2018-004666
Application 14/495,324
Technology Center 2400
Before JUSTIN BUSCH, CATHERINE SHIANG, and BETH Z. SHAW,
Administrative Patent Judges.
SHAW, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL 1
Appellant2 seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner's final rejection of claims 1, 4--13, and 15-23, which are all the
pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
INVENTION
Appellant's invention relates to a receiver node for use in a digital
broadcast system. Spec. 1.
1 Throughout this Decision we have considered the Appeal Brief filed
August 23, 2017 ("App. Br."), Reply Brief filed March 29, 2018 ("Reply
Br."), the Examiner's Answer mailed February 2, 2018 ("Ans."), and the
Final Office Action mailed January 23, 2017 ("Final Act.").
2 Appellant identifies NXP B.V. and Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc.,
as the real parties in interest. App. Br. 1.
Appeal 2018-004666
Application 14/495,324
Claim 1 is illustrative of the claims at issue and is reproduced below:
1. A receiver node for use in a digital
broadcast system, comprising a receiver configured to:
receive a signal comprising a plurality of services which
are time-multiplexed to form the signal, wherein the plurality of
services comprise a desired service encoded with an error
correcting code for decoding;
ignore the signal during an ignore period;
identify time periods in the signal in which the desired
service is present for receipt by the receiver and wherein the
ignore period comprises a portion of at least one of the
identified time periods;
use said error correcting code and the desired service
received outside the ignore period to reconstruct a part of the
desired service ignored by the receiver; and
during the ignore period, use the receiver to
perform a background scan for other services.
REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejected claims 1, 4, 5, 7-13, 15-17, and 19-23 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over ETSI (Digital Video
Broadcasting (DVB); DVB-H Implementation Guidelines, TR102 377,
Vl.4.1, 2009-06) in view ofLecki (US 2011/0164513). Final Act. 4--9.
The Examiner rejected claims 6 and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over ETSI, Lecki, and Odaka (US 4,380,071). Final Act.
10.
CONTENTIONS AND ANALYSIS
Appellant argues the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of ETSI and
Lecki. In particular, Appellant argues ETSI does not teach the recited
"ignore periods," and if modified by Lecki, the combination of ETSI and
2
Appeal 2018-004666
Application 14/495,324
Lecki does not teach ignoring the signal and using the receiver to perform a
background scan for other services during an ignore period. App. Br. 7-12;
Reply Br. 2-5. We agree with Appellant.
Appellant points out, and we agree, that ETSI discloses: "During the
time between bursts, the Receiver may scan for other available signals,
compare the signal strengths, and even implement a hand-over between
transport streams without interrupting the service reception." ETSI, 5.3.6
( emphasis added). Therefore, ETSI specifies and requires to continuously
receive data during specified receive periods without interrupting reception.
The Examiner finds ETSI teaches most elements of Appellant's claim
1, but does not explicitly teach "ignore the signal during [the] ignore
period." Final Act. 6. The Examiner finds Lecki teaches this limitation
because "the receiver is controlled to be inactive ( or tum off or ignore)
outside the reception time periods." Id.
As Appellant argues, and we agree, Lecki teaches that its receiver is
"turned-off' outside the reception time periods during inactive times, to save
power. App. Br. 9, 10; Lecki ,r 10. We therefore agree with Appellant that
combining Lecki with ETSI would result in a receiver that is turned off
during an ignore period, instead of ignoring the signal and performing the
claimed background scan during an ignore period.
The Examiner generally alleges that
the combination of Lecki and ETSI (using the off period within
the receiving period taught by Lecki to scan the channels as
taught by ETSI) together teaches time-slicing in which there are
specified receive periods and off periods which may be used for
background scans, and that during the receive periods, the
receiver may be turned off within the specified receive periods
to reduce power usage.
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Appeal 2018-004666
Application 14/495,324
Ans. 6. However, this statement does not provide sufficient explanation or
evidence as to why one ordinarily skilled in the art would have made the
Examiner's proposed modification to ETSI. KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc.,
550 U.S. 398, 418-19.
Therefore, on this record, the Examiner has not shown sufficiently
how the combination of references teaches "ignore the signal during [the]
ignore period" and "during the ignore period, use the receiver to perform a
background scan for other services," as recited in claim 1.
Thus, we are persuaded of error in the Examiner's rejection of claim 1
under 35 U.S.C. § 103, and we do not sustain the§ 103 rejection of claim 1.
For the same reasons, we do not sustain the§ 103 rejection of independent
claims 13 and 15, as well as dependent claims 4, 5, 7-12, 16, 17, and 19-23.
Nor do we sustain the rejection of dependent claims 6 and 18 because the
Examiner does not find Osaka cures the deficiencies of ETSI and Lecki
discussed above.
DECISION
We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1, 4--13, and
15-23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
REVERSED
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