Apple Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Aug 16, 2021

2021003486 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 16, 2021)

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.
15/129,372 09/26/2016 Vivek Gupta APP138WOUS 2050
167761 7590 08/16/2021
Eschweiler/Apple Inc.
c/o Eschweiler & Potashnik, LLC
Rosetta Center
629 Euclid Avenue, Suite 1000
Cleveland, OH 44114
EXAMINER
WANG, YAOTANG
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2474
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/16/2021 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):
docketing@epiplaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte VIVEK GUPTA
___________

Appeal 2021-003486
Application 15/129,372
Technology Center 2400

____________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., ERIC S. FRAHM and
MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges.

WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Appellant2 is appealing the final rejection of claims 1–7, 9–27, 29 and
30 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). See Appeal Brief 2. Claims 1, 10, 18 and 26

1 Rather than reiterate Appellant’s arguments and the Examiner’s
determinations, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed November 25, 2020), the
Reply Brief (filed May 7, 2021), the Final Action (mailed May 13, 2020)
and the Answer (mailed March 19, 2019), for the respective details.

2 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). (“The
word ‘applicant’ when used in this title refers to the inventor or all of the
joint inventors, or to the person applying for a patent as provided in
§§ 1.43, 1.45, or 1.46.”). Appellant identifies Appel, Inc. as the real party in
interest. Appeal Brief 2.

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are independent. Claims 8 and 28 are canceled. See Claims Appendix. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Introduction
According to Appellant:
Various embodiments may be generally directed to
techniques for coordinated application of wireless network
selection and traffic routing rules. In one embodiment, for
example, user equipment (UE) may comprise at least [one] radio
frequency (RF) transceiver, at least one RF antenna, and logic at
least a portion of which is in hardware, the logic to process a
received radio resource control (RRC) message comprising radio
access network (RAN) assistance information, evaluate a
threshold condition of an access network discovery and selection
function (ANDSF) management object (MO) routing policy
based on an access threshold comprised in the RAN assistance
information and a corresponding measurement, and apply the
ANDSF MO routing policy to route internet protocol (IP) traffic
based on the evaluation of the threshold condition.
Specification 2.
Representative Claim3 (disputed limitations emphasized)
1. User equipment (UE), comprising:

3 Appellant does not argue independent claims 1, 10 and 18 individually.
See Appeal Brief 9 (“Claims 10 and 18 have limitations similar to that
highlighted above with respect to claim 1.”). Accordingly, we select
independent claim 1 as representative. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv)
(“When multiple claims subject to the same ground of rejection are argued
as a group or subgroup by appellant, the Board may select a single claim
from the group or subgroup and may decide the appeal as to the ground of
rejection with respect to the group or subgroup on the basis of the selected
claim alone.”). Appellant argues independent claim 26 individually,
therefore we address claim 26 separately. See Appeal Brief 9.

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at least one radio frequency (RF) transceiver;
at least one RF antenna; and logic, at least a portion of
which is in hardware, the logic to:
process a received radio resource control (RRC) message
comprising radio access network (RAN) assistance information;
evaluate a threshold condition of an access network
discovery and selection function (ANDSF) management object
(MO) routing policy based on an access threshold comprised in the
RAN assistance information and a corresponding measurement;
apply the ANDSF MO routing policy to route internet
protocol (IP) traffic based on the evaluation of the threshold
condition; and
ignore any RAN rules in conjunction with applying the
ANDSF MO routing policy to route the IP traffic.

References
Name4 Reference Date
Tomici US 2012/0324100 A1 December 20, 2012
Bergström US 2016/0269985 A1 September 15, 2016
Lee US 2016/0353348 A1 December 1, 2016

Rejections on Appeal
Claims 1–7 and 9–25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Lee and BergstrÖm. Final Action 6–17.

4 All reference citations are to the first named inventor only.

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Claims 26, 27, 29 and 30 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over BergstrÖm and Tomici. Final Action 17–19.

ANALYSIS
Claims 1–7 and 9–25
Appellant discloses that support for claim 1’s limitation “ignore any RAN
rules in conjunction with applying the ANDSF MO routing policy . . . to route
the IP traffic” is found in the Specification on page 29, lines 9–10. See Appeal
Brief 3. The Specification simply discloses without elucidation, “Example 62 is
the apparatus of Example 55, comprising means for ignoring one or more RAN
rules in conjunction with applying the ANDSF MO routing policy.”
Specification 29. Example 62 is one of 148 examples disclosed in the
Specification. See Specification 22–36. We note, the Specification does not
disclose ignoring any RAN rules as recited in claim 1; the Specification only
discloses ignoring one or more RAN rules. See Specification 29. Therefore, in
the event of further prosecution, the Examiner may wish to consider whether at
least claim 1 should be rejected for failing to comply with the written description
requirement under 35 U.S.C. § 112.
The Examiner finds Lee fails to disclose claim 1’s ignoring any RAN
rules limitation and relies upon BergstrÖm to address Lee’s deficiency. See
Final Action 7. Specifically, the Examiner relies upon BergstrÖm’s
provisional application 61/883,225:
For the case roaming scenario the UE may have been
provided with a WLANSP [wireless local area network selection
policy] from the home PLMN [public land mobile network]
designed such that the UE would connect to a WLAN X belonging
to a partner of the home operator. However, if the visited RAN has
WLAN X in the RAN-list it would mean that the roaming UE would
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only connect to WLAN X when the RAN-rules indicates so, which
may not be wanted by the home operator. Therefore it could be
considered to add a flag in WLANSP indicating that any RAN-rules
should be ignored for this particular WLAN.
Specification 11 (Provisional Application 61/883,225) (emphasis added); see
BergstrÖm ¶¶ 128–29.
Appellant contends, “According to claim 1, the logic is further
configured to ignore any RAN rules in conjunction with applying the ANDSF
MO routing policy to route the IP traffic.” Appeal Brief 6. Appellant further
contends, “Bergstrom et al. do not disclose logic configured to ignore any RAN
rules in conjunction with applying the ANDSF MO routing policy to route the
IP traffic, as recited in claim 1, but instead teaches ignoring RAN rules while
applying a WLAN selection policy (WLANSP) to select a WLAN.” Appeal
Brief 6. Appellant surmises that, “[i]t appears that the Examiner interprets both
the WLAN selection policy and the ANDSF MO routing policy to be the same.”
Appeal Brief 6 (referring Final Action 3). We find Appellant’s arguments are
not persuasive of Examiner error in regard to the obviousness rejection of claim
1.
We emphasize that “‘the question under 35 USC 103 is not merely
what the references expressly teach but what they would have suggested to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.’” Merck
& Co. v. Biocraft Labs., Inc., 874 F.2d 804, 807 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (quoting In
re Lamberti, 545 F.2d 747, 750 (CCPA 1976)) (emphasis added). We agree
with Appellant that a WLAN selection policy and an ANDSF MO routing
policy are not exactly the same. Nonetheless, we discern no meaningful
difference in regard to ignoring RAN rules, as claimed, and BergstrÖm’s
disclosure of ignoring RAN rules because both the claimed invention and
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BergstrÖm address the matter of prioritizing communication within a
network environment. See Specification 2 (“Various embodiments may be
generally directed to techniques for coordinated application of wireless
network selection and traffic routing rules.”); see also BergstrÖm ¶ 26
(“[T]he wireless device selects a WLAN from among the first, second and
third subsets of WLAN identifiers based on the respective priority levels.”).
A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that
incorporating BergstrÖm’s prioritization within Lee would improve Lee’s
method of handling RAN assistance information within a network
environment. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007)
(“[I]f a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of
ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar
devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual
application is beyond his or her skill.”). Finally, Appellant has not
demonstrated that combining BergstrÖm’s prioritization method with Lee’s
method of handling RAN assistance information would have been “uniquely
challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art,” and we find the
proposed modification would have been within the purview of the ordinarily
skilled artisan. See Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d
1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 418); Specification 29;
Final Action 7. We sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of
independent claims 1, 10 and 18 argued together as well as “their associated
depending claims.” Appeal Brief 9.

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Claims 26, 27, 29 and 30
Appellant contends:
Bergstrom et al. do not disclose a computing device configured
to determine that a UE supports use of RAN thresholds in
ANDSF routing policies and configure an ANDSF MO for the
UE with an ANDSF routing policy that includes one or more
RAN threshold-based ANDSF rules, in response to the
determination, as recited in claim 26.
Appeal Brief 10.
Appellant further contends, “Bergstrom et al. do not disclose a computing
device configured to configure a UE to ignore any RAN rules in conjunction
with applying the ANDSF MO routing policy to route internet protocol (IP)
traffic, for the same reasons as cited above with respect to claim 1.” Appeal
Brief 12–13 (emphasis added).
We do not find Appellant’s arguments persuasive of Examiner error for
the same reasons as we state above. We acknowledge that a WLAN selection
policy and an ANDSF MO routing policy are not exactly the same.
Nonetheless, we discern no meaningful difference in regard to ignoring
RAN rules, as claimed, and BergstrÖm’s disclosure of ignoring RAN rules
because both the claimed invention and BergstrÖm addresses the matter of
prioritizing communication within a network environment. We sustain the
obviousness rejection of independent claim 26, as well as “associated
depending claims” argued together. Appeal Brief 13.

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CONCLUSION

Claims
Rejected
35
U.S.C. §
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–7, 9–25 103 Lee, BergstrÖm 1–7, 9–25
26, 27, 29,
30
103 BergstrÖm, Tomici 26, 27, 29, 30
Overall
Outcome
1–7, 9–27, 29,
30

No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(v).

AFFIRMED