Apple Inc.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardAug 16, 20212021003486 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 16, 2021) Copy Citation 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. Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 2 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. Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 3 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. Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 4 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 Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 5 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 Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 6 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. Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 7 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. Appeal 2021-003486 Application 15/129,372 8 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 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation