Eric Norige et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 25, 2019

14925904 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 25, 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.
14/925,904 10/28/2015 ERIC NORIGE AB8461-US-C1 2963
156240 7590 09/25/2019
Spectrum IP Law Group LLC
558 Castle Pines Parkway, B4-362
Castle Pines, CO 80108
EXAMINER
CHO, HONG SOL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2467
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/25/2019 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):
eofficeactions@appcoll.com
intel@slgip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
________________

Ex parte ERIC NORIGE and SAILESH KUMAR
________________

Appeal 2018-0049141
Application 14/925,904
Technology Center 2400
________________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., JEREMY J. CURCURI, and
PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges.

CURCURI, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1, 2, 4–8, 10–14, and 16–18. Final Act. 1. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
Claims 1, 2, 4–8, 10–14, and 16–18 are rejected under non-statutory
obviousness-type double patenting as obvious over claims 1–14 and 17 of
U.S. Patent No. 9,185,023. Final Act. 3.
Claims 1, 2, 6–8, 12–14, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(a)(2) as anticipated by Lecler (US 2013/0174113 A1; published July
4, 2013). Final Act. 4–5.

1 Appellants identify Netspeed Systems, Inc. as the real party in interest.
App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

2
Claims 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
obvious over Lecler and Durkan (US 2013/0174111 A1; published July 4,
2013). Final Act. 6.
We affirm.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants’ invention relates to “automatically optimize the
placement of heterogeneous SoC IP cores within a Network on Chip (NoC)
interconnect architecture.” Spec. ¶ 2. Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced
below:
1. A method, comprising:

generating a floorplan for a chip comprising a plurality of hosts and a
network on chip (NoC) interconnect configured to communicatively connect
the plurality of hosts, the generating of the floorplan comprising
determining, by a processor, positions for the plurality of hosts, a first one of
the plurality of hosts having a different physical footprint from a second one
of the plurality of hosts, wherein the positions for the plurality of hosts are
determined based on optimization of one or more efficiency functions; and

generating the NoC interconnect based on the positions for the
plurality of hosts;

wherein the generating the NoC interconnect comprises connecting
each of the plurality of hosts to an adjacent router based on the determined
positions for the plurality of hosts.

PRINCIPLES OF LAW
We review the appealed rejections for error based upon the issues
identified by Appellants, and in light of the arguments and evidence
Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

3
produced thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010)
(precedential).

ANALYSIS
THE OBVIOUSNESS-TYPE DOUBLE PATENTING REJECTION
Appellants explain the “terminal disclaimer filed on October 10, 2017
was approved on the same day, thereby rendering the rejection to be moot.”
App. Br. 6. We recognize that a proper terminal disclaimer may overcome
the obviousness-type double patenting rejection. However, at the Patent
Trial and Appeal Board, review of terminal disclaimers does not fall under
our purview. Appellants do not dispute any particular findings made in the
Final Action. See App. Br. 6; see also Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d at 1075
(“If an appellant fails to present arguments on a particular issue — or, more
broadly, on a particular rejection — the Board will not, as a general matter,
unilaterally review those uncontested aspects of the rejection. See, e.g.,
Hyatt v. Dudas, 551 F.3d 1307, 1313–14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (the Board may
treat arguments appellant failed to make for a given ground of rejection as
waived)”).
We, therefore, summarily sustain the Examiner’s obviousness-type
double patenting rejection of claims 1, 2, 4–8, 10–14, and 16–18.

Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

4
THE ANTICIPATION REJECTION OF CLAIMS 1, 2, 6–8, 12–14, AND 18 BY
LECLER
Contentions
The Examiner finds Lecler describes all limitations of claim 1. Final
Act. 4–5. In particular, the Examiner finds Lecler’s “units” correspond to
claim 1’s recited “hosts.” See Final Act. 4–5; see also Ans. 3–4.
Appellants present the following principal arguments:
i. Lecler does not describe “determining, by a processor, positions
for the plurality of hosts, a first one of the plurality of hosts having a
different physical footprint from a second one of the plurality of hosts,
wherein the positions for the plurality of hosts are determined based on
optimization of one or more efficiency functions”; and “wherein the
generating the NoC interconnect comprises connecting each of the plurality
of hosts to an adjacent router based on the determined positions for the
plurality of hosts” as recited in claim 1. App. Br. 7. “[I]n the broadest
reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification, a person of
ordinary skill in the art would understand that the hosts as recited in the
independent claims are described in Lecler as agents, and the routers as
described in the claims facilitate the functionality of the units that are
described in Lecler.” App. Br. 8. “[T]he shape of the agents [in Lecler] are
provided statically as an input and are not positioned based on any efficiency
function.” App. Br. 8; see also Reply Br. 2–5.
ii. Lecler’s units and agents are not interchangeable. See App. Br.
9–10 (“Modifying the implementations [of Lecler] to determine the shape
and placement of the agents would require a substantial redesign and
reconstruction of the implementations of Lecler, as the implementations of
Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

5
Lecler are directed to equations and algorithms to determine the shape and
placement of units given the shape and placement of the agents from a NoC
designer.”); see also Reply Br. 5.

Our Review
Appellants’ Specification discloses “NoC [(Network-on-Chip)] is a
global shared communication infrastructure made up of several routing
nodes interconnected with each other using point-to-point physical links.”
Spec. ¶ 4.
Appellants’ Specification further discloses:
Messages are injected by the source and are routed from
the source node to the destination over multiple intermediate
nodes and physical links. The destination node then ejects the
message and provides the message to the destination. For the
remainder of this application, the terms ‘components’, ‘blocks’,
‘hosts’ or ‘cores’ will be used interchangeably to refer to the
various system components which are interconnected using a
NoC. Terms ‘routers’ and ‘nodes’ will also be used
interchangeably. Without loss of generalization, the system with
multiple interconnected components will itself be referred to as
a ‘multi-core system’.
Spec. ¶ 5.
Thus, Appellants’ Specification distinguishes between the hosts and
the routers of the NoC. Thus, the broadest reasonable interpretation of
claim 1’s recited “hosts,” “NoC,” and “router[s],” in light of the
Specification, requires that the “hosts” are interconnected using the “NoC,”
with the “NoC” composed of the “router[s].”
Lecler discloses:
A NoC comprises nodes connected by wires. A NoC can
include many nodes. Nodes are either agents or units.
Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

6
Agents are nodes with a fixed shape within a floorplan.
Agents are IP cores such as CPUs and memory controllers.
Units are nodes of a NoC that are topologically between
agents. Units generally perform the functions of transporting data
transactions between agents. Switches, muxes, and buffers are
examples of units.
NoC can comprise different numbers and different
arrangements of nodes.
Lecler ¶¶ 17–20.
Thus, Lecler distinguishes between the agents and units of the NoC.
In Lecler, the “agents” are interconnected using the “NoC,” with the “NoC”
composed of the “units.”
Accordingly, when evaluating Lecler as prior art, claim 1’s recited
“hosts” correspond to Lecler’s “agents,” and claim 1’s recited “router[s]”
correspond to Lecler’s “units.” See App. Br. 8.
Thus, we find Appellants’ argument persuasive and disagree with the
Examiner’s finding that Lecler’s “units” correspond to claim 1’s recited
“hosts.” Instead, we find that Lecler’s “agents” correspond to claim 1’s
recited “hosts.”
Claim 1 requires “determining, by a processor, positions for the
plurality of hosts . . . wherein the positions for the plurality of hosts are
determined based on optimization of one or more efficiency functions.”
Turning to Lecler, Lecler does not determine positions for Lecler’s
agents based on an optimization; rather, Lecler’s entire invention pertains to
determining positions for Lecler’s units. See generally Lecler. The Examiner
has not made findings to establish that Lecler’s units and agents are
interchangeable. See Final Act. 4–5; Ans. 3–4. Therefore, Lecler does not
describe the limitations of claim 1.
Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

7
We, therefore, do not sustain the Examiner’s anticipation rejection of
claim 1. We also do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 2 and 6,
which depend from claim 1.
Independent claims 7 and 13 are similar in scope to claim 1, and for
the same reasons, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 7 and
13. We also do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 8, 12, 14, and
18, which variously depend from claims 7 and 13.

THE OBVIOUSNESS REJECTION OF CLAIMS 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, AND 17 OVER
LECLER AND DURKAN
Claims 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, and 17 variously depend from claims 1, 7, and
13. The Examiner’s rejection of these claims does not cure the deficiency
discussed above with respect to claims 1, 7, and 13. See Final Act. 6.
We, therefore, do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 4, 5,
10, 11, 16, and 17.

ORDER
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 4–8, 10–14, and 16–18
under obviousness-type double patenting is affirmed.
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 6–8, 12–14, and 18
under anticipation is reversed.
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, and 17
under obviousness is reversed.
Because we have affirmed at least one ground of rejection for each
claim on appeal, we affirm the Examiner's decision to reject the claims.
37 C.F.R. § 41.50(a)(1).
Appeal 2018-004914
Application 14/925,904

8
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