Ex Parte Addair

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 11, 2017

12575409 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 11, 2017)

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. 12/575,409 10/07/2009 Jennifer Addair P2009-04-11 (290110.433) 9940 70336 7590 01/10/2018 Seed IP Law Group LLP/EchoStar (290110) 701 FIFTH AVENUE SUITE 5400 SEATTLE, WA 98104 EXAMINER RAMAN, US HA ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2424 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/10/2018 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): US PTOe Action @ S eedIP .com pairlinkdktg @ seedip.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte JENNIFER ADD AIR Appeal 2017-005184 Application 12/575,409 Technology Center 2400 Before JOHNNY A. KUMAR, CARL L. SILVERMAN, and JASON M. REPKO, Administrative Patent Judges. KUMAR, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING Appeal 2017-005184 Application 12/575,409 Appellant filed a Request for Rehearing under 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1) (“Request”) on (Sept. 21, 2017), for reconsideration of our Decision mailed December (July 21, 2017) (“Decision”). The Decision affirmed the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1-5 and 7-32. We reconsider our decision in light of Appellant’s Request for Rehearing, but we decline to change the decision. We find Appellant’s arguments unpersuasive for the reasons given in our prior Decision. For the reasons given in the Final Office Action (pages 2 through 14) and Examiner’s Answer (Ans. 3-13), we agree with the Examiner’s findings that (1) claims 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10-12, 14-17, 21-23, 25, 26, 28, 29, and 31 are obvious over Delker and LaJoie; (2) claims 2, 20, and 32 are obvious over Delker, LaJoie, and Grasset; and (3) claims 4, 9, 13, 18, 19, 24, 27, and 30 are obvious over Delker, LaJoie, and Bopardikar.1 We highlight the following for emphasis. Appellant contends: 1. Claim 2 is not obvious in view of Delker, LaJoie, and Grasset because the combined system of Delker and LaJoie would not even need to transcode such an MPEG-2 program were it not for it being modified as suggested by the Examiner to receive such an MPEG- 2 program. Request 2. 1 We stated in our Decision of July 21, 2017: [W]e adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer in response to Appellant’s Appeal Brief.[] We concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. Decision 3. 2 Appeal 2017-005184 Application 12/575,409 2. Claims 13 and 27 are not obvious in view of Delker, LaJoie, and Bopardikar because the system of Bopardikar does not even need to determine the network bandwidth available to the content player device to better utilize whatever available bandwidth there is by transcoding to the more bandwidth-conserving MPEG4 format. Request 3. 3. Claim 32 is not obvious in view of Delker, LaJoie, and Grasset because Grasset does not disclose providing a stored, transcoded copy of the media content to any other devices than the original requesting device. Request 4. 4. The live content in Delker currently being received and stored in cache for internal rewinding and pausing of live content at the DVR is not the program in Delker obtained from the DVR in response to the request received by the media format transcoder. Request 4-5. Appellant’s contentions (1-4) merely repeat arguments already made in their Appeal and Reply Briefs, and do not further elaborate on “the points believed to have been misapprehended or overlooked by the Board” as required by 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1). In particular, Appellant’s points are restatements of the arguments presented in Appellant’s briefing as to alleged errors of Examiner fact finding. We find that Appellant’s restatements of arguments are addressed to the Examiner’s application of the references rather than points believed to have been misapprehended or overlooked by the Board. We did not overlook the arguments regarding the dependent claims as Appellant has argued (Request 2) because, as we stated in the 3 Appeal 2017-005184 Application 12/575,409 Decision, we found these arguments unpersuasive and adopted the Examiner’s findings (Decision 5). Appellant has failed to show any matter that was misapprehended or overlooked by the Board in rendering this rejection. We decline to change our prior Decision. CONCLUSION In view of the foregoing discussion, we grant Appellant’s Request for Rehearing to the extent of reconsidering our decision, but we deny Appellant’s request with respect to making any change thereto. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). REHEARING DENIED 4