Ex Parte Ansari

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 30, 2015

11616988 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 30, 2015)

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. 11/616,988 12/28/2006 Furquan Ahmed Ansari Ansari 6 (LCNT/128194) 3475 46363 7590 04/30/2015 WALL & TONG, LLP/ ALCATEL-LUCENT USA INC. 25 James Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 EXAMINER PREVAL, LIONEL ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2475 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/30/2015 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ______________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ______________ Ex parte FURQUAN AHMED ANSARI ______________ Appeal 2012-007186 Application 11/616,988 Technology Center 2400 ______________ Before JEFFREY S. SMITH, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judges. KUMAR, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING Appeal 2012-007186 Application 11/616,988 2 Appellant filed a Request for Rehearing under 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1) (“Request”) on February 11, 2015, for reconsideration of our Decision mailed December 18, 2014 (“Decision”).1 The Decision affirmed the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–10, 12–14, 17, 18, 20–23, and 25. 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 Non-Final Rejection and Examiner’s Answer, we agree with the Examiner’s findings (Ans. 4–22) that (1) Pancholi anticipates claims 1, 3–5, 10, 22, and 25; (2) Mirtorabi anticipates claims 12 and 13; and (3) claims 2, 6–9, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 23 are obvious over Pancholi and Mirtorabi (and Katz for claim 9). We highlight the following for emphasis. Appellant contends: 1. At least for these reasons as well as the reasons previously presented in Appellant’s Appeal and Reply Briefs, Appellant maintains that the cited portions of Pancholi fail to teach or suggest the features of “determining, at the router, a minimum Media Transmission Unit (MTU) size of the expected path using a respective plurality of MTU sizes of the links of the expected path” and “in response to a determination that the packet size is greater than the minimum MTU size of the expected path, propagating, from the router toward the sending device, a message for causing 1 “The request for rehearing must state with particularity the points believed to have been misapprehended or overlooked by the Board.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1). Appeal 2012-007186 Application 11/616,988 3 the sending device to constrain packet sizes of subsequent packets transmitted by the sending device to be less than or equal to the minimum MTU size of the expected path.” Request 2–4, 6 (Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 22; Point 1; claim 25, Point 1). 2. Pancholi still would fail to teach or suggest a router that determines a minimum MTU size of an expected path using a respective plurality of MTU sizes of the links of the expected path. Request 4 (Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 22; Point 2). 3. Appellant maintains that the cited portions of Pancholi fail to teach or suggest the feature of “in response to a determination that the packet size is greater than the minimum MTU size of the expected path, propagating, from the router toward the sending device, a message for causing the sending device to constrain packet sizes of subsequent packets transmitted by the sending device to be less than or equal to the minimum MTU size of the expected path.” Request 5–6 (Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 22; Point 3). 4. Appellant maintains that the PMTU value of an end-to-end path as disclosed in Pancholi is not MTU value of a link as recited in Appellant’s claim 25 and, thus, that the cited portions of Pancholi fail to teach or suggest the features of a processor configured for “receiving, at a router, a status message associated with a link, wherein the status message comprises an MTU size of the link,” “identifying, in the MTU size table, a table entry associated with the link," and "updating the identified table entry of the MTU size table to include the MTU size of the link.” Request 6–7 (Claim 25, Point 2). Appeal 2012-007186 Application 11/616,988 4 5. Appellant maintains that the cited portion of Mirtorabi fails to teach or suggest the feature of “wherein the link TLV comprises a sub-TLV including MTU information associated with the link,” as recited in Appellant’s claim 12. Request 8 (claims 12, 13). Appellant’s contentions (1–5) are restatements of the arguments presented in Appellant’s briefing as to alleged errors in the Examiner’s fact finding. Appellant’s arguments were addressed in our decision (Decision 4– 8) and will not be repeated here. We find that the Appellant’s restatements of arguments are addressed to the Examiner’s application of the references rather than to the points believed to have been misapprehended or overlooked by the Board. Based on the Examiner’s claim construction, we agreed with findings and conclusions made by the Examiner (see Ans. 4– 22). Appellant has failed to show any matter that was misapprehended or overlooked by the Board in rendering this Decision. 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)(1)(iv). REHEARING DENIED