Ex Parte Chen et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 28, 201713369836 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 28, 2017) 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. 13/369,836 02/09/2012 Doris Tzu-Lang Chen ALT.P301.1 (A03852.1) 9524 45634 7590 LAWRENCE M. CHO P. O. BOX 2144 CHAMPAIGN, IL 61825 03/29/2017 EXAMINER SAXENA, AKASH ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2128 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/29/2017 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 DORIS TZU-LANG CHEN and DESHANAND SINGH Appeal 2016-008308 Application 13/369,836 Technology Center 2100 Before JASON V. MORGAN, BRUCE R. WINSOR, and AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2016-008308 Application 13/369,836 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Non-Final Rejection of claims 1—32, which are all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. THE INVENTION The application is directed to “[a] method of configuring a programmable integrated circuit device us[ing] a high-level language.” (Abstract.) Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal: 1. A method of configuring a programmable integrated circuit device using a high-level programming language, said method comprising: compiling a plurality of virtual programmable devices from descriptions in said high-level programming language; receiving a description of a user configuration for said pro grammable integrated circuit device in said high-level program ming language; parsing said user configuration using a programming proces sor, and selecting, as a result of said parsing, one of said com piled virtual programmable devices; instantiating said one of said compiled virtual programmable devices on said programmable integrated circuit device; and configuring said instantiated one of said compiled virtual pro grammable devices with said user configuration. 1 Appellants identify Intel Corporation as the real party in interest. (See App. Br. 3.) 2 Appeal 2016-008308 Application 13/369,836 THE REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: James Coole and Gregg Stitt, Intermediate Fabrics: Virtual Architectures for Circuit Portability and Fast Placement and Routing, CODES+ISSS ’10, Proceedings of the Eighth IEEE/ACM/IFIP International Conference on Hardware/Software Codesign and System Synthesis, pp. 13-22 (Oct. 2010) (“Coale”) Muhsen Owaida et al., Synthesis of Platform Architectures from OpenCL Programs, 2011 IEEE 19th Annual International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), pp. 186-193 (May 2011) (“Owaida”) Greg Stitt and James Coole, Intermediate Fabrics: Virtual Architectures for Near-Instant FPGA Compilation, IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 81—84 (Sept. 2011) (“Stitt”) THE REJECTIONS2 1. Claims 1,15, and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a) as anticipated by Owaida. (See Final Act. 2.) 2. Claims 1-3, 7-9, 11, 12, 1^19, 21-23, 25, 26, 28-30, and 32 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Coole and Owaida. (See Final Act. 2—3.3) 2 A rejection of claims 1,15, and 29 under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a), first paragraph, has been withdrawn. (See Ans. 3.) 3 As Appellants note (App. Br. 8 n.*), the Examiner’s rejection inadvertently identifies claim 13 in its treatment of claim 14. (See Final Act. 8 (referring to recitations found in claim 14), 13 (citing Stitt with respect to claim 13).) 3 Appeal 2016-008308 Application 13/369,836 3. Claims 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 20, 24, 27, and 31 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Coole, Owiada, and Stitt. (See Final Act. 3.) APPELLANTS’ CONTENTION Appellants argue the rejections are in error because “Owaida neither shows nor renders obvious: compiling a plurality of virtual programmable devices from de scriptions in said high-level programming language as defined in . . . independent claim 1, or selecting, as a result of said parsing, one previously compiled virtual programmable device from among a library of virtual pro grammable devices previously compiled from a description in said high-level programming language; as defined in . . . independent claim 15, and in similar language in . . . independent claim 29.” (App. Br. 12.) ANALYSIS Appellants argue Owaida does not teach or suggest “a plurality of virtual programmable devices from descriptions in said high-level programming language” as recited in claim 1, and analogous limitations in the other independent claims. (See App. Br. 12.) As the Examiner observes (Ans. 4), however, this does not address the Section 103 rejections, in which the Examiner found the subject limitations taught or suggested in Coole. (See Non-Final Act. 12-13 (Claim 1); 16-18 (Claim 15); 18-20 (Claim 29).) Regarding claim 1, for example, the Examiner found that Coole’s “intermediate fabrics” are a “plurality of virtual programmable devices compiled from descriptions in a high-level language.” (Id. at 12.) 4 Appeal 2016-008308 Application 13/369,836 Appellants’ argument that Owaida’s “architectural templates” do not teach or suggest the claimed virtual programmable devices fails to rebut this finding and the analogous findings for the other independent claims supporting the obviousness rejection. Because the alleged failing of Owaida is based on the particulars of how its “architectural templates” are generated, Appellants’ argument does not necessarily apply (nor do they argue it applies) to the “intermediate fabrics” of Coole. For these reasons, Appellants’ arguments are insufficient to show error in the rejections of claims 1—32 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and those rejections are sustained. Because we sustain the rejections of all claims as obvious, we do not reach the rejection of claims 1,15, and 29 as anticipated by Owaida. See In re Hyon, 679 F.3d 1363, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (finding affirmance of rejection of all claims under Section 103(a) made it unnecessary to reach other grounds of rejection); In re Gleave, 560 F.3d 1331, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (same). DECISION The rejections of claims 1—32 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) are affirmed. 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). AFFIRMED 5 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation