Ex Parte Corda

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Aug 23, 2017

12670699 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 23, 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.
12/670,699 01/26/2010 Alexandre Corda 81339093 US01 4395
65913 7590 08/25/2017
Intellectual Property and Licensing
NXPB.V.
411 East Plumeria Drive, MS41
SAN JOSE, CA 95134
EXAMINER
VERDERAMO III, RALPH A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2136
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/25/2017 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):
ip. department .u s @ nxp. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ALEXANDRE CORDA1
Appeal 2017-001934
Application 12/670,699
Technology Center 2100
Before JASON V. MORGAN, ERIC B. CHEN, and
MICHAEL M. BARRY, Administrative Patent Judges.
BARRY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of
claims 1—15, which are all claims pending in the application.2 We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm.
1 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(i) (2016) requires an appellant to identify the real
party in interest. In a prior appeal involving the application here at issue,
Appellant identified the real party in interest as NXP, B.V. See Ex parte
Corda, Case No. 2013-008015 (PTAB Oct. 1, 2015). In view of Appellant’
request for correspondence to be sent to NXP and identifying an agent of
NXP as the point of contact (see App. Br. 11), it appears Appellant failed to
comply with this rule.
2 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(ii) (2016) requires an appellant to identify related
appeals. Appellant failed to comply with this rule by not identifying the
prior appeal involving this application (see Ex parte Corda supra note 1).
Appeal 2017-001934
Application 12/670,699
Introduction
The claims relate to defragmentation of memory in contactless smart
cards for mobile communications devices. See Spec. 1 and Claims.
Appellant’s Specification discloses device and method embodiments that
describe defragmentation of MIFARE® memory (developed by NXP
Semiconductors) by first parsing the memory to find either empty spaces or
parts occupied by applications. Then, based on the number or size of empty
memory spaces, the storage locations of applications are reorganized. See
Spec 1—7. Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A mobile communication device being
connectable to a contactless smart card memory having sectors,
each sector protected by two different keys, and comprising an
applications manager being configured to
parse the memory for parts of the memory being
occupied by applications and for empty memory spaces
between the occupied parts of the memory and
if a predefined number or size of empty memory spaces
is detected, to do a de-fragmentation of the memory by
reorganizing the storage location of applications to create a
region of contiguous sectors.
App. Br. 12 (Claims App’x) (formatting adjusted).
References
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims
consists of three patent publications and two non-patent references:
Noble et al. US 2001/0047451 A1 Nov. 29, 2001
(“Noble”)
Pudipeddi et al. US 2007/0143563 Al June 21, 2007
(“Pudipeddi”)
La Aaltonen et al. GB 2 403 377 A Dec. 29, 2004
(“La Aaltonen”)
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Application 12/670,699
Philips Semiconductors, mifare® Standard Card IC MF1 IC S50
Functional Specification, July 1998 (“Philips”).
Michahelles et al., Pervasive RFID and NFC Techs., IEEE Pervasive
Computing, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 94—97 July—Sept. 2007 (“Michahelles”).
Rejections
Claims 1, 2, 4—6, 8—10, and 12—15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over La Aaltonen, Noble, and Philips. Final Act.
2-9.
Claims 3 and 7 stand rejected under § 103(a) as unpatentable over La
Aaltonen, Noble, Philips, and Pudipeddi. Final Act. 9-10.
Claim 11 stands rejected under § 103(a) as unpatentable over La
Aaltonen, Noble, Philips, and Michahelles. Final Act. 11.
ISSUES
Based on Appellant’s arguments, the issues before us are whether the
Examiner errs in the rejections: (1) of independent claims 1 and 5 (App. Br.
4—6); and (2) of dependent claims 13 and 15 {id. at 7).3
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
contentions of reversible error. We disagree with Appellant’s conclusions.
Instead, we adopt the Examiner’s findings and reasons as set forth in the
Final Rejection from which this appeal is taken and as set forth in the
3 Appellant’s only argument of Examiner error for dependent claims 2—4, 6—
12, and 14 is based on the arguments for the parent independent claims 1 and
5. See App. Br. 8—10. Accordingly, each of these claims stands or falls with
its parent independent claim.
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Appeal 2017-001934
Application 12/670,699
Answer. See Final Act. 2—11 and Ans. 3—14. We highlight the following
for emphasis.
Independent claims 1 and 5
Appellant argues the Examiner errs in finding the cited prior art
teaches or suggests the requirement of “reorganizing the storage location of
applications to create a region of contiguous sectors,” as recited by claims
1 and 5. App. Br. 4. Appellant argues the rejection “mistakenly broadened
‘storage location of applications’ to refer to data in general and ‘a region of
contiguous sectors’ to defragmentation of any stored data in a memory,”
which “is unreasonable because it ignores the plain meanings of both
‘applications’ and ‘region of contiguous sectors.’” Id. at 5.
Appellant specifically contends the rejection “failed to show actual
reorganization of the storage location of applications to create a region of
contiguous sectors in Aaltonen. The Examiner failed to cite another
reference to remedy this deficiency.” Id. at 4. This is unpersuasive. The
rejection relies upon La Aaltonen for teaching a “memory” and Philips for
teaching a smart card memory with “sectors.” Final Act. 3^4. Each
reference cited by the Examiner must be read, not in isolation, but for what it
fairly teaches in combination with the prior art as a whole. See In re Merck
& Co., Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986). One cannot show
nonobviousness by attacking references individually when the rejection is
based on a combination of references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425
(CCPA 1981). In view of Philips’ teaching of memory divided into sectors,
we agree with the Examiner that an ordinarily skilled artisan would have
understood La Aaltonen’s disclosure of the basic defragmentation technique
of “releasing fragmented memory areas and creating an unused area for
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Appeal 2017-001934
Application 12/670,699
future use” (7:22—23) to teach “reorganizing the storage ... to create a
region of contiguous sectors,” as recited. See Ans. 12—13.
The crux, then, is whether La Aaltonen teaches “reorganizing the
storage location of applications.'1'’ Appellant strenuously contends “the
Examiner has failed to point to any disclosure related to reorganizing the
storage location of applications in any of the references of record.” App.
Br. 5; see also Reply Br. 1—3. This is unpersuasive. As the Examiner finds,
La Aaltonen generally discusses defragmentation of “stored data,” and
“‘data’ would include any logical grouping of data, such as files,
applications, or others.” Ans. 13 (citing La Aaltonen 7:5—14). We agree.
Noble confirms an ordinarily skilled artisan would have understood, in the
context of storage and defragmentation, that reference to “data”
encompasses “applications.” See Noble 1 8 (“drives are often used by
electronic systems such as computers to permanently or semi-permanently
store applications, e.g., software programs, data, etc.”). Thus, we agree with
the Examiner that “[i]t is clear to one of ordinary skill in the art with
conventional knowledge of the benefits of defragmentation that any logical
grouping of data would benefit from being stored in contiguous locations,”
and that “applications” are simply one well-known example. Ans. 13.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 1
and 5. For the same reasons, we sustain the rejection of claims 2-4, 6—12,
and 14, for which Appellant argues the Examiner errs based solely on the
arguments for claims 1 and 5 (see App. Br. 8—10).
Dependent claims 13 and 15
Claims 13 and 15 depend from claims 1 and 5, respectively, and recite
“wherein the region of contiguous sectors has five contiguous sectors.”
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Application 12/670,699
App. Br. 14 (Claims App’x). Appellant contends that “[bjecause Aaltonen
lacks a region of contiguous sectors, Aaltonen also lacks five contiguous
sectors as claimed.” App. Br. 7. This is unpersuasive.
The Examiner finds La Aaltonen’s disclosure of “mov[ing] the data to
achieve a substantially contiguous use of memory locations with the
memory” (7:25—26) teaches this requirement. Final Act. 9. We agree. As
discussed above, in view of Philips’ teaching of memory divided into
sectors, an ordinarily skilled artisan would have understood La Aaltonen’s
disclosure for defragmenting memory to achieve contiguous “memory
locations” teaches reorganizing the memory to result in “a region of
contiguous sectors,” as recited. We further agree with the Examiner that:
La Aaltonen suggests a plurality of locations. Logically,
defragmentation would have to include at least two locations,
since one location could not be fragmented. La Aaltonen does
not limit the size of the data/files so the defragmentation can
obviously be scaled up to any size, which would obviously
include five locations.
Ans. 14.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 13
and 15.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we sustain the rejection of claims 1—15 under
§ 103(a). 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
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