Ex Parte Crowder et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 29, 2017

13342522 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 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. 13/342,522 01/03/2012 William Crowder 0234-US-Dl 2382 83579 7590 03/31/2017 LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS, LLC Attn: Patent Docketing 1025 Eldorado Blvd. Broomfield, CO 80021 EXAMINER PEREZ-VELEZ, ROCIO DEL MAR ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2132 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/31/2017 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): patent, docketing @ leve!3. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte WILLIAM CROWDER, JEFFREY ROLLER, and DAVID FULLAGAR Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 Technology Center 2100 Before JAMES R. HUGHES, ERIC S. FRAHM, and CATHERINE SHIANG, Administrative Patent Judges. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner’s final decision rejecting claims 1—14, which constitute all the claims pending in this application. Final Act. 1—2; App. Br. 2.1 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 We refer to Appellants’ Specification (“Spec.”), filed Jan. 3,2012 (claiming benefit of US 61/172,638, filed Apr. 24, 2009) and Appeal Brief (“App. Br.”) filed Mar. 9, 2015. We also refer to the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”) mailed July 30, 2015, and Final Office Action (Final Rejection) (“Final Act.”) mailed July 7, 2014. Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 Appellants ’ Invention The invention concerns media resource storage and management in a computer system, e.g., cache servers and methods for reducing disk read time in cache servers, including iteratively grouping resources (files) into a common file (multifile) and building the common file as a contiguous grouping of the resources. Spec. || 2-4, 17—21; Abstract. Representative Claim Independent claim 1, reproduced below with key disputed limitations emphasized, further illustrates the invention: 1. A computer-implemented method for reducing disk read time in a cache server, the method comprising: at the cache server, iteratively requesting resources to be grouped into a common file; building the common file as a contiguous grouping of the requested resources', and initiating at least part of the common file to be served by reading at least some of the requested resources from the common file in a contiguous manner. Rejections on Appeal 1. The Examiner rejects claims 1—14 under 35 U.S.C § 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which applicant regards as the invention. 2. The Examiner rejects claims 1—14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Ansari et al. (US 2009/0037382 Al, published Feb. 5, 2009) (“Ansari”) and Menon et al. (US 2008/0215747 Al, published Sept. 4, 2008) (“Menon”). 2 Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 ISSUES Based upon our review of the record, Appellants’ contentions, and the Examiner’s findings and conclusions, the issues before us follow: 1. Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1— 14 as being indefinite? 2. Did the Examiner err in finding that Ansari and Menon collectively would have taught or suggested that the “iteratively requesting resources to be grouped into a common file” and “building the common file as a contiguous grouping of the requested resources,’’within the meaning of Appellants’ claim 1 and the commensurate limitations of claim 8? ANALYSIS The 35 U.S.C. § 112 Rejection The Examiner finds Appellants’ independent claims 1 and 8 indefinite because “[tjhere is insufficient antecedent basis” for the claim “limitation ‘the requested resources’” in that the [pjrior limitation “‘iteratively requesting resources to be grouped into a common file’” can be interpreted in more than one way.” Final Act. 3. The Examiner further explains that because “the limitation may be interpreted in more than one way, it is impossible to determine with specificity the scopeofthe claims, which renders the claims indefinite.” Ans. 11. See Final Act. 3; Ans. 10-12. Appellants contend that the claim provides proper antecedent basis for “the requested resources” and that the breadth of claim 1 (and claim 8) should not to be equated with indefiniteness. App. Br. 4. The essence of the requirement under 35 U.S.C.§ 112, second paragraph is that the language ofthe claims must make clear what subject 3 Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 matter the claims encompass — i.e., ‘“whether those skilled in the art would understand what is claimed when the claim is read in light of the specification.’” Star Scientific, Inc. v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 655 F.3d 1364, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (quoting Orthokinetics, Inc. v. Safety Travel Chairs, Inc., 806 F.2d 1565, 1576 (Fed. Cir. 1986)). Appellants’ Specification describes requesting resources, comprising video content, from a server in a content delivery network and building a contiguous grouping of the video content in a common file. Spec. || 84, 85. Upon review of the claim language and Appellants’ Specification, we agree with Appellants that claim 1 (and claim 8) make reasonably clear what subject matter the claims encompass. Consequently, we find that the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claims 1 and 8 as being indefinite. Claims 2—7 and 9-14 depend on claims 1 and 8, respectively. Thus we reverse the Examiner’s indefiniteness rejection of claims 1—14. The 35 U.S.C. § 103 Rejection of Claims 1—14 Appellants argue independent claims 1 (see App. Br. 4—7) and independent claim 8 (see App. Br. 7—9) separately, but merely reiterate the arguments made with respect to claim 1. See App. Br. 4—7. Appellants do not separately argue dependent claims 2—7 and 9-14. See App. Br. 9. Accordingly, we select independent claim 1 as representative of Appellants’ arguments and grouping with respect to claims 1—14. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 4—11), and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer 4 Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 (Ans. 12—20) in responseto Appellants’ Appeal Brief. We concurwith the findings and conclusions reached by the Examiner, and we provide the following for emphasis. Appellants contend that Ansari and Menon do not teach the disputed features of representative claim 1. See App. Br. 4—7,9-10. Specifically, Appellants contend: (1) that Ansari does not teach iteratively requesting resources (see App. Br. 5—6); (2) that Ansari does not teach building the common file as a contiguous grouping of the requested resources (see App. Br. 6-7); and (3) the Examiner does not provide a reasonable rationale for combining Ansari and Menon (see App. Br. 9—10). The Examiner finds that Ansari teaches iteratively requesting resources and building a common file as a contiguous grouping of the requested resources. Final Act. 4—5; Ans. 12—17. Specifically, the Examiner finds that Ansari describes a predictive media cache iteratively requesting data (resources), in that Ansari describes queuing multiple background queries (i.e., requests), receiving the results of the queries, and cache the results. See Final Act. 4 (citing Ansari || 139, 140). The Examiner further finds Ansari teaches building the common file as a contiguous grouping of the requested resources, in that Ansari describes organizing data within the predictive media cache into groups. .See Final Act. 5 (citing Ansari 1165). Appellants generally argue that the Examiner cited portions of Ansari do not teach the disputed limitations of Appellants’ claim 1. See App. Br. 5—7. Appellants, however do not specifically address the findings of the Examiner (delineated supra) or explain with any specificity why these findings are in error. For example, Appellants contend “that the cited 5 Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 portions of Ansari do not teach the element[, iteratively requesting resources,] as claimed” (App. Br. 5), but do not explain why Ansari’s paragraphs 139 and 140 do not describe iteratively requesting data as maintained by the Examiner. Similarly, Appellants contend Ansari does not teach grouping resources into a common file, but do not explain why Ansari’s paragraph 165 does not describe a common file as maintained by the Examiner. See App. Br. 6. Further, Appellants contend Ansari does not teach grouping resources into a common file, but do not explain why Ansari’s paragraph 165 does not describe building a common file as a contiguous grouping as maintained by the Examiner. See App. Br. 6-7. With respect to Appellants’ third point of error, that the Examiner has not provided a proper rationale for combining Ansari and Menon (see App. Br. 9-10; supra), we disagree. The Examiner provides a rationale for combining the references — improved effectiveness and efficiency (by quickly satisfy user requests). Thus, the Examiner has stated “somerational underpinning to supportthe legal conclusion of obviousness.” KSRInt’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (quoting In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). Thus, Appellants do not persuade us of error in the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of representative independent claim 1. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of representative claim 1, independent claim 8, and dependent claims 2—7 and 9-14, not separately argued with particularity (supra). 6 Appeal 2016-000530 Application 13/342,522 CONCLUSIONS Appellants have shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1— 14 under 35 U.S.C § 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite. Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 1—14 under 35 U.S.C. § 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 7