Ex Parte Hou et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 22, 2016

12557652 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 22, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO.
12/557,652
93823 7590
BGL/Huawei
P.O. Box 10395
Chicago, IL 60610
FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
09/11/2009 Xiaolong Hou
04/25/2016
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
13674-321 4839
EXAMINER
MUMMALANENI, MRUNALINI YERNENI
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2699
MAILDATE DELIVERY MODE
04/25/2016 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 XIALONG HOU, and NING CHEN
Appeal2014-005147
Application 12/557,652
Technology Center 2600
Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, CATHERINE SHIANG, and
KAMRAN JIVANI, Administrative Patent Judges.
SHIANG, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's final
rejection of claims 1-19, which are all the claims pending in the application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
The present invention relates to mobile communication services. See
generally Spec. 1. Claim 1 is exemplary:
1. A method for processing value-added service for short message
service, VAS-SMS, comprising:
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Application 2014-00514 7
setting and providing by a Short Message Service Center (SMSC), a
value-added service identifier to identify a new subscriber which has been
subscribed to V ASSMS;
receiving by the SMSC, an original short message submitted by a
calling party to a called party;
determining by the SMSC, whether at least one of the calling party or
the called party of the original short message is provided with the value-
added service identifier;
if it is determined that the at least one of the calling party or the called
party is provided with the value-added service identifier:
forwarding by the SMSC, the original short message to a VAS-
SMS processing center;
obtaining by the V AS-SMS processing center, value-added
service subscription data of the calling party or the called party;
wherein:
based on the obtained value-added service subscription
data:
generating by the V AS-SMS processing center, a value-
added service short message associated with the original short
message;
submitting by the VAS-SMS processing center, the value-added
service short message to the SMSC;
delivering by the SMSC, the value-added service short message
to a mobile station of the called party;
receiving by the SMSC, a delivery message response submitted
by the called party;
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Application 2014-00514 7
based on the received delivery message response, the SMSC
submitting a delivery status report to the VAS-SMS processing center
to report a delivery result about whether the value-added service short
message is delivered with success; and
receiving by the V AS-SMS processing center, the delivery result of
the value-added service short message as that of the associated original short
message, and sending a delivery result notification of the original short
message to the short message service center.
References and Rejections
Jiang US 2006/0136560 Al Jun.22,2006
Hu US 2007 /0249374 Al Oct. 25, 2007
Greenwood US 2008/0064424 Al Mar. 13, 2008
Hwang WO 2007/040310 Al April 12, 2007
l'l-.1n YU{) ')(\(\Q/(\Q..:\1')0 A 1 T11hr 1 '7 ')(\(\Q
'-.../_l__l__l__l__l_ ff'-' L.VV\J/ V\JJJL.J .L :1.._l_ .J U-_I_ J _I_ I ' L..VV\J
Aldiscon (IS-SMS-SMINSP-0055; Short Message Peer to Peer Interface
Specification; 1/14/1996).
3GPP TS 23.039 V2.0.0 (Interface Protocols for the Connection of Short
Message Service Centers' (SMSCs) to Short Message Entities (SMEs);
Published 06-1999) ("TS 23.039").
SMPPv5 Short Message Peer-to-Peer Protocol Specification, Version V5.0
(Published 02/19/2003) ("SMPPv5").
Claims 1-5 and 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (a) as being
unpatentable over Hwang, Hu, SMPPv5, Chin, and Aldiscon.
Claims 6-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hwang, Hu, SMPPv5, Chin, Aldiscon, and TS 23.039.
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Application 2014-00514 7
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable
over Hwang, Hu, SMPPv5, TS 23.039, Greenwood, and Jiang.
Claims 11-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hwang, Hu, SMPPv5, and Jiang.
ANALYSIS 1
We have reviewed Appellants' arguments in the Briefs, the
Examiner's rejection, the Examiner's response to Appellants' arguments,
and the evidence of record. We concur with Appellants' conclusion that the
Examiner erred in finding Hwang, SMPPv5, Hu, Chin, and Aldiscon
collectively teach "receiving by the V AS-SMS [value-added service for
short message service] processing center, the delivery result of the value-
added service short message as that of the associated original short message,
and sending a delivery result notification of the original short message to the
short message service center," as recited in independent claim 1.2 See App.
Br. 20-22; Reply Br. 15-16.
In the Final Rejection, the Examiner concedes "Hwang does not
teach" the disputed claim limitation. Final Act. 10. Instead, the Examiner
finds "SMPPv5 teaches the [disputed claim limitation]" (Final Act. 10) and
cites the following excerpts of SMPPv5 as evidence:
1 Appellants raise additional arguments. Because the identified issue is
dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the additional arguments.
2 For our analysis, we assume the recited predicate condition ("if it is
determined that the at least one of the calling party or the called party is
provided with the value-added service identifier") is satisfied within the
scope of method claim 1. Similarly, we assume the recited predicate
conditions are satisfied with respect to other independent claims.
4
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SMPP v5, §2.6.1: "each SMPP session involves two sets of
sequence numbers; the set used by the ESME for ESME-
originated requests and the set used by the MC for MC-
originated requests" and §2.6.5: ''for an application to
efficiently utilize the SMP P session bandwidth, asynchronous
transmission can make significant improvements .... If the
ESME is synchronous and can only send a single PDU at a
time, then as soon as the MC acknowledges the PDU, the
SMPP session will be idle until the response PDU has been
processed by the ESME and the next request dispatched to the
MC" along with Fig 2-15.
Final Act. 10.
Appellants argue, and we agree, that the cited SMPP v5 portions do
not teach the disputed claim limitation, because they are silent with respect
to the disputed claim limitation. See App. Br. 20-22.
The Examiner does not respond to Appellants' above argument. In
the Answer, the Examiner asserts the following:
First, the Examiner cites a number of messages from Hwang' s Figure
2 (ii .. ns. 11 ), but none of those messages include the disputed claim
limitation. Nor does the Examiner assert that Hwang's messages teach the
disputed claim limitation.
Second, the Examiner cites SMPPv5 and finds:
According to SMPPv5 (SMPPv5, § 2.6), since ESME (i.e.,
VAS) and MC (i.e., SMSC) use sequence numbers to submit
requests to the other party (MC and ESME respectively), there
is a possibility of confusion for the originator of the sequence
number. To avoid this, SMPPv5 proposed (SMPPv5, §§ 2.6.4-
2.6.5) to use request-response where sequence numbers sent in
a session are not acknowledged through another session (i.e.,
Asynchronous mode of operation).
Ans. 11.
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We have reviewed the cited portions of SMPPv5, but such portions do
not support the Examiner's findings. See App. Br. 20-21. SMPPv5's
section 2.6.1 states "each SMPP session involves two sets of sequence
numbers; . . . They can cross over each other in value, but will or should not
be confused with each other." SMPPv5 i-f 2.6.1. SMPPv5's sections 2.6.4 is
entitled "Synchronous Vs. Asynchronous" and explains the differences
between synchronous and asynchronous sessions. See SMPPv5 i-f 2.6.4.
SMPPv5's sections 2.6.5. is entitled "Why Asynchronous?" and explains
asynchronous sessions are advantageous because they avoid the inefficiency
of idle time associated with synchronous sessions. See SMPPv5 i-f 2.6.5.
Third, the Examiner creates a new figure of Hwang in view of
SMPPv5, based on the cited portions of Hwang and SMPPv5 discussed
above. See Ans. 13. The new figure includes the newly added messages of
"Submit_SM_Resp (seq=51)" and "DELIVER_SM_Resp (seq=l)," which
the Examiner maps to the disputed claim limitation. See Ans. 13.
As discussed above, the cited portions of Hwang and SMPPv5 do not
teach the disputed claim limitation. Nor does the Examiner adequately
explain how SMPPv5' s teaching of advantageous asynchronous sessions
would have motivated one skilled in the art to modify Hwang to add the new
steps of "Submit_SM_Resp (seq=51)" and "DELIVER_SM_Resp (seq=l),"
which are not taught by Hwang and/or SMPPv5.
Since the Examiner does not adequately map the disputed claim
limitation to the cited prior art, we agree with Appellants that the Examiner
has not sufficiently developed the record for finding Hwang and SMPPv5
collectively teach "receiving by the VAS-SMS processing center, the
delivery result of the value-added service short message as that of the
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associated original short message, and sending a delivery result notification
of the original short message to the short message service center," as
required by claim 1. See App. Br. 20-22; Reply Br. 15-16. Therefore, we
are constrained by the record to reverse the Examiner's rejections of claim 1,
and corresponding dependent claims 2-14 for similar reasons. The
Examiner has cited additional references for rejecting some of the dependent
claims, but has not shown those additional references overcome the
deficiencies discussed above with respect to claim 1.
Independent claims 15 and 17-19 recite limitations that are
substantively the same as the disputed claim limitation of claim 1. See
claims 15, 17-19. Therefore, for similar reasons, we do not sustain the
Examiner's rejection of independent claims 15 and 17-19, and
corresponding dependent claim 16.
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1-19.
REVERSED
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