Ex Parte Jaakkola

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 30, 2013

11133657 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 30, 2013)

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. 11/133,657 05/16/2005 Mikko Jaakkola 944-004.057 8825 10945 7590 08/30/2013 NOKIA CORPORATION c/o Ware, Fressola, Maguire & Barber LLP Building Five, Bradford Green 755 Main Street, PO Box 224 Monroe, CT 06468 EXAMINER GELIN, JEAN ALLAND ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2643 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/30/2013 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 MIKKO JAAKKOLA ____________________ Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 Technology Center 2600 ____________________ Before THU A. DANG, JAMES R. HUGHES, and JEFFERY S. SMITH, Administrative Patent Judges. DANG, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 2 I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of claims 82-106. Claims 1-81 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. A. INVENTION Appellant’s invention is related to “adapting a transmission rate for providing data in a downlink direction from an access point (AP) in a wireless network to a terminal” (Spec. 1, ll. 5-8). B. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM Claim 82 is exemplary: 82. A method comprising: adapting a wireless communication link for providing data in a downlink direction from an apparatus to a user equipment; and receiving, by the apparatus, a message from the user equipment containing information about an interference source to assist the apparatus in adapting the wireless communication link, wherein the information about the interference source comprises the position of the interference in time. C. REJECTION The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Sherlock US 2003/0123420 A1 July 3, 2003 Karger US 2003/0134639 A1 July 17, 2003 Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 3 Claims 82-106 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Karger and Sherlock. II. ISSUE The main issue before us is whether the Examiner has erred in determining that the combination of Karger and Sherlock teaches or would have suggested receiving “a message . . . containing information about an interference source” wherein “the information . . . comprises the position of the interference in time” (claim 82, emphasis added). III. FINDINGS OF FACT The following Findings of Fact (FF) are shown by a preponderance of the evidence. Karger 1. Karger discloses administering radio resources in a mobile radio cell, wherein a mobile terminal is requested by the base station to send out a signal which is representative of an interference situation at the location of the mobile terminal, the signal received from the mobile terminal is evaluated for determining the radio sources forming the basis of the signal and the intensities of the radio sources, and the base station adapts the distribution of the radio resources for improving the interference situation at the location of the mobile terminal (p. 1, ¶ [0006]). 2. The evaluation of the interference situation leads a further mobile station being identified as the main interference source for the mobile terminal (p. 1, ¶ [0007]). Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 4 Sherlock 3. Sherlock discloses an interference monitor that receives samples from access points and processes the data to characterize the data, wherein the processing involves comparing the frequency and time domain data to known interference templates to identify the nature (e.g., type, location) of the interference, and if the interference can be detected by more than one access point, then the interference monitor can provide an improved estimate of the location of the source of the interference (p. 3, ¶ [0029]). IV. ANALYSIS 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) As to representative claim 82, although Appellant concedes that Karger discloses a base station that “receives from a mobile terminal a signal having raw data representative of the interference situation” (App. Br. 10), Appellant argues that “this received information is not about the source of the interference causing the interference situation” but instead, is used by the base station to determine the source of the interference (id.). Similarly, although Appellant concedes that Sherlock discloses “detecting and locating interferers” (App. Br. 13), Appellant contends that “the interference monitor 54 must monitor the interference on its own based on the error statistic data received from one or more access points, and must try to determine the source of the interference, including [‘]the position of the interference in time,’ on its own” (id.). The Examiner finds that Karger discloses sending a signal that “includes raw data representative of the interference situation,” and points Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 5 out that “[t]his information . . . is used to inform the base station about the interference source” since “[t]he base station would not be able to know the source of the interference if the mobile terminal did not send [the data]” (Ans. 11). The Examiner also finds that Sherlock discloses that “[e]rror static data or raw baseband data (i.e., interpreted as message) stored at the mobile station is received by the interference monitor (corresponding to the apparatus receives message from the user equipment” wherein “[i]f the interference monitor determines that an interferer may be present it makes an estimation of the region impacted by the interferer based on the station that reports elevated error statistic and adapting the network accordingly []” (id.). Thus, the Examiner finds that Sherlock’s control system “can request additional capture data over different time period,” and “the interference data (Error static data or raw baseband data) contains time domain data corresponding to a specific interferer (source of the interference or microwave oven)” (Ans. 12, citations and emphasis omitted). We find no error with the Examiner’s conclusion that claim 82 would have been obvious over Karger in view of Sherlock (Ans. 4). Although Appellant argues that Karger does not disclose information “about the source of the interference causing the interference situation” (App. Br. 10), and that Sherlock does not disclose information “including the position of the interference in time” (App. Br. 13, emphasis omitted), Appellant appears to argue that neither Karger nor Sherlock individually anticipates claim 82. However, the test for obviousness is not what the references show individually but what the combined teachings would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 6 We give the claim its broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the Specification. See In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997). We note that, by contending that Karger’s information differs from Appellant’s information “about an interference source” (App. Br. 10) and Sherlock’s information differs from Appellant’s information comprising “the position of the interference in time” (App. Br. 13), we find Appellant’s principal argument urging patentability is predicated on non-functional descriptive material (i.e., the type or content of the data that is being received). That is, the “messsage” is the type/content of the data being received by the apparatus, and the “information about the interference source” is the type/content of the data contained in the message, and “the position of the interference in time” is the type/content of the data comprised in the information, but the type of data being received and the type of data contained and comprised therein do not change the functionality of or provide an additional function to the “receiving” step. The informational content of non-functional descriptive material is not entitled to weight in the patentability analysis. See In re Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579, 1583 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (“Lowry does not claim merely the information content of a memory . . . . Nor does he seek to patent the content of information resident in a database.”). See also Ex parte Nehls, 88 USPQ2d 1883, 1887-90 (BPAI 2008) (precedential); Ex parte Curry, 84 USPQ2d 1272 (BPAI 2005) (informative) (Federal Circuit Appeal No. 2006-1003), aff’d, Rule 36 (June 12, 2006)); Ex parte Mathias, 84 USPQ2d 1276 (BPAI 2005) (informative), aff’d, 191 Fed. Appx. 959 (Fed. Cir. 2006). Here, the informational content of the data that is being received is entitled to no weight in the patentability analysis. Accordingly, we conclude Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 7 that claim 82 merely requires receiving, by the apparatus, data from the user equipment. Karger discloses a mobile terminal is requested that sends out a signal representative of an interference situation (FF 1). Thus, Karger discloses receiving, by an apparatus, data from a user equipment, as required by claim 82. Furthermore, Karger discloses that the evaluation of the interference situation leads a further mobile station being identified as the main interference source for the mobile terminal (FF 2). We find no error with the Examiner’s finding that the received information “is used to inform the base station about the interference source” since “[t]he base station would not be able to know the source of the interference if the mobile terminal did not send [the data]” (Ans. 11). Additionally, Sherlock discloses receiving samples from access points and processes the data to characterize the data, wherein the processing involves comparing the frequency and time domain data to known interference templates to identify the nature (e.g., type, location) of the interference (FF 3). Thus, Sherlock also discloses receiving, by an apparatus, data from a user equipment, as required by claim 82. Since Sherlock’s received data includes frequency and time domain data to identify the location of the interference (FF 1), we also find no error with the Examiner’s finding that Sherlock’s information “contains time domain data corresponding to a specific interferer” (Ans. 12). Accordingly, we find no error in the Examiner’s conclusion that the combination of Karger and Sherlock would at least have suggested the Appeal 2011-004217 Application 11/133,657 8 features of claim 82. Thus, we find that Appellant has not shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 82 over Karger and Sherlock. Appellant provides similar arguments for independent claims 88, 94, 100, and 106 which Appellant asserts “contain similar limitations” (App. Br. 15), and merely repeats the recited language of dependent claims 83-87 while asserting that Sherlock “does not disclose, teach or suggest the limitations recited in these dependent claims” (App. Br. 15-16). Accordingly, for at least the reasons discussed above, independent claims 88, 94, 100, and 106 and claims 83-87, 89-93, 95-99, and 101-105 depending respectively from claims 82, 88, 94, and 100 fall with claim 82 over Karger and Sherlock. V. CONCLUSION AND DECISION The Examiner’s rejections of claims 82-106 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)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED llw