Ex Parte Lee et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 12, 2012

10891423 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 12, 2012)

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. 10/891,423 07/15/2004 Woo-suk Lee 1793.1361 8331 21171 7590 12/12/2012 STAAS & HALSEY LLP SUITE 700 1201 NEW YORK AVENUE, N.W. WASHINGTON, DC 20005 EXAMINER NEWAY, SAMUEL G ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2657 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/12/2012 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 LEE WOO-SUK LEE, HO-CHONG PARK and CHANG-YONG SON ____________ Appeal 2010-010170 Application 10/891,423 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before ALLEN R. MACDONALD, KRISTEN L. DROESCH and MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judges. DROESCH, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2010-010170 Application 10/891,423 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of a final rejection of claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 251. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. An oral hearing was held on December 03, 2012. BACKGROUND Appellants’ disclosed invention relates to a wide-band speech signal compression apparatus to compress a speech signal in a scalable bandwidth structure, and wide-band speech signal decompression apparatus to decompress the compressed speech signal, and corresponding methods for compression and decompression. Spec. 1. Claim 1 is illustrative and is reproduced below (disputed limitations in italics): 1. An apparatus to compress a wide-band speech signal, the apparatus comprising: a narrow-band speech compressor to compress a low- band speech signal of the wideband speech signal and output the compressed low-band speech signal as a low-band speech packet; and a high-band speech compressor to compress a high-band speech signal of the wideband speech signal using energy information of the low-band speech signal provided from the narrow-band speech compressor, and output the compressed high-band speech signal as a high-band speech packet, wherein the high-band speech signal compressor comprises: 1 Claims 4, 27, 38, 41 and 48-69 have been cancelled. Claims 7-24 were objected to as dependent from a rejected claim, but including allowable subject matter. Final Office Action (“FOA”) 8. Claims 26, 28-37, 39, 40 and 42-47 were allowed. Id. Appeal 2010-010170 Application 10/891,423 3 a filter bank to split the high-band speech signal of the wide-band speech signal into a plurality of band signals with different frequency bands; an RMS calculator to calculate RMS values for each of the band signals transmitted from the filter bank; a band priority decision unit to determine priorities of the band signals split by the filter bank based on the RMS values calculated by the RMS calculator; a band signal quantization module to quantize the band signals split by the filter bank and output a quantization index for each of the bands using band priority information determined by the band priority decision unit and the energy information of the low-band speech signal; and a packetizer to packetize the band priority information and the quantization index for each band output from the band signal quantization module and output the packetized result as the high-band speech packet, wherein the band signal quantization module performs quantization operations to quantize different numbers of sub-vectors according to the band priority information. Rejection Claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Epps et al., A New Very Low Bit Rate Wideband Speech Coder with a Sinusoidal Highband Model, ISCAS 2001, Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Vol. 1 of 5, May 6, 2001, pp. 337-340, (“Epps”), Koh (4,949,383), Matsumoto (6,353,808 B1) and Dunlop et al., A Packet Based System for Cellular Digital Mobile Radio Applications, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Selected Topics in Wireless Communications, 1992, pp. 27- 30 (“Dunlop”). Appeal 2010-010170 Application 10/891,423 4 ISSUE Did the Examiner err in finding that Koh teaches or suggests the disputed limitations of claim 1? ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief presented in response to the Final Office Action. We agree with Appellants’ conclusions. We highlight and address specific findings and arguments for emphasis as follows. The Examiner relies upon Koh for describing a band signal quantization module to quantize the band signals split by the filter bank and output a quantization index for each of the bands using band priority information determined by the band priority decision unit. FOA 4; Ans. 5 (citing Fig. 1, element 6 and related text). The Examiner finds that Koh describes a sub-band quantizer 6 which quantizes according to band priority information (band bit allocation number). Ans. 9-10 (citing Fig. 1). In support of the findings, the Examiner directs attention to Koh’s description that “[t]he resulting allocated numbers of bits are then output … to control the appropriate quantizers 6,” and “a quantizer 6 which encodes them using the desired number of bits.” Ans. 10 (citing col. 6, ll. 20-24 and col. 3, ll. 30- 34). Appellants argue that Koh does not teach or suggest the disputed claim limitations. Br. 11. Specifically, Appellants argue that in Koh, the method of quantization is not affected by the number of allocated bits (i.e., the band priority information). Br. 12. We agree with Appellants’ argument. Although the Examiner directs attention to Koh’s description of the resulting Appeal 2010-010170 Application 10/891,423 5 allocated numbers of bits being output to control the appropriate quantizers 6, and the quantizer 6 encoding normalized samples Skj using the desired number of bits BK, the Examiner does not sufficiently explain how the description of the control of the quantizers 6, or the description of encoding by the quantizers 6 also teach or suggest that the quantizers 6 quantize the signals using the bit allocation numbers, or perform quantization operations according to the bit allocation numbers, as recited in claim 1. We further agree with Appellants’ argument that Koh does not teach or suggest a band signal quantization module to quantize the band signals split by the filter bank and output a quantization index for each of the bands using band priority information determined by the band priority decision unit and the energy information of the low-band speech signal. Br. 11-12 (emphasis in original). The Examiner’s rejection is silent with respect to any of the applied references teaching or suggesting the band signal quantization module using the energy information of the low-band speech signal. FOA 2- 5; Ans. 4-7. For at least these reasons, we cannot sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 25 as unpatentable over Epps, Koh, Matsumoto and Dunlop. DECISION We REVERSE the rejection of claims 1-3, 5, 6 and 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Epps, Koh, Matsumoto and Dunlop. REVERSED Appeal 2010-010170 Application 10/891,423 6 msc