Ex Parte Oja et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 31, 2012

10882674 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte SAKU OJA, SIMO HYYTIA, PAAVO HELENIUS, BERT HOLTAPPELS, ANDREW REBEIRO-HARGRAVE, and ILKKA WESTMAN ____________ Appeal 2010-005367 Application 10/882,674 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, THU A. DANG, and JAMES R. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judges. DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2010-005367 Application 10/882,674 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims 1-35. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. The claims are directed to establishing a real-time multimedia session. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method, comprising: receiving, in a server, a request for session initiation, wherein the session is a session of a real-time media communication service; detecting, in the server, that a terminating subscriber does not belong to a same subsystem as an originating subscriber; maintaining, in the server, transit server information that associates a group of subscribers with a transit server, wherein the association is based on identification information of the subscriber and said transit server has access to a subscriber database of a subsystem of the associated terminating subscriber; determining, in the server, in response to detecting that the terminating subscriber does not belong to the same subsystem as the originating subscriber, with identification information on the terminating subscriber included in the request for session initiation, the transit server associated with the terminating subscriber; querying subscriber information related to the requested session with a first control message from the server to the transit server, wherein the first control message comprises parameters of the requested session; and initiating, in the server, the requested session according to the queried subscriber information. Appeal 2010-005367 Application 10/882,674 3 REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Khello Gallant Black Bleckert US 7,027,582 B2 US 7,042,871 B2 US 7,130,282 B2 US Pat. Pub. 2007/0097879 A1 Apr. 11, 2006 (filed July 6, 2001) May 9, 2006 (prov. app. filed July 23, 2003) Oct. 31, 2006 (filed Sept. 20, 2002) May 3, 2007 (PCT filed Dec. 30, 2003) REJECTIONS Claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 12-15, 20-22, 26, 28, 33, and 34 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being unpatentable over Khello. Claims 3, 4, 11, 16, 17, 23, 29, and 30 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Khello and Bleckert. Claims 9, 27, and 35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Khello and Black. Claims 5, 6, 18, 19, 24, 25, 31, and 32 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Khello, Bleckert, and Gallant. Appeal 2010-005367 Application 10/882,674 4 ANALYSIS The Anticipation Rejection The Examiner finds that Khello discloses all the limitations of claim 1, including “initiating, in the server, the requested session according to the queried subscriber information” (Ans. 3-4, 11-12). The Examiner relies on Khello’s “Secondary DNS” server in the “Originating Network” in Figure 6 to meet the limitation of “a server” (Ans. 3). Appellants contend that Khello’s session establishment does not involve the DNS server system, but rather it is a separate procedure from the IP address resolution performed by the DNS servers (App. Br. 14). We agree with Appellants. Khello discloses the following with respect to Figure 6: The IP address is returned to the secondary DNS server in the originating network (reference numeral 8). That corresponding IP address is forwarded from the secondary DNS server to the local DNS server (reference numeral 9), and from the local DNS to the application user A’s equipment (reference numeral 10). With that IP address, A’s user equipment can then establish a multimedia session with remote entity B using both B’s E.164 telephone number and B’s IP address. (Khello, col. 10, ll. 55-63). Khello does not specifically disclose how the multimedia session is established. However, Khello’s Figure 8 and the accompanying description indicate that the multimedia session is established through a GPRS (general packet radio service) mobile data network, not the DNS network. For example, Khello discloses that after an IP address is forwarded to A’s user equipment through the DNS network, “A’s user equipment can run a game by establishing an IP data link with B’s user equipment using the IP address 445.334.332.220 via the GPRS nodes SGSN Appeal 2010-005367 Application 10/882,674 5 and GGSN in ‘A’ and B’s GPRS networks.” (Khello, col. 12, ll. 49-52) (emphasis added). While the Examiner responds that “the server and/or SGSN have to make a connection and/or session initiation and this is understood in the art (col. 12, lines 17-44),” (Ans. 12) (emphasis added), we see no evidence that a DNS server can initiate a multimedia session in Khello. Therefore, we cannot say that Khello’s DNS server establishes multimedia sessions, in contrast to claim 1, which recites “initiating, in the server, the requested session according to the queried subscriber information.” We are therefore constrained by the record to find that the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claim 1, independent claims 10, 15, 21, and 22 which recite commensurate limitations, and claims 2, 7, 8, 12-14, 20, 26, 28, 33, and 34 for similar reasons. The Obviousness Rejections Claims 3-6, 9, 11, 16-19, 23-25, 27, 29-32, and 35 depend from claims 1, 10, 15, and 21, and we do not sustain the rejections of these claims for the reasons discussed above. CONCLUSIONS OF LAW The Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 12-15, 20-22, 26, 28, 33, and 34 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e), and claims 3-6, 9, 11, 16-19, 23-25, 27, 29-32, and 35 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). DECISION For the above reasons, we reverse the rejections of claims 1-35. Appeal 2010-005367 Application 10/882,674 6 REVERSED tkl