Patent decision

BL number

O/251/13

Concerning rights in

GB1011084.9

Hearing Officer

Dr L Cullen

Decision date

13 June 2013

Person(s) or Company(s) involved

Intel Corporation

Provisions discussed

PA 1977, sections 1(1)(b), 14(5) and 76(2)

Keywords

Added subject matter, Inventive step, Support

Related Decisions

None

Summary

This application concerns a managed OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) telecommunications system. The invention relates to the type of signaling used (1D or 2D) by the base unit to advise the devices in the network of their allocations within a grid of resources. Allocations are signaled by sending the start location of each allocation, referred to as a burst, within the grid. The system derives the size of a burst by subtracting its start location from the start location of the next adjacent burst. Overall this approach reduces signaling overhead.

The examiner raised objections under added matter, support and inventive step to this application. The Hearing Officer, mindful of the approach outlined in Schering Biotech Corp's Application, found that there was implicit disclosure in the application that the invention involves the steps of, firstly, determining whether the location is defined using a 1D or 2D coordinate system and, secondly, using the appropriate coordinate system to define the start location of a burst. The Hearing Officer also found that a person skilled in the art reading this application would be satisfied that if it is possible to use both 1D and 2D coordinate systems to identify the location of a burst, then the system must also be able to determine which coordinate system has been used in order to work out the duration of the burst. As a result, he concluded that the amended claims did not comprise added matter and that support for these amendments can reasonably be implied from the description.

1. In relation to inventive step, the Hearing Officer, following Pozzoli, found that the team skilled in the art with the requisite common general knowledge and being familiar with the cited prior art would be aware that: logical resources can be allocated using a 1D or 2D numbering scheme; that these resources can be mapped onto physical resources in a contiguous or scattered format; that there are a number of ways to represent allocation information using 1D and 2D signaling; and that the choice to use 1D or 2D signaling within a given communications protocol to allocate resources is, in general, unrelated to that in any other protocol; that it is reasonable to expect that some protocols using 1D signaling and some protocols using 2D signaling will arise and that the decision which to use is unrelated to the specifics of the protocols involved, but more to the type(s) of data to be transmitted and the nature of the network that the device will be used with. The skilled team can reasonably be expected to put together a protocol signaling start locations using a 1D format with one using a 2D format in a device that switches between the two when changing protocols. This result is arrived at through normal practice with respect to multi-protocol devices and does not involve the exercise of any inventive input on the part of the skilled person. It was found also that all the features disclosed in the appended claims also lacked an inventive step.

The application was refused under section 18(3) of the Act for failure to meet the necessary requirements before expiry of the compliance period.