Obviousness

Based on the provided prior art, an analysis of the obviousness of the claims of US Patent 10,623,095 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is as follows.

The central concept of US Patent 10,623,095 is an optical signal monitoring apparatus and method that measures the optical power of a multiplexed signal (containing channels with different frequency widths) at a set sampling interval and uses a controller to intelligently identify which measured intensity values correspond to which signal. This allows for accurate power monitoring in a flexible grid environment.

A person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) in early 2014 would be an engineer or scientist with a degree in optical or electrical engineering and experience in optical communication systems, particularly WDM and flexible grid networks. This individual would be familiar with the function and design of Optical Channel Monitors (OCMs).

The independent claims (1, 6, 12, and 18) of US 10,623,095 would have been obvious to a PHOSITA in light of combinations of the cited prior art.

Obviousness Argument 1: US20140376909A1 (Finisar) in view of US8514390B2 (ITRI)

This combination renders the independent claims obvious.

• Primary Reference: Finisar ('909)
  The Finisar application serves as a strong primary reference. It discloses an OCM designed specifically for high-resolution monitoring in flexible grid systems. It explicitly teaches measuring "a plurality of optical intensity values of a multiplexed signal" that includes channels with different frequency widths (i.e., channel spacings). The stated purpose is to determine the power of these individual channels. This base teaching anticipates the core elements of claims 1, 12, and 18, namely, measuring a multiplexed signal with at least a first and second optical signal of different frequency widths. It also provides the foundation for claim 6 by disclosing the measurement of optical channel power.

• Secondary Reference: ITRI ('390)
  The ITRI patent teaches an essential configuration step missing from or not explicitly detailed in Finisar: registering channel information, such as center wavelength and bandwidth (frequency width), before monitoring. The controller then uses this registered information to guide its measurements.

• Motivation to Combine
  A PHOSITA implementing the flexible grid OCM taught by Finisar would face the known problem of needing to configure the monitor's controller to correctly interpret the raw spectral data it collects. The controller must know what channels to look for—their locations and widths—to accurately assign the measured "intensity values" to the correct channels ("first intensity values corresponding to the first optical signal and second intensity values corresponding to the second optical signal").

  ITRI ('390) provides a direct and well-understood solution to this exact problem: pre-registering the channel parameters. A PHOSITA would have been motivated to combine ITRI's registration method with Finisar's high-resolution OCM for a simple and predictable reason: to make the Finisar system work reliably and adaptably in a real-world, dynamic network. By incorporating the teaching of ITRI, the controller in the Finisar system would be explicitly provided with the "first frequency width" and "second frequency width" needed to "identify first sampling points... and second sampling points" as required by the claims. This combination is not a product of hindsight but rather the application of a known configuration technique (ITRI) to a modern monitoring system (Finisar) to achieve a predictable improvement in accuracy and functionality.

  Furthermore, with the channel power accurately identified through this combination, adding the alarm function of claim 6 ("output a first indication signal when the first optical channel power is less than a first threshold") would be an obvious and necessary feature. OCMs are fundamentally fault and performance monitoring tools; generating an alarm on a low-power condition is their primary purpose.

Obviousness Argument 2: US20150155934A1 (Fujitsu) in view of US8514390B2 (ITRI) and JP2012060308A (PTL 2)

This combination also renders the independent claims obvious.

• Primary Reference: Fujitsu ('934)
  The Fujitsu application, like Finisar, discloses a device for monitoring optical signals in a WDM system capable of handling flexible grids where channel widths vary. It describes measuring the optical power spectrum of the multiplexed signal and analyzing it to determine the quality and power of individual channels. This provides the base elements for all independent claims.

• Secondary References: ITRI ('390) and PTL 2 ('308A)
  ITRI ('390) provides the teaching of registering channel bandwidth, as described above. PTL 2 ('308A), cited as background art in the '095 patent itself, explicitly discloses a "signal light monitoring apparatus that... determines whether or not signal light is present for each channel." This directly teaches the concept of comparing a measured signal level against a threshold to determine presence, which is the functional basis of an alarm for signal interruption.

• Motivation to Combine
  The motivation to combine Fujitsu ('934) and ITRI ('390) is the same as in the first argument: to provide the monitoring system's controller with the necessary channel parameters to accurately process the measured spectrum. A PHOSITA would recognize that to analyze the signal quality of a specific channel as taught by Fujitsu, the analyzer must first be told the parameters of that channel (e.g., its width), a method taught by ITRI.

  Furthermore, the PHOSITA would be motivated to incorporate the teaching of PTL 2. The entire purpose of the monitoring described by Fujitsu is to assess signal quality. PTL 2 teaches the fundamental next step: making a determination based on that quality assessment (i.e., is the signal present or not?). Combining the "monitoring" of Fujitsu with the "determination" of PTL 2 would be a matter of completing the system's intended function. It would be obvious to a PHOSITA that after measuring a channel's power (as per the combination of Fujitsu and ITRI), the system should compare it to a threshold (as taught by PTL 2) to issue an alarm if the signal is interrupted or degraded. This would be a predictable and necessary integration to create a complete and useful monitoring tool.