Obviousness

To establish obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103, it must be shown that the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). This typically involves identifying a primary prior art reference and then combining it with other secondary references and/or general knowledge, along with a clear motivation for doing so. The priority date for US10959123 is July 24, 2012.

The core inventive concept of US Patent 10959123, as outlined in its independent claims (Claims 1, 8, and 16), can be summarized as:

1. Receiving a request for a particular action (e.g., a financial transaction).
2. Encoding a particular value into a compact message format to reduce message latency, where the receiving device already knows the meaning of this value.
3. Determining transmission parameters (such as carrier frequency, modulation type, transmission power, sampling rate, or buffer size) for wireless transmission in the ionospheric High Frequency (HF) band, based on both message latency and a predefined channel bandwidth.
4. Transmitting the encoded message using these determined parameters.

Identified Prior Art for Obviousness:

Based on the provided prior art analysis, the following references and general knowledge are most pertinent for an obviousness analysis:

• General Knowledge of High-Frequency (HF) Radio Communication: This encompasses the understanding of transmitting messages over HF bands, including via ionospheric propagation (skywave), and the fundamental components of an HF communication system (transmitters, receivers, antennas). It also includes the awareness of regulatory constraints such as predefined channel bandwidths (e.g., the FCC's 2.8 KHz limit for HF, as mentioned in US10959123's description).
• Phillips, Matthew, "High-Speed Trading: My Laser is Faster Than Your Laser," Bloomberg Businessweek, Apr. 23, 2012: This non-patent literature (NPL) reference is crucial as it was published before the priority date of US10959123 and clearly highlights the intense demand for ultra-low latency in high-frequency trading (HFT), noting that "tens of microseconds of latency difference" could be worth "millions of dollars" to traders [cite: Phillips, NPL]. This provides a strong "problem to be solved" and a motivation for a PHOSITA to reduce communication latency.
• ITU-R P.533-10, "Method for the prediction of the performance of HF circuits, Oct. 2009": This NPL demonstrates the knowledge in the art for calculating HF propagation characteristics, including "time-of-flight" (propagation delay), which is a key component of message latency in the patent [cite: ITU-R, NPL].
• General Knowledge of Data Compression and Efficient Coding: The principle of encoding frequently transmitted information into a shorter, predefined format, known to both the sender and receiver, to reduce message size and thus transmission time, is a fundamental and well-established technique in communication engineering (e.g., telegraph codes, specialized communication protocols).
• General Principles of Wireless Communication Engineering: This includes the routine practice of selecting and optimizing transmission parameters (carrier frequency, modulation type, power, data rate) to meet specific performance objectives (e.g., low latency, reliability) while adhering to regulatory or system constraints (e.g., channel bandwidth limits).

Obviousness Analysis of Representative Claim 1:

Consider a Person Having Ordinary Skill in the Art (PHOSITA) in wireless communication engineering, with knowledge of financial trading systems, at the priority date of US10959123 (July 24, 2012).

Claim 1: "A method for ionospheric Radio Frequency (RF) transmission of a message in a High Frequency (HF) band to a remote receiving device, the method comprising: receiving a request for a particular action to be performed; encoding a particular value using a format derived to effect message latency into an encoded message for transmission to the remote receiving device over a frequency in an ionospheric HF frequency band, wherein the particular value is known a priori to the remote receiving device as corresponding to the particular action; determining transmission parameters for transmission of the encoded message in the ionospheric HF frequency band based at least on (a) message latency and on (b) a predefined channel bandwidth; and transmitting the encoded message in the ionospheric HF frequency band according to the determined transmission parameters to the remote receiving device."

1. "receiving a request for a particular action to be performed;": This is a basic operation in any communication system designed to facilitate requests and actions. In the context of financial transactions, the Phillips NPL establishes the critical nature of such requests and the need for speed [cite: Phillips, NPL].

2. "encoding a particular value using a format derived to effect message latency into an encoded message for transmission to the remote receiving device over a frequency in an ionospheric HF frequency band, wherein the particular value is known a priori to the remote receiving device as corresponding to the particular action;":

   • Ionospheric HF frequency band: General knowledge of HF radio communication systems readily teaches transmitting over this band.
   • Encoding a particular value... to effect message latency... known a priori: Given the intense motivation to reduce latency in HFT as highlighted by Phillips [cite: Phillips, NPL], a PHOSITA would naturally seek to reduce "message size latency" by minimizing the number of bits in a transmitted message. It is a fundamental and well-known concept in data compression and efficient communication (e.g., short codes, predefined abbreviations) to represent frequently communicated or critical information with the shortest possible unique bit sequences, leveraging a priori knowledge at the receiver. Applying this general principle of efficient coding to the specific domain of financial transaction messages would be an obvious design choice for a PHOSITA driven by latency concerns.

3. "determining transmission parameters for transmission of the encoded message in the ionospheric HF frequency band based at least on (a) message latency and on (b) a predefined channel bandwidth;":

   • Ionospheric HF frequency band: As mentioned, this is part of general HF communication knowledge.
   • Determining transmission parameters: Standard practice in wireless communication involves setting parameters like carrier frequency, modulation type, and transmission power.
   • Based at least on (a) message latency: The Phillips NPL unequivocally provides the motivation to minimize latency in HFT [cite: Phillips, NPL]. A PHOSITA, aware of propagation delay calculation methods (e.g., from ITU-R P.533-10 for HF circuits [cite: ITU-R, NPL]) and having shortened the message size (as discussed above), would routinely select and optimize transmission parameters (such as carrier frequency for optimal propagation path, or modulation type/data rate for faster bit transmission) to reduce overall message latency.
   • Based at least on (b) a predefined channel bandwidth: It is a fundamental engineering requirement to operate within regulatory or system-imposed channel bandwidth limits. The patent itself explicitly mentions the FCC's 2.8 KHz limit for HF transmissions as a constraint. A PHOSITA would routinely perform the trade-off analysis of selecting transmission parameters (e.g., a modulation type like MSK, OOK, PSK, as mentioned in the patent, which produces spectral emissions within the allowed bandwidth) to achieve low latency while complying with these known bandwidth restrictions. This balancing act is a standard design problem in telecommunications.

4. "transmitting the encoded message in the ionospheric HF frequency band according to the determined transmission parameters to the remote receiving device.": This is the logical final step after the message is encoded and transmission parameters are determined.

Motivation for Combination:

A PHOSITA would be strongly motivated to combine these elements due to the extremely high value placed on speed and latency reduction in the high-frequency trading (HFT) industry, as explicitly taught by Phillips (2012) [cite: Phillips, NPL]. Recognizing the need for long-distance communication links, and considering HF ionospheric transmission as a viable (albeit often slower) option, a PHOSITA would strive to optimize this link for the lowest possible latency. This optimization would naturally lead to:

• Employing efficient, bit-reduced encoding for repetitive financial messages, a standard data compression technique.
• Consciously optimizing all adjustable transmission parameters (frequency, modulation, power, etc.) with the explicit goal of minimizing message latency.
• Performing this optimization strictly within the bounds of known regulatory constraints, such as predefined channel bandwidths, which is a routine engineering task.

Conclusion:

The combination of the general knowledge of HF radio communication, the critical need for ultra-low latency in HFT (as evidenced by Phillips, 2012 [cite: Phillips, NPL]), well-known principles of efficient data encoding/compression, and standard wireless communication engineering practices for parameter optimization under constraints (including propagation delay calculations from references like ITU-R P.533-10 [cite: ITU-R, NPL]), would have rendered the claims of US10959123 obvious to a PHOSITA at the time of the invention. The invention primarily applies known communication and optimization techniques to a specific problem (low-latency HFT over HF ionospheric links) where there was a clear, high-value motivation to do so.