Ex Parte Witkowski et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 28, 2014

10423356 (P.T.A.B. May. 28, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte ANDREW WITKOWSKI, GREGORY DORMAN, AND
DAVID GREENFIELD
____________

Appeal 2012-000778
Application 10/423,356
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, JOHN A. EVANS, and J. JOHN LEE,
Administrative Patent Judges.

EVANS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants1 seek our review2 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner’s final rejection of Claims 68 and 75-873 as obvious, as non-

1 The Real Party in Interest is Oracle International Corporation.
2 We have considered in this decision only those arguments Appellants
actually raised in the Briefs. Any other arguments which Appellants could
have made but chose not to make in the Briefs are deemed to be waived. See
37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004).
3 App. Br. 2, 8-9.
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statutory subject matter, and as failing to comply with the written description
requirement. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM-IN-PART.4
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The claims relate to “techniques for storing multidimensional data in
relational database management systems.” Spec., ¶ [0002].
Claims 68, 81, and 87 are independent. The claims have not been
argued separately and therefore stand or fall together. 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004). An understanding of the invention can be derived
from a reading of exemplary Claim 68, which is reproduced below with
disputed limitations italicized:
68. A computer-implemented method comprising:
storing multidimensional data in a relational database, wherein
the multidimensional data that is stored in the relational database
includes a plurality of dimensions, and wherein at least one dimension
of the plurality of dimensions includes a hierarchy having two or more
levels of granularity;
receiving a particular query that requests to retrieve multi-
dimensional data from the relational database via a certain view
referred to by a reference within said particular query, said particular
query conforming to a database language supported by a relational
database system;
wherein a partial materialized view includes a portion of said
multidimensional data aggregated at one or more particular levels of
granularity of said hierarchy;

4 Our decision refers to Appellants’ Appeal Brief filed March 21, 2011
(“App. Br.”); Reply Brief filed August 19, 2011 (“Reply Br.”); Examiner’s
Answer mailed June 20, 2011 (“Ans.”); Final Office Action mailed July 21,
2010 (“Final Rej.”); and the original Specification filed April 25, 2003
(“Spec.”).
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wherein said particular query requests data aggregated at a
number of levels of granularity of:
said hierarchy, and
another dimension different than the dimension of said
hierarchy; and
rewriting said particular query to translate said certain view into
a view defined by an inner subquery that returns data aggregated at
said number of levels of granularity, and
rewriting said inner subquery; and
wherein (1) said rewriting said particular query to translate
said certain view into a view defined by an inner subquery that
returns and (2) said rewriting said inner subquery both do not involve
rewriting said particular query to access said partial materialized
view;
after rewriting said inner subquery, rewriting said particular
query to access said partial materialized view; and
wherein the method is performed by one or more computers.

REFERENCES
The Examiner relies upon the prior art as follows:
Cheng U.S. 5,367,675 Nov. 22, 1994
Carey U.S. 2001/0049685 A1 Dec. 6, 2001
Cochrane U.S. 6,560,594 B2 May 6, 2003
Lin U.S. 6,615,203 B1 Sep. 2, 2003
Anjur U.S. 7,028,046 B2 Apr. 11, 2006
Chang-Sup Park, Myoung Ho Kim & Yoon-Joon Lee, Rewriting
OLAP Queries using Materialized Views and Dimension Hierarchies in
Data Warehouses, IEEE 17th Int’l Conference on Data Engineering, 515-
523 (2001) (hereinafter “Park”).

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The claims stand rejected as follows:5
1. Claims 81-86 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to non-
statutory subject matter. Ans. 5.
2. Claims 68 and 87 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first
paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description
requirement. Ans. 5-6.
3. Claims 68, 75-77, and 80 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
obvious over Cochrane and Cheng. Ans. 6-9.
4. Claims 78 and 79 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious
over Cochrane, Cheng, and Anjur. Ans. 9-12.
5. Claim 80 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Cochrane, Cheng, and Carey. Ans. 12.
6. Claims 81-84 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Cochrane, Park, and Carey. Ans. 13-16.
7. Claims 85 and 86 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious
over Cochrane, Park, Carey, and Anjur. Ans. 16-18.
8. Claim 87 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Cochrane, Cheng, and Lin. Ans. 18-22.

5 Based on Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief, we will decide the
appeal on the basis of claims as set forth below. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii).

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ISSUES ON APPEAL
Based on Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief and Reply Brief,
the issues presented on appeal are:
I. Whether the Examiner erred in rejecting Claims 81-86 as non-
statutory subject matter under § 101.
II. Whether the Examiner erred in rejecting Claims 68 and 87
under § 112, first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written
description requirement.
III. Whether the Examiner erred in making the asserted
combination of Cochrane and Cheng to reject Claims 68, 75-80, and
87.
IV. Whether the Examiner erred in making the asserted
combination of Cochrane, Park, and Carey to reject Claims 81-86.

ANALYSIS
I. NON-STATUTORY SUBJECT MATTER
Appellants contend the limitation “computer-readable storage
medium” of Claims 81-86 cannot reasonably be interpreted to include a
transitory signal. App. Br. 9. Appellants argue that neither a signal nor a
wave is a computer-readable storage medium, “because neither a signal nor
a wave is a medium that is capable of storing instructions that may be read
by a computer.” Id.
However, the language “non-transitory” does not appear in Claims 81-
86, and the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims covers a
transitory signal per se. A transitory, propagating signal is not a process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, and as such, cannot be
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patentable subject matter. In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1357 (Fed. Cir.
2007).
We, therefore, affirm the non-statutory subject matter rejection of
Claims 81-86.6

II. WRITTEN DESCRIPTION
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We agree with Appellants’
conclusions.
Appellants contend the limitation “(1) said rewriting said particular
query to translate said certain view into a view defined by an inner subquery
that returns and (2) said rewriting said inner subquery both do not involve
rewriting said particular query to access said partial materialized view” of
Claims 68 and 87 is supported by the written description. App. Br. 9-10.
Appellants contend the Specification explicitly states that “one or more of
several query transformations” to an inner query are performed before
rewriting to access a materialized view. App. Br. 10. Appellants argue that
performing query transformations “[b]efore the materialized view rewrite” is
tantamount to performing a query transformation that does not involve a
rewrite to access a materialized view. Id. Further, Appellants contend the
Specification gives explicit examples of “(1) rewriting a particular query to

6 A claim drawn to such a computer-readable storage medium that covers
both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow
the claim to cover only statutory embodiments and avoid a rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 101. See David J. Kappos, Subject Matter Eligibility of
Computer Readable Media, 1351 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 212 (Feb. 23, 2012).

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translate said certain into a view defined by an inner subquery and (2)
rewriting the inner subquery,” where these rewrite examples do not involve
rewriting to access a materialized view. App. Br. 10-11.
The Examiner contends that performing transformations “[b]efore the
materialized view rewrite” does not necessarily exclude rewriting a
particular access query to access said partially materialized view. Ans. 25.
The Examiner argues that, “[w]hile the examples provided by Appellant[s]
do not show this occurring,” Appellants have not “explicitly discounted
rewriting either of those queries to access said partial materialized view
before the materialized view rewrite.” Id. The Examiner also contends that
rewriting the particular query and inner subquery “both ultimately do
involve ‘rewriting said particular query to access said partial materialized
view,’ albeit several steps in the future.” Id. at 26.
Appellants reply that, by providing explicit examples of rewrites that
do not involve rewriting to access a materialized view, they have shown to
skilled artisans that Appellants had possession of the claimed invention as of
the filing date. Reply Br. 2-3.
We agree with the Appellants’ contentions. Claims 68 and 87 require,
at the time of rewriting the particular query to translate and rewriting the
inner subquery, the rewritings do not involve rewriting the particular query
to access the partial materialized view. The claims do not exclude the partial
materialized view being accessed at another time (e.g., later in the claimed
method), just not at the time of rewriting the particular query to translate and
rewriting the inner subquery. This limitation is supported by the language in
the Specification, paragraph [0098], where the query transformations take
place before the materialized view rewrite. The recitation in Claims 68 and
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87 of waiting until after the rewriting steps to access the partial materialized
view is analogous to the language of Claim 81, where the rewriting steps are
performed “before . . . access[ing] the partial materialized view,” which is
also supported by the Specification, paragraph [0098]. Claim 81 was not
(nor should it have been) rejected by the Examiner under § 112, first
paragraph.
Therefore, we decline to sustain the Examiner’s rejection of Claims
68 and 87 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph.

III. OBVIOUSNESS: COCHRANE AND CHENG
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We agree with Appellants’
conclusions.
Appellants contend that Claims 68 and 87 require, “after performing
the view translation rewrite and the inner subquery rewrite, performing a
materialized view rewrite.” App. Br. 13. Appellants argue that Cheng
teaches “perform[ing] a view merge transformation of view SB.V2,” which
“involves eliminating the view to create the inner subquery Q3 in the interim
SQL [Structured Query Language] statement,” and “the inner subquery Q3
is then eliminated to form optimized query 170.” Id. Appellants contend
that, “[b]y teaching to rewrite a query to eliminate a view, the passage fails
to teach rewriting a query to access a view, materialized or otherwise, much
less doing so after rewriting an inner subquery.” Id. Appellant further
contends that Cheng, or any cited reference, fails to teach “performing the
view translation rewrite and the inner subquery rewrite before the
materialized view rewrite.” Id. at 13-14.
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The Examiner finds Cheng to teach the rewriting to translate and
rewriting the inner subquery (i.e., Interim SQL statement of Cheng and New
SQL statement) and that both do not involve rewriting said particular query
to access said partial materialized view. The Examiner also finds that after
rewriting said inner subquery, Cheng teaches rewriting said particular query
to access said partial materialized view, where the particular query of Cheng
is merged to access the view. Ans. 8. The Examiner contends that the view
SB.V2 of Cheng “is removed from the query, such that both transformations
do not involve rewriting the query to access the materialized view”, and
“[t]he view is merged with the query after the rewrite, such that the
information in the materialized view may be accessed.” Id. at 29.
Regarding the timing of rewriting the materialized view after rewriting to
translate and rewriting the inner subquery, the Examiner contends that
Cochrane “teaches an optimization technique which involves multiple
steps,” and that “[i]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to have inserted further steps into this optimization technique”; thus,
adding the steps of Cheng provided Cochrane “the benefit of more optimal
processing of a query and with less time to retrieve data.” Id. (citation
omitted).
Appellants reply that there is “no teaching of a materialized view in
Cheng, including the passages relied upon by the Examiner for teaching to
rewrite to a materialized view.” Reply Br. 4 (citation omitted). Appellants
reiterate the argument that Cheng teaches rewriting queries to eliminate
views, rather than rewriting queries to access either views or materialized
views. Id.
We agree the Examiner erred. The Examiner finds that Cochrane
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does not teach: rewriting to translate, rewriting the inner subquery and, after
rewriting the inner subquery, rewriting the particular query to access the
partial materialized view. Ans. 7. Rather, the Examiner relies upon Cheng
for the rewriting steps as well as the timing of the steps. Id. at 7-8. The
Examiner contends that merging the view and query of Cheng is analogous
to the claimed “rewriting said particular query to access said partial
materialized view,” but does not provide an explanation of how merging the
view and query is the same as rewriting the query to access the partial
materialized view itself. To establish prima facie obviousness of a claimed
invention, all the claim limitations must be taught or suggested by the prior
art. See In re Royka, 490 F.2d 981, 985 (CCPA 1974). Because the
Examiner has not sufficiently explained how the view itself in Cheng is
accessed, the Examiner has not established a factual basis that supports the
legal conclusion of obviousness. Furthermore, the claim requires that
rewriting to translate and rewriting the inner subquery do not involve
rewriting the particular query to access the partial materialized view.
However, Cheng shows the process of rewriting to translate and rewriting
the inner subquery of Figure 4 does, in fact, access the view SB.V2 at step
150.
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Therefore, we decline to sustain the Examiner’s rejection of Claims
68, 75-80, and 87 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Cochrane and
Cheng.

IV. OBVIOUSNESS: COCHRANE, PARK, AND CAREY
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We agree with Appellants’
conclusions.
Appellants contend that Claim 81 requires rewriting the particular
query to translate and rewriting the inner subquery before rewriting a
particular query to access a partial materialized view. App. Br. 12.
Appellants contend the claims do not simply require a view translation
rewrite to produce an inner subquery, a subquery rewrite of the inner
subquery, and a materialized view rewrite, but also specifically claim the
timing with which the various rewriting steps are performed. Id. Appellants
argue the Examiner has erroneously relied upon Cochrane to teach these
limitations, particularly “before rewriting said particular query to access said
partial materialized view,” which only cites half the limitation and leaves out
the query transformation steps to which this partial limitation paragraph
refers. Id. (citation omitted). Appellants contend “[t]here is no query
transformation performed [in Cochrane] between query Q4 to query Q4’,
and thus no transformation performed before rewriting query Q4 to access
materialized view DBA.PG_SALESSUM.” Id. Thus, Appellants argue,
“[i]f Cochrane fails to teach performing a query transformation before a
materialized view rewrite, it must fail to teach performing a view translation
rewrite and an inner subquery rewrite before a materialized view rewrite, as
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claimed.” Id. at 12-13. Further, Appellants contend that “Park and Chen
also fail to teach performing some form of query transformation step before
rewriting the query to access a materialized view.” Id. at 13.
The Examiner finds Cochrane teaches “before rewriting said
particular query to access said partial materialized view”; Park teaches
“rewriting to translate”; and Carey teaches “rewriting the inner subquery,
and rewriting said particular query to access said partial materialized view.”
Thus, the Examiner finds the combination of references teaches each
claimed limitation and the overall timing of the transformation sequences.
Ans. 14-15, 27 (citations omitted). The Examiner further finds Cochrane
teaches performing a query rewrite, specifically Q4 and Q4’, wherein the
final rewrite involves “rewriting said particular query to access said partial
materialized view.” Id. at 27. The Examiner finds this rewrite of Cochrane
“occurs by following optimization logic,” which “involves a plurality of
determinations and steps.” Id. at 28. The Examiner contends that “[o]ne of
ordinary skill in the art would recognize optimization logic, such as that
described in [Park and Carey,] would be capable of being used in addition to
the optimization logic of [Cochrane] before a ‘final query’ could be created
and submitted.” Id.
Appellants reply the Examiner has not provided any proof that the
logic and steps of optimization logic of Park and Carey is combinable with
Cochrane. Reply Br. 3. In the context of rewriting queries to access
materialized views, Appellants contend “the Examiner failed to show it is
known to perform . . . a query rewrite before performing a rewrite to access
a materialized view[, and] [t]herefore, . . . has failed to show that Cochrane
can be combined with any form of query rewrites that are performed before
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a materialized rewrite, much less performing a view translation rewrite, then
an inner subquery rewrite, before a materialized view rewrite, as claimed.”
Id.
We agree the Examiner erred. The Examiner relies upon Cochrane to
teach “before rewriting said particular query to access said partial
materialized view” (Ans. 14) (citation omitted), then states that Cochrane
does not teach “rewriting said particular query to access said partial
materialized view” (Ans. 15). Where a reference does not teach a particular
step, it cannot be said that it teaches performing any other steps “before” that
step. Further, the Examiner relies on Cochrane to teach the timing limitation
of Claim 81: “before rewriting the particular query to access the…view,”
then relies on other references to teach performing the subsequent steps of
Claim 81: “rewriting…to translate” (Park) and “rewriting the inner
subquery” (Carey), without sufficiently explaining where a person of
ordinary skill would find such a teaching in the references of the required
order of the steps. The motivation to combine the references provided by
the Examiner of optimizing the query may be valid, however the references,
alone or in combination, must first teach all limitations of the claims.
Therefore, we decline to sustain the Examiner’s rejection of Claims
81-86 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Cochrane, Park, and Carey.

ORDER
The rejection of Claims 81-86 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is AFFIRMED.
The rejection of Claims 68 and 87 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first
paragraph, is REVERSED.
The rejection of Claims 68 and 75-87 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is
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REVERSED.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART
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