Oracle International CorporationDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardMar 17, 202014171474 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 17, 2020) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/171,474 02/03/2014 Pradip Kumar PANDEY ORA130889-US-NP 4448 55498 7590 03/17/2020 Vista IP Law Group, LLP (Oracle) 2160 Lundy Avenue Suite 230 San Jose, CA 95131 EXAMINER GIULIANI, GIUSEPPI J ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2165 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/17/2020 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): docketing@viplawgroup.com ev@viplawgroup.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte PRADIP KUMAR PANDEY ____________________ Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before JAMES B. ARPIN, JON M. JURGOVAN, and IFTIKHAR AHMED, Administrative Patent Judges. AHMED, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1–20, all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The claimed subject matter relates to “database-oriented enterprise applications and more particularly to techniques for building a database 1 We use the word Appellant to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). According to Appellant, the real party-in-interest is Oracle International Corporation. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 2 query by combining a preformed query with a dynamically-specified filter.” Spec. ¶ 2. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced below with certain disputed limitations emphasized: 1. A computer implemented method using a system organized to have three or more tiers comprising one or more processors, the one or more processors performing one or more steps comprising: identifying a predefined database query, the predefined database query comprising one or more static query clauses; receiving a user-specified filter clause from a user interface operating in a first tier; reformatting the user-specified filter clause from a first filter clause representation into a second filter clause representation; and modifying the predefined database query at a second tier of the system to form a dynamically-generated database language query, the predefined database query being modified by combining the second filter clause representation to the predefined database query rather than updating an existing filter clause in the predefined database query with a new or modified predicate, the dynamically-generated database language query comprising both the second filter clause representation and the one or more static query clauses, the second filter clause representation being added to the one or more static query clauses that remain static in the predefined database query rather the one or more static query clauses being updated when modifying the predefined database query. Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 3 REJECTIONS Claims 1–9 and 11–20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over the combined teachings of Dettinger (US 2004/0068489 A1; April 8, 2004) and Focazio (US 2005/0091199 A1; Apr. 28, 2005). Final Act. 2. Claim 10 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over the combined teachings of Dettinger, Focazio, and Elias (US 2015/0169685 A1; June 18, 2015). Final Act. 12. ISSUE Did the Examiner err in finding that Dettinger teaches or suggests a “predefined database query comprising one or more static query clauses,” as recited in claim 1? ANALYSIS Independent claim 1 recites a method including the step of identifying a “predefined database query comprising one or more static query clauses.” Appeal Br. 19 (Claims App.) (emphasis added). Independent claims 11 and 18, the only other independent claims, recite similar limitations.2 The Examiner finds that Dettinger teaches or suggests this limitation. According to the Examiner, Dettinger discloses a query being built that “has previously added age-related query conditions for ‘Age > 40’ and ‘Age > 50,’” which constitute a predefined database query. Final Act. 7 (citing Dettinger ¶ 57, Fig. 5A) (emphasis added). The Examiner further finds that 2 Claim 18 recites a system, and claim 11 recites a computer program product embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions to be executed by a processor. Appeal Br. 18 (Claims App.). Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 4 “the user [in Dettinger] may view a screen displaying the query in SQL format by pressing a SHOW SQL button,” and such a query constitutes a static query clause as claimed. Id. (citing Dettinger ¶ 72). Appellant argues that “the very premise of Dettinger is directed to a technique to form new queries from the pre-defined query sub-components,” and as such, Dettinger “merely teaches predefining the lower level building blocks of a query – and NOT predefining the query itself .” Appeal Br. 9. Appellant further asserts that Dettinger’s building blocks, “e.g., reusable query database components,” facilitate building an original query, rather than predefining a query for use later. Id. (explaining that “the predefined database query components include one or more query conditions that serve to filter results returned from the new query”). According to Appellant, Dettinger distinguishes a query condition from a query component, neither of which is an already formed query. Id. at 11–12 (citing Dettinger ¶ 6, Fig. 6). Appellant further asserts that “even though the new query may contain the same conditions that were previously used in queries, the query builder must still ‘build a query based on the list of current conditions and reusable the query components.’” Id. at 14 (citing Dettinger ¶ 72). Figure 1B of the application is reproduced below. Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 5 Figure 1B, reproduced above, shows a dynamically-generated database language query generated “by combining a preformed query with a dynamically-specified filter.” Spec. ¶ 15. Contrasting Dettinger to the claimed invention, Appellant argues that “[t]he instant application is directed to forming a query by combining a predefined query comprising one or more static portions (e.g., First Static Portion 115 and Second Static Portion 119) and an additional filter clause (e.g., Dynamically-specified Query Filter 109).” Appeal Br. 10 (referring to Spec. Fig. 1B). Dettinger, Appellant contends, provides a “query building GUI [that] enables a selection of previously defined query conditions and reusable query components (e.g., lower level building blocks) to build a new query – rather [than] identifying predefined database queries itself to build a query.” Id. at 11. The Examiner counters by finding that “the reusable query components and query conditions [in Dettinger] may be saved and reused for building new queries (i.e. they are predefined),” and “the GUI disclosed by Dettinger provides the functionality to view the corresponding SQL query and execute the query conditions and/or reusable query components (i.e. the conditions and reusable query components are not merely lower level building blocks, but rather queries that may be viewed and executed).” Ans. 3 (emphasis omitted). The Examiner finds no “meaningful differentiation between a query condition and [the claimed] static query clause,” thereby making query conditions “not merely low level building blocks, but rather, . . . predefined queries themselves.” Id. at 3–4. We agree with Appellant that the Examiner has not sufficiently explained how Dettinger teaches or suggests a “predefined database query comprising one or more static query clauses.” Although Dettinger teaches Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 6 “reusable query components and query conditions may be saved and reused for building new queries” (Ans. 3), we are not persuaded that either of those teach or suggest a predefined database query as claimed. Query conditions “serve to filter results returned from the query,” and, therefore, are not themselves queries. Dettinger ¶ 6. Dettinger also teaches that “the user may be able to save the current query conditions as a reusable query component.” Id. ¶ 65. Dettinger explains that reusable query components are different from complete queries because “[w]hen the reusable query component is saved only the query conditions, rather than the entire query may be saved.” Id. ¶ 67; see also id. ¶ 68 (“By saving only the query conditions, reusable query components may be more storage efficient than scripts that store an entire query.”) (emphasis added). Dettinger further teaches “a graphical user interface (GUI) [that] may provide the end user a convenient means for building a query” using query conditions and reusable query components. Id. ¶ 55, Fig. 5A; see id. ¶ 68. We also are not persuaded by the Examiner’s finding that Dettinger’s disclosure of a “RUN” button, that allows the user to build and execute a query based on the list of selected conditions, teaches or suggests a predefined database query. Ans. 4 (citing Dettinger ¶ 72). The claim instead requires identifying a predefined database query, which is then modified. To the extent Dettinger teaches building executable queries, those are built at runtime from query conditions selected by the user, and are not predefined. Dettinger ¶ 72, Fig. 6. Although we agree with the Examiner that “the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, [and] limitations from the specification are not read in the claim” (Ans. 4–5), we find that the Examiner’s interpretation of Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 7 the term “predefined database query” as broadly meaning any database query, regardless of its format and when it is built, reads out the claim requirement from claim 1 that the database query already exist and be identified as the first step of the claimed method. The broadest reasonable interpretation “is an interpretation that corresponds with what and how the inventor describes his invention in the specification, i.e., an interpretation that is ‘consistent with the specification.’” In re Smith Int’l, Inc., 871 F.3d 1375, 1383 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (citing In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997)). The Specification explains that the “business logic (also found in the backend tier) forms a query in a database query language and passes the query to a database engine for execution.” Spec. ¶ 5 (emphasis added); see also id. ¶ 11 (“The predefined database query originates from business logic (e.g., in an enterprise application.)”). Further, Figure 1B shows the predefined query as a complete query in a database query language format. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a “predefined database query” is one that is consistent with a complete query—not just query conditions— built and existing in a database query language. We, therefore, agree with Appellant that the Examiner has failed to explain sufficiently how Dettinger teaches a “predefined database query,” as recited in claim 1. The Examiner also does not rely on Focazio to teach this claim limitation in support of the obviousness rejection based on Dettinger and Focazio. Accordingly, given the record here, we reverse the rejections of independent claims 1, 11 and 18, and their dependent claims 2–10, 12–17, 19, 20. Appeal 2019-001615 Application 14/171,474 8 DECISION For the reasons above, we reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–20. In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s Affirmed Reversed 1–9, 11–20 103(a) Dettinger, Focazio 1–9, 11–20 10 103(a) Dettinger, Focazio, Elias 10 Overall Outcome 1–20 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation