Oracle International Corporation

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 17, 2020

14171474 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 17, 2020)

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.
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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.
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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.).
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“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.

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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
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“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
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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.
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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