Ex Parte Carpenter

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jul 17, 2012

11345041 (B.P.A.I. Jul. 17, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________________

Ex parte BRYAN F. CARPENTER
____________________

Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
Technology Center 2100
____________________

Before: JOSEPH L. DIXON, LANCE LEONARD BARRY, and
ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
2
STATEMENT OF CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims 1-
22. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.

The claims are directed to method and system for managing access to
a data store with a primary thread and secondary threads. Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method of managing access to a data store,
comprising:
instantiating a primary thread, and a number of secondary
threads, for execution by a processing system;
launching a data populator on the primary thread;
launching a number of data formatters on at least one of
the number of secondary threads;
causing the data populator to write data items to the data
store;
monitoring a parameter of a data acquisition system; and
in response to the monitored parameter, controlling
execution of the secondary threads with respect to the primary
thread to manage access to the data store, and the data items
therein, by the number of data formatters.

REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Slaughter US 6,738,846 B1 May 18, 2004
Sciamanna
Bell
US 2003/0204371 A1
US 2004/0044725 A1
Oct. 30, 2003
Mar. 4, 2004
Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
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REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 15, 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C §103(a)
as being unpatentable over Slaughter and Sciamanna.
Claims 3 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C §103(a) as being
unpatentable over Slaughter, Sciamanna, and Bell.
Claims 6-9, 11, 17-20, 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C §103(a) as
being unpatentable over Slaughter, Sciamanna, and Hennessy (Computer
Architecture: A Quantitative Approach).
Claims 10 and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C §103(a) as being
unpatentable over Slaughter, Sciamanna, Hennessy, and Tanenbaum
(Structured Computer Organization).

ANALYSIS
Further, as pointed out by our reviewing court, we must first
determine the scope of the claim. "[T]he name of the game is the claim." In
re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Therefore, we look to the
limitations as recited in independent claim 1.

Appellant maintains with respect to the claimed invention that:
Slaughter teaches cooperation between threads, but the
cooperation disclosed by Slaughter involves: the creation of a
packet by a first thread; the designation of a second thread by
the first thread; and the completion of processing actions
designated by the packet by the second thread. See, col. 2, lines
52-65. However, this is control of the second thread in
response to a processing state of the first thread, AND NOT
Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
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control of the second thread in response to a monitored
parameter of a data acquisition system.

Although Sciamanna generally discloses a data
acquisition system, and the processing and storage of data, there
is no indication by Sciamanna regarding how the tasks of
processing and storing data are performed. Appellant therefore
believes it is too big a leap to claim that:

It would have been obvious ... to divide the
task of monitoring and reporting test data, as
taught by Sciamanna, into a multithreaded
operation where different threads cooperatively
handle the two portions of the task in order to
better use available computing resources resulting
in faster execution.

7/11/2008 Final Office Action, p. 4.

Appellant believe[s] the above position is untenable, in
part, because claim 1 recites more than just a division of work
between two threads, but rather a control of work execution
based on a monitored parameter of a data acquisition system.
Neither Slaughter nor Sciamanna disclose such an execution
control based on a monitored parameter of a data acquisition
system. At best, Slaughter discloses execution control based on
thread execution states that are unrelated to a monitored
parameter of a data acquisition system.

(App. Br. 9-10). We agree with Appellant. The Examiner attempts to
respond to Appellant's argument at pages 12-14 of the Answer and relies
upon plural threads to perform portions of a task. We find the relied upon
teaching in Slaughter and Sciamanna to be insufficient to teach or fairly
suggest the claim limitation "in response to the monitored parameter,
controlling execution of the secondary threads with respect to the primary
thread to manage access to the data store, and the data items therein, by the
Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
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number of data formatters." (Claim 1). The Examiner maintains that in
light of the teachings of Sciamanna, "[t]hus a person having ordinary skill in
the art would recognize a benefit of being able to divide and conquer the
writing of the data and the manipulating of the data in order to increase
parallelism." (Ans. 14). While we find the Examiner's proffered line of
reasoning (Ans. 13-14) to be possible, we do not find the relied upon
portions of Sciamanna reference concerning monitoring, facilitation of
trouble-shooting and problem diagnosis in commercial, industrial, and
manufacturing operations in combination with the teachings of Slaughter
concerning a cooperative processing of a task in a multi-threaded computing
system to be suggestive to the skilled artisans as the Examiner proffers and
speculates. Such conjecture would require us to resort to speculation,
unfounded assumptions, or hindsight reconstruction. See In re Warner, 379
F.2d 1011, 1017 (CCPA 1967). "The review authorized by 35 U.S.C.
Section 134 is not a process whereby the examiner . . . invite[s] the [B]oard
to examine the application and resolve patentability in the first instance."
Ex parte Braeken, 54 USPQ2d 1110, 1112 (BPAI 1999). We decline and
will not resort to speculation, unfounded assumptions, or hindsight
reconstruction to make up for this deficiency in the Examiner's rejection.
Independent claim 12 contains similar limitations to those found in
independent claim 1. Therefore, we cannot sustain the rejection of
independent claim 12.

With respect to independent claims 6 and 17, the Examiner
relies upon the teachings of Hennessy in addition to the Slaughter and
Sciamanna references. (Ans. 8-9). Appellant contends that:
Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
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Similarly to claim 1, claim 6 teaches the coordination of
execution between primary and secondary threads. However,
claim 6 teaches the use of tokens for such coordination. While
the Examiner equates Hennessy's "register renaming" with the
creation and passing of tokens, appellant fails to see how the
two are equivalent. Appellant asserts that, even if a renamed
register is considered to be equivalent to a "token", Hennessy
does not discloses any sort of passing of such a token (or
register name).

(App. Br. 11-12). We agree with Appellant that the "register renaming,"
which the Examiner equates to "tokens" does not teach or suggest passing of
such tokens or register names as recited in the language of independent
claim 6. We further agree with Appellant that claim 6 recites coordination
of execution between primary and secondary threads using and passing these
tokens and the Examiner has not presented either express teachings of all the
claimed limitations or a convincing line of reasoning why the claimed
invention would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the
time of the invention. The Examiner attempts to respond to Appellant' s
arguments in the Answer at pages 15-16 and again provides a lengthy line of
reasoning which we again find to be attenuated and based upon speculation
and conjecture to combine the relied upon portions of the Sciamanna
reference concerning monitoring, facilitation of trouble-shooting and
problem diagnosis in commercial, industrial, and manufacturing operations
in combination with the teachings of Slaughter concerning a cooperative
processing of a task in a multi-threaded computing system with the register
renaming of Hennessy. We find the Examiner's reliance upon the disparate
teachings of the three references to fall short of teaching or suggesting the
claimed invention as recited in independent claim 6.

Appeal 2010-001390
Application 11/345,041
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CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
Appellant has shown error in the Examiner's showing of obviousness
of independent claims 1 and 6.
DECISION
For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1-22 are
reversed.

REVERSED

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