Ex Parte Ghosh et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Sep 7, 2012

11175804 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 7, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte BHASKAR GHOSH, NATHAN K. FOLKERT,
THIERRY CRUANES, and SANKAR SUBRAMANIAN
____________

Appeal 2010-004835
Application 11/175,804
Technology Center 2100
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Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, JASON V. MORGAN,
and JOHN G. NEW, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2010-004835
Application 11/175,804

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Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of
claims 1-26, which constitute all the claims pending in this application. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants’ invention relates to parallelization of window functions,
wherein a window function operates over a set of values from an input item
set (see Spec. ¶¶ [0003] – [0004). According to Appellants, window
functions operate over a set of values from the input item set, such as values
from a particular set of rows that belong to a particular database table (Spec.
¶¶ [0005] – [0006]).
Exemplary Claim
Exemplary independent claim 1 reads as follows:
1. A method of parallelizing an operation, the method
comprising:
during execution of said command,
obtaining an input item set that serves as input to said
window function;
assigning a partition of an input item set to each of
a plurality of slave processes;
receiving at each of the plurality of slave processes
a set of data items that fall within the partition assigned
to the slave process;
producing a plurality of first results by causing
each slave process of the plurality of slave processes to
perform a first operation on the set of data items received
by the slave process;
communicating to each slave process information
that reflects the first results produced by one or more
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other slave processes of the plurality of slave processes;
and
producing a plurality of second results by causing
each slave process to perform a second operation based
on said information and the data items received by the
slave process.
Appellants’ Contentions
Appellants contend that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-26
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of
Bellamkonda (US 6,622,138 B1) and Iyoda (US 2005/0188087 A1) because
Bellamkonda describes a process “for parallel execution of a database query
containing a window function partitions input to the window function
relying on the PARTITION BY clause specified in the query” (App. Br. 6).
Appellants point to columns 15 and 17 of the reference and assert that
“Bellamkonda relies on partitioning criteria (e.g., a PARTITION BY clause)
specified in the query to partition input to a window function over a set of
slave processes” (id.). Appellants contrast the process disclosed in
Bellamkonda with Appellants’ claimed invention by providing examples of
their processes (see App. Br. 6-9) and contend that the missing features are
not taught or suggested by Iyoda’s parallel processing (App. Br. 10). In that
regard, Appellants assert that the execution results received from the master
in Iyoda “are the only results produced by the set of slaves and are final
results, not first results which are then communicated [to] the same set of
slaves which then produce second results based on the first results they
receive” (id.).
Issue on Appeal
Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1-26 as being obvious
because the combination of Bellamkonda and Iyoda fails to teach or suggest
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“communicating to each of the plurality of slave processes that produced the
plurality of first results information that reflects the first results produced by
one or more other slave processes of the plurality of slave processes that
produced the plurality of first results” and “producing a plurality of second
results . . . based on said information and the data items received by the
slave process,” as recited in claim 1?

ANALYSIS
We agree with Appellants’ contention above that the Examiner has
not shown the combination of Bellamkonda and Iyoda teaches or suggests a
set of slave processes for producing first results, receiving information about
each other’s first results, and then producing second results (see App. Br. 9-
10). We emphasize that the Examiner’s broad interpretation of the claimed
“window function” to encompass “analytical functions” (Ans. 19) is
inconsistent with Appellants’ claimed term interpreted in view of the
Specification. As stated by Appellants’ (Reply Br. 2-3), the Examiner’s
position encompasses processes that do not include the disputed features of
the claim by taking the processes that require more information to be the
same as those that can generate results based on only the input value. The
Examiner has not persuasively explained why adding Iyoda’s parallel
processing—where an execution result is produced by aggregating received
first results from a plurality of processing terminal units in a master process
and then transmitted to a requester-side terminal unit—would have provided
the missing features of Bellamkonda (see Ans. 4-6 and 18-21). Thus, based
on the weight of evidence, we find that the Examiner has not shown the
combination of the applied references teaches or suggests the disputed
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features of claim 1. Therefore, the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1, and
claims 2-26 dependent thereon, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Bellamkonda and Iyoda.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-26 is reversed.

REVERSED

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