Ex Parte Mayerle et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 26, 2017

13651927 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 26, 2017)

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.
13/651,927 10/15/2012 Jochen Mayerle 0046-042001/2012P00292US 2411
56056 7590 09/28/2017
BRAKE HUGHES BELLERMANN LLP
C/O CPA Global
900 Second Avenue South
Suite 600
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55402
EXAMINER
MAGUIRE, LINDSAY M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3693
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/28/2017 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):
uspto@brakehughes.com
docketing@brakehughes.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JOCHEN MAYERLE and CLEMENS JACOB
Appeal 2016-0024401
Application 13/651,9272
Technology Center 3600
Before JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, and
TARA L. HUTCHINGS, Administrative Patent Judges.
HUTCHINGS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1—20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
1 Our decision references Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“App. Br.,” filed
July 22, 2015) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Dec. 21, 2015), and the
Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Oct. 22, 2015) and Final Office Action
(“Final Act.,” mailed Feb. 23, 2015).
2 Appellants identify SAP SE as the real party in interest. App. Br. 1.
Appeal 2016-002440
Application 13/651,927
CLAIMED INVENTION
Claims 1, 12, and 18 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A system for linking an application with an in­
memory database system for enabling an in-memory-enabled
transactional application to perform a plurality of business
transactions in conjunction with the in-memory database system,
the system comprising:
an in-memory transactional processor configured to
execute an application in conjunction with an in-memory
database system,
the in-memory transactional processor configured to
receive contextual data related to an instantiation of a first
business transaction of the application and instantiate at least one
second business transaction of the application during a course of
processing the first business transaction, each of the first business
transaction and the at least one second business transaction
including a sequence of process steps, the first business
transaction and the at least one second business transaction being
parallel transactions for at least a period of time,
the in-memory transactional processor configured to store
results of at least one process step of the at least one second
business transaction in the in-memory database system,
the in-memory transactional processor configured to
evaluate, at a decision point within the sequence of process steps
of the first business transaction, a next process step as specified
by a business model of the application and a plurality of
alternative process steps that are alternatives to the next process
step to determine a subsequent process step to be performed after
the decision point using the contextual data and the results of the
at least one process step of the at least one second business
transaction that have been stored as newly captured information
in the in-memory database system, and
the in-memory transactional processor configured to store
transactional results of the first business transaction in the in­
memory database system to be available for at least one other
parallel transaction.
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Application 13/651,927
REJECTION
Claims 1—20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to non-
statutory subject matter.
ANALYSIS
In rejecting the pending claims under § 101, the Examiner finds that
the claims are directed to “performing business transactions,” which is a
fundamental economic practice and thus, an abstract idea. Final Act. 2. The
Examiner further finds that the claims do not include additional elements or
a combination of elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial
exception, because the claims do not include an improvement to another
technology or technical field, an improvement to the functioning of the
computer itself, or meaningful limitations beyond linking the use of an
abstract idea to a particular technological environment. Id. at 2—3. The
Examiner finds that the claims are done by a “generically recited in-memory
transactional processor and in-memory database system.” Id. at 3. And the
Examiner finds that the limitations are merely instructions to implement the
abstract idea on a computer, requiring no more than a generic computer to
perform generic computer functions. Id.
Appellants argue that the pending claims, like the claims in DDR
Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245 (Fed. Cir. 2014), are not
directed to a fundamental economic practice, but instead are rooted in
computer technology (specifically, database transacational technology) to
overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks.
App. Br. 16. Specifically, Appellants argue that the claims “specify in very
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Application 13/651,927
specific technical terms how process steps of business transactions are
evaluated within the context of an in-memory database system to yield a
desired result — a result that provide [s] a level of parallelism (in terms of
transactional speed and performance) not found in conventional systems.”
Id.
Responding to Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner asserts that “[t]he
steps of the claims are performed by the generically recited in-memory
transactional processor and in-memory database system.” Ans. 6. The
Examiner finds that “[t]here is nothing stated within the claims that is an
improvement [to a] technical field [or] that illustrates what is superior about
the in-memory transactional processor and in-memory database system.” Id.
The Examiner contends that the Specification indicates that the claimed
invention “fails to set forth any special technology used in the
implementation of the claims.” Id. (quoting Spec. 128 (“The system 100
may include other components that are well known to one of ordinary skill
in the art.”)).
Disputing the Examiner’s findings, Appellants argue that the claimed
in-memory transactional processor operates in conjunction with the in­
memory database system to increase the transactional flexibility and
performance (speed) of the transactional database system, thereby relating to
an “improvement of the functioning of the transaction system itself.” Reply
Br. 4. Appellants assert that the “in-memory database system is a special
type of database system that supports real-time analytics and transactional
processing including replication and aggregation techniques.” Id. at 6.
Appellants’ Specification describes that
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Application 13/651,927
[tjransactional processing may include information
processing that is divided into individual, indivisible operations
called transactions. Each transaction must succeed or fail as a
complete unit. Typically, within a transaction, data is read,
processed in a defined process, and then the results of the
transaction are stored in a database. Since the results of one
transactional process must be stored in a database before the
process of another transactional process may use the stored
results within its process, conventional applications are limited
to a minimum set of data and processing steps because otherwise
the processing time is stretched in an unacceptable way for
transaction processing patterns having multiple dimensions (e.g.,
a number of different concurrent, parallel operations).
Spec. 11; see also id. 12 (“[t]his type of conventional transactional
processing may have sub-optimal execution speed on a reactive basis, which
[is] ineffective in today’s fast-paced business environment”).
The Specification describes that the claimed invention permits the
capture of data of parallel transactions within an in-memory database system
during the course of processing a transaction. See id. ]Hf 23—24. It also
permits the transactional application to consider alternative process steps
using the captured information. See id. ]ff[ 24—25. Thus, although the
claimed invention involves business transactions, the Specification describes
the heart of the invention as an improved in-memory database system that
supports real-time analytics and transactional processing, including
replication and aggregation techiques. The Examiner refers to the
Specification’s description at paragraph 28 that system 100 (which includes
the claimed in-memory processing framework 110) “may include other
components that are well known” as evidence that the claim is not directed
to any special technology. Ans. 6. Yet the invention is directed to in-
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Application 13/651,927
memory processing framework 110, which the Specification does not
describe as conventional.
Here, the present record fails to adequately support a determination
that the claimed invention does not improve the functioning of a transaction
system itself. Therefore, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
claims 1—20 under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—20 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is
reversed.
REVERSED
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