Ex Parte Ogasawara

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jun 4, 2012

11241326 (B.P.A.I. Jun. 4, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte TAKESHI OGASAWARA
____________

Appeal 2009-010268
Application 11/241,326
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, LANCE LEONARD BARRY, and
JAMES R. HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2009-010268
Application 11/241,326

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
A Patent Examiner rejected claims 1-8, 10-13, and 15-18. The
Appellant appeals therefrom under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
A. INVENTION
The invention at issue on appeal relates generally to writing to a file
on a storage device, such as a hard disk drive, and more particularly to
writing to a file by multiple application threads in parallel. (Spec. 1).

B. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM
Claim 1, which further illustrates the invention, follows.
1. A method for writing to a file on a file cluster-by-
file cluster basis, by a plurality of application threads,
comprising:
the application threads writing to the file by:
for each file cluster of a plurality of file clusters of
the file:
mapping the file cluster to a memory cluster;
repeating:
allocating a block of the memory
cluster to one of the application threads that
is writing to the file cluster, the memory
cluster corresponding to the file cluster;
writing to the file cluster by the one of
the application threads via the one of the
application threads writing to the block of
Appeal 2009-010268
Application 11/241,326

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the memory cluster until the block is
finished,
until all blocks of the memory cluster are finished;
registering the memory cluster within a queue;
reading the memory cluster from the queue by a
file writer thread; and,
writing the memory cluster to the file cluster by
the file writer thread,
such that different of the application threads write to
different of the file clusters of the file,
wherein the file cluster is mapped to the memory cluster
prior to the blocks of the memory cluster being allocated and
written to by the application threads.

C. REFERENCES
The Examiner relies on the following references as evidence:
Pang US 6,493,837 B1 Dec. 10, 2002
Berry US 6,754,890 B1 Jun. 22, 2004
Huras U.S. Pat. Pub. No.2004/0181635 Sep. 16, 2004

Official Notice

D. REJECTIONS

Claims 1, 4-6, 11, 12, and 15-17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§103(a) as being unpatentable over Pang in view of Berry.

Claims 2 and 3 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) as being
unpatentable over Pang in view of Berry further in view of official notice.
Appeal 2009-010268
Application 11/241,326

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Claims 7, 8, 10, 13, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) as
being unpatentable over Pang in view of Berry further in view of Huras.

ANALYSIS
From our review of the administrative record, we find that the
Appellant's Reply Brief thoroughly addresses and embellishes the
contentions which were previously advanced in the Appeal Brief. We agree
with Appellant's arguments at set as set forth at pages 1-7 of the Reply Brief
and find that the Examiner has failed to consider the invention "as a whole"
by considering the entirety of the claim language of claims 1 and 17.
The Examiner maintains that:
Berry et al. teaches that trace records are associated with a
thread and written to a file. The file cluster would therefore
have to be mapped to the memory cluster in order to write the
trace record to the file. When a second process is associated
with the same trace file, as stipulated in Berry et al., then the
memory cluster would be allocated and written to. However,
the previously existing file cluster write would have already
taken place, therefore allowing for the claim language of the
file cluster mapping taking place before the memory cluster
being allocated and written.

(Ans. 17). We find the Examiner's position to be based upon
speculation and conjecture. The Examiner has not identified where
the Berry reference provides express support for the underlying
stipulation which the Examiner has based the conclusion of
obviousness upon.
While we agree with the Examiner that a situation may be
possible where the same exact data in the file cluster is written
multiple times so that the prior mapping may meet the language of
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Application 11/241,326

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independent claim 1, we find the Examiner's line of reasoning in the
conclusion to be attenuated and unreasonable in light of the express
language of the process of independent claim 1. Furthermore, we find
that if the data within the file cluster has changed, then the file cluster
would not necessarily be the same in the second iteration of the
process. Therefore, we find the Examiner's conclusion to be based
upon attempted hindsight reconstruction of Appellant's claimed
invention. Thus, we cannot sustain the rejection of independent claim
1 and independent claim 17 which contains similar limitations and
their respective dependent claims.
The Examiner has not identified how the official notice nor the
Huras reference remedies the above noted deficiency for dependent
claims 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, and 18. Therefore, we cannot sustain the
rejection of these claims as maintained by the Examiner.

CONCLUSION
For the aforementioned reasons, the Appellant has shown error in the
Examiner's showing of obviousness of independent claims 1 and 17.

ORDER
We reverse the obviousness rejections of claims1-8, 10-13, and 15-18.
REVERSED

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