Red Hat, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jul 6, 2021

2020001564 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 6, 2021)

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.
15/168,617 05/31/2016 Jozef Hartinger 1145-016/20161052US 6868
137131 7590 07/06/2021
Red Hat, Inc and Withrow & Terranova, PLLC
106 Pinedale Springs Way
Cary, NC 27511
EXAMINER
WU, JUNCHUN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2191
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/06/2021 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):
patents@wt-ip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JOZEF HARTINGER, LINCOLN BAXTER III,
JOSHUA R. KINLAW, and IAN P. HANDS
Appeal 2020-001564
Application 15/168,617
Technology Center 2100

Before BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, NABEEL U. KHAN, and
AMBER L. HAGY, Administrative Patent Judges.

HAGY, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 3–13, 15–18, and 20, which are all of
the pending claims. See Final Act. 1; Appeal Br. 24–29 (Claims App’x).
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

1 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant
identifies the real party in interest as Red Hat, Inc. Appeal Br. 1.
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Application 15/168,617
2
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claimed invention relates “generally to software development
and, in particular, to exception resolution in a software development
session.” Spec. ¶ 1. By way of background, Appellant’s Specification
describes how “complex, time-consuming, and expensive” the software
development process can be, especially given that “[c]omplex software
modules may have thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of
lines of instructions.” Id. ¶ 2. A “single typographical error in one line of
instructions can lead to an exception being reported somewhere else in the
lines of instructions.” Id. ¶ 16. An “exception,” as described in the
Specification, “refers to an event generated during the software development
session,” such as by an operating system, “that indicates a deviation from
normal processing.” Id. ¶ 22. The Specification describes examples of
exceptions as including “a syntax error, a syntax warning, a run-time error, a
network communication error, a data corruption error, an error indicating
incorrect usage of a third-party library, or the like.” Id. The Specification
notes that determining the cause of the exception can be “time-consuming.”
Id. ¶ 17.
Purportedly to aid the process of exception resolution in a software
development session, Appellant’s Specification describes a system and
method in which a “user’s encounters with exceptions” are tracked over time
and stored. Spec. ¶ 3. Also stored with exception information is “contextual
information” pertaining to the exception. Id. ¶¶ 3, 24–25. Such contextual
information comprises, for example, “a date and time of an occurrence of the
exception,” as well as “environmental information that identifies a current
operating environment” of the computing system. Id. ¶¶ 25–27. When an
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Application 15/168,617
3
exception is detected, the system and method will recognize if the exception
has been detected previously (id. ¶¶ 32–35), and if so, the system and
method will display contextual information associated with that exception.
Id. ¶¶ 3, 36.
Claims 1, 13, and 18 are independent. Claim 1, reproduced below, is
representative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method comprising:
monitoring, by a computing device comprising a
processor device, a first software development session of a user,
the first software development session being implemented by a
development environment configured to facilitate a generation
of software instructions;
detecting a first exception during the first software
development session;
in response to detecting the first exception, obtaining first
contextual information from the computing device;
storing the first contextual information and first
exception information that identifies the first exception in a
storage device;
detecting a second exception during a second software
development session;
determining that the second exception is a same
exception as the first exception; and
in response to determining that the second exception is
the same exception as the first exception:
accessing the first contextual information from the
storage device; and
presenting at least some of the first contextual
information on a display device.

Appeal 2020-001564
Application 15/168,617
4
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Gerard2 US 7,984,220 B2 July 19, 2011
Eismann US 8,386,960 B1 Feb. 26, 2013
Gebhart US 2001/0025373 A1 Sept. 27, 2001
Tsyganskiy US 2006/0294158 A1 Dec. 28, 2006
Adi US 2009/0106729 A1 Apr. 23, 2009
Warren US 2013/0332907 A1 Dec. 12, 2013
Ligman US 2015/0052503 A1 Feb. 19, 2015
Baggott US 2015/0095892 A1 Apr. 2, 2015
REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 3–5, 13, 15, 18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 1033 as obvious over the combination of Adi, Eismann, Baggott, and
Warren. Final Act. 2–8.
Claims 6, 7, and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious
over the combination of Adi, Eismann, Baggott, Warren, and Tsyganskiy.
Final Act. 8–11.
Claims 8, 9, and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious
over the combination of Adi, Eismann, Baggott, Warren, and Gerard. Final
Act. 11–12.
Claims 10 and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious
over the combination of Adi, Eismann, Baggott, Warren, and Ligman. Final
Act. 12–13.

2 All references are cited using the first-named inventor.
3 All rejections are under the provisions of Title 35 of the United States
Code in effect after the effective date of the Leahy-Smith America Invents
Act of 2011.
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5
Claim 11 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious over the
combination of Adi, Eismann, Baggott, Warren, and Gebhart. Final Act.
13–14.
OPINION
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
arguments the Examiner has erred. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072,
1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential).
Appellant argues independent claims 1, 13, and 18 (all rejected on the
same ground) collectively. Appeal Br. 8–17. For essentially the reasons
argued by Appellant, and as elaborated below, we concur with Appellant’s
contentions the Examiner erred in finding the prior art teaches or suggests
“monitoring . . . a first software development session . . . being implemented
by a development environment configured to facilitate a generation of
software instructions” to “detect[] . . . exception[s],” as recited in
independent claim 1 and commensurately recited in independent claims 13
and 18.4 Appeal Br. 24, 26–28 (Claims App’x.); see id. at 9–13.
The Examiner relies on Adi as teaching first and second software
development sessions of a user, detecting first and second exceptions during
the first and second software development sessions, and obtaining contextual
information in response to detecting the first exception. Final Act. 2–3
(citing Adi ¶¶ 13, 24, 41). In particular, the Examiner maps a “software
development session” to Adi’s disclosure of a “software development
process,” an “exception” to Adi’s disclosure of detecting a “complex

4 Appellant’s contentions present additional issues. Because the identified
issue is dispositive of Appellant’s arguments on appeal, we do not reach the
additional issues.
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6
situation,” and “contextual information” to Adi’s disclosure of “information
representative of instances of simple software development process events.”
Id. (emphasis omitted).
Appellant argues the Examiner’s findings are in error because Adi
does not disclose a “software development session,” as claimed, but instead
“relates to the process of developing software.” Appeal Br. 10. As such,
Appellant contends, “Adi is not focused on problems that specifically occur
during the development and testing phases.” Id. In response, the Examiner
states that Adi’s disclosure of “software development task monitors” that are
“adapted to monitor a single phase of the software development process”
teach “monitoring . . . a software development session.” Ans. 15–16
(emphasis omitted).
We are persuaded of Examiner error in the rejection. As Appellant
notes, Adi discloses monitoring an overall process of software development
and does not disclose in particular a system or method for generating
software instructions. This is illustrated, for example, by Adi’s disclosure of
the types of events that are monitored in the software development
process—“a file check-out event, a file check-in event, a build starting, a
build succeeding or failing, an instant message sent, a defect opened, a
defect transferred to another owner, a requirement created, a requirement
accepted, and so on.” Adi ¶ 14. As such, Adi’s disclosure addresses a
software development process at a high level, in which writing and
debugging software may be one part. But Adi does not disclose the actual
process of writing and debugging software—that is, monitoring software
instructions for exceptions. The “events” that are monitored in Adi are not
software errors or exceptions, but rather relate to actions by users of the
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system that “should have occurred” but “did not occur,” such as a failure to
follow file check-in procedures or to act in response to a customer reported
issue. See id. ¶¶ 13, 29.
The Examiner’s reliance on Eismann does not remedy the deficiency
in the Examiner’s findings based on Adi. The Examiner finds Eismann
discloses a “software development environment” that “may be configured to
receive input from a user in a graphical user interface (GUI) environment
and generate programming instructions.” Final Act. 4 (emphasis omitted).
As Appellant points out, however, Eismann does not disclose a
process or system that monitors exceptions that may occur in a software
development session. See Appeal Br. 10–11. Indeed, Eismann does not
disclose a system in which the user would be concerned with software
exceptions at all. Rather, Eismann discloses a system in which “a user
without extensive training may be able to design certain aspects of an
application program.” Eismann, 2:37–39. In particular, Eismann discloses a
system in which a user may build a program by using a graphical user
interface to select objects and targets, “without the user having to write
code.” Id. at 2:31–37. Thus, as Appellant contends, and we agree, even if
Adi and Eismann were combined, the combination does not teach or suggest
detecting or monitoring exceptions that would occur in software
development. See Appeal Br. 10–11.
The Examiner’s reliance on Baggott and Warren does not remedy the
deficiency in the Examiner’s findings regarding Adi and Eismann, as the
Examiner does not find that either Baggott or Warren teaches or suggests
monitoring a software development session for exceptions. See Final
Act. 4–6.
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This gap in the Examiner’s findings is fatal to the Examiner’s
rejection of independent claim 1 as unpatentable, and we, therefore, do not
sustain the rejection of that claim, or of independent claims 13 and 18, which
recite commensurate limitations. The dependent claims stand with their
respective independent claims.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner’s obviousness rejections of claims 1, 3–13, 15–18, and
20 are not sustained.

DECISION SUMMARY
Claim(s)
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 3–5, 13,
15, 18, 20
103 Adi, Eismann,
Baggott, Warren
1, 3–5, 13,
15, 18, 20
6, 7, 12 103 Adi, Eismann,
Baggott, Warren,
Tsyganskiy
6, 17, 12
8, 9, 16 103 Adi, Eismann,
Baggott, Warren,
Gerard
8, 9, 16
10, 17 103 Adi, Eismann,
Baggott, Warren,
Ligman
10, 17
11 103 Adi, Eismann,
Baggott, Warren,
Gebhart
11
Overall
Outcome
1, 3–13, 15–
18, 20
REVERSED