Ex Parte Chen et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 30, 2017

13418055 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 30, 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.
13/418,055 03/12/2012 Qiming Chen 82929199 4794
56436 7590
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
EXAMINER
MAHMOOD, REZWANUL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2164
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/01/2017 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):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
chris. mania @ hpe. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte QIMING CHEN and MEICHUN SHU
Appeal 2016-002951
Application 13/418,055
Technology Center 2100
Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, ERIC FRAHM and
LINZY McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judges.
COURTENAY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final
Rejection of claims 1—20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.1
Invention
The disclosed and claimed invention on appeal is directed to a “Page
Feed for Efficient Dataflow Between Distributed Query Engines.” (Title).
1 Throughout this opinion, we refer to: (1) the Final Rejection, mailed Jan.
29, 2015 (“Final Act.”); (2) the Appeal Brief, filed June 25, 2015 (“App.
Br.”); (3) the Examiner’s Answer, mailed Nov. 27, 2015 (“Ans.”); and (4)
the Reply Brief, filed Jan. 25, 2016 (“Reply Br.”).
Appeal 2016-002951
Application 13/418,055
Representative Claim
1. A method of page feed for efficient dataflow between
distributed query engines, comprising:
[LI] storing a query result relation by a producer query [L2] as a
page in a query engine buffer pool, wherein each page stored in
the query engine buffer pool is a data block of uniform size,
wherein the query result relation comprises a plurality of results of
the producer query;
sending the page to a distributed caching platform (DCP) as a data
source of another query;
reading the query result relation by a consumer query from the
page stored in the DCP.
(Contested limitations LI and L2 are emphasized).
Rejections
A. Claims 1, 5—13, and 18—20 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being obvious over the combined teachings and
suggestions of Marron (US 2003/0065874 Al, Apr. 3, 2003) in view
of Chen (US 2004/0143562 Al, July 22, 2004).
B. Claim 2 is rejected under pre-AI A 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
obvious over the combined teachings and suggestions of Marron,
Chen, and Dye (US 6,879,266 Bl, Apr. 12, 2005).
C. Claims 3 and 4 are rejected under pre-AI A 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being obvious over the combined teachings and suggestions of
Marron, Chen, and Copeland (US 2004/0073630 Al, Apr. 15, 2004).
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Application 13/418,055
D. Claims 14—17 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
obvious over the combined teachings and suggestions of Marron,
Chen, and George (US 2011/0307736 Al, Dec. 15, 2011).
Grouping of Claims
Based on Appellants’ arguments, we decide the appeal of rejection A
of claims 1, 6—13, and 18—20 on the basis of representative independent
claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). We address rejection A of
dependent claim 5 separately, infra. We address rejections B, C, and D,
infra. To the extent Appellants have not advanced separate, substantive
arguments for particular claims and/or limitations, or other issues, such
arguments are considered waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
ANALYSIS
We have considered all of Appellants’ arguments and any evidence
presented. We disagree with Appellants’ arguments, and we adopt as our
own: (1) the findings and legal conclusions set forth by the Examiner in the
action from which this appeal is taken, and (2) the findings, legal
conclusions, and explanations set forth in the Answer in response to
Appellants’ arguments. (Ans. 3—12). However, we highlight and address
specific findings and arguments for emphasis in our analysis below.
Rejection of Independent Claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
We decide the following issues presented in this appeal:
Issues: Under § 103, did the Examiner err by finding the cited
combination of Marron and Chen would have collectively taught or
suggested contested limitations LI and L2:
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LI — “storing a query result relation by a producer query” and
L2 — “as a page in a query engine buffer pool,”
within the meaning of claim 1? 2 (emphasis added).
We find the first issue turns upon the broadest reasonable
interpretation of the stored “query result relation” (limitation LI). The
Examiner finds: “Marron discloses storing, sending, and reading query
results, wherein the query results are stored as web information such as
HTML pages in a query engine buffer pool (Marron: Paragraphs 50, 60, and
61 ).” (Final Act. 5-6).
Regarding contested limitation LI, Appellants contend, “the rejection
failed to interpret the claim term query result relation using the broadest
reasonable interpretation consistent with the Specification.” (App. Br. 6)
(emphasis added). In support, Appellants (App. Br. 6) point to various
examples in the Specification:
As used in the Specification, the term query result relation
refers to a set of tuples that are returned as a result of a query.
For example, the Specification states that “the producer query
stores the result relation as pages,” and that “the tuples in
these pages are in the format needed by the relational
operators.” Specification, par. [0018] (emphasis added).
Further, the Specification states that “an external relation R is
produced as a query result (e.g., Select* into R from T) of a
query executed on the producer QE. Next, whenever a new
page p of the external relation R is created and full with
newly inserted tuples.” Specification, par. [0042] (emphasis
added).
2 We give the contested claim limitations the broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the Specification. See In re Morris, 111 F.3d
1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997). Cf. Spec. 171 (“It is noted that the examples
shown and described are provided for purposes of illustration and are not
intended to be limiting. Still other examples are also contemplated.”).
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Application 13/418,055
In contrast, the cited “HTML page” is not a set of tuples
that are returned as a result of a query. Rather, an HTML page
is simply a single page that is displayed in a web browser. As
such, a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art, having read
the Specification, would not interpret the claim term query
result relation to refer to an HTML page.
(App. Br. 6).
However, we decline Appellants’ invitation to read limitations from
the Specification into the claims.3 (See Examiner’s response, Ans. 3).
Appellants fail to point to a definition in claim 1, or in the Specification, that
would preclude the Examiner’s broader interpretation of “query result
relation.” (Claim 1) (See Final Act. 6; Ans. 3). Because “applicants may
amend claims to narrow their scope, a broad construction during prosecution
creates no unfairness to the applicant or patentee.” In re ICON Health and
Fitness, Inc., 496 F.3d 1374, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citation omitted).
Therefore, on this record, we are not persuaded the Examiner’s claim
construction is overly broad, unreasonable, or inconsistent with Appellants’
Specification.
Regarding contested limitation F2, Appellants contend:
[A] review of the cited portions of Chen reveals that they say
nothing whatsoever about a query result relation, much less
storing a query result relation as a page. In fact, Chen as a
whole appears to be entirely silent regarding storing
any particular data object as a page. Rather, Chen describes
something substantially different, namely a memory-based
3 See Williamson v. Citrix Online, EEC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1346-47 (Fed. Cir.
2015) (“This court has repeatedly ‘cautioned against limiting the claimed
invention to preferred embodiments or specific examples in the
specification.’”) (quoting Teleflex, Inc. v. Ficosa N. Am. Corp., 299 F.3d
1313, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2002)).
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database system in which all memory is managed using units
called “memory pages.” For example, Chen states that “[a]
memory page is the basic memory unit of Memory
Management.” See Chen, par. [0058] (emphasis added). A
person of ordinary skill in the relevant art will readily
appreciate that managing all memory using pages, as described
in Chen, does not disclose or suggest that a query result
relation is stored as a page.
(App. Br. 7).
In the Final Action (6), the Examiner relies, inter alia, on paragraph
58 of Chen, for teaching or suggesting contested limitation L2, “a page in a
query engine buffer pool” (claim 1), as follows:
Referring to FIG. 4, the Memory Page Pool 149
includes the above contiguous MEM Page buffer herein the
MEM Pages and MEM Nodes, and the four double linked
lists (see FIG. 9 too). The Memory Page Pool includes both
memory page (called MEM Page or MEM Page) and
memory node (called MEM Node or MEM Node) management.
A memory page is the basic memory unit of Memory
Management with normally1024, 2048 or 8192 bytes in
each memory page, whereas a memory node is made from
a memory page and is of a smaller size than a memory page.
(Chen, 1 58).
Given this evidence {id.), and the absence of a definition for “query
engine buffer pool” in claim 1, or in the Specification, we are not persuaded
the Examiner erred in finding Marron and Chen collectively teach or suggest
contested limitation L2: “a page in a query engine buffer pool. . . .” (Claim
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Nor are we persuaded by Appellants arguments that the Examiner has
improperly combined the references under § 103. Appellants contend, inter
alia:
[T]he provided rationale is merely circular logic, namely that it
would have been obvious to modify Marron to include the
memory-based database system of Chen because this would
create the memory-based database system of Chen (i.e., “to
create a database engine completely in memory.”). It is
submitted that such circular reasoning is not a valid rationale to
explain why it would have been obvious to a person
of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to
combine Mehr and Sekhar in this particular manner.
Moreover, the provided rationale fails to provide any
explanation or reasoning as to why this particular modification
would have been seen as desirable or beneficial by a person of
ordinary skill in the art. Rather, the provided rationale is a mere
conclusory statement that does not provide articulated
reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the
legal conclusion of obviousness. Therefore, the provided
rationale fails to conform to the rule of KSR.
(App. Br. 7-8).
The Examiner finds (Final Act. 6): “The motivation to combine
Marron and Chen would be to create a database engine completely in
memory to include the parsing and execution of queries by storing all data
indexed, sorte[d] and searched based on selected search algorithms in
memory (Chen: Abstract and Paragraph 13).” (emphasis added).
We note the Abstract of Chen expressly describes the advantage of a
memory-resident database in terms of processing speed:
the processing speed of database query will take
advantage of speed of RAM (Random Access Memory)
without sacrifice any speed losing on Hard disk I/O. Not
only the whole database is running in RAM, but also all or
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pre-selected database table columns are default to be
indexed. All internal processing of database query is based
on indexed columns.
(Chen, Abstract) (emphasis added).
Given this evidence {id.), we find the Examiner provides sufficient
articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to establish why an
artisan would have been motivated to combine Marron with Chen’s
memory-resident database system, i.e., to realize an improvement in
database query speed. (Chen, Abstract). (See Final Act. 6).
Moreover, Appellants do not provide evidence sufficient to
demonstrate that combining the teachings of Marron and Chen, as proffered
by the Examiner (Final Act. 6), would have been “uniquely challenging or
difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art,” {Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v.
Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007)), nor have
Appellants provided any objective evidence of secondary considerations,
which our reviewing court guides “operates as a beneficial check on
hindsight.” Cheese Systems, Inc. v. Tetra Pak Cheese and Powder Systems,
Inc., 725 F.3d 1341, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2013).
On this record, we find the Examiner’s proffered combination of the
respective teachings of Marron and Chen would have merely yielded
predictable results, and thus would have been obvious to an artisan
possessing an ordinary level of skill at the time of Appellants’ invention.
See KSR Inti Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007) (“The
combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be
obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.”).
For at least the aforementioned reasons, and based upon a
preponderance of the evidence, we do not find persuasive Appellants’
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arguments alleging the Examiner has improperly combined the references
under § 103. (App. Br. 7—8).
Because Appellants have not persuaded us the Examiner erred, we
sustain rejection A of representative independent claim 1, and rejection A of
the associated grouped claims, which fall with claim 1. See Grouping of
Claims, supra.
Rejection A of Dependent Claim 5
Claim 5 recites: “The method of claim 1, further comprising selecting
page size to balance efficiency of access to the DCP and query processing.”
Regarding the rejection of claim 5, Appellants contend:
[Cjlaim 5 recites “the method of claim 1, further
comprising selecting page size to balance efficiency of access
to the DCP and query processing'’'’ (emphasis added). The
rejection asserted that this subject matter is disclosed by par.
[0161] of Marron and par. [0055], [0058] and Figs. 4-8 of
Chen. See Office Action, pp. 6-7.
Appellant respectfully disagrees. Specifically, a review
of the cited par. [0161] of Marron reveals that it says nothing
whatsoever about either page size or balancing efficiency,
much less "'selecting page size to balance efficiency of access to
the DCP and query processing,” as included in claim 5.
Further, a review of the cited portions of Chen reveals
that they say nothing whatsoever regarding balancing
efficiency of access to the DCP and query processing. In fact,
a search of Chen as a whole reveals that it is entirely silent
regarding about this subject matter.
(App. Br. 9).
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The Examiner disagrees:
Marron in Paragraph 161 discloses the storage
requirements for caching and in Paragraph 162 discloses
overhead associated with size of data and the tradeoff between
cache representation and the additional querying capabilities.
Chen in Paragraphs 55 and 58 discloses calculating total
memory size, page size among various page sizes, and the
number of pages and allocating all memory of the
targeted total memory size.
Calculating a tradeoff between data size representing a
cached and querying capability of a distributed caching system
is balancing efficiency of access to the DCP and query
processing. Calculating a page size and memory size to allocate
all memory of the targeted memory is selecting page size to
balance access.
Therefore, the combination of Marron and Chen
discloses the argued feature “selecting page size to balance
efficiency of access to the DCP and query processing”,
as disclosed in dependent claim 5.
(Ans. 11).
We note Marron (| 162) describes a “reasonable tradeoff between
greater overhead in terms of a larger cached file size (e.g., “2.8 times that of
the original size of the file”), and “additional querying capabilities.”
(emphasis added). Thus, we find Marron (id.) teaches or suggests “to
balance efficiency of access to the DCP [(Distributed Caching Platform)]
and query processing,” within the meaning of claim 5. (See Ans. 11:
“Marron in Paragraph 161 discloses the storage requirements for caching
and in Paragraph 162 discloses overhead associated with size of data and the
tradeoff between cache representation and the additional querying
capabilities.”
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As explained by the Examiner (Ans. 11), Chen describes allocating
memory page size (155), which is further described in 1 58:
The Memory Page Pool includes both memory page (called
MEM Page or MEM Page) and memory node (called MEM
Node or MEM Node) management. A memory page is the basic
memory unit of Memory Management with normally1024,
2048 or 8192 bytes in each memory page, whereas a memory
node is made from a memory page and is of a smaller size than
a memory page.
(Chen, 1 58). (See Final Act. 7).
We note the Examiner’s rejection of claim 5 is based on the combined
teachings and suggestions of Marron and Chen. 4 Given the evidence relied
upon by the Examiner (Final Act. 7; Ans. 11), on this record, Appellants
have not persuaded us of error regarding the Examiner’s legal conclusion of
obviousness.
Accordingly, we sustain rejection A of dependent claim 5.
Rejections B, C, and D of Remaining Claims
To the extent Appellants have not advanced separate and substantive
arguments regarding the rejections of the remaining dependent claims on
appeal, such arguments are considered waived. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(l)(iv). (See App. Br. 9-11).
4 “[T]he question under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is not merely what the references
expressly teach but what they would have suggested to one of ordinary skill
in the art at the time the invention was made.” Merck & Co., Inc. v. Biocraft
Laboratories, Inc., 874 F. 2d 804, 807—808 (Fed. Cir. 1989), cert, denied,
493 U.S. 975 (1989); see also MPEP § 2123(E).
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Reply Brief
To the extent Appellants may advance new arguments in the Reply
Brief not in response to a shift in the Examiner's position in the Answer, we
note arguments raised in a Reply Brief that were not raised in the Appeal
Brief or are not responsive to arguments raised in the Examiner’s Answer
will not be considered except for good cause. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.41(b)(2).
Conclusion
For at least the aforementioned reasons, we find a preponderance of
the evidence supports the Examiner’s underlying factual findings and
ultimate legal conclusion of obviousness regarding all contested issues on
appeal.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1—20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a).
No time for taking any action connected with this appeal may be
extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1). See 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(f).
AFFIRMED
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