11729473 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 31, 2014)

Ex Parte Hu et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 31, 2014

11729473 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 31, 2014)

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. 11/729,473 03/28/2007 Yong Hu 50277-3190 5666 42425 7590 01/02/2015 HICKMAN PALERMO TRUONG BECKER BINGHAM WONG/ORACLE 1 Almaden Boulevard Floor 12 SAN JOSE, CA 95113 EXAMINER PEACH, POLINA G ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2165 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/02/2015 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte YONG HU, BIPUL SINHA, AMIT GANESH, JUAN LOAIZA, and VIVEKANANDHAN RAJA ___________ Appeal 2012-005335 Application 11/729,473 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, DANIEL N. FISHMAN, and CATHERINE SHIANG, Administrative Patent Judges. FISHMAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING Appellants request rehearing under 37 C.F.R. § 41.52 of the Decision mailed October 14, 2014 (“Decision”), in which we affirmed the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–13 and 27–39. Appellants timely filed the Request for Rehearing (“Request”) on December 12, 2014. We are not persuaded that the Decision is in error and do not modify the Decision. Appeal 2012-005335 Application 11/729,473 2 REQUEST FOR REHEARING Appellants argue the Decision is in error because: 1. the Decision fails to understand the difference between the intra- layer requirements of claim 1 and the inter-layer teachings of McLaughlin (Request 2–4), 2. the Decision may not rely on McLaughlin in combination with McGoveran (Request 4), and 3. the Decision overlooks an argument that McGoveran’s transactions are competing for the same resources (Request 5). ANALYSIS Issue 1 We are not persuaded the Decision misapprehended or overlooked Appellants’ arguments relating to intra-layer status sharing requirements of claim 1 as distinguished from the inter-layer status sharing of McLaughlin. Initially, we note, neither Appellants’ Specification nor the claims recite, or make a distinction between, “inter-layer” and “intra-layer.” Regardless, the Decision specifically finds McLaughlin teaches hierarchical layers of transaction processing among distributed server nodes, such that lower layers of a transaction make their completion status visible (accessible) to higher layer server nodes. Decision 5 (citing McLaughlin Figs. 4, 5; col. 4, ll. 47–54; Ans. 17). In other words, in McLaughlin, each server (node) of multiple layers in the hierarchy of nodes processing corresponding branches of a distributed transaction must make its completion status known to its parent node. Each parent of the hierarchy, in turn, makes its completion status (the aggregation of its processing completion status and that of its Appeal 2012-005335 Application 11/729,473 3 child nodes) known to its parent node, etc., up to the top-level (“TL”) node—e.g., up to the transaction manager. See, e.g., McLaughlin Figs. 4 and 5; col. 4, ll. 47–54. Thus, McLaughlin clearly teaches a first database server (e.g., a parent node) accessing server-side state status updated by another server (e.g., one of its child nodes) as recited in claim 1. See Decision 5. Issue 2 Appellants argue the Decision “may not rely on McLaughlin in combination of [sic] McGoveran to disclose access to an intermediate status to affirm the rejection of Claim 1.” Request 4. This argument fails to point to an issue or argument that the Decision misapprehended or overlooked. Rather, Appellants raise a new argument based on their contention that we misapprehended the teachings of McLaughlin (Issue 1, supra) and thus, cannot properly combine the two references. In view of our discussion of Issue 1, we are not persuaded by Appellants’ new argument that the Decision has misapprehended or overlooked an issue or argument. Issue 3 Appellants argue the Decision overlooked an argument on page 9 of the Appeal Brief alleging “the transactions, or even presumably transaction branches, in McGoveran are executing on a single resource manager that manages the same resources.” Request 5. We are not persuaded the Decision overlooked this argument. Rather, the Decision addresses this argument and agrees with the Examiner’s findings. Decision 5–6 (quoting Appeal 2012-005335 Application 11/729,473 4 from Ans. 24).1 Appellants’ assertion (Request 5) appears to simply disagree with our findings in agreement with the Examiner’s explanation rather than identify an argument that we overlooked. DECISION We have granted Appellants’ Request to the extent that we have reconsidered the Decision affirming the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–13 and 27–39. The Decision affirming the Examiner’s rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is maintained. DENIED mls 1 We note a typographic error in this portion of the Decision where on page 5, six lines from the bottom, “Ans. 8–10” should read “App. Br. 8–10.”