Ex Parte Kornegay et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Aug 20, 2013

11425011 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 20, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
11/425,011 06/19/2006 Marcus L. Kornegay RPS920060016US1 8541
50594 7590 08/21/2013
CAREY, RODRIGUEZ, GREENBERG & O''''KEEFE, LLP
STEVEN M. GREENBERG
7900 Glades Road
SUITE 520
BOCA RATON, FL 33487
EXAMINER
RUTZ, JARED IAN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2187
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/21/2013 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 MARCUS L. KORNEGAY, NGAN N. PHAM, and
BRIAN T. VANDERPOOL
____________

Appeal 2011-001145
Application 11/425,011
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, KRISTEN L. DROESCH, and
JOHN G. NEW, Administrative Patent Judges.

RUGGIERO, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1 and 4-13. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm. .
Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the Examiner,
reference is made to the Appeal Brief (filed Feb. 5, 2010), the Answer
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(mailed Apr. 8, 2010), and the Reply Brief (filed June 8, 2010).1 Only those
arguments actually made by Appellants have been considered in this
decision. Arguments which Appellants could have made but chose not to
make in the Briefs have not been considered and are deemed to be waived
(see 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)).

Appellants’ Invention
Appellants’ invention relates to cache coherency management for
silent invalid state transition handling in a symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)
environment. An invalid state transition for a cache line is identified and a
corresponding cache directory entry for the cache line is evicted. In a
particular claimed embodiment, an invalid state transition notification is
broadcast to all of the node controllers in the SMP system. See generally
Abstract and Spec. ¶ [0019].

Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows:
1. A cache coherency method comprising:
identifying, in a local node, an invalid state transition for a cache line
in the local node;
evicting a corresponding cache directory entry, stored in the local
node, for the cache line; and
forwarding an invalid state transition notification, to all node
controllers in a symmetric multiprocessing system, to evict a corresponding
cache directory entry stored in a home node for the cache line.

1 The Examiner has issued a Supplemental Examiner’s Answer (Aug. 4,
2010) solely to address an supposed typographical error in the original
Examiner’s Answer which omitted claim 13 from the statement of the
rejection. As pointed out by Appellants in a Supplemental Reply Brief
(Sept. 29, 2010), however, the original Examiner’s Answer did include
claim 13 in the rejection and Appellants have addressed such rejection.
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The Examiner’s Rejections
The Examiner relies on the following prior art references to show
unpatentability:
Rubinstein US 5,913,215 June 15, 1999
Glasco US 2004/0088494 A1 May 6, 2004

Claims 1 and 4-8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being
anticipated by Glasco.
Claims 9, 12, and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Glasco in view of Rubinstein.
Claims 9-13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to
non-statutory subject matter.

ANALYSIS
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) REJECTION
Appellants argue, with respect to independent claims 1 and 6, that
Glasco does not disclose the forwarding of an invalid state notification to all
node controllers in a symmetric multiprocessing system. According to
Appellants, the Examiner erred in equating Glasco’s forwarding of probes to
appropriate remote clusters with the claimed forwarding of invalid state
notification to all node controllers.2 App. Br. 12-14; Reply Br. 5-11).

2 The Examiner has interpreted Glasco’s forwarding of “probes” indicative
of invalid state transition as corresponding to the claimed “notification” of
invalid state transmission. Appellants’ arguments in the Briefs do not
challenge the Examiner’s interpretation.
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We find Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive of any error in the
Examiner’s stated position. As explained by the Examiner, Glasco discloses
that probes indicative of an invalid memory line are forwarded to
appropriate remote clusters. Ans. 5 (citing ¶ [0116]). According to the
Examiner, therefore, when the invalid memory line in Glasco is cached in all
of the remote clusters, the appropriate remote clusters to which the probe is
forwarded is all of the remote clusters. Ans. 4, 5, and 16 (citing ¶¶ [0079],
[0115], [0116] and Fig. 7).
We agree with the Examiner. As described at paragraph [0115] of
Glasco, when a determination is made that an entry in a cache coherence
directory indicative of a “dirty” memory line needs to be evicted, a probe is
forwarded to all local nodes of a home cluster. In the immediately
succeeding paragraph [0116], Glasco discloses that the probe indicative of
the existence of a copy of the “dirty” memory line is forwarded to the
appropriate remote clusters, i.e., the remote clusters which have copies of the
invalid memory line according to a cache coherency directory. In addition,
as illustrated in Glasco’s Figure 7 and the accompanying description at
paragraph [0079], Glasco contemplates the situation in which a memory
line, as exemplified by “Address 751,” exists in all of the clusters of the
system of Figures 1A and 1B.
We further find unpersuasive Appellants’ contention that the
Examiner improperly construed the claimed limitations to require only that
all node controllers in the system receive an invalid state transition
regardless of whether the notifications are referencing different invalid state
transitions. Reply Br. 6. Contrary to Appellants’ contention, we find the
Examiner’s claim construction indeed requires the notification of a same
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single invalid state transition to all controllers. The Examiner explains,
however, and we agree, that this notification will have to occur only once in
Glasco to anticipate the appealed claims, a condition which will occur when
the same invalid memory line is present in a home cluster as well as in all
remote clusters as previously discussed. Further, contrary to Appellants’
contention that the Examiner’s position is based on a factually unsupported
inherency argument (Reply Br. 9-10), we instead find that the Examiner’s
position is based on a reasoned conclusion drawn from the explicit teachings
of Glasco.3
In view of the above discussion, we find that the Examiner did not err
in concluding that all of the limitations of independent claims 1 and 6 are
present in the disclosure of Glasco. Accordingly, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) rejection of independent claims 1 and 6, as well as the rejection of
dependent claims 4, 5, 7, and 8 not separately argued by Appellants, is
sustained.

35 U.S.C. § 103(a) REJECTION
We also sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection, based on the
combination of Glasco and Rubinstein, of claims 9, 12, and 13. Appellants
(App. Br. 16) have not argued the rejected claims with any particularity but,
instead, have relied upon arguments asserted against the rejection of
independent claims 1 and 6, which arguments we found unpersuasive as
discussed supra.

3 The Examiner offers an additional alternative claim interpretation at page
16 of the Answer. We do not reach the merits of this alternative
interpretation as we find the Examiner’s initial interpretation to be
dispositive.
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35 U.S.C. § 101 REJECTION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 9-13 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as not
being limited to statutory subject matter is sustained. Appellants argue that
claims 9-13 reciting a “computer program product comprising a computer
usable tangible medium” are statutory. According to Appellants, the
Examiner erred in construing “computer program product comprising a
computer usable tangible medium” as being transitory in nature. In
Appellants’ view, one of ordinary skill would understand that a computer
usable medium is tangible and that the computer program contained therein
is fixed in the tangible medium in a non-transitory manner (App. Br. 8-11;
Reply Br. 2-4).
We find Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive of any error in the
Examiner’s stated position. We find no error in the Examiner’s
determination that because Appellants’ Specification fails to limit expressly
the term “computer usable medium” to exclude signals, carrier waves, etc.,
the term encompasses transitory propagating signals. We agree with the
Examiner that Appellants’ addition of the term “tangible” to the claims does
not limit the claims to statutory subject matter. Ans. 11-14. If a claim
covers material not found in any of the four statutory categories, that claim
falls outside the plainly expressed scope of § 101 even if the subject matter
is otherwise new and useful. In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1354 (Fed. Cir.
2007). “A transitory, propagating signal like Nuijten’s is not a ‘process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.’” Id. at 1357. Those four
categories define the explicit scope and reach of subject matter patentable
under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
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We also refer to the guidance provided in U.S. Patent & Trademark
Office, Subject Matter Eligibility of Computer Readable Media, 1351 Off.
Gaz. Pat. Office 212 (Feb. 23, 2010) (hereinafter Subject Matter Eligibility
of Computer Readable Media). There, the Office states that “[t]he broadest
reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer readable [sic]
medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations)
typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory
propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of
computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent.”

CONCLUSION
Based on the analysis above, we conclude that the Examiner did not
err in rejecting claims 1 and 4-8 for anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b),
claims 9, 12, and 13 for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and claims 9-
13 as being non-statutory 35 U.S.C. § 101.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1 and 4-13 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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