Ex Parte Likes et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Aug 6, 2010

10085965 (B.P.A.I. Aug. 6, 2010)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________________

Ex parte DONALD C. LIKES and RUSSELL C. BROWN
____________________

Appeal 2009-0013221
Application 10/085,965
Technology Center 2400
____________________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, ST JOHN COURTENAY III, and
DEBRA K STEPHENS, Administrative Patent Judges.

HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL2

1 Filed February 28, 2002. The real party in interest is Advanced Micro
Devices, Inc. (App. Br. 1.)
2 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, or for filing a request for rehearing,
as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 41.52, begins to run from the “MAIL DATE”
(paper delivery mode) or the “NOTIFICATION DATE” (electronic delivery
mode) shown on the PTOL-90A cover letter attached to this decision.

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I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) (2002) from the
Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1-6, 8-15, 17-23, 25 and 26. Claims 7,
16, and 24 have been canceled. (App. Br. 2.) We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b) (2008).
We reverse.
Appellants’ Invention
Appellants invented a method and system for allowing software
components to dynamically communicate with each other independently
from a particular communication scheme. (Spec.2, ll. 18-23.) As depicted
in Appellants’ Figure 2A, upon receiving from a first software component
(150) a message (2.1) identifying another component (152) and a specific
scheme (112) associated therewith, a communication scheme handler (120)
retrieves from a data store (104) resource locator information (110) for each
component including an associated scheme portion (112), a host portion
(114), a port portion (116 ) and a path portion (116) to thereby allow the
software components to dynamically exchange messages. (Id. at 6, ll. 14-31,
id. at 7, ll. 9-21.)
Illustrative Claim
Independent claim 1 further illustrates the invention. It reads as
follows:
1. A method comprising:

obtaining a message from a first component of a software
system;
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identifying a module to handle scheme-specific
communication of the message; and

using the module for communicating the message from
the first component to a second component of the software
system, the communicating the message including using a first
resource locator to identify, the first component and using a
second resource locator to identify the second component, the
first resource locator including a first resource locator
communication scheme indication portion, a first resource
locator network node name indication portion, a fist resource
locator port identifier indication portion and a first resource
locator path indication portion, the second resource locator
including a second resource locator communication scheme
indication, portion, a second resource locator network node
name indication portion, a second resource locator port
identifier indication portion and a second resource locator path
indication portion.

Prior Art Relied Upon
The Examiner relies on the following prior art as evidence of
unpatentability:
Man US 5,710,908 Jan. 20, 1998
Glass US 6,519,653 B1 Feb. 11, 2003

Rejection on Appeal
The Examiner rejects claims 1-6, 8-15, 17-23, 25 and 26 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Man and
Glass.

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Appellants’ Contentions
Appellants contend that the combination of Man and Glass does not
teach or suggest a first and a second resource locator respectively identifying
a first and a second component, wherein each resource locator includes an
associated scheme, node name, port, and path portions, as recited in
independent claim 1. (App. Br. 6, Reply Br. 2.) According to Appellants,
while Man discloses a protocol independent method for transmitting data
packets between application programs, it does not teach the disputed
limitations. (App. Br. 4-5) Further, Appellants argue that Glass does not
cure the noted deficiencies of Man despite its disclosure of using a universal
resource locator to exchange messages between agent messages in a
network. (Id. at 5-6, Reply Br. 2.)
Examiner’s Findings
The Examiner finds that Man’s disclosure of exchanging messages
between application programs wherein each message includes
communication specific information for address data and packet header
information teaches a protocol communication scheme in the header of the
message. (Ans. 6.) Further, the Examiner finds that Glass’s disclosure of a
universal resource locator (URL) teaches a resource locator that identifies a
node name, a port name, and path name. (Id. at 7.) Therefore the Examiner
finds that the proffered combination teaches the disputed limitations. (Id.)

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II. ISSUE
Have Appellants shown that the Examiner erred in finding that the
combination of Man and Glass teaches or suggests a first and second
resource locators respectively identifying a first and a second components,
wherein each resource locator includes an associated scheme, node name,
port, and path portions, as recited in independent claim 1?

III. FINDINGS OF FACT
The following Findings of Fact (FF) are shown by a preponderance of
the evidence.
Man
1. Man discloses a method and system for transmitting data
packets from a first application program executing on a first device to a
second application program executing on a second device via a local area
network. (Abst.)
2. As depicted in Figure 3, Man discloses each device (20, 100)
includes a protocol independent interface (PII) program (250, 255) that,
upon being initialized, determines available protocols, and assigns an access
line to each of the protocols. (Col. 2, ll. 25-28, col. 10, ll. 23-27.) The PII
program then assigns an access ID to each application program, and
subsequently maps each access ID/access line pair to a corresponding block
protocol specific information, which includes a protocol header. (Id. at ll.
28-33, col. 10, ll. 28-34.)
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3. Upon receiving a data packet containing the access ID of the
first application program along with the destination ID of the second
application program, the PII program retrieves the block protocol specific
information from the mapping information to thereby form a transmission
packet (data packet + destination ID + retrieved block protocol specific info)
before forwarding it to the second application program via the LAN. (Id. at
ll. 33-44, col. 10, ll. 35-45.)
4. Each protocol header includes some type of address data such
as socket, name, or port info. (Col. 12, l. 40- col. 13, l. 4.)
Glass
5. Glass discloses a computer network communications system
whereupon a first computer agent requests an encounter with a second agent
to exchange messages therewith, the second agent creating an object to bind
itself to the requesting agent for the duration of the encounter. (Abst.)
6. The agent’s request includes the requester’s host address, port
number on the network. (Col. 2, ll. 40-43.) A uniform resource locator
(URL) may be used to refer to the object, including an alias, host address, a
port number. (Col. 4, ll. 4-6, ll. 21-26.)

IV. ANALYSIS
Independent claim 1 requires, inter alia, first and second resource
locators, respectively, that identify first and second components, wherein
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each resource locator includes an associated scheme, node name, port, and
path portion. (Br. 9, Claims App’x.)
As set forth in the Findings of Fact section, Man discloses that, upon
receiving a message request from a first application program to
communicate with a second application program, a PII program retrieves
block protocol specific information pertaining to the requesting application
program including a protocol header mapped to a dedicated access ID/access
line pair before forwarding the message to the destination application
program. (FF. 2-3.) Further, Man indicates that the protocol header
includes address data information such as socket, port, name. (FF. 4.)
Additionally, Glass discloses using URLs as part of a computer agent’s
request to communicate with another computer agent wherein the URL
includes an alias, host address, and a port number. (FF. 5-6.)
We find that the Man-Glass combination, at best, teaches or suggests
using a resource locator to identify a requesting application program, which
in turn references a destination application program with which it wishes to
communicate. While the disclosed resource locator can serve the purpose of
identifying both the requesting and the destination application programs, the
Examiner’s proffered combination does not suggest using a separate
resource locator to uniquely identify each of the application programs.
Thus, even though the disclosed resource locator does include a path, a node
name, a communication scheme, and a port, we find that the disclosed
resource locator can only serve to uniquely identify the requesting
application program. Furthermore, we note that the integration of Glass’s
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URL into Man does not appear to be workable since Man primarily relies on
dedicated lines to communicate messages between the two application
programs. Consequently, to somehow conclude that Glass’s locator could be
extended to uniquely identify the requesting and destination application
programs of Man would require us to stretch the boundaries of the proffered
combination beyond reasonable limits. Since Appellants have shown at least
one error in the rejection of claim 1, we need not reach the merits of
Appellants’ other arguments. It follows that Appellants have shown error in
the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 as being unpatentable over the
combination of Man and Glass.
Because claims 2-6, 8-15, 17-23, 25 and 26 also recite the limitations
of independent claim 1 discussed above, we find that Appellants have also
shown error in the Examiner’s rejection of these claims for the reasons set
forth above.

V. CONCLUSION OF LAW
Appellants have established that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claims 1-6, 8-15, 17-23, 25 and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as set forth
above.

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VI. DECISION
We reverse the Examiner's rejection of claims 1-6, 8-15, 17-23, 25
and 26.
REVERSED

Vsh

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