Ex Parte MARATHE et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 19, 2018

13167278 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 19, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/167,278 06/23/2011
152690 7590 04/23/2018
Clayton, McKay & Bailey, PC
1155 Mount Vernon Highway NE, Suite 800
Atlanta, GA 30338
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Shraddha Vijay MARATRE
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
A498 7671
EXAMINER
TRUONG, LECH!
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2194
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/23/2018 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):
docketing@cmblaw.com
ipadmin@vmware.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SHRADDHA VIJAY MARATRE and IMRAN Q. SAYED
Appeal 2016-003566
Application 13/167,278
Technology Center 2100
Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, CARLL. SILVERMAN, and
JAMES W. DEJMEK, Administrative Patent Judges.
WINSOR, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection
of claims 1-20, which constitute all the claims pending in this application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants' disclosed invention relates to "extensible applications."
Spec. ,-r 1.
1 Appellants identify VMware, Inc., as the real party in interest. App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2016-003566
Application 13/167,278
In an "extensible" application, a developer of an
application may enable third parties to "extend" the application
with additional functionality through the application's
"extension framework," for example, by adding third party
developed plug-ins or other similar add-on technologies to the
application. Such extensibility is particularly useful for
extending a graphical user interface (GUI) of an application,
enabling third party plug-ins to add their own views and/or
other GUI components to the application by extending certain
well-defined "extension points" exposed by the application's
extension framework.
Spec. i-f 2. Claim 1, which is illustrative, reads as follows:
1. A method comprising:
receiving, by a computing device, configuration
information for a set of components of an extensible
application, wherein each component in the set of components
individually includes extending information if the component is
an extension of another component and hosting information if
the component is hosting a set of extension points;
dynamically generating, by the computing device, an
extension structure at runtime of the application from the
configuration information, wherein the extension structure is
generated by dynamically connecting components together
based on the individually included extending information and
the hosting information of the set of components;
receiving, by the computing device, a navigation request
to a target component;
determining, by the computing device, a path of
components to the target component using the dynamically
generated extension structure;
traversing, by the computing device, the path of
components until the target component is loaded; and
displaying, by the computing device, the target
component.
The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims:
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Appeal 2016-003566
Application 13/167,278
Shenassa et al.
Yogaratnam et al.
Haynes et al.
US 6,842,856 B2 Jan.I I, 2005
US 2005/0188384 Al Aug. 25, 2005
US 2009/0083213 Al Mar. 26, 2009
Ergo et al. US 8,196,132 B2 June 5, 2012
Claims 1-5, 7-10, 16-18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a)2 as being unpatentable over Shenassa, Haynes, and Ergo. Final
Act. 2-9.
Claims 6, 11-15, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Shenassa, Haynes, Ergo, and Y ogaratnam. Final
Act. 9-10.
Rather than repeat the arguments here, we refer to the Briefs ("App.
Br." filed Aug. 21, 2014; "Reply Br." filed Jan. 13, 2015) for the positions
of Appellants; the Final Office Action ("Final Act." mailed Apr. 4, 2014)
and Examiner's Answer ("Ans." mailed Nov. 20, 2014) for the reasoning,
findings, and conclusions of the Examiner; and the Specification ("Spec."
filed June 23, 2011, as amended Apr. 5, 2013).
ISSUE
The dispositive issue presented by Appellants' arguments is whether
the Examiner errs in finding the combination of Shenassa, Haynes, and
Ergo, and in particular Shenassa, teaches or suggests "each component in the
set of components individually includes extending information if the
2 All rejections are under the provisions of 35 U.S.C. in effect prior to the
effective date of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 ("pre-AIA").
Final Act 2.
3
Appeal 2016-003566
Application 13/167,278
component is an extension of another component and hosting information if
the component is hosting a set of extension points" (the "argued limitation").
as recited in claim 1. 3
ANALYSIS
The Examiner relies on Shenassa to teach or suggest all of the
elements of the claim, including the argued limitation, except dynamically
producing an extension structure at runtime and navigating the extension
structure. Final Act. 2--4 (citing Shenassa, col. 1, 11. 50-60, col. 2, 11. 55---61,
col. 5, 11. 60-67, col. 6, 11. 1-15, 20-45, 49-55. 4 The Examiner relies on
Ergo to teach or suggest dynamically producing the extension structure
(Final Act. 7) and Haynes to teach or suggest navigating the extension
structure (Final Act. 4--7). The Examiner explains as follows:
Shenassa teaches property startinitial 191 (hosting information)
specifies the plug-ins (component) that should be started first and
the order in which these plug-ins should be started. Property
startEnd 192 (extension information) specifies the plug-ins that
should be started last and the order in which these last plug-ins
should be started, col 6, ln 7-12 .... [1f1hen the name or class
name or version of plug-in is identified by startlnitial 191, it is a
host information and when the name, class name or version name
of the plug-in is identified by startEnd 192, it is the extension
information.
Ans. 11-12 (emphasis added). In other words, the Examiner construes
hosting information and extending information individually included in each
3 Appellants' arguments present additional issues. Because the identified
issue is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the additional issues.
4 A citation to Shenassa i-f 30, 11. 8-30 (Final Act. 4), appears to refer,
instead, to Shenassa, col. 6, 11. 49-55).
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Appeal 2016-003566
Application 13/167,278
component to encompass the name or version name associated with the
component.
In construing claim terms
[the USPTO] applies to the verbiage of the proposed claims the
broadest reasonable meaning of the words in their ordinary usage
as they would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art,
taking into account whatever enlightenment by way of
definitions or otherwise that may be afforded by the written
description contained in the applicant's specification.
In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997).
The correct inquiry in giving a claim term its broadest
reasonable interpretation in light of the specification is not
whether the specification proscribes or precludes some broad
reading of the claim term adopted by the examiner. And it is not
simply an interpretation that is not inconsistent with the
specification. It is an interpretation that corresponds with what
and how the inventor describes his invention in the specification,
i.e., an interpretation that is 'consistent with the specification.'
In re Smith Int'!, Inc., 871F.3d1375, 1382-83 (Fed, Cir. 2017) (quoting
Morris, 127 F.3d at 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted)); see also In re Suitco Surface, 603 F.3d 1255, 1259-60
(Fed. Cir. 2010).
Appellants contend the Examiner errs because the extending and
hosting information taught by Shenassa is located in a separate data structure
in a plug-in manager, and not in the individual components, as recited in the
argued limitation. App. Br. 9-10 (citing Shenassa, col. 5, 11. 22-25, 42---67,
col. 6, 11. 1-10, 63-65, Figs. 1-3, 5). 5 We agree with Appellants.
5 We note that claim 1 is a method claim and the argued limitation includes
the word "if' and may be conditional, see Ex parte Schulhauser, No. 2013-
007847, 2016 WL 6277792, *3-5 (PTAB Apr. 28, 2016) (precedential); see
also MANUAL OF PATENT EXAMINING PROCEDURE (MPEP) §
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Application 13/167,278
The Specification provides the following definitions: "Information
that identifies the extension point the component is extending is referred to
as 'extending information' and information identifying the extension points
the component is hosting is referred to as 'hosting information."' Spec.
i-f 30. The information identified by the Examiner as the hosting information
and extending information for the component merely identifies the
component itself and does not identify "the extension point the component is
extending" (id.) or the "extension points the component is hosting" (id.). As
described by both the Examiner (Ans. 11-12) and Appellants (App. Br. 9-
10; Reply Br. 2), Shenassa teaches the information that identifies the
extension points extended by and hosted by the components, i.e., the
"extending information" and "hosting information," is located in a data
structure 190 comprising properties 191-193 within a plug-in manager 120
(see Shenassa, Fig. 5) and not within the individual plug-ins 121-26
managed by the plug-in manager 120 (id., Fig. 3).
The Examiner has given the argued limitation a claim construction
that is inconsistent with the Specification and is, therefore, unreasonably
broad. See Smith, 871 F.3d at 1382-83. The Examiner has failed to
demonstrate that Shenassa teaches or suggests the argued limitation or to
present findings and explanations that would explain why the argued
2111.04(II) (9th ed. Rev. 08.2017, Jan. 2018) (citing Schulhauser). In this
case, however, the components of the argued limitation of claim 1 are "a set
of components of an extensible application." We conclude, therefore, that
the broadest reasonable interpretation of the argued limitation encompasses
receiving information regarding only those components that are hosts of
other extending components, extensions of other hosting components, or
both.
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Appeal 2016-003566
Application 13/167,278
limitation would have been obvious despite the deficiencies in Shenassa's
teachings. Therefore, constrained by the record before us, we conclude the
Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1. Accordingly, we do not sustain the
rejections of (1) claim 1; (2) independent claims 11 and 16, which include
limitations substantially similar to the argued limitation; and (3) claims 2-
10, 12-15, and 17-20, which depend, directly or indirectly, from claim 1,
11, and 16, respectively.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-20 is reversed.
REVERSED
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