Ex Parte Okmianski

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 1, 2015

11264188 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 1, 2015)

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.
11/264,188 10/31/2005 Anton Okmianski 50325-1179 3465
29989 7590 04/01/2015
HICKMAN PALERMO BECKER BINGHAM, LLP
1 ALMADEN BOULEVARD
FLOOR 12
SAN JOSE, CA 95113
EXAMINER
MILLS, PAUL V
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2196
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/01/2015 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 ANTON OKMIANSKI
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Appeal 2012-011179
Application 11/264,188
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, JASON V. MORGAN, and
GARTH D. BAER, Administrative Patent Judges.

BAER, 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 1–32. Ans. 3. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We affirm.
BACKGROUND
A. The Invention
Appellant’s invention is directed to “a method and a system for
efficiently interpreting computer programs that require invocation of an
interpreter.” Spec. ¶ 18. Independent claim 1 is illustrative and is
reproduced below, with emphasis added to the disputed element:
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Application 11/264,188
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1. A method of interpreting a computer program wherein
the computer program requires invocation of an interpreter for
execution, the method comprising:
starting an interpretation control server;
after starting the interpretation control server, receiving a
request from a client at the interpretation control server via a
network connection, wherein the request comprises two or more
program files of the computer program, wherein said
interpretation control server is a program written in an
interpreted language and has been run by an instance of an
interpreter, said instance providing an environment for the
interpretation control server;
wherein the two or more program files of the computer
program require interpretation by the instance of the interpreter;
requesting the instance of the interpreter being used to
run the interpretation control server to successively interpret
the two or more program files of the computer program
and invoke a method of the two or more program files of
the computer program within the environment of the
interpretation control server without restarting the instance
of the interpreter; and
providing one or more result values to the client, wherein
the one or more result values are based on results of
interpretation of the two or more program files of the computer
program by the instance of the interpreter;
wherein the method is performed by one or more
processors.

B. The Rejections on Appeal
The Examiner rejects claims 1–6, 8–14, 16–22, 24–30, and 32 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Gorrie (Luke Gorrie, Echidna User
Guide For Echidna 0.4.0 (1999)), Process (Luke Gorrie, ProcessService.java
part of Echidna 0.4.0 (1999), available at http://web.
archive.org/web/1999101321223/http://www.javagroup.org/echidna/), and
Mahmoud (Qusay H. Mahmoud, The Web as a Global Computing Platform,
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Application 11/264,188
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Proceedings of the 7th Int’l Conf. on High Performance Computing and
Networking Europe (HPCN99): 1593 Lecture Notes in Computer Science
281–290 (1999)). Ans. 5.
The Examiner also rejects claims 1–6, 8–14, 16–22, 24–30, and 32
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Gorrie, Process, and Izatt (Izatt, et
al., Ajents: Towards an Environment for Parallel, Distributed and Mobile
Java Applications, Proceedings of the ACM 1999 Conf. on Java Grande 15–
24 (1999)). Ans. 13.
The Examiner rejects claims 7, 15, 23, and 31 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as obvious over Gorrie, Process, Mahmoud, and Brecht (Tim
Brecht et al., ParaWeb: Towards World-Wide Supercomputing, European
Symp. on Operating System Principles 181–88 (1996)). Ans. 11.
The Examiner also rejects claims 7, 15, 23, and 31 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as obvious over Gorrie, Izatt, Process, and Brecht. Ans. 18.
ANALYSIS
Appellant essentially repeats the same argument for each of the
rejections noted infra (see App. Br. 6–17). We will, therefore, group all
rejections together and treat claims 2–32 as standing or falling with claim 1.
See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (2012); 76 Fed. Reg. 72,270 (Nov. 22,
2011). See also In re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 590 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
arguments that the Examiner erred. We disagree with Appellant, as outlined
below. We and adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the
Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Ans. 5–19) and (2)
the reasons and conclusions set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s
Answer in response to Appellant’s Appeal Brief (Ans. 20–33).
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Application 11/264,188
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Appellant asserts the Examiner erred in finding the prior art teaches or
suggests “interpreting, by an instance of the interpreter, two or more
program files of a computer program without restarting the instance of the
interpreter,” as claim 1 requires. Specifically, Appellant contends the
Examiner erred in relying on prior references which describe a Java Virtual
Machine (JVM) as teaching the claimed instance of the interpreter. See
App. Br. 9–10 (arguing that Gorrie’s JVM is not an instance of the
interpreter); id. at 11 (same argument for Process’s JVM); id. at 11 (same
argument for Mahmoud); id. at 15 (same argument for Izatt). Appellant
recognizes JVM is “a programing environment that facilitates execution [sic]
various programs and processes” (App. Br. 8–9), but argues “executing a
complied code by an executor is not analogous to interpreting files by an
instance of the interpreter, and compiling a code is not analogous to
interpreting program files by an instance of the interpreter.” App. Br. 10.
We disagree.
The record supports the Examiner’s finding that a JVM meets the
claim language requiring an interpreter which interprets program files. As
the Examiner explains, a JVM facilitates execution of portable programs “by
translating the platform neutral instructions, which the host platform does
not recognize, into machine language instructions, which th[e] platform can
execute.” Ans. 21. The Examiner cites as evidence a 2005 reference which
explains “[t]he JVM is like a foreign language interpreter, turning Java
bytecode into whatever native language a particular computer understands.”
Ans. 21 (citing Beginning Programming with Java for Dummies).
Moreover, Appellant’s own Specification supports the Examiner’s finding
because, as the Examiner explains, “almost the entirety of Appellant’s
specification . . . is explicitly directed toward the embodiment where the
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Application 11/264,188
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particular type of interpreter instance is a JVM.” Ans. 22 (citing
numerous paragraphs in Appellant’s Specification). We agree with the
Examiner that JVM meets the claimed interpreter.
Appellant also challenges the Examiner’s conclusion that it would
have been obvious to modify Gorrie, Process, and Mahmoud to provide
advantages of simplicity and ease of use and to increase execution
performance, characterizing the Examiner’s rationale as “non-specific,” and
“hindsight.” App. Br. 13. We disagree with Appellant essentially for the
same reasons given on pages 29–30 of the Examiner’s Answer. “Any
judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based
upon hindsight reasoning, but so long as it takes into account only
knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the
claimed invention was made and does not include knowledge gleaned only
from applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper.” In re
McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 1395 (CCPA 1971). Here, the Examiner
explained that several of the cited references articulate the same motivation
on which the Examiner relies, i.e., it was within the level of ordinary skill in
the art at the time of the claimed invention, and Appellant has not offered
adequate evidence or technical reasoning to undermine the Examiner’s
proposed modifications.
For the reasons outlined above, we sustain the Examiner’s rejections
of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Because Appellant does not provide
any separate arguments to contest claims 2–32, see App. Br. 6–17, those
claims fall with claim 1 as noted above.

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Application 11/264,188
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DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–32.
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
mls