Ex Parte OkmianskiDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 1, 201511264188 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 1, 2015) Copy Citation 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 ____________ 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: Appeal 2012-011179 Application 11/264,188 2 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, Appeal 2012-011179 Application 11/264,188 3 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). Appeal 2012-011179 Application 11/264,188 4 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 Appeal 2012-011179 Application 11/264,188 5 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. Appeal 2012-011179 Application 11/264,188 6 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 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation