Ex Parte SIHN et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 30, 2016

12845923 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 30, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/845,923 07/29/2010
89980 7590 07/05/2016
NSIPLAW
P.O. Box 65745
Washington, DC 20035
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Kue-Hwan SIHN
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.
011054.0051 1935
EXAMINER
TRUONG, CAMQUY
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2193
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/05/2016 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):
pto@nsiplaw.com
pto.nsip@gmail.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte KUE-HWAN SIHN, HEE-JIN CHUNG, and
DONG-GUN KIM
Appeal2015-001187
Application 12/845,923
Technology Center 2100
Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., and
ADAM J. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judges.
MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2015-001187
Application 12/845,923
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's final
rejection of claims 1-3, 5-10, and 12-15. Claims 4 and 11 were objected to
as being dependent upon a rejected base claim but would be allowable if
rewritten in independent form (App. Br. 1, Ans. 4). We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
Appellants' claimed invention is directed to a "parallel processing in
consideration of degree of parallelism" in which "[ o ]ne of a task parallelism
and a data parallelism is dynamically selected" (Abstract).
Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the
subject matter on appeal:
1. An apparatus for parallel processing, the apparatus
compnsmg:
at least one processing core configured to process a job;
a granularity determination unit configured to determine
a parallelism granularity of the job; and
a code allocating unit configured to:
select a sequential version code for a first amount
of determined parallelism granularity and select a parallel
version code for a second amount of determined parallelism
granularity; and
allocate the selected code to the processing core.
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REFERENCES and the REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 8, and 15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Gaudette (US 7,454,659 Bl; issued Nov. 18, 2008) in
view of Trivedi (US 7,681,013 Bl; issued Mar. 16, 2010). Final Act. 2--4.
Claims 2, 3, 9, and 10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Gaudette in view of Trivedi, further in view of Rehg
(US 2002/0091747 Al; published July 11, 2002). Final Act. 4---6.
Claims 5, 6, 12, and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Gaudette in view of Trivedi, further in view of
Wetzel (US 2002/0152256 Al; published Oct. 17, 2002). Final Act. 6-7.
Claims 7 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Gaudette in view of Trivedi, further in view of Wetzel and
Ford (US 2009/0043993 Al; published Feb. 12, 2009). Final Act. 7.
ISSUE
The pivotal issue is whether the Examiner erred in finding that the
combination of Gaudette and Trivedi teaches or suggests the limitation of
"select a sequential version code for a first amount of determined parallelism
granularity and select a parallel version code for a second amount of
determined parallelism granularity," as recited in claim 1.
ANALYSIS
Appellants argue that Gaudette fails to disclose the claimed
"parallelism granularity" (See Reply Br. 2-5). Appellants contend that the
claim term "granularity" should be accorded its plain meaning using a
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Wikipedia definition (App. Br. 6) and when considered along with their
Specification (App. Br. 6, referring to Spec. 9), "Gaudette does not disclose
selecting anything based upon a determined granularity of parallelism"
(App. Br. 6; see also Reply Br. 2-3).
We are not persuaded by Appellants' arguments. Although
Appellants' cited portion of the Specification regarding "parallelism
granularity" states that "[ t ]he granularity determination unit 212 may set the
granularity to a task level or a data level depending on applications" (Spec.
9, 11. 1-2; emphasis added), neither the cited portion, nor the remainder of
the Specification provides any metric by which to measure the claimed
"amount of determined parallelism granularity" (emphasis added).
Regarding Appellants' citation to Wikipedia, we find Wikipedia to be
an unreliable source of information because it is generally not considered to
be as trustworthy as traditional sources for several reasons, including: (1) it
is not peer reviewed; (2) the authors are unknown; and (3) anyone can
contribute to the source definition. See Bing Shun Li v. Holder, 400
Fed.Appx. 854, 857 (5th Cir. 2010) (noting Wikipedia's unreliability and
citing Badasa v. Mukasey, 540 F.3d 909, 910-11 (8th Cir. 2008)). Thus, we
find the presented Wikipedia definition provides no probative evidence to
persuade us that the Examiner's interpretation is unreasonable.
We agree with the Examiner's finding that the "number of arguments"
taught by Gaudette corresponds to the claimed "amount of determined
parallelism granularity" (Ans. 5, citing Gaudette 4:50-65), because the
number of arguments in Gaudette' s Matlab command serve as a reasonable
proxy for the amount of data to be processed by the command. Similarly,
we agree with the Examiner's finding that the "number of instances" taught
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by Gaudette also corresponds to the claimed "amount of determined
parallelism" (Ans. 5, citing Gaudette 15:46-63), because the number of
instances of a particular object being concurrently processed also serves as
reasonable proxy for the amount of data to be processed in parallel.
Appellants also argue Gaudette fails to disclose the "selecting" of
code for the amount of determined parallelism granularity (see App. Br. 6-7,
Reply Br. 5---6). Particularly, Appellants contend "Gaudette does not
disclose selecting anything based upon a determined granularity of
parallelism" (App. Br. 6; emphasis added). We are not persuaded by
Appellants' argument, because it is not commensurate in scope with the
claim language. The claim does not require a selection to be based upon a
determined granularity of parallelism; instead, a selection is made "for" an
"amount of determined parallelism granularity" which does not require such
a causal relationship. 1 We agree with the Examiner's finding that Gaudette
discloses that a "selection" is made "for" first and second amounts of
determined parallelism granularity (see Ans. 4--6).
Appellants argue "Gaudette does not disclose selecting different
versions of code" (App. Br. 11; emphasis added) and the "fact that Gaudette
discloses executing tasks both serially and in parallel provides no indication
that the tasks must be executed by one version of code when executed
serially and another version of code when executed in parallel" (Reply Br. 7;
emphasis added). We are not persuaded by Appellants' argument, because
Appellants' argument is not commensurate in scope with the claim language.
The claim does not require the code versions to differ. For at least this
1 We note the claims, as originally filed, required a selection "based on the
determined parallelism granularity"; see claim 1.
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reason, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred. Additionally, the
Examiner finds, and we agree, that "a job requiring a task to be processed
serially" (Ans. 7, quoting Gaudette 42:5---6) corresponds to one version of
code, and "executing a set of tasks independently of each other" (Ans. 7,
quoting Gaudette 42:49--50) corresponds to another version of code.
Gaudette column 42, lines 46-67 and corresponding Figure 9B clearly
envision both serial and parallel processing to be performed simultaneously,
and one of ordinary skill in the art would consider the code versions to differ
because of the different types of operations used in serial and parallel
processing, even though the claim does not require the code versions to
differ.
Appellants finally argue "Appellants have not had an opportunity to
react to the thrust of the rejection during the prosecution of the application"
(App. Br. 9) and refers to the "Examiner's Answer's New Ground for
Rejections" (Reply Br. 4). We note that Appellants' argument regarding the
new ground of rejection is a petitionable matter, and thus, not a matter
before the Board (see MPEP 1207.03(b); see also 37 C.F.R. § 41.40).
Appellants could have filed a petition under 37 C.F.R. § 1.181(a) within two
months from the mailing of the Examiner's Answer requesting that a ground
of rejection set forth in the Answer be designated as a new ground of
rejection. Appellants' failure to do so here constitutes a waiver of any
arguments that a rejection must be designated as a new ground of rejection.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejection of independent
claim 1 and independent claims 8 and 15 commensurate in scope, and
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dependent claims 2, 3, 5-7, 9, 10, and 12-14 not separately argued with
particularity.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in finding that the combination of Gaudette
and Trivedi discloses or suggests the limitation of "select a sequential
version code for a first amount of determined parallelism granularity and
select a parallel version code for a second amount of determined parallelism
granularity," as recited in claim 1.
DECISION
The Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1-3, 5-10, and 12-15 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)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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