Ex parte Yoshida

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Apr 29, 2002

08441024 (B.P.A.I. Apr. 29, 2002)

Application for patent filed May 15, 1995, which claims 1
the foreign filing priority benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 119 of
Japanese Application No. 06-153489, filed July 5, 1994.
The opinion in support of the decision being entered
today was not written for publication and is not binding
precedent of the Board.
Paper No. 31
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
________________
BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
________________
Ex parte TAKASHI YOSHIDA
________________
Appeal No. 2000-2091
Application 08/441,0241
________________
HEARD: APRIL 10, 2002
________________
Before RUGGIERO, DIXON and SAADAT, Administrative Patent
Judges.
SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is a decision on appeal from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1 through 11 and 13 through 16. Claim 12
has been canceled.
We reverse.
BACKGROUND
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Application 08/441,024
2
Appellant’s invention is directed to a client/server
system in which clients receive data from a server, process
the data and return the data back to the server. The data
used by a plurality of clients is supervised exclusively by a
server as each client down-loads the data from the server and
returns the processed data to the server (specification, page
12). Appellant’s invention addresses the problem encountered
when the client or the server breaks down. In either
instance, the data is automatically transmitted from the
client to the server when both the client and the server are
operational (specification, pages 13-16). As the data is
transmitted to the server, the client sends a message to the
server indicating that the data supervising information must
be renewed (specification, page 17). Thus, the data generated
by the client before transfer to the server, is saved in case
of break down and then automatically transferred from the
client to the server without any user input (specification,
page 18).
The representative independent claim 1 is reproduced as
follows:
1. A client/server system comprising:
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Application 08/441,024
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a server which supervises data;
a plurality of clients for which the server
supervises data in a memory unit in the server, each
client down-loads data, which is required for a data
processing in each client, from the server and returns
the data to the server after the data processing is
finished, each of said clients comprising:
a data receiving process downloading the data from
the server;
a server supervisor that determines whether the
server is in correct operation or is down by sending data
to the server without receiving an inquiry from said
server;
a not-yet-transferred data memory for storing,
during operation as a client and when the server
supervisor determines that the server is not in
operation, not-yet-transferred data to be returned to the
server when the server returns to operation;
a not-yet-transferred data writing process, during
operation as a client, writing the not-yet-transferred
data to the not-yet transferred data memory when the
server supervisor determine that the server is not in
operation;
a not-yet-transferred data confirming process,
during operation as a client, checking whether the not-
yet-transferred data to be transferred to the server is
present in the not-yet-transferred data memory; and
a not-yet-transferred data transferring process,
during operation as a client, transferring the not-yet-
transferred data to the server, when the not-yet-
transferred data confirming process confirms that the
not-yet-transferred data is present in the not-yet-
Appeal No. 2000-2091
Application 08/441,024
Claim 12 was finally rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103, as2
being unpatentable over Kobayashi in view of Agrawal (Paper
No. 17, mailed April 30, 1999). Appellant canceled claim 12
in an amendment after final rejection (Paper No. 20, filed
August 30, 1999). The Examiner approved entry of this
amendment upon filing of a Notice of Appeal and an Appeal
Brief, as indicated in an advisory action (Paper No. 21,
mailed September 3, 1999).
4
transferred data memory and the server supervisor
confirms that the server is in operation.
The prior art references of record relied upon by the
Examiner in rejecting the appealed claims are:
Agrawal et al. (Agrawal) 4,800,488 Jan. 24,
1989
Kobayashi 5,140,689 Aug. 18,
1992
Mary Baker & John Ousterhout (Baker), “Availability in the
Sprite Distributed File System,” Operating Systems Review,
pp. 1-4, April 1991.
William Genosa (Genosa), “Monitoring Performance with isostat
and vmstat,” System Administer, pp. 1-9, March/April 1994.
Claims 1 through 11 and 13 through 16 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kobayashi
in view of Agrawal and Baker. 2
Claim 3 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Kobayashi in view of Agrawal, Baker and
Genosa.
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Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced
by the Examiner and Appellant regarding the above-noted
rejections, we make reference to the answer (Paper No. 25,
mailed February 16, 2000) for the Examiner’s complete
reasoning in support of the rejections, and to the brief
(Paper No. 24, filed January 3, 2000) and the reply brief
(Paper No. 27, filed April 17, 2000) for Appellant’s arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
At the outset, we note that Appellant indicates that
claims 1 through 11, 15 and 16 stand or fall together and
claims 13 and 14 stand or fall together (brief, page 5).
However, Appellant has not, in the arguments section of the
brief, provided separate arguments for claims 13 and 14, as
required by 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (July 1, 1999). Appellant
has merely pointed out the subject matter that claims 13 and
14 cover and relied on the same arguments made with respect to
the other claims. Therefore, for the § 103 rejection of
claims over Kobayashi, Agrawal and Baker we will consider
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Application 08/441,024
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Appellant’s claims 1 through 11 and 13 through 16 as standing
or falling together as a group, and we will treat claim 1 as
the representative claim of that group.
With respect to Kobayashi, Appellant argues that the
claimed storing, writing, confirming and transferring of not-
yet-transferred data are all done on the client side whereas
Kobayashi performs such functions on the server side. In
particular, Appellant points to the rollback journal file in
Kobayashi that receives data from the transaction processing
control section, which is located on the server side, only
when the data processing system operates as a server (oral
hearing and brief, page 8). Appellant concludes that the
rollback journal is associated with the server and does not
store the data that is to be transferred from a client to a
server. Additionally, Appellant argues that the transaction
processing control section of Kobayashi operates on the server
side whereas the claimed data writing, confirming and
transferring processes are internal to and executed by a
client (brief, page 9). Similarly, Appellant asserts that
Kobayashi merely provides status data for PHASE II processing
to the client while the rollback processing restores data in
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the server without receiving any processed data from the
client (brief, pages 9 and 10). Appellant further points out
that the claimed client sends edited data to the server
voluntarily, and not in response to a request for services
from a server (brief, page 11).
With respect to Agrawal, Appellant argues that the client
does not send processed data to the server to update tasks as,
similar to Kobayashi, Agrawal performs tasks at the server
side (brief, page 10). Regarding Baker, Appellant points out
that if a server crashes, clients do not write edited data to
their memory and instead, continue where they left off and
only provide their file system states to the server when
server reboot is detected (brief, page 11).
In response, the Examiner provides no arguments to
dispute Appellant’s assertion that all the functions claimed
to be performed by the client, are done in Kobayashi at the
server side. The Examiner merely indicates that the only
disputed issue is what constitutes a client or a server. The
Examiner argues that the claimed client acts as a server when
it becomes a “provider of services” by “providing fault
recovery monitoring and data restoration services” (answer,
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Application 08/441,024
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page 12). Furthermore, the Examiner does not disagree with
Appellant’s definition of “client” and “server” and indicates
that appellant’s claimed client becomes a server when it
provides services to the server, although the services are not
requested by the server.
Appellant responds by relying on the definition of
“recovery” and argues that the client of the claimed invention
does not recover or restore lost data to the server. Instead,
the client proceeds with its data transfer when the server
becomes operational (reply brief, page 2). Additionally,
Appellant points to the definition of a server as responding
to “commands from a client” to conclude that the client of
claim 1 is not a server since it does not respond to another
computer in response to a request for service (oral hearing
and reply brief, page 3).
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the Examiner
bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28
USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). The conclusion that the
claimed subject matter is obvious must be supported by
evidence, as shown by some objective teaching in the prior art
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or by knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill
in the art that would have led that individual to combine the
relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed
invention. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d
1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988). Furthermore, to reach a
conclusion of obviousness under § 103, the examiner must also
produce factual basis supported by teaching in a prior art
reference or shown to be common knowledge of unquestionable
demonstration, consistent with the holding in Graham v. John
Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966). Our reviewing court requires
this evidence in order to establish a prima facie case. In re
Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1471-72, 223 USPQ 785, 787-88 (Fed.
Cir. 1984); In re Cofer, 354 F.2d 664, 668, 148 USPQ 268, 271-
72 (CCPA 1966).
Initially, we note that a review of Kobayashi compels us
to agree with Appellant’s characterization of the reference
that the storing, writing, confirming and transferring of data
are performed at the server side, not at the client side. As
shown in Figures 1 and 2, Kobayashi provides rollback journal
13 for storing intermediate results of transaction processing
Appeal No. 2000-2091
Application 08/441,024
Microsoft Press Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1997, p. 400. 3
Appellant’s definition is consistent with that found in
Microsoft Press Dictionary, 2nd edition , 1994, pp. 75, 355,
which accompanies this decision.
10
by the transaction processing control section 11 of servers A
and B (Col. 4, lines 41-45 & 54-60).
Next, we address the Examiner’s contention that
Appellant’s claimed “client” acts as the server of Kobayashi
when the client monitors the failed server and provides
services. Appellant provides the definition for “server” as
“a computer or program that responds to commands from a
client.” Therefore, according to the definition, a client3
requests services from a server and the server provides the
requested services. We do not agree with the Examiner that
any device that sends data to another, functions as a server.
Notwithstanding their common goal of processing data, we find
that clients and servers are defined as having distinct roles
and capabilities that are not interchangeable. Based on the
definitions presented by Appellant, a server is ultimately
responsible for storing and managing data as well as making
resources available to clients in response to
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11
requests/commands from clients as the clients request services
from the server.
Appellant’s claim 1 recites a client/server system
wherein each client that downloads data from the server,
processes the data and returns the processed data back to the
server. The claimed server “supervises data in a memory unit
in the server” while the client writes the data to a memory
only when the client detects server break down. We find that
the server does not become a client and remains a server
during the period the client writes the processed data and
transfers the data back to the server, as soon as the client
confirms that the server is in operation. We also note that,
without any instructions or requests received from the server,
the data storing and transferring functions are performed by
the client to merely preserve the processed data during the
time the server is down. Thus, based on the established
distinctions between “client” and “server,” the transaction
processing control section of Kobayashi that carries out such
functions at the server side, is different from the claimed
data storing and transferring which is performed at the client
side.
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We also note that Agrawal pertains to sharing of computer
resources wherein clients solicit availability status
information from servers (col. 2, lines 22-26). The client in
Agrawal does not store and transfer data and merely transmits
a solicit message to the server, as the storage and
transferring functions are performed by the server. Baker, on
the other hand, uses the file system state replicated on the
client workstation and allows the client to continue
processing (page 2). In case of the server’s reboot, the
client transfers to the server the pertinent file system state
not the data that was downloaded, processed and transmitted.
Based on our analysis above, we find no teaching or suggestion
in Agrawal and Baker that would overcome the deficiencies of
Kobayashi related to the claimed data downloading, processing,
storing and transferring at the client side. Accordingly, we
do not sustain the rejection of claims 1 through 11 and 13
through 16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Kobayashi in view of
Agrawal and Baker.
We next consider the rejection of claim 3, which depends
from claim 1, under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Kobayashi, Agrawal
and Baker in combination with Genosa. The rejection is based
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Application 08/441,024
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on the Examiner’s proposed modification of the data recovery
method of Kobayashi, Agrawal and Baker by using the time
stamped files of Genosa to provide the most recent version of
a file (answer, page 11). Appellant argues that Genosa is
concerned with gathering statistics on system performance and
contains no teaching or suggestion to overcome the
deficiencies in Kobayashi, Agrawal and Baker (brief, page 13
and reply brief, page 6). In response, the Examiner indicates
that Genosa should not be evaluated alone since the rejection
is based on the combination of the references (answer, page
15).
Our review of Genosa reveals that the reference teaches
using monitoring programs for gathering statistics and
identifying performance problems in computers. The program of
Genosa defines “where the output files will be stored” and
uses the “TIME variable” in order to “create a timestamp of
each record that is appended to the output files” (page 1, ¶
3). We find no teaching or suggestion in Genosa relating to
the claimed limitation of data downloading, processing,
storing and transferring at the client side, that would
overcome the deficiencies noted above in Kobayashi, Agrawal
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and Baker. Therefore, we do not sustain the rejection of
claim 3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Kobayashi, Agrawal and
Baker in view of Genosa.
CONCLUSION
In view of the foregoing, the decision of the Examiner
rejecting claims 1 through 11 and 13 through 16 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
REVERSED
JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO )
Administrative Patent Judge )
)
)
)
JOSEPH L. DIXON ) BOARD OF PATENT
Administrative Patent Judge ) APPEALS AND
) INTERFERENCES
)
)
MAHSHID D. SAADAT )
Appeal No. 2000-2091
Application 08/441,024
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Administrative Patent Judge )
Appeal No. 2000-2091
Application 08/441,024
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