Ex Parte Evans et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 23, 2013

10673140 (P.T.A.B. May. 23, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE 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. 10/673,140 09/30/2003 Christopher Evans 50277-4111 3825 42425 7590 05/23/2013 HICKMAN PALERMO TRUONG BECKER BINGHAMWONG/ORACLE 1 Almaden Boulevard Floor 12 SAN JOSE, CA 95113 EXAMINER MAHMOOD, REZWANUL ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2164 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/23/2013 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 CHRISTOPHER EVANS, PAOLO FRAGAPANE, STEPHEN CAVE, JAMES STEADMAN, ANDREW OSBORN, and KATHRYN NASH ____________ Appeal 2011-000152 Application 10/673,140 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, BARBARA A. PARVIS, and STACEY G. WHITE, Administrative Patent Judges. PARVIS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of a final rejection of claims 1-9. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. Appeal 2011-000152 Application 10/673,140 2 BACKGROUND Appellants’ disclosed invention relates to method of preventing execution of unnecessary joins between tables in a database referred to by a Structured Query Language (SQL) statement. Spec. 1, ll. 3-5. Independent claim 1 is illustrative and is reproduced below: 1. A computer implemented method of preventing execution of unnecessary joins between tables in a database, the method comprising the steps of: a. presenting a Structured Query Language (SQL) statement to the database, the SQL statement referring directly to a set of tables in the database; b. preparing a list of tables that have a potential to be used to return the set of results but that are not directly referred to by the SQL statement; c. removing tables that must be accessed in order to return the set of results from the list in accordance with a predetermined set of rules; d. preventing execution of joins involving any of the tables remaining in the list; and e. returning a set of results from the database based on the SQL statement. EVIDENCE CONSIDERED The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Levine US 6,640,221B1 Oct. 28, 2003 (filed Jul. 10, 2000) Appeal 2011-000152 Application 10/673,140 3 REJECTION Claims 1-9 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being unpatentable over Levine. Ans. 4-7.1 ISSUES Appellants argue that Levine does not teach or suggest deleting any tables from the reference table; instead, tables are reordered by deleting them from a raw table and moving them to an ordered list. App. Br. 9-10. Additionally, Appellants contend that Levine explicitly rejects the Examiner’s finding by stating that reordering of tables from the raw list to the ordered list is repeated until all the join objects have been moved from the raw list to the ordered list. App. Br. 10. These arguments present us with the following issue: did the Examiner err in finding that Levine discloses “preventing execution of joins involving any of the tables remaining in the list,” as recited in independent claim 1? ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief presented in response to the Final Office Action and the Examiner’s response to the Appellants’ arguments. We concur with Appellants’ conclusion that the Examiner erred in finding that Levine discloses “preventing execution of joins involving any of the tables remaining in the list,” as recited in independent claim 1. 1 The rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 was withdrawn by the Examiner. Ans. 3. Appeal 2011-000152 Application 10/673,140 4 In response to Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner states Levine discloses, “[o]nly tables related in a join relationship are moved from the first list to the second list, thus preventing execution of joins involving any of the tables remaining on the first list” (Ans. 8). The Examiner identifies excerpts of Levine (see Ans. 5, 8-11) that disclose, for example, automatically sequencing tables joined in an SQL query by moving tables from a first raw list to a second ordered list (Levine Abstract ll. 12-14; col. 4, ll. 11-28; col. 14, ll. 5-9). While we agree with the Examiner to the extent that the Examiner states that Levine discloses aspects of an automatic sequencing algorithm (Ans. 8), in the excerpts of Levine that the Examiner identifies, Levine does not refer to or explicitly discuss tables remaining on the first list. Instead, Levine discloses that all of the join objects are moved from the first list to the second ordered list (Levine col. 4, ll. 27-28 (“ . . . repeating steps (d) through (g) until there are no tables remaining in the first list.”); col. 13, ll. 32-35 (“After each table is analyzed accordingly, and moved into the ‘ordered’ list, the ‘ordered’ list is then written into the ‘raw’ list, resulting in a properly-sequenced listing of the tables.”); col. 14, ll. 5-9 (“These steps 162-172 are repeated until all of the join objects have been moved from the ‘raw’ list to the ‘ordered’ list, at which point the sequencing is complete, and the ‘ordered’ list is written back as the ‘raw’ list, but now in proper table sequence.”). Accordingly, we will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) based upon Levine. Likewise, we will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claims 2-9 as each of these dependent claims depends from claim 1. Appeal 2011-000152 Application 10/673,140 5 DECISION We REVERSE the rejection of claims 1-9. REVERSED tj