Ex Parte MARATHE et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 19, 201813167278 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 19, 2018) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 13/167,278 06/23/2011 152690 7590 04/23/2018 Clayton, McKay & Bailey, PC 1155 Mount Vernon Highway NE, Suite 800 Atlanta, GA 30338 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Shraddha Vijay MARATRE 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. A498 7671 EXAMINER TRUONG, LECH! ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2194 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/23/2018 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): docketing@cmblaw.com ipadmin@vmware.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte SHRADDHA VIJAY MARATRE and IMRAN Q. SAYED Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 Technology Center 2100 Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, CARLL. SILVERMAN, and JAMES W. DEJMEK, Administrative Patent Judges. WINSOR, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of claims 1-20, which constitute all the claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants' disclosed invention relates to "extensible applications." Spec. ,-r 1. 1 Appellants identify VMware, Inc., as the real party in interest. App. Br. 2. Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 In an "extensible" application, a developer of an application may enable third parties to "extend" the application with additional functionality through the application's "extension framework," for example, by adding third party developed plug-ins or other similar add-on technologies to the application. Such extensibility is particularly useful for extending a graphical user interface (GUI) of an application, enabling third party plug-ins to add their own views and/or other GUI components to the application by extending certain well-defined "extension points" exposed by the application's extension framework. Spec. i-f 2. Claim 1, which is illustrative, reads as follows: 1. A method comprising: receiving, by a computing device, configuration information for a set of components of an extensible application, wherein each component in the set of components individually includes extending information if the component is an extension of another component and hosting information if the component is hosting a set of extension points; dynamically generating, by the computing device, an extension structure at runtime of the application from the configuration information, wherein the extension structure is generated by dynamically connecting components together based on the individually included extending information and the hosting information of the set of components; receiving, by the computing device, a navigation request to a target component; determining, by the computing device, a path of components to the target component using the dynamically generated extension structure; traversing, by the computing device, the path of components until the target component is loaded; and displaying, by the computing device, the target component. The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims: 2 Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 Shenassa et al. Yogaratnam et al. Haynes et al. US 6,842,856 B2 Jan.I I, 2005 US 2005/0188384 Al Aug. 25, 2005 US 2009/0083213 Al Mar. 26, 2009 Ergo et al. US 8,196,132 B2 June 5, 2012 Claims 1-5, 7-10, 16-18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)2 as being unpatentable over Shenassa, Haynes, and Ergo. Final Act. 2-9. Claims 6, 11-15, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shenassa, Haynes, Ergo, and Y ogaratnam. Final Act. 9-10. Rather than repeat the arguments here, we refer to the Briefs ("App. Br." filed Aug. 21, 2014; "Reply Br." filed Jan. 13, 2015) for the positions of Appellants; the Final Office Action ("Final Act." mailed Apr. 4, 2014) and Examiner's Answer ("Ans." mailed Nov. 20, 2014) for the reasoning, findings, and conclusions of the Examiner; and the Specification ("Spec." filed June 23, 2011, as amended Apr. 5, 2013). ISSUE The dispositive issue presented by Appellants' arguments is whether the Examiner errs in finding the combination of Shenassa, Haynes, and Ergo, and in particular Shenassa, teaches or suggests "each component in the set of components individually includes extending information if the 2 All rejections are under the provisions of 35 U.S.C. in effect prior to the effective date of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 ("pre-AIA"). Final Act 2. 3 Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 component is an extension of another component and hosting information if the component is hosting a set of extension points" (the "argued limitation"). as recited in claim 1. 3 ANALYSIS The Examiner relies on Shenassa to teach or suggest all of the elements of the claim, including the argued limitation, except dynamically producing an extension structure at runtime and navigating the extension structure. Final Act. 2--4 (citing Shenassa, col. 1, 11. 50-60, col. 2, 11. 55---61, col. 5, 11. 60-67, col. 6, 11. 1-15, 20-45, 49-55. 4 The Examiner relies on Ergo to teach or suggest dynamically producing the extension structure (Final Act. 7) and Haynes to teach or suggest navigating the extension structure (Final Act. 4--7). The Examiner explains as follows: Shenassa teaches property startinitial 191 (hosting information) specifies the plug-ins (component) that should be started first and the order in which these plug-ins should be started. Property startEnd 192 (extension information) specifies the plug-ins that should be started last and the order in which these last plug-ins should be started, col 6, ln 7-12 .... [1f1hen the name or class name or version of plug-in is identified by startlnitial 191, it is a host information and when the name, class name or version name of the plug-in is identified by startEnd 192, it is the extension information. Ans. 11-12 (emphasis added). In other words, the Examiner construes hosting information and extending information individually included in each 3 Appellants' arguments present additional issues. Because the identified issue is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the additional issues. 4 A citation to Shenassa i-f 30, 11. 8-30 (Final Act. 4), appears to refer, instead, to Shenassa, col. 6, 11. 49-55). 4 Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 component to encompass the name or version name associated with the component. In construing claim terms [the USPTO] applies to the verbiage of the proposed claims the broadest reasonable meaning of the words in their ordinary usage as they would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, taking into account whatever enlightenment by way of definitions or otherwise that may be afforded by the written description contained in the applicant's specification. In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997). The correct inquiry in giving a claim term its broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification is not whether the specification proscribes or precludes some broad reading of the claim term adopted by the examiner. And it is not simply an interpretation that is not inconsistent with the specification. It is an interpretation that corresponds with what and how the inventor describes his invention in the specification, i.e., an interpretation that is 'consistent with the specification.' In re Smith Int'!, Inc., 871F.3d1375, 1382-83 (Fed, Cir. 2017) (quoting Morris, 127 F.3d at 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)); see also In re Suitco Surface, 603 F.3d 1255, 1259-60 (Fed. Cir. 2010). Appellants contend the Examiner errs because the extending and hosting information taught by Shenassa is located in a separate data structure in a plug-in manager, and not in the individual components, as recited in the argued limitation. App. Br. 9-10 (citing Shenassa, col. 5, 11. 22-25, 42---67, col. 6, 11. 1-10, 63-65, Figs. 1-3, 5). 5 We agree with Appellants. 5 We note that claim 1 is a method claim and the argued limitation includes the word "if' and may be conditional, see Ex parte Schulhauser, No. 2013- 007847, 2016 WL 6277792, *3-5 (PTAB Apr. 28, 2016) (precedential); see also MANUAL OF PATENT EXAMINING PROCEDURE (MPEP) § 5 Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 The Specification provides the following definitions: "Information that identifies the extension point the component is extending is referred to as 'extending information' and information identifying the extension points the component is hosting is referred to as 'hosting information."' Spec. i-f 30. The information identified by the Examiner as the hosting information and extending information for the component merely identifies the component itself and does not identify "the extension point the component is extending" (id.) or the "extension points the component is hosting" (id.). As described by both the Examiner (Ans. 11-12) and Appellants (App. Br. 9- 10; Reply Br. 2), Shenassa teaches the information that identifies the extension points extended by and hosted by the components, i.e., the "extending information" and "hosting information," is located in a data structure 190 comprising properties 191-193 within a plug-in manager 120 (see Shenassa, Fig. 5) and not within the individual plug-ins 121-26 managed by the plug-in manager 120 (id., Fig. 3). The Examiner has given the argued limitation a claim construction that is inconsistent with the Specification and is, therefore, unreasonably broad. See Smith, 871 F.3d at 1382-83. The Examiner has failed to demonstrate that Shenassa teaches or suggests the argued limitation or to present findings and explanations that would explain why the argued 2111.04(II) (9th ed. Rev. 08.2017, Jan. 2018) (citing Schulhauser). In this case, however, the components of the argued limitation of claim 1 are "a set of components of an extensible application." We conclude, therefore, that the broadest reasonable interpretation of the argued limitation encompasses receiving information regarding only those components that are hosts of other extending components, extensions of other hosting components, or both. 6 Appeal 2016-003566 Application 13/167,278 limitation would have been obvious despite the deficiencies in Shenassa's teachings. Therefore, constrained by the record before us, we conclude the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1. Accordingly, we do not sustain the rejections of (1) claim 1; (2) independent claims 11 and 16, which include limitations substantially similar to the argued limitation; and (3) claims 2- 10, 12-15, and 17-20, which depend, directly or indirectly, from claim 1, 11, and 16, respectively. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-20 is reversed. REVERSED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation