Ex Parte Schofield et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 13, 201713453513 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 13, 2017) 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. 13/453,513 04/23/2012 Andrew J. Schofield GB920090003US2 8718 70748 7590 IBM Corp. (AUS/RCR) c/o Rolnik Law Firm, P.C. 24 N. Main St. Kingwood, TX 77339 EXAMINER YUN, CARINA ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2194 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/18/2017 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): notices@rolnikiplaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ANDREW J. SCHOFIELD and PHILIP B. WILLOUGHBY Appeal 2016-0001351 Application 13/453,513 Technology Center 2100 Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JOHN A. EVANS, and DANIEL J. GALLIGAN, Administrative Patent Judges. Per Curiam. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 2, 4, and 6. App. Br. 7. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). Claims 1, 3, and 5 have been canceled. Claims Appx. We affirm. 1 Appellants identify the real party in interest as International Business Machines Corporation. App. Br. 2. Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 Appellants ’ Invention Appellants’ invention is directed to a method of processing messages in a cluster (10) of queue managers (QM1, QM2, QM3, QM4) with instances such as (11) and (12), where messages with an affinity are processed together in the same queue manager (QM2). See Spec. ]Hf 40-45, Fig. 1. Illustrative Claim Independent claim 2 is illustrative, and reads as follows: 2. A method of processing messages, including affinity sets of related messages, for use with a messaging and queuing system of the type capable of supporting a cluster, the method comprising: in response to an application program command to a messaging server, the messaging server opening a queue having multiple instances of the queue on respective messaging servers of the cluster, wherein the messaging server is among a plurality of logically associated messaging servers for controlling and hosting queues of messages, wherein the messaging server and respective messaging servers are logically associated, and in response, generating an object handle; in response to application program commands to the messaging server to put a plurality of messages on the queue, distributing messages among the multiple instances of the queue so as to balance a workload between at least two messaging servers according to predetermined rules, wherein the at least two messaging servers are among the plurality of logically associated messaging servers wherein distributing messages among the multiple instances of the queue on the respective messaging servers of the cluster is specified by an option in an application program command which causes selection of a queue instance to be deferred until a command to 2 Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 put messages on the queue is received, wherein distributing messages further comprises: using the object handle as the access information for selecting the particular queue instance for a first message of a plurality of messages; in response to selecting the particular queue instance for the first message, deriving access information from a message attribute of the first message and the first message is a first message of an affinity set; obtaining and storing access information for a particular queue instance to which the first message is put; and in response to an application program command to the messaging server to put a first further message to the queue, wherein the first further message is part of the affinity set, sending the first further message to the particular queue instance using the access information. Prior Art Relied Upon Hickson et al. US 6,226,641 B1 May 1, 2001 (“Hickson”) Piper et al. US 2008/0019351 Al Jan. 24, 2008 (“Piper”) IBM, Queue Manager Clusters, MQ Series, Nov. 2000. (“QMC”) Rejections on Appeal Appellants request review of the following Examiner’s rejections Claims 2 and 4 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Piper and QMC. Ans. 3—5. 3 Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Piper, QMC, and Hickson. Ans. 5—6. ANALYSIS We consider Appellants’ arguments seriatim, as they are presented in the Appeal Brief, pages 8—13, and the Reply Brief, pages 1—5.2 Appellants first argue that QMC does not teach “access information,” as recited in independent claim 2. App. Br. 8—9; Reply Br. 1—2. In particular, Appellants argue the user ID in QMC is neither access information nor a message attribute of the first message. App. Br. 9; Reply Br. 2. This argument is not persuasive. The Examiner finds QMC teaches authorization for putting messages on queues. Ans. 6 (citing QMC 67). The Examiner explains the PUT authority (PUTAUT) attribute in QMC specifies the authority to put a message to a queue. Id. According to the Examiner, QMC teaches that the options for PUTAUT attributes, DEF or CTX, are user IDs to permit putting a message to a queue. Id. QMC teaches that the user ID of the receiving queue manager is placed in the ReplyToQMgr field of the message descriptor of the first message in a batch of messages in the message 2 Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the Examiner, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed June 8, 2015) (“App. Br.”), the Reply Brief (filed September 24, 2015) (“Reply Br.”), the Answer (mailed August 20, 2015) (“Ans.”), and the Final Office Action (mailed March 23, 2015) (“Final Act.”) for the respective details. We have considered in this Decision only those arguments Appellants actually raised in the Briefs. Any other arguments Appellants could have made but chose not to make in the Briefs are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv) (2012). 4 Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 affinity. QMC 47. When the sending queue manager in QMC obtains this user ID in a reply from the receiving queue manager, the sending queue manager places the user ID in all subsequent messages in the batch to be directed to the same queue when received by the receiving queue manager. QMC 48. This is an example of the CTX PUTAUT attribute derived from the message channel agent user (MCAUSER), the program controlling the receiving queue manager. See QMC 67, 131. We agree with the Examiner that the name of the receiving queue manager as its user ID, placed in the first message of the message affinity batch, constitutes access information directing messages in the batch to the same queue. See Ans. 6; see Final Act. 5. Second, Appellants contend QMC does not teach “in response to selecting the particular queue instance for the first message, deriving access information from a message attribute of the first message and the first message is a first message of an affinity set,” as recited in independent claim 2. App. Br. 9. In particular, Appellants argue QMC teaches stopping unauthorized queue managers from sending messages to a queue manager. App. Br. 9 (citing QMC 67). Appellants further assert QMC does not teach a cause and effect relationship between the selecting and deriving steps in the disputed limitation. App. Br. 10. These arguments are not persuasive. The Examiner correctly finds QMC teaches selecting the destination queue manager and deriving the access information. Ans. 6—7; Final Act. 5 (citing 49, 67). As discussed above, QMC teaches that when the destination queue manager is selected and receives the first message of an affinity batch, it places its name as the user ID in the ReplyToQMgr field of the first 5 Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 message and responds to the sending queue manager with the first message. See QMC 47. [T]he queue manager that receives the first message in a batch [returns] its name in its response. It does this using the ReplyToQMgr field of the message descriptor. The queue manager at the sending end can then extract this queue manager name and specify it on all subsequent messages. QMC 47-48. The Examiner explains, and we agree that the destination queue manager’s name provides access to messages to the queue. Ans. 6—7. QMC teaches that the destination queue manager’s name is extracted from the first message in the batch in the destination queue manager’s response. QMC 48. Therefore, we find no error in the Examiner’s finding that QMC teaches that the selection of destination queue manager causes the derivation of the access information from the first message in the response from the destination queue manager to route the remaining messages in the affinity set to the same destination queue manager. Ans. 6—7; QMC 47-48. Third, Appellants argue that Piper does not teach “in response to an application program command to the messaging server to put a first further message to the queue, wherein the first further message is part of the affinity set, sending the first further message to the particular queue instance using the access information,” as recited in independent claim 2. App. Br. 10. In particular, Appellants contend Piper teaches a domino failover technique with no teaching of an application program command or putting of a first further message to the queue. App. Br. 11 (citing Piper | 59). According to Appellants, Piper does not teach a causal relationship between the MQPUT 6 Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 call and recited sending step in the disputed limitation. App. Br. 11; Reply Br. 4. These arguments are not persuasive. The Examiner finds Piper teaches an MQPUT call as an application program command to put messages on a cluster queue based on group IDs as access information. Ans. 7. In particular, the Examiner finds Piper teaches an application using an MQPUT call as a command to put a message on a cluster queue. Ans. 7 (citing Piper 149). The Examiner further finds Piper teaches a GroupID as access information to identify in which queue a message is put. Ans. 7 (citing Piper || 51—53). We agree with the Examiner that the GroupID allows the distributing queue manager to send all messages of an affinity group to the same queue manager. See Piper || 51—56. A message in an affinity group identified by the GroupID in Piper teaches the recited first further message part of the affinity set. See id. We further agree with the Examiner that in response to an MQPUT call to put a message on the cluster queue Piper teaches sending a message in the affinity group as a first further message to a particular queue in the cluster using the access information. Final Act. 4 (citing Piper || 49, 51, 72); see Piper 172 (“[MJembers of a group with an identifier of ‘HAMPSHIRE’ . . . are sent to QM2.”). Fourth, Appellants assert QMC does not teach “the messaging server opening a queue having multiple instances of the queue on respective messaging servers of the cluster,” as recited in independent claim 2. App. Br. 11. Appellants argue QMC teaches a user manually specifies the queue manager name with the MQOPEN call. App. Br. 12 (citing QMC 47, 49). This argument is not persuasive. 7 Appeal 2016-000135 Application 13/453,513 The Examiner correctly finds QMC teaches a queue-manager alias as a messaging server to open a queue with multiple instances, one to a queue manager specified in the MQOPEN call and another to another queue manager. Ans. 7 (citing QMC 33). We disagree with Appellants because QMC teaches that the queue-manager alias as a messaging server, not solely the user, opens a queue with multiple instances in remapping the queue- manager name. Id. It follows Appellants have not shown error in the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 2. Regarding the rejection of claims 4 and 6, because Appellants have either not presented separate patentability arguments or have reiterated substantially the same arguments as those previously discussed for patentability of claim 2 above (App. Br. 13; Reply Br. 5), claims 4 and 6 fall therewith. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv) (2013). DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 2, 4, and 6. 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 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation