Ex Parte Wilkinson et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 17, 2016

13175613 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 17, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/175,613 07 /01/2011 William Kevin Wilkinson
56436 7590 10/19/2016
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
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.
82749110 2924
EXAMINER
MIAN, MUHAMMAD U
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2163
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/19/2016 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):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
mkraft@hpe.com
chris.mania@hpe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte WILLIAM KEVIN WILKINSON and ALKIVIADIS SIMITSIS
Appeal2015-003835
Application 13/175,613
Technology Center 2100
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, BRUCE R. WINSOR, and
JOHN F. HORVATH, 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.
1 The real party in interest identified by Appellants is Hewlett-Packard
Development Company, LP, a wholly-owned affiliate of Hewlett-Packard
Company. App. Br. 2.
Appeal2015-003835
Application 13/175,613
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants' disclosed invention relates to surrogate key generation to
facilitate an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process that transforms
data in operational databases formatted for operational tasks to data in a data
warehouse formatted for analytic tasks. (See Spec. i-fi-f l-3.) Claim 1, which
is illustrative, reads as follows:
1. A method for massively parallel surrogate key generation
performed by a physical computing system, the method
compnsmg:
creating a lookup record for a production key of an input
record, a key of said lookup record comprising said production
key and a value of said lookup record comprising both an input
record identifier for said input record and a unique identifier of
said production key within said input record;
sending said lookup record to a first node of a distributed
computing system, said first node determined by hashing said
production key with a first hash function; and
with said first node, determining a surrogate key for said
production key.
Claims 1-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bland et al. (US 7,779,042 Bl; Aug. 17, 2010)
(hereinafter "Bland") and Liu et al. (US 2009/0089560 Al; Apr. 2, 2009)
(hereinafter "Liu"). See Final Act. 6-17.
Rather than repeat the arguments here, we refer to the Briefs ("App.
Br." filed Aug. 15, 2014; "Reply Br."2 filed Feb. 03, 2015) and the
Specification ("Spec." filed July 01, 2011) for the positions of Appellants
2 The pages of the Reply Brief are effectively unnumbered. We refer to the
19 pages of the Reply Brief using consecutive numbers, with the caption
page being page 1 and the signature page being page 19.
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Appeal2015-003835
Application 13/175,613
and the Final Otlice Action ("Final Act." mailed Apr. 16, 2014) and
Examiner's Answer ("Ans." mailed Dec. 04, 2014) for the reasoning,
findings, and conclusions of the Examiner.
ISSUE
The dispositive issue presented by Appellants' arguments is whether
the Examiner errs in finding the combination of Bland and Liu teaches or
suggests
creating a lookup record for a production key of an input record,
a key of said lookup record comprising said production key and
a value of said lookup record comprising both an input record
identifier for said input record and a unique identifier of said
production key within said input record
(the "creating a lookup record limitation"), as recited in claim 1. 3
ANALYSIS
The Examiner finds that Bland combined with Liu teaches the
creating a lookup record limitation. Final Act. 7 (citing Bland, col. 7, 11.
23-39, col. 8, 11. 9-26; Liu i-f 65). The Examiner maps the recited "lookup
record" to Eland's "normalized event"; the recited "input record" to Eland's
"event" and Liu's "vector"; the recited "production key" to Eland's "natural
key"; the recited "unique identifier" to Eland's "EID" ("Entity Identifier,"
Bland, col. 7, 11. 20-21); and the recited "input record identifier" to Liu's
"vector identifier." Id. The Examiner explains as follows:
Bland teaches ". . . normalized events that identify entities by
their EIDs rather than source-specific natural key identifiers"
3 Appellants' arguments present additional issues. Because the identified
issue is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the additional issues.
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Appeal2015-003835
Application 13/175,613
(emphasis added, see Bland col. 7 [l.] 38-39). The Examiner
contends that identifying is different than replacing and there is
nothing in Bland that suggests that the natural keys are removed
or deleted.
Ans. 4 (ellipsis in original).
Appellants argue, inter alia, that "Appellant[ s have] disclosed and
claimed the specific structure of a look up record that allows parallel
processing to work in surrogate key generation" (App. Br. 11) and that this
structure "is not available in the cited references" (id.). More particularly,
Appellants contend, inter alia, "[t]he normalized event taught by Bland
apparently no longer includes the 'source-specific natural key,' which has
been replaced by the EID." (App. Br. 13.) We agree with Appellants.
As an initial matter, we note that we agree with the Examiner that the
person of ordinary skill in the art would have learned from the cited
references to adapt Eland's surrogate key generation process for parallel
processing as taught by Liu. See Ans. 2. However, Appellants' claims are
not to the parallel processing of surrogate key generation generally, but to a
specific process for doing so using specific data structures, including the one
recited in the creating a lookup record limitation. See, e.g., App. Br. 24
(claim 1 ) .
Bland teaches "[t]he input adapters translate source-specific events
from source-specific formats to normalized events. One of the translation
functions is the conversion of natural keys to normalized keys, namely E!Ds
or a type of surrogate key." Bland col. 7, 11. 27-33 (emphases added).
Bland' s teaching of "translating" and "converting" the "natural key"
(mapped to the recited "production key") to an "EID" (mapped to the recited
"unique identifier") at least suggests that Eland's "normalized event"
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Appeal2015-003835
Application 13/175,613
(mapped to the recited "lookup record") contains the EID but not the natural
key, which has been translated or converted to the EID. We are constrained
by the Examiner's mapping of the claim to Bland and Liu to agree with
Appellants' contention that "[the Examiner is] reading more into Bland than
is actually there. The Answer has no evidence that the normalized event
taught by Bland includes the 'source-specific natural key.' The contrary, one
of skill in the art would naturally assume that the natural key has been
replaced by the EID." Reply Br. 8-9.
We find Appellants demonstrate that the Examiner errs in finding the
combination of Bland and Liu teaches or suggests the creating a lookup
record limitation. Accordingly, constrained by the record before us, we do
not sustain the rejection of (1) independent claim 1; (2) independent claims
11 and 15, which recite limitations substantially similar to the creating a
lookup record limitation (compare App. Br. 26 (claim 11) and id. at 27-28
(claim 15) with id. at 24 (claim 1)); and (3) claims 2-10, 12-14, and 16-20,
which variously depend, directly or indirectly, from claims 1 and 11 (see In
re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1076 (Fed. Cir. 1988) ("Dependent claims are
nonobvious under section 103 if the independent claims from which they
depend are nonobvious.")).
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-20 is reversed.
REVERSED
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