SAP SE

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 18, 2022

2021001482 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 18, 2022)

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. 15/354,852 11/17/2016 JULIAN SCHWING 54874-213F01US 7736 64280 7590 03/18/2022 Mintz Levin/SAP Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo, P.C. One Financial Center Boston, MA 02111 EXAMINER HALM, KWEKU WILLIAM ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2166 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/18/2022 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): IPDocketingBOS@mintz.com IPFileroombos@mintz.com mintzdocketing@cpaglobal.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ________________ Ex parte JULIAN SCHWING, JOHANNES MERX, and CHRISTOPH WEYERHAEUSER ________________ Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 Technology Center 2100 ________________ Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, JASON J. CHUNG, and CARL L. SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judges. CHUNG, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals the Final Rejection of claims 1-18. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. INVENTION The invention relates to a calculation engine that partitions and unions data for efficient processing. Spec. ¶ 1. Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and is reproduced below: 1. A system comprising: 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. According to Appellant, SAP SE is the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 1. Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 2 at least one processor; and at least one memory including instructions which when executed by the at least one processor cause operations comprising: detecting a partitioning flag at a first datasource operation in a calculation scenario to be executed in a calculation engine of a database management system, the partitioning flag providing instructions to the calculation scenario regarding table partitions, the calculation scenario defining a common structure for execution of a plurality of queries having one or more first attributes; determining, based upon the detected partitioning flag, that a table in a plurality of tables called by the datasource operator is partitioned into a plurality of partitions on a plurality of computing systems each comprising a programmable processor, each table in the plurality of tables being assigned a role and configured to be joined in accordance with a predetermined schema using one or more metamodels in a plurality of metamodels; duplicating at least one operator in the calculation scenario that follows the partitioning flag to form a plurality of copies of the at least one operator such that one copy of the at least one operator is provided to each computing system of the plurality of computing systems for execution on a respective partition of the plurality of partitions to generate an intermediate result for each partition; detecting a second flag indicating a union of the intermediate results; unioning the intermediate results for further processing, the unioning including selecting a computing system in the plurality of computing system and transferring the intermediate results to the selected computing system for the unioning; and executing, reusing the defined common structure of the calculation scenario, another query having one or more second attributes being different from the one or more first attributes. Appeal Br. 16 (Claims Appendix) (emphasis added). Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 3 REJECTIONS The Examiner rejects claims 1-3, 6-9, 12-15, and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Hallmark (US Pat. No. 5,857,180; issued Jan. 5, 1999), Yeh (US Pat. No. 7,546,226 B1; issued June 9, 2009), and Petride (US 2014/0280037 A1; published Sept. 18, 2014). Final Act. 5-17. The Examiner rejects claims 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, and 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Hallmark, Yeh, Petride, and Hu (US 2017/0103116 A1; filed Sept. 16, 2016). Final Act. 17-19. ANALYSIS The Examiner finds Petride teaches a union all algorithm that causes results from each computer node to be streamed to a parent node 408 and the parent node then processes all tagged relations to remove any duplicates among them, which the Examiner maps to the limitation “unioning the intermediate results for further processing, the unioning including selecting a computing system in the plurality of computing system and transferring the intermediate results to the selected computing system for the unioning” recited in claim 1. Ans. 4-5 (citing Petride ¶¶ 51, 52); Final Act. 4, 13 (citing Petride ¶¶ 36, 90, 48, 26, Fig. 1). Moreover, the Examiner finds Hallmark teaches concurrently executing structured query language statements such as union or order by commands using multiple processes such that the query operations use department number fields and employees’ names, which the Examiner maps to the limitation “executing, reusing the defined common structure of the calculation scenario, another query having one or more second attributes being different from the one or more first attributes” recited in claim 1. Ans. 6-8 (citing Hallmark, 6:3-5, 6:13-20); Final Act. 3-4 (citing Hallmark, 3:1-9, 6:11-15). Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 4 Appellant argues Petride merely teaches unioning operations occurring at respective nodes but fails to teach selecting a specific node to execute the union of intermediate results. Appeal Br. 11-12; Reply Br. 5-7. Appellant argues Petride merely teaches union operations occurring at a worker node, but fails to teach a parent node performing further processing of data. Appeal Br. 12; Reply Br. 7. In addition, Appellant argues Hallmark merely teaches selecting different scenarios to execute queries but fails to teach reusing common structures to execute queries. Appeal Br. 12; Reply Br. 7-8. We disagree with Appellant. As an initial matter, we note that the Federal Circuit has held that the Board may adopt a claim construction of a disputed term that neither party proposes without running afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act, see 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq. (1946) (“APA”).2 See, e.g., Praxair Distrib., Inc. v. Mallinckrodt Hosp. Prods. IP Ltd., 890 F.3d 1024, 1034 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (rejecting argument that Board violated patent owner’s “procedural rights by adopting a claim construction that neither party proposed”); WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., 889 F.3d 1308, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“The Board is not bound to adopt either party’s preferred articulated construction of a disputed claim term.”). Parties are well aware that the Board may stray from disputed, proposed constructions. See WesternGeco, 889 F.3d at 1328 (“Having put it at issue, WesternGeco was well aware that the Board could alter its construction in the final written decision.”). This legal guidance is applicable here, even though an Ex parte 2 The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), requires a federal court to hold unlawful and set aside agency action not in accordance with law or without observance of procedure required by law. See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2). Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 5 proceeding is a single party before the Office, and the Examiner (who represents the Office) is not a “party” to any proceeding. Moreover, “[a]n intended use or purpose usually will not limit the scope of the claim because such statements usually do no more than define a context in which the invention operates.” Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. v. Schering-Plough Corp., 320 F.3d 1339, 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2003). Such statements often appear in a claim’s preamble, but can appear elsewhere in the claim. See In re Stencel, 828 F.2d 751, 754 (Fed. Cir. 1987). It is well settled that statements of intended use can arise in method claims, where such statements do not add structural limitations to the claims. See, e.g., TomTom, Inc. v. Adolph, 790 F.3d 1315, 1317, 1323-24 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (construing generating language in a recited method for generating and updating data for use in a destination tracking system as mere intended use of the invention); In re Anderson, 662 F. App’x 958, 963 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (non-precedential) (agreeing with the Board that claimed “for use” language is a statement of intended use that did not add a structural limitation to the claimed system or method). In this case, we note that system claim 1 recites “for further processing” and “for the unioning.” In addition, computer program product claim 7 recites “for further processing” and “for the unioning.” And, method claim 13 recites “for further processing” and “for the unioning.” As a result, we conclude the limitations recited in this paragraph in claims 1 and 7 are statements of intended use. In addition, we conclude claim 13’s language is a statement of intended purpose. Accordingly, as a matter of law, we conclude that the limitations “for further processing” and “for the unioning” recited in claims 1, 7, and 13 need not be satisfied in the prior art to render claims 1, 7, and 13 anticipated Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 6 or obvious. Nonetheless, Petride teaches a union all algorithm that causes results from each computer node (i.e., unioning the intermediate results) to be streamed to a parent node 408 (i.e., selecting a computing system in the plurality of computing system and transferring the intermediate results; Petride’s Figure 1 and paragraph 26 teaches a plurality of nodes) and the parent node then processes all tagged relations to remove any duplicates among them (i.e., for further processing), which teaches the limitation “unioning the intermediate results for further processing, the unioning including selecting a computing system in the plurality of computing system and transferring the intermediate results to the selected computing system for the unioning” recited in claim 1. Ans. 4-5 (citing Petride ¶¶ 51, 52); Final Act. 4, 13 (citing Petride ¶¶ 36, 90, 48, 26, Fig. 1). Furthermore, Hallmark teaches concurrently executing (i.e., reusing, another query) structured query language (i.e., defined common structure) statements such as union or order by commands using multiple processes such that the query operations use department number fields (i.e., first attributes) and employees’ names (i.e., second attributes), which teaches the limitation “executing, reusing the defined common structure of the calculation scenario, another query having one or more second attributes being different from the one or more first attributes” recited in claim 1. Ans. 6-8 (citing Hallmark, 6:3-5, 6:13-20); Final Act. 3-4 (citing Hallmark, 3:1- 9, 6:11-15). Appellant does not argue claims 2-18 separately with particularity. Appeal Br. 7-14. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of: (1) independent claims 1, 7, and 13; and (2) dependent claims 2-6, 8-12, and 14-18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Appeal 2021-001482 Application 15/354,852 7 We have only considered those arguments that Appellant actually raised in the Briefs. Arguments Appellant could have made, but chose not to make, in the Briefs have not been considered and are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (2013). CONCLUSION No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1-3, 6-9, 12-15, 18 103 Hallmark, Yeh, Petride 1-3, 6-9, 12-15, 18 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, 17 103 Hallmark, Yeh, Petride, Hu 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, 17 Overall Outcome 1-18