Appeal 2006-2937
Application 09/840,188
(Denning at p. 233, last paragraph), and the element key, which are
used to generate the field key, are all “cryptographic information
outside of the table” which may be used to control access to the data
in the columns as clearly taught and suggested by Denning.
Additionally, we find that it would have been obvious to one
skilled in the art at the time of the invention to have stored each of the
field keys if the database were not too large. Here, the language of
independent claim 41 only recites a first and second column which is
quite small and manageable. At the oral hearing, Appellant’s
representative opined that to store the field keys of every column
would be too much data to store and retrieve and that Denning
suggests the generation of the keys on the fly. We agree, but that is
not what is recited in the language of independent claim 41.
Therefore, Appellant’s argument is not persuasive.
Additionally, we note that Denning discusses the need to
evaluate key generation functions to consider the effort required to
generate all of the element keys in one record to decrypt an entire
record. (Denning at p. 234, last paragraph.) We find this to be a
recognition that some functions may demand too much data
processing for decrypting an entire record which would suggest the
storage rather than the calculation for those functions which are
demanding. Therefore, Appellant’s argument is not persuasive.
Furthermore, we find that the first and second cryptographic
information may be the same since the claim language does not
require that the first information be different than the second
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