Appeal 2007-0928
Application 09/943,964
detection feature in which a data message flows “entirely” through a
software stage component. As discussed above, however, we find such a
feature to be disclosed in Ahmed.
For the above reasons, since it is our opinion that the Examiner’s
prima facie case of obviousness has not been overcome by any convincing
arguments from Appellants, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection,
based on the combination of Ahmed and Sato, of independent claim 1, as
well as dependent claims 2-8 not separately argued by Appellants, is
sustained.
We do not sustain, however, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection, based on the combination of Ahmed and Sato, of separately argued
dependent claims 9-12. Referring to our earlier discussion of Ahmed, we
found that Ahmed’s ping and reply status message system satisfied appealed
claim 1’s requirement of detecting whether a data message or its derivative
flows entirely through a software stage component. The language of
dependent claims 9 and 10 is more specific, however, since the fault
detection feature of claims 9 and 10 requires the determination of a faulty
software stage component detection if the data message is present at the
input but not the output of each of the first and second software stage
components, respectively. Similarly, the fault detection determination of
dependent claims 11 and 12 requires the detection of the presence of the
derivative of the data message at the input but not the output of each of the
respective first and second stage software components. Since there is no
disclosure in Ahmed that the ping and reply messages have the same data
content, the features of dependent claims 9-12 are not satisfied.
12
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