Appeal 2007-1600
Application 09/753,062
argue that “[t]here is no provision in the system of Kermani for grouping
agents at an assigned priority level since each agent is assigned a unique
priority,” and that “Kermani does not provide for a structure in which items
are layered or grouped” (Br. 6).
While we agree that Kermani does not teach grouping agents at an
assigned priority level, that fact is irrelevant to patentability because no
claim requires such grouping, and because Appellants’ proffered definition
of “hierarchy” only requires layering or grouping, in the alternative. We find
that Kermani’s priority scheme constitutes the layering of agents, one above
another, one agent per layer, and as such Kermani’s prioritization of agents
is equivalent to organizing processors into a hierarchy. We therefore find
that, even under Appellants’ latest suggested definition of “hierarchy,”
Kermani teaches the limitations of claim 1.
We further note that Appellants submitted a different definition of
“hierarchy,” in response to a previous Office Action, as “any arrangement of
principles, things etc. in an ascending or descending order.”5 It is
immediately apparent from Figure 2 of Appellants’ Brief (Br. 5) that
Kermani’s priority scheme meets this more common definition of the word
“hierarchy.” As a result, under either definition of “hierarchy” advocated by
Appellants, we find that Kermani teaches the limitations of claim 1.
We therefore affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 under
35 U.S.C. § 102. We further affirm the rejections of claims 2-8, 13-19, 20,
and 22-28, grouped with claim 1 and not argued separately by Appellants.
5 WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY 456 (encyclopedic ed. 1989), submitted with
Appellants’ response to non-final Office Action, filed Feb. 5, 2004.
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