Appeal No. 1997-1933
Application No. 08/299,715
reference indicates just the opposite of what the examiner
says, the examiner appears to be confused as to the standard
for obviousness. Merely that the prior art can be modified in
the manner suggested by the examiner does not make the
modification obvious unless the prior art suggested the
desirability of the modification. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d
1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-4 (Fed. Cir. 1992). Oracle's
ability to release an exclusive lock prior to completion of
the transaction is not the same as either the disclosure of
actually releasing the lock early or the obviousness of doing
so. Accordingly, the examiner has failed to establish a prima
facie case of obviousness, and we cannot sustain the rejection
of claim 12.
Claim 13 parallels claim 12 with means for accomplishing
each of the method steps of claim 12. Thus, claim 13 includes
the same indicator and relationship between the indicator and
the mutually exclusive semaphore lock found above to be
lacking from Oracle DBA and Oracle SQL. Therefore, the
rejection of claim 13 suffers from the same deficiencies as
claim 12. Consequently, we cannot sustain the rejection of
claim 13.
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