Appeal No. 2000-0883
Application No. 08/672,528
after posting the message without waiting for response from the
receiving program.” The examiner states (Answer, page 5) that
message queues are used “to enable an application program
(receiving program) to receive multiple messages from other
programs.” The examiner concludes (Answer, page 5) that it would
have been obvious to include a message queue (and thus an
asynchronous mode of operation) in Sandage “so as to enable all
VMs to access the shared code. ”
In the examiner’s response to appellants’ arguments, he
states (Answer, page 7) that the asynchronous mode of
interprogram messaging and application message queues are
inherent to the Windows operating environment and, therefore, to
Sandage. The examiner continues (Answer, page 8) that the
skilled artisan would have been motivated to apply the message
queues to Sandage “to provide the device driver with the ability
to handle multiple function calls to the shared code. ”
Appellants point out (Brief, page 9) that in Sandage “[t]he
shared code VxD invokes calls to a Windows Process scheduler to
schedule the target VM and block selection of the calling VM. ”
Our review of Sandage confirms that Sandage does block selection
of the calling VM until after the target VM executes the shared
code routine and generates the return parameters (see column 7,
lines 39-51). As the calling VM must wait for the return
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007