Appeal No. 2000-1973
Application 08/890,906
object has been shown to be present in Kelly. Thus, Kelly does
not encapsulate an object comprising data and a method. We agree
with appellants that Kelly only controls access at the
user/object level, i.e., access by users to objects (where
"objects" are only data structures) by methods external to the
object, and does not deal with enforcing encapsulation by
restricting access to object data to only authorized method
programs including a method program associated with the object.
Appellants argue that there is no teaching in Kelly that
describes how Kelly ensures that only the object's methods are
allowed to access the object's data (Br6).
The examiner states (EA10):
In response, the Examiner notes that Kelly defines objects
as follows: "'Objects' are data structures used to hold
information that is used by the operating system and which
must be protected from unauthorized access by users of the
system" [col. 4, lines 58-61]. Hence, calling object
methods according to access privileges does provide
protection to the data that the object methods operate upon.
In addition, Kelly explicitly disclose: " User of object
instances of a particular type do not need to know anything
about the routines 430-438 pointed to by the OTD (Object
Type Descriptor)" [col. 14, lines 9-11]. Kelly further
discloses: "... thus the details of the object's structure
do not concern the users of these objects " [col. 14,
lines 18-20]. These disclosures by Kelly are entirely
consistent with standard accepted definitions of
encapsulation.
The examiner's reasoning is not persuasive. Again, Kelly
does not disclose encapsulating object data and methods. Thus,
the examiner's statement about "calling object methods according
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