Appeal No. 2001-0682
Application No. 09/003,572
In reaching this conclusion, we construe the claimed “speculative reordering” feature to be very
narrowly defined, as argued by Appellant and disclosed in the specification, as meaning “...to
schedule an operation before its control dependencies are resolved.” (Brief, pages 6 and 7;
specification, page 8, lines 24-25). In our view, the re-addressing of conditional “Jump” or “Call”
instructions, as asserted by the Examiner, would not satisfy the control dependency resolution
requirements of the “speculative reordering” feature as defined by Appellant. An inventor’s
definition and explanation of the meaning of a term, as evidenced by the specification, controls the
interpretation of that claim term, as opposed, for example, to dictionary definitions. Serrano v.
Telular Corp., 111 F.3d 1578, 1581, 42 USPQ2d 1538, 1541 (Fed. Cir. 1997).
In view of the above discussion, since all of the claim limitations are not present in the
disclosure of Sites, we do not sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) rejection of independent
claims 1, 19, 27, and 45, nor of claims 2, 3, 6, 9-18, 21, 24-26, 28, 29, 32, 35-44, 47, and 50-52
dependent thereon.
Turning to a consideration of the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of dependent
claims 4, 5, 7, 8, 20, 22, 23, 30, 31, 33, 34, 46, 48, and 49 based on the combination of Sites and
Robinson, we do not sustain this rejection as well. In addressing the limitations in these dependent
claims, which are directed to the details of “trapping” and “checkpoint resetting” operations, the
Examiner looks to Robinson to remedy these deficiencies in Sites (Answer, pages 9-11). For all of
the reasons discussed supra, however, the Examiner has failed to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness since we find no teaching or suggestion in Robinson that would overcome the innate
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