Appeal No. 2001-1270
Application No. 08/619,060
The examiner responds that the objects connected to sub-objects in Figures 4
and 5 of the reference are deemed to be essentially organized as a tree. Resolving
paths of this “tree” is deemed to involve a tree search. (Answer at 7.)
The statement of the rejection of claim 1 (id. at 3-4) refers to column 5, lines 46
through 55 and column 14, lines 29 through 49 for the claimed “means for providing the
addition of properties” and column 6, lines 35 through 53 and column 15, lines 26
through 34 for the claimed “means for providing recursive searching.” The reference to
the material at columns 14 and 15 is an apparent error, however. We take the correct
citations to be column 6, lines 1 through 45 and column 8, line 39 through column 9,
line 47, as explained in the Advisory Action mailed June 15, 1998 (Paper No. 9).
In any event, we have studied the entire reference, with particular emphasis on
all sections pointed out in the Answer and the Advisory Action, but do not find
disclosure of searching as claimed by appellants. A context object (e.g., object C;
Nelson Fig. 4) contains data including a “binding list” that relates a name and an object.
Col. 5, ll. 46-54. As shown in Figure 5, a client may access an object named “J” by
requesting context D to resolve the name “C/J.” Name server A processes the request
by resolving the name “C” to obtain context object C and then resolving the name “J”
within context object C to obtain object J. The name server returns a duplicate of object
J. Col. 6, ll. 45-52.
Instant claim 1 requires providing the addition of properties “as name/value pair
sequence to each node within a tree search” and “recursive searching of a group of
-4-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007