Appeal No. 2001-2348
Application 08/927,222
the various locking modes of Nitta do not have differing amounts
of utilization of a processor resource as claimed. Specifically,
appellants argue that the number of processes accessing a
resource and the amount of utilization of that resource are not
necessarily related. Appellants also argue that the decision to
transition from one lock mode to another lock mode in Nitta is
not based on the number of requests received within a
predetermined interval as claimed [brief, pages 7-9].
With respect to the first argument, the examiner responds
that the exclusive lock mode of Nitta has a different amount of
utilization of the processor resource than the shared lock mode
because the exclusive lock mode performs the additional function
of actually deleting elements from the resource. With respect to
the second argument, the examiner responds that he has
interpreted the total access time of the resource handler to be
the claimed predetermined interval. Using this interpretation,
the examiner asserts that Nitta progresses from one lock mode to
another lock mode based on the number of requests received during
a predetermined interval [answer, pages 6-8].
We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of the
claims based on Nitta taken alone. We agree with appellants that
Nitta does not teach the limitation of determining the number of
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