Appeal No. 2002-0275
Application No. 09/215,752
Independent claims 7, 16, and 22
In response to the section 102 rejection of claims 7, 16, and 22 over Maruyama,
appellants argue that it is unclear where the step of receiving a data value stream is
taught in the portion of the reference upon which the rejection relies. Appellants allege
that the cited portion of the reference does not disclose mapping data values to a data
structure according to attributes in a received meta definition. According to appellants,
Maruyama “only teaches managing changes to data type definitions within an object-
oriented database.” (Brief at 7.)
The examiner replies that a “data value stream” can be reasonably and broadly
interpreted as any transfer of data between software components. (Answer at 8.)
Appellants appear not to traverse the finding that a data value stream may be any
transfer of data between software components. “However, if the reference teaches a
transfer of data that includes meta data for the data, then there is no need to retrieve a
meta definition from a Meta Data Service or to map data values to a data structure
according to attributes in a received meta definition.” (Reply Brief at 5.)
We do not consider appellants’ argument to be based on what is actually
claimed. Instant, representative claim 7 recites “receiving a data value stream.” As we
have discussed previously herein, Maruyama describes, at column 9, lines 37 through
64, a user entering an object identifier using view manager 101 (Fig. 1). View manager
101 receives a data value stream comprising the object identifier entered by the user.
Based on the particular object identifier, the software sends a query for a meta definition
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