Appeal No. 2003-1986
Application 09/315,200
Meta-data has existed for centuries. Card catalogs and
handwritten indexes are examples long before the electronic
age.
Although countless articles, magazines and books spell this
term as one word, "meta-data" with the hyphen is the proper,
generic spelling, because the Metadata company has
trademarked the name. See metadata, data dictionary,
repository, meta tag and Meta Data Coalition.
"Meta-data" is also defined in "dictionary.reference.com/
search?q=meta-data":
Data about data. In data processing, meta-data is
definitional data that provides information about or
documentation of other data managed within an application or
environment.
For example, meta-data would document data about data
elements or attributes, (name, size, data type, etc) and
data about records or data structures (length, fields,
columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how
it is associated, ownership, etc.). Meta-data may include
descriptive information about the context, quality and
condition, or characteristics of the data.
Traditionally, the information we put on the page is content or
true data. Meta-data is information used to describe or define
that content. So, it's not content in and of itself.
The examiner relies on both the implementation repository
data structure in Table 4 (probably because it contains a "Last
Update Time" parameter similar to appellant's "upd_" meta-data)
and on the service profile repository data structure in Table 7
(probably because the heading "Object Type #1=ACME::VIDEOMAIL"
and the parameters like "Object Type Version=1" have the
appearance of attribute key/value pairs). We first examine the
implementation repository data structure (col. 14, line 5 to
- 7 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007