Appeal 2007-0506
Application 09/998,511
Obviousness
The Examiner finds that Nishimura does not disclose that the first
program entity is an "interface . . . in which is identified a method," and
wherein the second program entity is a "class . . . that implements the
interface," as recited in claim 14 (Final Rejection 7). The Examiner finds
that Coplien discloses debugging an object-oriented computer program
having a first program entity comprising an abstract class and a second
program entity that identifies the method, referring to Figure 5 and
associated text (id.). The Examiner further finds that Coplien discloses
setting a breakpoint in a function of the first program entity and halting
execution during debugging in response to reaching an implementation of
the method defined in the second program entity, referring to column 8,
lines 45-53 (id.). The Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious
to replace the first program entity in Nishimura with an "abstract class which
would produce the expected result with reasonable success" (id.).
Appellants argue that Coplien merely discloses the general concept of
an interface-implementation relationship in object-oriented programming,
but falls short of disclosing halting execution of a program upon reaching an
implementation of a method identified in an interface with which a
breakpoint is associated (App. Br. 15).
Coplien discloses that object-oriented programming focuses on
applications made up of objects, instances of abstract data types. An
abstract data type (ADT) or class contains a template describing what data
fields will be in a variable of that type and also contains (semantically) the
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