Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
a. Operating system
"An operating system is a program that acts as intermediary between a
user of a computer and the computer hardware." Abraham Silberschatz and
Peter B. Galvin, Operating System Concepts (4th ed., Addison-Wesley Publ.
Co. Feb. 1994), page 3. The computer system environment is:
An operating system is an important part of almost every computer
system. A computer system can roughly be divided into four
components: the hardware, the operating system, the applications
programs, and the users . . . .
The hardware — the central processing unit (CPU), memory,
and input/output (I/O) devices — provides the basic computing
resources. The applications programs — such as compilers, database
systems, games, and business programs — define the ways in which
these resources are used to solve the computing problems of the
users. . . . The operating system controls and coordinates the use of
the hardware among the various applications programs for the various
users.
Id. at 3-4. A primary goal of an operating system is convenience for the user
and a secondary goal is efficient operation of the computer system. Id. at 5.
b. Program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions suitable for
processing by the CPU (also called a processor) of a computer. Computer
programs can be written in a high-level human readable programming
language called source code, which is compiled by a compiler program to
generate machine-readable object (machine) code (i.e., ones and zeros)
required for execution by the CPU. Normally, the whole program is written
in source code and then compiled by a compiler program into executable
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