Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
Presentation Manager (Microsoft Press 1989), pages 4-5. OS/2 was the first
widespread commercial operating system to allow a process to have multiple
threads. "Until the latter half of the 1980s, most operating systems allowed
a process to have only one thread of execution. (In fact, most operating
systems used the term process to refer to an executable entity. Thread is a
relatively new term.)" Custer, Inside Windows NT, page 92. "One of the
fundamental differences among the operating system environments available
on Windows NT is their ability to support multithreaded processes. Win32
and OS/2, for example, allow multiple threads per process, whereas POSIX,
MS-DOS, and the Windows 16-bit environments do not." Id. at 106. OS/2
existed in the time period before the 1990 application.
f. Multitasking
Multitasking is concurrent execution of two or more tasks. "The
terms task and process are used interchangeably to describe the direct result
of executing a binary (.EXE) file. . . . [U]nder MS-DOS all programs and
applications consist of a single process. OS/2 uses the terms task and
process because a single application program under OS/2 may consist of
more than one process." Letwin, Inside OS/2, page 44. OS/2 provides for
multitasking of processes and threads. See LaFore, Peter Norton's Inside
OS/2, page 11 ("different processes can run at the same time, and different
threads can run at the same time").
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