Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
5. Patent Owner's arguments are not persuasive
Patent Owner's arguments have been considered, but do not change
our interpretation of the terms "threads" and "multithreading."
a. Threads must be interruptible
Patent Owner argues that there is no support for the Examiner's
definition of "multithreading" as requiring that all threads must be
interruptible (Br. 31) and argues that a thread does not have to be
interruptible. It is argued that Phillips v. AWH states that the specification
governs claim interpretation and the Examiner's interpretation is inconsistent
with the specification (Br. 32):
Since original application described in detail the character insertion
routine of the editor, which completed its function substantially
simultaneously and therefore relinquished control of the CPU long
before the invocation of the next interrupt, and therefore this character
insertion routine was never interrupted, the Examiner's claim
construction of "thread" was clearly inconsistent with the original
applications. That is, a "thread" as used in the reexamination claims
was not required to be interruptible or interrupted.
Patent Owner argued before the district court that the editor was
interruptible, Reiffin v. Microsoft, 270 F. Supp. 2d at 1142, but, having lost
there, now argues that interruptibility is not necessary.
Patent Owner consistently stated that "threads" and "multithreading"
have their ordinary meanings in the art and that he did not intend the terms
to have a definition which is distinct from the ordinary generally understood
meanings to those skilled in the art as set forth in books and dictionaries
(Findings 5-13). The '604 patent provides a definition of "multithreading"
that is consistent with the ordinary meaning in the art. The terms "threads"
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