Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
There are two possibilities for the two threads: the compiler and the
editor. The district court concluded that the editor is not a thread because it
does not have the attributes of a thread. First, the editor does not possess the
capacity to be interrupted, as required by the '603 patent's definition of
"preemptive multithreading." This corresponds to Microsoft's first argued
critical defect, Reiffin v. Microsoft, 270 F. Supp. 2d at 1140. The court
determined that the sentence relied upon by Patent Owner to show that the
editor was interruptible, that "clock interrupts of about every 10 to 30
milliseconds should be frequent enough to keep up with the keys stroked at
the keyboard" ('603 patent, col. 13, lines 18-20) "does not require the reader
to infer that the editor must be interruptible," id. at 1142.
Second, the court concluded that there is "no express provision within
the description for the saving and retrieving of the context of the editor, as
required by the court's construction of the term 'thread,'" id., and that "the
description does not characterize the editor as having any features of a
thread," id. This corresponds to Microsoft's third argued critical defect, id.
at 1140. Therefore, the court concluded, the "editor cannot, therefore, be
interpreted as a thread," id. at 1142.
The district court concluded: "The written description of the
invention neither expressly nor inherently discloses that the editor is a
thread. The system described, which contains only one thread, the compiler,
cannot be interpreted as a multithreading system, as the term 'multithreading'
is defined in the '603 patent." Id.
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