Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
Patent Owner's '604 patent. In both De Jong and the '604 patent, a
keyboard- or timer-activated interrupt (Finding 9) interrupts a continuously
executing main program to pass control to an interrupt service routine, the
interrupt service routine saves the registers, gets input characters from the
keyboard and either puts them into a buffer (for alphanumeric characters) or
performs a control character routine (for control characters), restores the
registers and returns control to the main program (compare Figures 3a, 5,
and 6 of the '604 patent to Figure 10-2 of De Jong) (Findings 11-18). The
differences between the '604 patent's disclosed invention and De Jong are
that the main program in De Jong is a Morse code program and not a
compiler, and the interrupt service routine in De Jong has very limited
editing functions (it only allows deletion of characters at the end of the
buffer) and does not keep track of a compiler's progress. However, none of
the original '604 patent claims recited the functions of the main program or
the interrupt service routine as being compiler and editor. Patent Owner
does not dispute that De Jong teaches two "threads" in a "multithreading"
system in the same sense as the editor and compiler in the '604 patent.
Patent Owner submitted a substitute amendment in the reexamination
on April 30, 2004, to change "thread" to "processing thread " in independent
claims 1, 6, 18, 24, and 26, and to change "instruction thread" to "processing
instruction thread" in claim 4 and 14. Original claims 10 and 17, which
were not amended, recite "threads for processing said body of data code."
Patent Owner states (Br. 47) that "Processing is the vital step between
receiving data (input) and producing results (output)—the task for which
computers are designed," Microsoft Computer Dictionary (Microsoft Press
98
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