Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
The problem is that Patent Owner is trying to shift from a formal
programming language, consisting of mix of keywords, identifiers, symbols,
and punctuation marks, to a natural language consisting only of words and
punctuation marks. This is not described. Keywords are special symbols
and are not words used to form sentences. The lines of a program are not
sentences composed only of words. The '604 patent does not describe
operating on words and sentences.
Patent Owner states that the book by Prof. N. Wirth, Algorithms +
Data Structures = Programs (Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1976), Ch. 5,
pages 280-347, mentioned in the '604 patent for its description of a compiler
(col. 5, line 66 to col. 6, line 2), should be treated as incorporated by
reference (Br. 96 n.25). Patent Owner refers to the following statement in
Wirth as support for claiming "words" and "sentences":
Every language is based on a vocabulary. Its elements are
ordinarily called words; in the realm of formal languages, however,
they are called (basic) symbols. It is characteristic of languages that
some sequences of words are recognized as correct, well-formed
sentences of the language and that others are said to be incorrect or ill-
formed. What is it that determines whether a sequence of words is a
correct sentence or not? It is the grammar, syntax, or structure of the
language. In fact, we define the syntax as the set of rules or formulas
which defines the set of (formally correct) sentences. [Emphasis in
original.]
It is argued that "[d]uring the lexical analysis of the symbols making up the
source code, the spelling of those symbols that are words is checked, and
during syntactic analysis, the grammar of the programming language
statements is checked" (Br. 99), and the "Wirth text that describes the
compiler used in the illustrative embodiment specifically analogizes
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