T 0831/16 13-04-2021
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HIERARCHICAL FEDERATION METADATA
I. The appeal is against the decision of the Examining Division to refuse European patent application No. 07 843 693 on the basis of lack of inventive step (Article 56 EPC 1973). The refusal was a decision according to the state of the file, referring to a previous communication of the Examining Division.
II. Reference is made to the following documents:
D1 =|ROANTREE M ET AL: "A three-layer model for schema management in federated databases", SYSTEM SCIENCES, 1997, PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTIETH HWAII INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WAILEA, HI, USA 7-10 JAN. 1997, LOS ALAMITOS, CA, USA, IEEE COMPUT. SOC, US, vol. 1,7 January 1997, pages 44-53, XP010272030,DOI: 10.1109/HICSS.1997.667176;ISBN: 978-0-8186-7743-4
D2 =|CAI W ET AL: "Hierarchical federations: an architecture for information hiding", PROCEEDINGS 15TH WORKSHOP ON PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED SIMULATION. PADS 2001.LAKE ARROWHEAD, CA, MAY 15 - 18, 2001; LOS ALAMITOS, CA: IEEE COMP. SOC, US, 15 May 2001, pages 67-74, XP010543391, DOI: 10.1109/PADS.2001.924622, ISBN: 978-0-7695-1104-7| |
III. The Appellant (Applicant) requests that the decision under appeal be set aside and that a patent be granted on the basis of the following documents:
Description: Pages 1, 2, 2a, 3 to 8, filed with the letter of 12 November 2020;
Claims: Nos. 1 to 10, filed with the letter of 28 October 2020;
Drawings: Sheets 1/2 and 2/2 as originally filed.
IV. Claim 1 reads (Board's labelling (A) to (I)):
(A) A data structure stored on a computer readable medium (108) and arranged for a networked computing environment comprising federations,
(B) wherein a federation comprises two or more organizations coupled in a fashion such that authentication and authorization statements span the organizations in accordance with a pre-defined policy,
(C) the data structure (108) comprising fields including at least one or more grouping of metadata about a first federation or about an organization (104, 106, 110, 112) within the first federation, wherein
(D) the metadata comprises information about the organization and structure of the first federation or the organization within the first federation,
(E) the data structure (108) further comprising a reference to explicitly defined metadata in a block of federation metadata in a different data structure (102, 114), wherein
(F) at least one of the one or more groupings of metadata about the first federation or about an organization within the first federation is included in the data structure by the reference to the explicitly defined metadata in the block of federation metadata in the different data structure (102, 114), and
(G) the block of federation metadata being used for storing metadata including explicitly defined information about the organization and structure of at least one other federation or organization;
(H) the data structure (108) further comprising inherited federation metadata for the first federation, wherein
(I) the inherited federation metadata for the first federation is included in the data structure by virtue of the first federation being hierarchically below a second federation to which the inherited federation metadata also applies such that the inherited federation metadata is inherited from the second federation by the first federation.
V. Claim 9 reads (Board's labelling corresponding to the labelling of claim 1):
(A') A method for obtaining metadata in a networked computing environment comprising federations,
(B') wherein a federation comprises two or more organizations coupled in a fashion such that authentication and authorization statements span the organizations in accordance with a pre-defined policy, the method comprising:
(E1') referencing federation metadata for a first federation in a data structure,
(C') the data structure comprising one or more fields including at least one or more grouping of metadata about a first federation or about an organization within the first federation,
(E2') the data structure further comprising a reference to explicitly defined metadata in a block of federation metadata in a different data structure (102, 114),
(D') wherein the metadata comprises information about the organization and structure of the first federation or the organization within the first federation,
(F') wherein at least one of the one or more groupings of metadata about the first federation or about an organization within the first federation is included in the data structure by the reference to the explicitly defined metadata in the block of federation metadata in the different data structure (102, 108),
(G') the block of federation metadata being used for storing metadata including explicitly defined information about the organization and structure of at least one other federation or organization at a location specified by a pointer; and
(H') applying the federation metadata to the first federation;
wherein the federation metadata further comprises inherited federation metadata for the first federation, (I') wherein the inherited federation metadata for the first federation is included by virtue of the first federation being hierarchically below a second federation to which the inherited federation metadata also applies such that the inherited federation metadata is inherited from the second federation by the first federation.
VI. The Examining Division argued that the subject-matter of the independent claims lacked an inventive step in view of a combination of documents D1 and D2 and common general knowledge. The reasoning can be summarised as follows:
(a) The reference to explicitly defined metadata in a block of federation metadata in a different data structure was obvious in view of the teachings of document D2, particularly the federation gateway or federation proxy discussed under section 2 on page 68 of document D2.
(b) In particular, D2 disclosed and taught Feature (F) on page 68, point 2.
(c) With regard to the inherited metadata as defined in the independent claims that was inherited by virtue of a hierarchy between the federations, this feature was considered as one of several alleged straightforward possibilities in the field of metadata structuring.
VII. The arguments of the Appellant can be summarised as follows:
(a) D2 disclosed an architecture in which a federation gateway is placed between two federations in order to make information for one federation available to another federation. The claimed invention and particularly the reference included in the federation metadata data object to another metadata avoided the need for such a gateway or proxy as it is required in the system of D2.
(b) The "gateway federation" principle in D2 was conceptually different to the claimed invention, because data of one federation was not available at all to the other federations. This was the reason why a gateway is at all required. The gateway translated or hid the data between the different federations.
(c) Features (F), (H) and (I) could not be regarded as common knowledge of a person skilled in the art without any prior art document disclosing or suggesting such features.
(d) In contrast to D2, in the present claims the metadata from another federation was included by reference in the first federation. The referenced metadata was therefore included in the data structure concerning the first federation and was available through the explicit reference to metadata defined in a different data structure. Therefore, the metadata defined in the different data structure was readily available for the first federation. No gateway or proxy at all was needed when using the present invention.
1. The invention as claimed
1.1 Communication within a computer system and between computer systems is defined by communication policies. These policies are included in the software code of communication modules.
1.2 Federations may be established between different groups of computer systems. A federation generally includes two or more organizations connected in a fashion such that authentication and authorization statements span the organizations in accordance with a pre-defined policy.
1.3 In addition to the policy, federation members generally need to understand additional information, such as structure or organization information. Such information is stored in metadata databases.
1.4 The invention proposes that metadata about a federation or about an organization within the federation is not stored within the federation, but is available to the federation by means of reference to metadata in a metadata block in a different federation data structure having a different hierarchical level.
2. Article 123(2) EPC and Article 84 EPC 1973
2.1 Feature (D) corresponds to original claims 3 and 4, Features (H) and (I) to original claim 2. Feature (E) is based on the original description, page 4, lines 11-15 and original claim 8.
2.2 Corresponding amendments have been effected in relation to independent method claim 9 (see section V above).
2.3 The amendments are compliant with the requirements of Article 123(2) EPC.
2.4 The preambles of claims 1 and 9 have been reformulated in order to overcome clarity objections. Claim 1 now relates to a data structure and claim 9 now relates to a method for obtaining metadata. The claims now comply with the requirements of Article 84 EPC 1973.
3. Inventive Step - Article 56 EPC 1973
3.1 Closest Prior Art
Document D1 is chosen as closest prior art, because it discloses a federation system as described in Features (A) to (C) for a database structure. Document D2 is a less promising starting point for the problem and solution approach, because it relates to federations of simulation modules.
3.2 Difference
D1 discloses Features (A) to (C) in Figs. 1 and 2 together with the corresponding description. The Examining Division concluded in the impugned decision that D1 does not disclose Features (D) to (I). The Board agrees with this assessment.
3.3 Effect
The effect may be seen in making system communication more effective and flexible by enabling metadata from one federation being available to the other ones.
3.4 Problem
The problem therefore may be defined as making system communication more effective and flexible.
3.5 Non-Obviousness
3.5.1 The Board is of the opinion that Features (D) to (I) are not taught by D2. D2 has a different context and in particular does not disclose that a data structure comprises fields with metadata of information about the organization (Features (C) and (D)) and that the structure of a first federation additionally comprises a reference to explicitly defined metadata in a different data structure that is included into the data structure by this reference (Features (E) and (F)).
3.5.2 D2 relates to simulation federations and has the objective to develop a hierarchical federation architecture that supports hiding secure information (last paragraph on page 67). The information hiding is opposite to the objective of the present invention to include references in one federation to another federation. The method of D2 is inter alia applied to battlefield simulations and semiconductor supply-chain simulation. D1 however relates to federations of a computer system. Already in view of the different understanding of "federation" the skilled person would a priori not consider combining the teachings of D1 and D2.
3.5.3 Additionally, the "Federation Gateway" and "Proxy Federate" in D2 have a different purpose and motivation than Features (F) to (I) in the present invention. D2 discloses on page 69, left hand column, second paragraph, a "Proxy Federate", which belongs to multiple federations and has the function of a kind of data bus. Thereby it provides connectivity between the federations without integrating a reference from one federation to another.
3.5.4 The "Proxy Federate" needs as communication interface separate "RTI Ambassadors" for each federation joined. The system of Ambassadors and "Proxy Federate" is only able to perform data transformation and data communication. The "Proxy Federate" belongs to multiple federations and therefore cannot be completely trusted by either federation ("it may also create a security loophole", end of second paragraph on page 69). For this reason, the gateway and proxy functionality of D2 ensures that data from one federation is expressly not included in another federation, but all data has to be accessed through an additional gateway that can hide data that the respectively other federation must not access. This teaches away from referencing from one federation to another federation.
3.5.5 Furthermore, D2 does not disclose or teach that metadata is exchanged by reference between two different federations at different hierarchical levels (Feature (I)).
3.5.6 The Board therefore agrees with the arguments of the Appellant in that D2 suggests a different and opposite way to make the data usable between different federations, which is the intermediate gateway federation that translates and proxies the data.
3.5.7 Claim 9 relates to a method corresponding to claim 1, but formulated as method steps. Features (A') to (I') correspond to Features (A) to (I) of claim 1 (see section V above). Therefore, the reasoning for claim 1 also applies mutatis mutandis to claim 9.
4. Conclusion
For the above reasons the Board is of the opinion that the application and the invention to which it relates, in the version according to the appellant's request, meet the requirements of the EPC. Hence, a patent is to be granted on the basis of that request (Articles 97(1) EPC and 111(1) EPC 1973).
For these reasons it is decided that:
1. The decision under appeal is set aside.
2. The case is remitted to the Examining Division with the order to grant a patent in the following version:
Description: Pages 1, 2, 2a, 3 to 8, filed with the letter of 12 November 2020;
Claims: Nos. 1 to 10, filed with the letter of 28 October 2020;
Drawings: Sheets 1/2 and 2/2 as published.