Ex Parte Boehm et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 29, 2016

12959401 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 29, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/959,401 12/03/2010
69316 7590 10/03/2016
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
ONE MICROSOFT WAY
REDMOND, WA 98052
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Branton Nicolas Boehm
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
330624.01 5004
EXAMINER
HOLLAND, SHERYLL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2161
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/03/2016 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address( es):
usdocket@microsoft.com
chriochs@microsoft.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte BRANTON NICOLAS BOEHM, APURV A ASHWIN DOSHI,
JUAN-LEE PANG, and GRIGORY BORISOVICH LY AKHOVITSKIY,
Appeal2015-007485
Application No. 12/959,401
Technology Center 2100
Before MARC S. HOFF, JENNIFER L. McKEOWN, and
JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges.
HOFF, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
Appellants' invention is a system and method for file system backup.
A change journal is read to determined changes that have occurred to objects
of a file system. A data structure is created, from these changes, to capture
path information and collect changes for each object. Where the data
structure is insufficient to identify a complete path, the live file system is
consulted. A data protection engine then uses the completed data structure
Appeal2015-007485
Application No. 12/959,401
to update a catalog, to provide the capability to view the namespace of the
protected objects at one or more times covered by the catalog. Abstract.
Claim 1 is exemplary of the claims on appeal:
1. A method performed on a computing device, the method
compnsmg:
creating, based on records of a change journal, a plurality of tree data
structure fragments that are not connected together in a single tree data
structure that includes a root node, where each of the records corresponds to
a file system object that has been changed in a file system; and
building the single tree structure from the plurality of tree data structure
fragments combined with path information obtained from a live instance of
the file system, where the built single tree structure includes the root node.
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art in rejecting the
claims on appeal:
Cabrera
Jain
Thind
Dutton
US 6,189,016 Bl
US 2006/0117049 Al
US 2006/0116985 Al
US 2010/0070515 Al
Feb. 13,2001
Jun. 1,2006
Jun. 1, 2006
Mar. 18, 2010
Claims 1--4, 9-12, 16, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Thind, Cabrera, and Jain.
Claims 5-8, 13-15, and 17-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §
103(a) as being unpatentable over Thind, Cabrera, Jain, and Dutton.
Throughout this decision, we make reference to the Appeal Brief
("App. Br.," filed Mar. 3, 2015), the Reply Brief ("Reply Br.," filed Aug. 10,
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Appeal2015-007485
Application No. 12/959,401
2015), and the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.," mailed Jun. 16, 2015) for their
respective details.
ISSUE
Appellants' arguments present us with the following issue:
Does the combination of Thind, Cabrera, and Jain disclose or suggest
creating, based on records of a change journal, a plurality of tree data
structure fragments that are not connected together in a single tree data
structure that includes a root node?
ANALYSIS
CLAIMS 1--4, 9-12, 16, AND 20
Independent claims 1, 9, and 16 recite, in pertinent part, "creating,
based on records of a change journal, a plurality of tree data structure
fragments that are not connected together in a single tree data structure that
includes a root node."
The Examiner finds that Thind teaches the claimed plurality of tree
data structure fragments because each node of Thind' s tree data structure is a
fragment of that data structure. Ans. 3. "[I]n a namespace file system, file
metadata is created for each I/O request reflecting the updates in the file
system using filter manager 220. Each metadata node is a tree data structure
fragment, i.e. a single node 'QUOTA", Fig. 2, 8-10. Thind does not
explicitly disclose a change journal or disconnected file nodes." Ans. 24. We
disagree with the Examiner's interpretation of Thind, and we agree with
Appellants that Thind teaches that each such node or fragment is connected
in Thind's tree data structure. App. Br. 7.
Figure 3 of Appellants' drawings is reproduced below:
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Application No. 12/959,401
Appellants' Figure 3 represents exemplary tree data structure
fragments obtained from scanning a change journal in accordance with the
invention. See Spec. 3. "[T]he change detector 210 may read the change
journal record by record and create tree data structure fragments." Spec. ,-r
48. "The change detector 210 builds the tree data structure fragments of Fig.
3 incrementally, connecting the nodes when possible." Id.
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Appeal2015-007485
Application No. 12/959,401
Thind Figure 5 is reproduced below:
Thind Figure 5 is a block diagram representing a data structure that
may be used to monitor objects that have policies applied to them in
accordance with various aspects of the invention. Thind i-f 16. "The data
structure includes a node for each object of interest and is sometimes
referred to as a prefix tree .... When an object of interest is renamed or
deleted on a file system, the file structure shown in FIG. 5 may need to be
updated. Such updates may involve removing nodes, adding additional
nodes, and changing the contents of nodes." Thind i-f 55.
We agree with Appellants that Thind teaches updating the full prefix
tree that includes a root node, rather than updating nodes that are
disconnected from the prefix tree, as the Examiner finds. See App. Br. 8.
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Application No. 12/959,401
Contrary to the Examiner's finding, an inspection of Figure 5 shows that the
QUOT A nodes are not disconnected tree data structure fragments, but are
connected elements of Thind's prefix tree data structure. See App. Br. 7.
The Examiner finds that "Jain is used to show that individual node
fragments can become disconnected." Ans. 25. We do not agree with the
Examiner regarding Jain's relevance to the claimed invention. Jain teaches a
relationally organized system for organizing electronic information. In
contrast to hierarchical approaches, a relational database "stores information
in tables comprised of rows and columns." Jain ,-r 13. In other words, at
stated by Appellants, "relational database tables fail to teach a tree data
structure," and "table row entries fail to teach fragments of a tree structure."
Reply Br. 8. (Emphasis omitted). Jain's invention concerns a relational
system that "can emulate a hierarchically organized system. This type of
emulation is especially desirable when the storage capability and flexibility
of a relational system is needed, but the intuitiveness and ubiquity of the
hierarchical system is desired." Jain ,-r 16. We agree with Appellants that
"Jain's table row entries may not be connected in a single tree data structure
with a root node" and are not "fragments of a tree structure." Reply Br. 8.
As such, we conclude that Jain's table row entries are not properly
combinable with Thind's prefix data tree to obtain the invention under
appeal.
We conclude that the Examiner erred in rejecting these claims for
obviousness over Thind, Cabrera, and Jain. We do not sustain the
Examiner's§ 103 rejection of claims 1, 9, and 16, nor that of dependent
claims 2--4, 10-12, and 20.
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Appeal2015-007485
Application No. 12/959,401
CLAIMS 5-8, 13-15, AND 17-19
Each of these claims depends from independent claim 1, 9, or 16. The
Examiner has not identified disclosure in Dutton that cures the deficiencies
of Thind, Cabrera, and Jain identified supra. Accordingly, we do not sustain
the§ 103 rejections of claims 5-8, 13-15, and 17-19, for the same reasons
expressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1, supra.
CONCLUSION
The combination of Thind, Cabrera, and Jain does not teach or
suggest creating, based on records of a change journal, a plurality of tree
data structure fragments that are not connected together in a single tree data
structure that includes a root node.
DECISION
The Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-20 is reversed.
REVERSED
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