Ex Parte Droz et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJul 14, 201713898974 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 14, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office 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 APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 13/898,974 05/21/2013 Patrick Droz CH920120007US1 4835 67232 7590 07/18/2017 TANTOR TOT RTTRN T T P - TRM ART DTVTSTON EXAMINER 20 Church Street WANG, EDWARD 22nd Floor Hartford, CT 06103 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2139 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 07/18/2017 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): usptopatentmail@cantorcolbum.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte PATRICK DROZ, ANTONIUS P. ENGBERSEN, CHRISTOPH HAGLEITNER, RONALD P. LUIJTEN, BERNARD METZLER, MARTIN L. SCHMATZ, PATRICK STUEDI, and ANIMESH KUMAR TRIVEDI Appeal 2017-001409 Application 13/898,9741 Technology Center 2100 Before MARC S. HOFF, ERIC S. FRAHM, and TERRENCE W. McMILLIN, Administrative Patent Judges. HOFF, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a Final Rejection of claims 1, 2, 4—18, and 20.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. Appellants’ invention is a method of distributed memory access in a network. Spec. 1. A data element is striped into data segments, the data segments being imported on at least a number of the distributed memory 1 The real party in interest is International Business Machines Corporation. 2 Claims 3 and 19 have been cancelled. Appeal 2017-001409 Application 13/898,974 elements by multiple paths in the network. The method includes receiving, by a requesting element, credentials including an access permission for accessing the number of distributed memory elements and location information from the control element. The location information indicates physical locations of the data segments on the number of distributed memory elements. The method further includes launching, by the requesting element, a plurality of data transfers of the data segments over the multiple paths in the network to and/or from the physical locations. Spec. 2—3. Claim 1 is exemplary of the claims on appeal: 1. A method of distributed memory access in a network, the network including a plurality of distributed compute elements, a control element and a plurality of distributed memory elements, wherein a data element is striped into data segments, the data segments being imported on at least a number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements by multiple paths in the network, the method comprising: receiving, by a requesting element from the control element, credentials including an access permission for accessing the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements and location information, the location information indicating physical locations of the data segments on the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements; and launching, directly by the requesting element, a plurality of data transfers of the data segments over the multiple paths in the network between the requesting element and the physical locations of the data segments on the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements to obtain each of the data segments at the requesting element. The Examiner relies upon the following prior art in rejecting the claims on appeal: Bestler Grube et al. US 2008/0301254 Al US 2011/0213928 Al Dec. 4, 2008 Sept. 1,2011 (“Grube”) Gross et al. US 2011/0320558 Al Dec. 29, 2011 (“Gross”) 2 Appeal 2017-001409 Application 13/898,974 Claims 1, 2, 4—8, 13—18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gross and Bestler. Claims 9—12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Gross, Bestler, and Grube. Throughout this decision, we make reference to the Appeal Brief (“App. Br.,” filed Feb. 8, 2016), the Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Nov. 2, 2016), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Sept. 9, 2016) for their respective details. ISSUE 1. Does the combination of Gross and Bestler teach or suggest receiving, by a requesting element from the control element, credentials including (a) an access permission for accessing the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements and (b) location information that indicates physical locations of the data segments on the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements? 2. Does the combination of Gross and Bestler teach or suggest launching, directly by the requesting element, a plurality of data transfers of the data segments over the multiple paths in the network between the requesting element and the physical locations of the data segments? Principles of Law One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 426 (CCPA 1981). The test of obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference, nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is 3 Appeal 2017-001409 Application 13/898,974 what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. Id. at 425. ANALYSIS Claims 1,2,4-8,13-18, and 20 Appellants argue that Bestler fails to teach the claimed limitation of “launching, directly by the requesting element, a plurality of data transfers of the data segments over the multiple paths in the network.” App. Br. 6. Appellants characterize Bestler’s main server 108 as splicing the requested data stripes and providing the spliced data stripes to client 104. Id. Appellants thus argue that Bestler need not directly launch transfers from each physical memory resource that stores a data stripe. App. Br. 6—7. We are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument, because the Examiner relies on Gross, rather than Bestler, to teach the claimed launching of data transfers. The Examiner finds that data stored on different computing systems are transferred on different paths. Final Act. 3, citing Gross 132. Appellants contend that the Examiner’s combination of Gross and Bestler is improper, in that the Examiner proposes to modify Gross such that metadata server 30 provides the RDMA key to the client, but Bestler does not discuss permissions or RDMA keys. App. Br. 7. Appellants’ argument that the Examiner’s combination is improper because the Examiner proposes to use the teachings of Bestler to suggest coordination by a main server, but does not propose to use the teachings of Bestler to suggest splicing data stripes, is not well taken. We agree with the Examiner that such an argument implies that to combine references, one must physically substitute the elements of the modifying reference in place of analogous components in the base reference. Ans. 2. The test of obviousness, however, is what the 4 Appeal 2017-001409 Application 13/898,974 combined teachings of the references as a whole would have suggested to one having ordinary skill in the pertinent art. See Keller, 642 F.2d at 425. We agree with the Examiner that Bestler suggests the use of the main server as a central unit for coordinating retrieval of the data segments. Ans. 2. The Examiner proposes to modify the metadata service of Gross “to handle the metadata of striped data centrally without departing from its own teachings. This is in contrast to replacing the metadata service with the server of Bestler which would thereby defeat the teachings of Gross.” Ans. 3. We do not agree with Appellants that having a centralized provisioning of a single RDMA key is not possible. See App. Br. 8. Rather, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that “[s]o long as the credentials are negotiated by the metadata service and then sent to the client, the client will not have to be concerned about whether a piece of the data that is striped across the local memory managers is inaccessible.” Ans. 3. Last, we are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that the Examiner erred in proposing to modify Gross to include data stripes as in Bestler but not include splicing of data stripes before they are provided to the client as in Bestler. App. Br. 8. Just as discussed supra, however, the Examiner need not propose physically substituting an entire element of a modifying reference, but may instead propose to modify a base reference to incorporate teachings from another reference. We find that the Examiner did not err in combining Gross and Bestler to obtain the invention under appeal. We sustain the Examiner’s § 103(a) rejection of claims 1, 2, 4—8, 13—18, and 20. 5 Appeal 2017-001409 Application 13/898,974 Claims 9-12 Appellants’ only separate argument concerning these claims is that Grabe fails to remedy the deficiencies of Gross and Bestler asserted to exist with respect to parent claim 1. See App. Br. 9. As discussed supra, however, we do not agree that such deficiencies exist. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s § 103(a) rejection of claims 9—12 over Gross, Bestler, and Grube, for the same reasons expressed with respect to the rejection of claim 1. CONCLUSIONS 1. The combination of Gross and Bestler suggests receiving, by a requesting element from the control element, credentials including (a) an access permission for accessing the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements and (b) location information that indicates physical locations of the data segments on the number of the plurality of the distributed memory elements. 2. The combination of Gross and Bestler suggests launching, directly by the requesting element, a plurality of data transfers of the data segments over the multiple paths in the network between the requesting element and the physical locations of the data segments. ORDER The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 2, 4—18, and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is affirmed. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation