Ex Parte Fought et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 18, 201612252394 (P.T.A.B. May. 18, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 12/252,394 10/16/2008 75916 7590 05/20/2016 IBM AUS IPLA W (GLF) c/o Garg Law Firm, PLLC 4521 Copper Mountain Lane Richardson, TX 75082 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Kevin Lynn Fought 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. A US920080746US1 7341 EXAMINER JORDAN, KIMBERLY L ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2194 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/20/2016 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): dpandya@garglaw.com uspto@garglaw.com garglaw@gmail.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte KEVIN LYNN FOUGHT and MARC JOEL STEPHENSON Appeal2014-007251 Application 12/252,394 Technology Center 2100 Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, JOSEPH P. LENTIVECH, and KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judges. LENTIVECH, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner's final rejection of claims 1-20, the only claims pending in the application on appeal. We have jurisdiction over the pending claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is International Business Machines Corporation. App. Br. 2. Appeal2014-007251 Application 12/252,394 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants' Invention Appellants' invention generally relates to managing data processing partitions. Spec. i-f 1. Claim 1, which is illustrative, reads as follows: 1. A computer implemented method for managing a hosted virtual operating system environment, the computer implemented method comprising: receiving an instruction for an operation at a hosted virtual operating system environment; identifying, using a mapping information, a server that is hosting the hosted virtual operating system environment, the mapping information containing information about hosting relationships between a plurality of hosted virtual operating system environments and a plurality of servers; and directing the instruction to the server to achieve the operation at the hosted virtual operating system environment. References and Re} ection Claims 1-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Hewlett-Packard, HP Process Resource Manager Overview, June 2007 (hereinafter "PRM") and Hewlett- Packard, HP Global Workload Manger- Improving Server CPU Utilization, March 2005 (hereinafter "gWLM"). Final Act. 3-9. Issue on Appeal Did the Examiner err in finding that the combination of PRM and g WLM teaches or suggests "identifying, using a mapping information, a server that is hosting the hosted virtual operating system environment, the 2 Appeal2014-007251 Application 12/252,394 mapping information containing information about hosting relationships between a plurality of hosted virtual operating system environments and a plurality of servers," (hereinafter the "disputed limitation"), as recited in claim 1? ANALYSIS Appellants contend the combination of PRM and gWLM fails to teach or suggest the disputed limitation. App. Br. 10-13; Reply Br. 2-3. In particular, Appellants contend "[n]either PRM, nor gWLM ... teaches any mapping information in the manner of claim 1" and "the disclosures of PRM and gWLM are devoid of even a mention of the word 'map' let alone teaching mapping of any kind, and particularly the mapping information of claim 1." App. Br. 11-12 (emphasis omitted). Appellants further contend "[NJ either PRM nor gWLM stores mapping information of a virtual operating system environment, such as a WP AR [working partition] or a resource partition in PRM or gWLM, to a server, such as an LP AR [logical partition] or a virtual partition in PRM or gWLM." App. Br. 12 (emphasis omitted). Appellants acknowledge that PRM and gWLM teach that resources can be reassigned and updated and "stipulate that there has to be some way of doing so." App. Br. 13. But, Appellants contend, "it is not necessary that the implied way for performing the reassignments or updates be a mapping of any kind, or is a mapping in the manner of claim 1." App. Br. 13. We do not find Appellants' contentions persuasive. The Examiner finds (Ans. 9 (citing PRM 3)) PRM's virtual partitions and resource partitions are within the broadest reasonable interpretation of the terms 3 Appeal2014-007251 Application 12/252,394 "hosted virtual operating system environments" and "a server that is hosting the hosted virtual operating system environment," which is reasonable and consistent with Appellants' Specification (see Spec. i-fi-14, 60, Fig. 4). The Examiner finds g WLM teaches that hosting environments or servers are managed based on the need of the partitions and that the resources can be reassigned or updated. Ans. 9 (citing gWLM 5, 9). The Examiner further finds g WLM teaches managing resources by reassigning or updating resources for various partitions. Id. Based on these findings, the Examiner finds the combined teachings of PRM and g WLM teaches a relationship between virtual partitions (e.g., hosted virtual operating system environments) and resource partitions (e.g., servers hosting the hosted virtual environments). Ans. 9. Because gWLM teaches that the relationship between the virtual partitions and resource partitions is updated, the Examiner finds g WLM teaches or suggests that the information is stored. Ans. 9. Based on these findings, the Examiner concludes the combination of PRM and gWLM teaches or suggests the disputed limitation. Ans. 9-10. Appellants acknowledge that PRM and gWLM teach updating and reassigning resources and acknowledge that there must be some way of performing the updates and reassignments. App. Br. 13. Although neither PRM nor gWLM explicitly teaches how the updating or reassigning is performed, we find an ordinary artisan would understand that in order for the updates and reassignments to be performed, some method for tracking which partitions are currently assigned to the different hosting environments must also be performed. We find that this presumption is consistent with the broadest reasonable interpretation of "mapping" which basically includes associating one element with another element (i.e., a relationship between 4 Appeal2014-007251 Application 12/252,394 elements). See Spec. if 8. The ordinary artisan would therefore perform the well-known means of mapping for tracking or monitoring the current assignment of partitions to hosting environments. See KSR Int 'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007) ("The combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."). As such, we are unpersuaded the Examiner erred in finding the combination of PRM and gWLM teaches or suggests the disputed limitation. Accordingly, we are unpersuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1. Regarding the rejection of claims 2-20, because Appellants have either not presented separate patentability arguments or have relied on the same arguments as those previously discussed for patentability of claim 1 above (see App. Br. 13), claims 2-20 fall therewith. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). DECISION We affirm the Examiner's rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). 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 5 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation