Ex Parte Gorrell et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 29, 2016

13397903 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 29, 2016)

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.
13/397,903 02/16/2012 Roland N. Gorrell ORA120174 3198
7590 12/01/201681505
ORACLE
(Oracle formerly d/b/a Sun Microsystems)
8055 East Tufts Avenue
Suite 450
Denver, CO 80237
EXAMINER
BIRKHIMER, CHRISTOPHER D
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2136
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/01/2016 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):
ptomail @ mfblaw .com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ROLAND N. GORRELL, FRANK BOCHULA, TOM DAWDY,
JEFF JOHNSON, and VINNIE BYRNE
Appeal 2015-007828
Application 13/397,903
Technology Center 2100
Before MARC S. HOFF, THU A. DANG, and CATHERINE SHIANG,
Administrative Patent Judges.
DANG, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner’s Final
Rejection of claims 1—3 and 5—21, which are all of the pending claims.
Claim 4 has been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
Appeal 2015-007828
Application 13/397,903
A. THE INVENTION
According to Appellants, the invention “generally relates to the use of
virtual tape libraries (VTLs) for use in disaster recovery (DR) of enterprise
production data” and, more specifically, “to manners of migrating
production data from a local VTL to one or more logical partitions of a
remote, second-tier disk storage system” (Spec. 12).
B. EXEMPLARY CLAIM
Claim 1 is exemplary:
1. A method for use in disaster recovery (DR), comprising:
storing a first production dataset in one or more virtual
tape volumes (VTV s) of a virtual tape library (VTL) at a
production site, wherein the production site VTL comprises a
first tier of disk storage having a first access time and a first
capacity;
migrating copies of the one or more VTV s storing the first
production dataset from the production site VTL to a first of a
plurality of logical partitions of a virtual library extension (VLE)
at a DR site over at least one network, wherein the DR site VLE
comprises a second tier of disk storage having a second access
time and a second capacity, and wherein at least one of: a) the
second access time is slower than the first access time, and b) the
second capacity is greater than the first capacity;
declaring a DR procedure at the production site; and
migrating copies of VTVs storing a second production
dataset generated after the DR procedure declaration from the
production site VTL to a second of the plurality of logical
partitions of the DR site VLE, wherein the first production
dataset was generated before the DR procedure declaration.
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Application 13/397,903
C. REJECTIONS
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Claims 1,3, 5—13, and 19—21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Bish and Yanai.
Claim 2 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bish, Yanai, and Blendermann.
Claims 14—18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bish, Chakravarty, and Yanai.
The issue before us is whether the Examiner erred in finding the
combination of Bish and Yanai teaches or would have suggested: “migrating
copies of one or more VTVs [virtual tape volumes] storing the first
production dataset from the production site VTL [virtual tape library] to a
first of a plurality of logical partitions of a virtual library extension (VLE) at
a DR [disaster recovery] site'1'’; “declaring a DR procedure at the production
site”; and “migrating copies of VTVs storing a second production dataset
generated after the DR procedure declaration from the production site VTL
to a second of the plurality of logical partitions of the DR site VLE” (claim
1, emphasis added).
Yanai
Blendermann
Bish
Chakravarty
US 5,742,792 Apr. 21, 1998
US 6,317,814 B1 Nov. 13,2001
US 2009/0055582 A1 Feb. 26, 2009
US 7,831,793 B2 Nov. 9, 2010
II. ISSUE
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Application 13/397,903
III. FINDINGS OF FACT
The following Findings of Fact (FF) are shown by a preponderance of
the evidence.
Appellants ’ Invention
1. Appellants’ invention is directed to a DR setup, wherein Figure 3 is
reproduced below:
Figure 3 shows migration of data generated at the production site to a
logical partition of a remote VLE at the DR site (1 21). A VTV 240 storing
a first production dataset at production site 204 is migrated to a second tier
of disk storage 232 at DR site 208 (129), wherein VLE includes a first
logical partition 24 (130). After declaring a start to a DR procedure, a copy
of VTV 268 is migrated from the production site VTL 224 to a second
logical partition 252 in the DR site VLE 232 (131).
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Application 13/397,903
Bish
2. Bish discloses managing data movement operations between the host,
a cache storage, and a secondary storage, wherein Figure 1 is reproduced
below:
100
104 ^
FIG. 1
Figure 1 shows a storage manager application 106 that maps data
stored in the cache storage 108 and secondary storage 110 to a plurality of
virtual logic volumes 114 (| 28). In response to a request for data received
at VTS 102 from the host 104, the storage manager application 106 moves
selected segments 118 of the plurality of segments 116 from the linear
storage medium 112 to the cache storage 108 (129).
Yanai
3. Yanai disclose a primary data storage system that automatically
controls the duplication or copying of data to a secondary data storage,
wherein should a disaster or facility outage occur at the primary data storage
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Application 13/397,903
system site, the user will simply need to initialize the application program in
the secondary data storage system (col. 10,11. 14—27).
IV. ANALYSIS
Appellants contend that “the virtual tape volumes of Bish are not
migrated in the first place and actually only reside in the VTS 102” (App.
Br. 7). In particular, Appellants contend:
Bish and Ya[n]ai do not disclose or suggest migrating copies of
production data generated before declaration of a DR procedure
to a first logical partition of a VLE at a DR site and migrating
copies of production data generated after declaration of a DR
procedure to a second logical partition of the VLE at the DR site
as required by claim 1 (App. Br. 8).
After reviewing the record on appeal, we find that the preponderance
of evidence supports Appellants’ position.
Bish discloses managing data movement operations between the host,
a cache storage, and a secondary storage, wherein data stored in the cache
storage and secondary storage are mapped to a plurality of virtual logic
volumes (FF 2). Although the Examiner finds, in Bish, that “data is mapped
to a virtual logical volume” which “shows the migrating of the data to the
virtual volumes” wherein “more than one virtual volume can be created”
(Ans. 3), we do not find any teaching or suggestion of migrating copies of a
VTV storing a first production dataset “from the production site” VTL to a
first partition of a VLE “at a DR site” mid migrating copies of VTVs storing
a second production dataset generated after a DR procedure declaration
“from the production site” VTL to a second partition of “the DR site” VLE,
as required by claim 1. That is, we find no teaching or suggestion in the
relied portions of Bish of migrating VTVs, let alone a migration to first
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Application 13/397,903
logical partition of a VLE at a DR site before the DR procedure declaration
and another to a second logical partition of a VLE at a DR site after the DR
procedure declaration, as Appellants contend (App. Br. 8).
Further, Yanai merely discloses copying of data from a primary data
storage to a secondary data storage, such that, should a disaster or facility
outage occur at the primary data storage system site, the application program
in the secondary data storage system is initialized (FF 3). Although the
Examiner finds that “Yanai is used to teach specifically that copies of data
are migrated from one location to another and the use of multiple virtual
volumes” (Ans. 5), we agree with the Appellants that, even if combined, the
cited portions of Bish and Yanai do not disclose or suggest the contested
limitations. (App. Br. 8).
On this record, we are constrained to reverse the Examiner’s § 103
rejection of independent claim 1, independent claim 19 similarly reciting the
contested limitations and standing therewith (App. Br. 10), and claims 3, 5—
13, 20, and 21 depending respectively therefrom over Bish and Yanai. The
Examiner does not identify how Blendermann, Chakravarty or Yanai
overcomes the deficiencies of Bish and Yanai. Thus, we also reverse the
rejections of claim 2 over Bish and Yanai in further view of Blendermann,
and of claims 14—18 over Bish, Chakravarty and Yanai.
IV. CONCLUSION AND DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—3 and 5—21 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a).
REVERSED
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