Ex Parte LI et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 15, 2016

13106751 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 15, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/106,751 05/12/2011
75949 7590
IBM CORPORATION
C/O: Fabian Vancott
215 South State Street
Suite 1200
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
11/17/2016
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Li Li
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.
CN920100026US 1 5974
EXAMINER
SINGH, AMRESH
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2159
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/17/2016 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):
patents@fabianvancott.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte LI LI, JU WEI SHI, RUI XIONG TIAN, and YI XIN ZHAO
Appeal2015-005036
Application 13/106,751
Technology Center 2100
Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, KEVIN C. TROCK, and
NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
WINSOR, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
final rejection2 of claims 1, 2, and 5-20, which constitute all the claims
pending in this application. App. Br. 4. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). Claims 3 and 4 are cancelled. Id.
1 The real party in interest identified by Appellants is International Business
Machines Corporation. App. Br. 2.
2 The Final Office Action (mailed July 29, 2014), states both that it is final
(Final Act. 1) and non-final (Final Act. 2). In view of the Amendment after
Final (filed Sept. 30, 2014) and Advisory Action (mailed Nov. 5, 2014), we
conclude both the Examiner and Appellants understood the claims to be
finally rejected, and we treat the claims accordingly.
Appeal2015-005036
Application 13/106,751
We affirm.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants' disclosed invention "relate[ s] to garbage collection in
computer programming .... [i]n particular, ... to providing garbage
collection in an in-memory replication system." Spec. i-f 2. Claim 10, which
is illustrative, reads as follows (with emphasis added):
10. A system for garbage collection in a first node server of
an in-memory replication system, said system comprising:
a processor; and
at least one memory communicatively coupled to said
processor, said memory comprising executable code that, when
executed by said processor, causes said processor to:
determine whether any external node server has indicated
that a replicated data object stored by said at least one memory
is eligible for garbage collection; and
in response to determining that an external node server
has indicated that the replicated data object stored by said at
least one memory is eligible for garbage collection, perform
garbage collection on said replicated data object without
performing a mark operation of garbage collection.
Claims 10-16, 1-7, 19, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) 3 as being unpatentable over Barsness et al. (US 2009/0112953 Al;
Apr. 30, 2009) ("Barsness") and Holt (US 2008/0250213 Al; Oct. 9, 2008).
See Final Act. 2-5, 7; Adv. Act. 2.
3 In an apparent typographical or clerical error, in the rejection summary the
Examiner refers to the rejection of claims 10-16 as being for anticipation
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). See Final Act 2. However, both the preceding
heading (Final Act 2) and the overall thrust of the detailed rejection (Final
Act 2-5, 7) indicates it is for unpatentability under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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Application 13/106,751
Claims 17, 18, 8, and 9 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Barsness, Holt, and Oh et al. (US 2009/0119353
Al; May 7, 2009) ("Oh"). See Final Act. 6-7.
Rather than repeat the arguments here, we refer to the Briefs ("App.
Br." filed Nov. 24, 2014; "Reply Br." filed Apr. 2, 2015) and the
Specification ("Spec." filed May 12, 2011) for the positions of Appellants
and the Final Office Action ("Final Act." mailed July 29, 2014), Advisory
Action ("Adv. Act." mailed Nov. 5, 2014), and Answer ("Ans." mailed Feb.
3, 2015) for the reasoning, findings, and conclusions of the Examiner. Only
those arguments actually made by Appellants have been considered in this
decision. Arguments that Appellants did not make in the Briefs have not
been considered and are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(l)(iv) (2014).
ISSUES
The issues presented by Appellants' arguments are as follows:
Whether the Examiner errs in finding the combination of Barsness and
Holt teaches or suggests "in response to determining that an external node
server has indicated that [a] replicated data object stored by said at least one
memory is eligible for garbage collection, perform[ing] garbage collection
on said replicated data object without performing a mark operation of
garbage collection" (emphasis added), as recited in claim 10.
Whether the Examiner errs in finding the combination of Barsness and
Holt teaches or suggests "acquiring identification information for said data
object identified with said first node server and transmitting said
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Application 13/106,751
identification information to at least one other node server in said in-memory
replication system that stores said data object," as recited in claim 1.
ANALYSIS
Claim 10
The Examiner relies on Barsness to teach "in response to determining
that an external node server has indicated that [a] replicated data object
stored by said at least one memory is eligible for garbage collection,
perform[ing] garbage collection on said replicated data object," as recited in
claim 10, but finds Barsness does not teach doing so "without performing a
mark operation of garbage collection." Final Act. 3 (citing Barsness i-f 38).
The Examiner finds as follows:
Holt teaches, identification information for replicated data,
where the data is identified without performing mark operation
(Paragraphs [0497]-[0498], Fig 55 and 56: Element 195-based
on if a data object is marked for deletion on machines (N-1)
(external nodes), making a determination to perform deletion of
the object on the machine without performing mark operation on
the machine, Holt).
Final Act. 3. The Examiner further finds it would have been obvious to the
person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to combine
Barsness and Holt in the manner recited in the claim. Final Act. 3--4 (citing
Holt i-f 41 ). The Examiner explains as follows:
[Barsness] explicitly teaches that even thou[gh] a mark step [is]
performed in Machine X, the actual garbage collection does not
take place unless specified by other Machines that garbage
collection can be performed based on identification of the object
that is marked for deletion, i.e. the actual decision to garbage
collection is NOT based on the performing a mark operation but
rather based on census of other Machines.
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Application 13/106,751
Ans. 3.
Appellants contend the Examiner errs for the following reason:
Holt states that "[i]n step 181 the proposing machine sends
an enquiry message to machine X to request the clean-up or
finalisation status of the object (or class or other asset) to be
cleaned-up" wherein "finalisation or clean up status is
determined as seen in step 192 which determines if the object (or
class or other asset) corresponding to the clean-up status request
of global name, as received at step 191 (191A), is marked for
deletion." (Holt, paras. 497--498) (emphasis added). Clearly,
Holt describes marking objects for deletion. Consequently, Holt
not only fails to describe "perform[ing] garbage collection on
said replicated data object without performing a mark operation
of garbage collection," but instead teaches away from this
subject matter claimed in claim 10. (Claim 10) (emphasis
added).
App. Br. 11; see also Reply Br. 4--7.
We are unpersuaded of error because Appellants' contention is not
commensurate with the scope of the claim. Contrary to Appellants'
argument, claim 10 does not recite that garbage collection occurs without
marking data objects for collection. Rather, it recites "perform[ing] garbage
collection on said replicated data object without performing a mark
operation of garbage collection" (emphases added). According to
Appellants' Specification "[t]he task of the mark operation is to traverse all
the data objects in a heap from a root node and to mark all the data objects
found to be alive until all the data objects are traversed, wherein unmarked
data objects are garbage." Spec. i-f 24. In light of Appellants' Specification,
"a mark operation of garbage collection" is a mark operation performed on
all the data objects in a heap during a garbage collection operation, e.g., a
Mark-Copy or Mark-Sweep operation. See Spec. i-fi-123-25. That Holt
teaches deleting objects, i.e., garbage collection, that have been marked for
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Application 13/106,751
deletion does not mean that Holt teaches performing a mark operation as a
part of the garbage collection process. Indeed, Holt's teaching of data
objects marked for deletion teaches, cumulatively with Barsness, that "[an]
external node server has indicated that a replicated data object stored by said
at least one memory is eligible for garbage collection," as recited in claim
10.
We find the Examiner's findings, conclusions, and reasoning to be
reasonable and consistent with the scope of claim 10. Accordingly, we
sustain the rejections over various combinations of Barsness, Holt, and Oh
of claim 10, independent claim 19, 4 which is argued on substantially the
same bases as claim 10 (App. Br. 16), and claims 11-18 and 20, which
respectively depend, directly or indirectly, from claims 10 and 19 and were
not separately argued with particularity.
Claim 1
Appellants argue claim 1 on substantially the same bases as claim 10.
App. Br. 14. We are unpersuaded of error for the reasons discussed supra.
The Examiner finds Barsness teaches "acquiring identification
information for said data object identified with said first node server and
transmitting said identification information to at least one other node server
in said in-memory replication system that stores said data object" (the
4 In the event of further prosecution of claims 19 and 20, or claims in similar
form, the Examiner may wish to review such claims for compliance under
35 U.S.C. § 101 in light ofMPEP § 2106(!) (9th ed. 2014). See In re
Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2007); Ex parte Mewherter, 107
USPQ2d 1857, 1862 (PTAB 2013) (precedential); David J. Kappos, Subject
Matter Eligibility of Computer Readable Media, 1351 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office
212 (Feb. 23, 2010).
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"acquiring and transmitting steps"5), as recited in claim 1. See Final Act. 4-
5 (citing Barsness i-f 7) (discussing claim 13), 7; see also Ans. 4 (additionally
citing Barsness i-fi-138-39, 42, 45).
Appellants contend as follows:
Barsness states that the method described therein may further
include "determining a set of garbage collection statistics
associated with at least one evaluated object in the object space
and transmitting the set of garbage collection statistics to a
master garbage collector running on a second compute node of
the parallel computing system." (Barsness, para. 7) (emphasis
added). Appellant asserts that statistics are not the same as
"identification information for [a] data object." (Claim 1)
App. Br. 15; see also Reply Br. 7-8. We are unpersuaded of error.
First of all, we note that the first occurrence of "identification
information" recited in the acquiring and transmitting step of claim 1 is not
preceded by a definite article and is, therefore, not necessarily the same
"identification information" recited in the determining, identifying, and
performing steps of claim 1. Barsness teaches transmitting statistical
information to other nodes, including information regarding specific data
objects, e.g, "average life time of an object" (emphasis added) (Barsness
i-f 38), for the purpose of identifying objects that may be eligible for deletion
(see id. i-f 42). We conclude that this information regarding the average life
time of specific objects falls within the broadest reasonable interpretation of
"identification information for said data object [eligible for deletion]
identified with said first node server," as recited in claim 1. We further note
5 We refer to the steps of claim 1 by the gerunds used in the claim to
describe the steps.
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Application 13/106,751
that nothing in claim 1 precludes acquiring and transmitting information
regarding objects not eligible for deletion.
We find the Examiner's findings, conclusions, and reasoning to be
reasonable and consistent with the scope of claim 1. Accordingly, we
sustain the rejections over various combinations of Barsness, Holt, and Oh
of claim 1 and claims 2 and 5-9 which depend, directly or indirectly, from
claim 1 and were not separately argued with particularity.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1, 2, and 5-20 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). See 37 C.F.R.
§§ 41.50(f), 41.52(b).
AFFIRMED
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