Ex Parte Masurkar

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 31, 2013

10875329 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 31, 2013)

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.
10/875,329 06/24/2004 Vijay Masurkar SUN04-12(040962)
SUNM 040
9955
51344 7590 01/31/2013
BROOKS KUSHMAN P.C. /Oracle America/ SUN / STK
1000 TOWN CENTER, TWENTY-SECOND FLOOR
SOUTHFIELD, MI 48075-1238
EXAMINER
KO, CHAE M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2114
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/31/2013 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte VIJAY MASURKAR
____________

Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, BARBARA A. BENOIT, and
JAMES B. ARPIN, Administrative Patent Judges.

BENOIT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of
claims 1-10, 12-22, 24-34, and 36-39, which constitute all the claims
pending in the application.

Claims 11, 23, and 35 have been canceled. Br.
4. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
1
We affirm.

1
Due to failure to timely notify the Office of a corresponding foreign-filed
application, the application went abandoned while pending a decision from
the Board. A petition to revive the application was granted on May 15,
2012.
Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s invention relates to remotely diagnosing grid-based
computing systems. See generally Abstract. Claim 1 is illustrative and
reads as follows, with key disputed limitations emphasized:
1. A method for diagnosing a grid-based computing system, the
method comprising:
establishing an event framework defining an arrangement of event
information;
receiving a diagnostic event record from a resource within the grid-
based computing system, the diagnostic event record containing:
i) event data concerning an event that has occurred within the resource
in the grid; and
ii) diagnostic telemetry information concerning operation of the
resource up to the occurrence of the event;
applying the diagnostic event record to the event framework to
identify at least one resource causing the occurrence of the event in the grid-
based computing system; and
presenting, via a graphical user interface, specific identities of
resources impacted by the event.
The Examiner relies on the following as evidence of unpatentability:
Faigon US 6,006,016 Dec. 21, 1999
Kipersztok US 6,574,537 B2 June 3, 2003
Syrjala US 2004/0078349 A1 Apr. 22, 2004
Westberg US 2004/0123184 A1 June 24, 2004
(filed Dec. 19, 2002)
Hansen US 7,117,239 B1 Oct. 3, 2006
(filed Nov. 8, 2000)
Bigagli US 7,340,654 B2 Mar. 4, 2008
(filed June 17, 2004)
Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329

3
The Rejections
1. The Examiner rejected claims 1-4, 6, 7, 13-16, 18, 19, 22, 25-28,
30, 31, 34, and 37-39 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Faigon
and Bigagli. Ans. 3-11.
2

2. The Examiner rejected claims 5, 17, and 29 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Faigon, Bigagli, and Syrjala. Ans. 11-12.
3. The Examiner rejected claims 8, 20, and 32 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Faigon, Bigagli, and Kipersztok. Ans. 13-14.
4. The Examiner rejected claims 9, 21, and 33 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Faigon, Bigagli, Kipersztok, and Westberg.
3

Ans. 14-16.
5. The Examiner rejected claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Faigon, Bigagli, and Hansen. Ans. 16-17.
6. The Examiner rejected claims 12, 24, and 36 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Faigon, Bigagli, Syrjala, Kipersztok,
Westberg, and Hansen. Ans. 17-18.

2
Throughout this opinion, we refer to the Appeal Brief filed September 21,
2009 (Br.) and the Examiner’s Answer mailed December 22, 2009 (Ans.).
3
Claim 9 depends from claim 8; claim 21 depends from claim 20; and claim
33 depends from claim 32. The Examiner, however, erroneously rejects
claims 9, 21, and 33 under § 103 over Faigon, Bigagli, and Westberg (Ans.
14) when claims 8, 20, and 32 have been rejected under § 103 over Faigon,
Bigagli, and Kipersztok (Ans. 13). Although Appellant does not argue this
error, we nonetheless deem it harmless because the rejection of claim 9
incorporates the rejection of claim 8 (Ans. 14), and claims 21 and 33 are
rejected for the same reasons set forth in connection of the rejection of claim
9 (Ans. 15-16). Based on the record before us, we presume the Examiner
intended to reject claims 9, 21, and 32 as unpatentable over Faigon, Bigagli,
Kipersztok, and Westberg and present the correct claim listing here for
clarity.
Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329

4
CONTENTIONS
The Examiner finds that Faigon teaches all of the limitations of
illustrative claim 1, except that the network is grid-based. Ans. 3-5. For this
limitation, the Examiner relies upon Bigagli in concluding that the claim
would have been obvious to an ordinarily skilled artisan. Ans. 5.
Faigon teaches techniques for correlating faults in a networking
system and uses a database of fault rules for determining the occurrence of
faults defined by the fault rules. Faigon, Abstract. The Examiner equates
Faigon’s meta traps, which are information about faults received by a
network management station, with the recited diagnostic event record. Ans.
4 (citing, e.g., Faigon, col. 7, ll. 1-49).
Appellant, while acknowledging Faigon’s meta traps describe faults,
argues that Faigon does not teach or suggest passing actual parameters or
thresholds set in place to trigger faults, and so Faigon does not teach or
suggest diagnostic telemetry information, recited in claim 1. Br. 14.

ISSUE
Do Faigon and Bigagli collectively teach or suggest the diagnostic
telemetry information recited in claim 1?

ANALYSIS
As Appellant points out (Br. 14), claim 1 requires the recited
diagnostic event record to contain both i) event data concerning an event that
has occurred within the resource in the grid and ii) diagnostic telemetry
information concerning operation of the resource up to the occurrence of the
event. Appellant does not dispute that Faigon’s disclosed meta traps teach
Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329

5
or suggest the recited diagnostic event record that contains event data. See
Br. 14; see also Ans. 19. Instead, in challenging the rejection, Appellant
argues that Faigon does not teach or suggest the recited diagnostic telemetry
information because the Specification defines diagnostic telemetry
information as information pertaining to thresholds that enable alarms to be
triggered when crossed (Spec. 8:15-17) and is different from an event or an
alarm (Spec. 7:15). Br. 14.
The cited portion of the Specification referring to thresholds,
however, describes a component used to configure “telemetry parameters . . .
such as thresholds that in turn enable alarms when the thresholds are
crossed.” Spec. 8:15-17. We do not agree that this disclosure in Appellant’s
Specification of an example of how “telemetry parameters” may be
configured requires the recited “diagnostic telemetry information” to include
parameters or thresholds, as Appellant argues. CCS Fitness, Inc. v.
Brunswick Corp., 288 F.3d 1359, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (Claim terms are
properly construed to include limitations not otherwise inherent in the term
when the Specification “clearly set[s] forth a definition of the disputed claim
term.”). Appellant’s argument that Faigon does not teach or suggest the
recited diagnostic telemetry information because Faigon’s meta traps do not
teach or suggest passing actual parameters or thresholds set in place to
trigger faults, then, is unavailing because Appellant’s argument is not
commensurate with the claim scope.
Even if we were to accept Appellant’s incorrect premise that
diagnostic telemetry information requires passing parameters or thresholds
set in place to trigger faults, Faigon teaches a counter field indicating the
number of correlated traps to generate the meta trap (Faigon, col. 13, ll. 24-
Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329

6
31, 46-47), which the Examiner equates to the threshold for generating the
meta trap (Ans. 20-21). Thus, even under Appellant’s incorrect construction
of diagnostic telemetry information, Faigon teaches thresholds for
generating the meta trap, which at least suggest thresholds set in place to
trigger faults.
Nor are we persuaded that Faigon does not teach or suggest diagnostic
telemetry information that is different from an event or an alarm. As the
Examiner explains in response to Appellant’s arguments:
Faigon teaches the method of generating meta traps upon the
satisfaction of a certain number of conditions (Faigon, col. 7,
lines 5-7). These conditions may be the occurrence of a certain
number of events within a specified time period (Faigon, col. 7,
lines 7-9). The generated meta traps are then sent to a second
device such as a network management station (Faigon, col. 7,
lines 11-13). . . .[A meta] trap object contains several fields
related to the detected problem. It lists where the problem
occurred, severity of the problem, probable cause, possible
solutions, a counter field indicating the number of correlated
traps to generate the meta trap, etc[.] (Faigon, col. 13, lines 24-
54).
Ans. 19 (emphasis added); see also Ans 4 (citing Faigon, col. 7, ll. 1-49, col.
13, ll. 29-54). Based on this functionality, Faigon teaches generating a meta
trap, having probable cause and possible solution information, after the
occurrence of a certain number of events. Thus, in contrast to Appellant’s
arguments (Br. 14), Faigon teaches diagnostic telemetry information that is
separate from an event or an alarm, as the Examiner finds (Ans. 4, 19).
Accordingly, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s reliance
on Faigon to teach or suggest the diagnostic telemetry information recited in
claim 1. We therefore sustain the rejection of claim 1 and claims 2-4, 6, 7,
Appeal 2010-007032
Application 10/875,329

7
13-16, 18, 19, 22, 25-28, 30, 31, 34, and 37-39, which were not separately
argued with particularly.

THE REMAINING OBVIOUSNESS REJECTIONS
For each of the remaining rejections, Appellant refers to the previous
arguments regarding claim 1. See Br. 15-16. The issues before us, then, are
the same as those in connection with claim 1, discussed above. Based on the
previous explanation, we need not address whether Syrjala, Kipersztok,
Westberg, or Hansen cures any purported deficiency of Faigon and Bigagli.
Id. Appellant has not persuaded us of error in the rejections of claims 5, 8-
10, 12, 17, 20, 21, 24, 29, 32, 33, and 36.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-10, 12-22, 24-34, and
36-39 under § 103.

ORDER
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-10, 12-22, 24-34, and 36-
39 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)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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