Ex Parte Mcclanahan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 11, 2014

11952558 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 11, 2014)

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.
11/952,558 12/07/2007 Edward D. MCCLANAHAN 2120-03200 1474
85421 7590 04/11/2014
Conley Rose, P.C.
P.O. Box 3267
Houston, TX 77253-3267
EXAMINER
KIM, CHONG R
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
COM
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/11/2014 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 EDWARD D. MCCLANAHAN,
RAJNI BALASUBRAMANIAN, and SIVAKUMAR DARIMISETTY
__________

Appeal 2011-011960
Application 11/952,558
Technology Center 2100
__________

Before LORA M. GREEN, JEFFREY N. FREDMAN, and
ULRIKE W. JENKS, Administrative Patent Judges.

FREDMAN, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal1 under 35 U.S.C. § 134 involving claims to
distributed file system medium and methods. The Examiner rejected the
claims as anticipated. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We
reverse.

1 Appellants identify the Real Parties in Interest as Brocade
Communication Systems, Inc. (See App. Br. 3).
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Application 11/952,558

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Statement of the Case
Background
“Network administrators need to efficiently manage file servers and
file server resources while keeping them protected, yet accessible, to
authorized users” (Spec. 1 ¶ 0001). The Specification teaches that
“[h]owever, as the number of distributed servers rises, users may have
difficulty finding files, and the costs of maintaining the network increase”
(Spec. 1 ¶ 0001).
The Claims
Claims 1-24 are on appeal. Claim 1 is representative and reads as
follows:
1. A method comprising:
a) creating a temporary target s-stub file, the
temporary target s-stub file pointing to a source share;
b) creating a plurality of stub files in a target top-level
directory on a target share, each stub file out of the plurality
of stub files corresponding to source data, the source data
comprising files and subdirectories in a source top-level
directory on a source share, the plurality of stub files
comprising source information, the source information
associated with the temporary target s-stub file, a source s-
stub file pointing to the source share; and
c) remapping the source s-stub to point to the target
share.

The issue
The Examiner rejected claims 1-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as
anticipated by Stacey2 (Ans. 4-10).

2 Stacey et al., US 2006/0212481 A1, published Sept. 21, 2006.
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Application 11/952,558

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The Examiner finds that
Stacey discloses a method comprising: a) creating a
temporary target s-stub file, the temporary target s-stub file
pointing to a source share ([0006], the file in the primary file
server is typically replaced with a stub file that contains
attributes of the file and a link to the new file location in the
secondary file server. The stub file can be accessed to
redirect an access request from a client to the new file
location in the secondary server, or to migrate data from the
present file location back to the primary file server.
Examiner has interpreted the shares to correspond to
Stacey’s data files)

(Ans. 4).
The Examiner further finds that Stacy teaches steps b) and c) of
claim 1, including creating and remapping stub files (Ans. 5).
Appellants contend that
Stacey teaches stub pointers to files. Examiner diminishes
the importance of pointing to shares as opposed to pointing to
files, and calls the two equivalent. However, it is
unreasonable to interpret the two as equivalent because a
share is a discrete shared portion of memory such as a drive,
volume, or partition.

(App. Br. 11.) Appellants contend that a “person having ordinary skill in the
art would not consider a file to be a share because the characteristics and
uses for files and shares are different” (App. Br. 11).
Appellants also contend that “remapping a source s-stub to point to
the target share, as recited in the claim, is an elegant step that ultimately
allows for efficient migration to occur by routing access through the
temporary target s-stub file” (App. Br. 11). Appellants contend that
“Examiner’s citation to remapping a stub to point to a different file would
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Application 11/952,558

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not teach or suggest such a step to a person having ordinary skill in the art;
rather, it teaches that each stub file should be remapped during migration”
(App. Br. 11).
The issue with respect to this rejection is: Does the evidence of record
support the Examiner’s conclusion that Stacy teaches a “pointing to a source
share” as required by claims 1 and 13?
Findings of Fact
1. The Specification teaches that “[t]arget information includes
information regarding a target file server, target share (a discrete shared
portion of memory on a target file server), and target path in order to
describe the location of data moved to the target file server” (Spec. 10 ¶
0024).
2. The Specification teaches “[s]ource information includes
similar information that references the source location of the data, e.g.,
source file server, source share, etc.” (Spec. 10 ¶ 0024.)
3. The Specification teaches that “when a user uses a client 110,
112 to access a file located in a directory the user perceives as
\\Data\ClientData\ABC\, the client 110, 112 actually accesses the file in the
directory \\Server122\bldg2\clidat\ABCcorp\. Here, ‘bldg2’ is a share on
server 122” (Spec. 4 ¶ 0014).
4. Stacy teaches
In a system employing hierarchical storage
management, when a file or data blocks of a file are moved
from a primary file server to a secondary file server, the file
in the primary file server is typically replaced with a stub
file that contains attributes of the file and a link to the new
file location in the secondary file server. The stub file can
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Application 11/952,558

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be accessed to redirect an access request from a client to the
new file location in the secondary server, or to migrate data
from the present file location back to the primary file server.

(Stacy 1 ¶ 0006.)
5. Stacy teaches “by creating stub files including pointers to data
files in a read-only snapshot copy of at least the portion of the production
file system” (Stacy 1 ¶ 0009).
6. Stacy teaches that “migration of the read-only snapshot data
that is referenced by the stub files in order to create ordinary read-write data
files that can be used for replacing the stub files. Once the stub files are
replaced with the ordinary data files, the read-only snapshot copy can be
deleted” (Stacy 2 ¶ 0011).
Principles of Law
Claim terms are interpreted using the broadest reasonable
interpretation in light of the Specification. See, e.g., In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d
1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2000) (“[D]uring examination proceedings, claims are
given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the
specification.”).
“In proceedings before the Patent and Trademark Office, the
Examiner bears the burden of establishing a prima face case of obviousness
based upon the prior art.” In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1265 (Fed. Cir.
1992).
Moreover, “obviousness requires a suggestion of all limitations in a
claim.” CFMT, Inc. v. Yieldup Int’l Corp., 349 F.3d 1333, 1342 (Fed. Cir.
2003).
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Analysis
We begin with claim interpretation, since before a claim is properly
interpreted, its scope cannot be compared to the prior art. The limitation in
dispute is the phrase “source share” in claim 1. Appellants contend that the
“Examiner diminishes the importance of pointing to shares as opposed to
pointing to files, and calls the two equivalent. However, it is unreasonable
to interpret the two as equivalent because a share is a discrete shared portion
of memory such as a drive, volume, or partition” (App. Br. 11).
During prosecution, claim terms are given their broadest reasonable
interpretation as they would be understood by persons of ordinary skill in the
art in the light of the Specification. The Specification explains,
parenthetically, that a “target share” is “a discrete shared portion of memory
on a target file server” (Spec. 10 ¶ 0024; FF 1). Further, the Specification
teaches that “when a user uses a client 110, 112 to access a file located in a
directory the user perceives as \\Data\ClientData\ABC\, the client 110, 112
actually accesses the file in the directory \\Server122\bldg2\clidat\ABCcorp\.
Here, ‘bldg2’ is a share on server 122” (Spec. 4 ¶ 0014; FF 3) (emphasis
added).
Thus, while the Specification does not provide a specific definition of
the term “share,” the term “share” as interpreted in light of the Specification
refers to a discrete portion of memory on a file server (FF 1). The
Specification further differentiates between a file and a share, explaining that
a “file” is in a directory, but the directory includes “bldg2” as a “share” of
the server, supporting a finding that these are two distinct entities (FF 1, 3).
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The Examiner finds that the “claims do not preclude the ‘shares’ from
being data files on a server, therefore the Examiner has interpreted the
claimed shares to correspond to Stacey’s data files because Stacey’s data
files are in fact a shared portion of memory on a server” (Ans. 10).
Appellants respond that “the uses of ‘share’ in [Stacey] fail to teach or
suggest stub files pointing to shares because the use of the word ‘share’ in
these instances are not contextually similar to the use in Appellants’ instant
claim” (Reply Br. 1). Appellants contend that “sharing access to files fails
to teach or suggest a share as used in the claim because sharing access to
files can be implemented in numerous ways not involving a share” (Reply
Br. 1).
We find that Appellants have the better position. Simply because
Stacey teaches a “shared read-only file system” does not explicitly or
implicitly suggest that files themselves constitute “shares.” Nor has the
Examiner established, with any evidence, that files are equivalent to
“shares.” Given that the Specification itself differentiates files and shares, as
discussed above, we conclude that the reasonable interpretation of the term
“share” in claim 1 does not include files, but rather refers to a discrete
portion of memory location on a server, consistent with the disclosure in the
Specification (FF 1, 3).
Therefore, since Stacey does not teach a stub file “pointing to a source
share” as required by claims 1 and 13, but rather teaches stub files which
point to data files (FF 5), Stacey does not anticipate the claimed invention.

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Conclusion of Law
The evidence of record does not support the Examiner’s conclusion
that Stacy teaches a “pointing to a source share” as required by claims 1 and
13.
SUMMARY
In summary, we reverse the rejection of claims 1-24 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) as anticipated by Stacey.

REVERSED

cdc