Ex Parte Pande et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Aug 13, 2009

10675505 (B.P.A.I. Aug. 13, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte ARVIND ARUN PANDE, SAURABH
RAMCHANDRA GODBOLE, and ANAND A. KEKRE
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Appeal 2008-005735
Application 10/675,505
Technology Center 2100
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Decided: August 14, 2009
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Before JAMES D. THOMAS, JEAN R. HOMERE, and THU A. DANG,
Administrative Patent Judges.

THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1 through 5, 7 through 11, 13 through 17, 19 through 21,
23, and 24. Appellants have canceled claims 6, 12, 18, and 22. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

Invention
The method includes determining that a change occurred to data
in a region of a primary volume without including the region in
a set of regions designated for replication to a secondary
volume. The region is added to the set of regions designated
for replication to the secondary volume and replicated.
(Abstract, ll. 15-18; Spec. 30; Figs. 3-5).

Representative Claim
1. A method comprising:
determining that a change occurred to data in a first region of a first plurality
of regions of a first volume, wherein the change resulted from a
restore operation; and in response to determining that the change occurred,
updating information identifying a set of regions designated for
replication to a second volume, wherein subsequent to the updating
the information, the first region is included in the set of regions
designated for replication to the second volume.

Prior Art and Examiner’s Rejections
The Examiner relies on the following references as evidence of
unpatentability:
Huras 2005/0278393 A1 Dec. 15, 2005
(filed Apr. 29, 2003)
Shih 6, 615, 223 B1 Sept. 2, 2003
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Lomet 6,578,041 B1 June 10, 2003

All claims on appeal, claims 1 through 5, 7 through 11, 13 through 17,
19 through 21, 23, and 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103. As
evidence of obviousness, the Examiner relies upon Huras in view of Shih as
to claims 1 through 5, 7, 8, 11, 13 through 17, 19 through 21, 23, and 24 in a
first stated rejection. Dependent claims 9 and 10 stand rejected in a second
stated rejection further relying upon Lomet in addition to the initial
combination of references.
Claim Groupings
According to Appellants’ arguments in the Brief (no Reply Brief has
been filed), Appellants consider, as do we, independent claim 1 as
representative of the subject matter of all the claims in the first stated
rejection. Additionally, with respect to the second stated of rejection,
Appellants rely for patentability upon the arguments set forth for
representative independent claim 1in the first stated rejection.

ISSUE
Have Appellants shown that the Examiner erred in finding that the
subject matter of representative independent claim 1 on appea1 would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the collective
teachings and suggestions of Huras and Shih within 35 U.S.C. § 103?

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FINDINGS OF FACT (“FF”)
1. Appellants have noted the state of the prior art in the following:
Copies of primary data are made on different physical storage
devices, and often at remote locations, to ensure that a version
of the primary data is consistently and continuously available.
(Spec. para. 2, ll. 6-8).
Typical uses of copies of primary data include backup, Decision
Support Systems (DSS) data extraction and reports, testing, and
trial failover (i.e., testing failure of hardware or software and
resuming operations of the hardware or software on a second
set of hardware or software). These copies of data are
preferably updated as often as possible so that the copies can be
used in the event that primary data are corrupted, lost, or
otherwise need to be restored.
(Spec. para. 3, ll. 1-6).
Other types of data storage areas take form as one or more
physical devices, such as one or more dynamic or static random
access storage devices, one or more magnetic or optical data
storage disks, or one or more other types of storage devices.
With respect to backup copies of primary data, preferably the
backup storage devices are direct access storage devices such as
disks rather than sequential access storage devices such as
tapes. Because disks are often grouped to form a logical
storage volume that is used to store backup copies of primary
data, the term "storage area" is used interchangeably herein
with "storage volume;" however, one of skill in the art will
recognize that the systems and processes described herein are
also applicable to other types of storage areas and that the use
of the term "storage volume" is not intended to be limiting. A
storage volume is considered to be made up of regions. A
storage volume storing the primary data is referred to herein as
a primary volume, and a storage area storing a backup copy of
the primary data is referred to herein as a backup volume or a
secondary volume.
(Spec. para. 5, ll. 1-13).
One way to achieve consistency and avoid data loss is to ensure
that every update made to the primary data is also made to the
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backup copy, preferably in real time. However, when a primary
volume becomes corrupted and the result of the update
corrupting the primary data is propagated to backup volumes,
"backing out" the corrupted data and restoring the primary data
to a previous state is required on every copy of the data that has
been made. Previously, this problem has been solved by
restoring the primary volume from a snapshot volume made
before the primary data were corrupted. Once the primary
volume hosting the primary data is restored, the entire primary
volume is copied to each backup volume to ensure consistency
between the primary data and backup copies. Only then can
normal operations, such as updates and replication, of the
primary volume resume.
(Spec. para. 6).
One reason that the entire primary volume is copied to each
backup location is that some applications, such as database
applications, require that the updates made to the primary data
are made to the backup copy of the primary data in the same
order.
(Spec. para. 7, ll. 1-3).

2. As the title of Huras indicates, his invention is focusing upon efficient,
enhanced performance of recovery/restore operations in a database
management system. General reference is made to Figures 2 through 5 and
Figure 8, which illustrates a restore operation. To aid in understanding the
terminology of Huras, we make general reference to paragraph 7:
Known DBMSs may organize multiple tablespaces and store
tables of the database. To recover selected tablespaces in the
event of a system crash, a backup image of the database or the
table space is restored followed by rolling forward through the
log files that were created since the backup was taken. Log
files contain log records that describe the changes made to the
data currently stored in the database. Each log file contains one
or more log records that apply to one or more tablespaces.
(Para. 7, ll. 1-11).
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As recognized by the Examiner, paragraph 73 of Huras
emphasizes that disks/volumes of disks, to the extent claimed, are
known in the art from an artisan’s perspective of database
management systems, which are discussed from a prior art’s
perspective beginning at column 1 of page 1 of Huras and the subject
of his invention, as initially depicted in database system 200 in Figure
2.

3. Again, as Shih’s title reveals, his invention focuses on data
replication from the illustrated volumes 4 in Figure 1 in one database
site 2 to another database site 52 and volume 54. Changes must be
replicated to the secondary site. In a corresponding manner to the
teachings of Huras, Shih utilizes change logs and replication logs to
keep track of the changes, which include updating, deleting, and
adding functionalities at a minimum.

ANALYSIS
At the outset, we note that Appellants have not challenged the
combinability of Huras and Shih within 35 U.S.C. § 103 in the Brief.
Therefore, no governing case law is cited in this opinion to that effect.
The remaining determination to be made is whether that combined
teachings and/or suggestions among these references would have
rendered obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art of the subject
matter that is claimed and argued before us in representative
independent claim 1 on appeal. Beginning at page 5 through page 9
of the Brief, Appellants present arguments to essentially every clause
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of representative independent claim 1 on appeal. These arguments
focus only upon the teachings in Huras and make only passing
mention to the teachings relied upon by the Examiner in Shih. In
fact, Appellant does not contest what the Examiner relies upon that is
in Shih within the arguments presented before us.
Therefore, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection before us of
representative independent claim 1 on appeal essentially for the
reasons set forth by the Examiner’s Response to Argument section
beginning at page 10 of the Answer. Significantly, since no Reply
Brief has been filed, Appellants do not contest these responsive
positions of the Examiner.
Among the three labeled arguments presented in the Brief
between pages 5 through 9, the Examiner has met head on each one of
them and showed corresponding teachings and suggestions in Huras
to the features argued not to be present in this reference. Of equal
significance, the Examiner has persuasively shown that Appellants’
own Specification at paragraph 5, reproduced earlier in FF 1, indicates
to the artisan that Appellants regard the claimed “storage volume” as
claimed to be interchangeable with a broad storage area concept
within the admitted prior art. Both are consistent with the teachings in
Huras and Shih. We note that a brief assessment of the teachings of
Huras in FF 2 must begin with the understanding of the terminology
noted in paragraph 7 reproduced there that sets the logical framework
of the Examiner’s analysis of this reference.
It is interesting to observe that there is no positive statement of
replication in representative independent claim 1 on appeal, which
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merely recites the designation of “for replication” to another storage
volume. An actual replication function is not recited until dependent
claim 7, for example. Nevertheless, the overlapping teachings of this
concept between Huras and Shih noted in FF 2 and 3, as well as the
Examiner’s own extensive correlation are equally persuasive of
unpatentabillity. The updating capabilities argued not to be present
among these references are taught such as to require the replication in
the second database or data storage volume area. FF1 indicates as
well that this updating requirement of claim 1 was known in the art.

CONCLUSION and DECISION
Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in finding that the
combination of teachings and suggestions of Huras and Shih would have
rendered obvious to one of ordinary skill in art of the subject matter of
representative independent claim 1 on appeal. Therefore, the Examiner’s
decision to reject all claims on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is affirmed.
All claims on appeal are unpatentable.
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)(v).

AFFIRMED

erc

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