Ex Parte Pendharkar et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardNov 8, 201712712186 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 8, 2017) Copy Citation 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. 12/712,186 02/24/2010 Niranjan Pendharkar 007170.0440U1 2161 135983 7590 11/13/2017 FisiherRrnvles; T T P EXAMINER Veritas Technologies, LLC 222 South Main St., 5th Floor TSUI, DANIEL D Salt Lake City, UT 84101 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2132 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 11/13/2017 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): vrts-docketing@fisherbroyles.com docketing @ fisherbroyles .com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte NIRANJAN PENDHARKAR, SHAILESH VAMAN MARATHE, and VENKATA TATAVARTY Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 Technology Center 2100 Before KAMRAN JIVANI, KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, and SCOTT E. BAIN, Administrative Patent Judges. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1, 5—14, and 17—20. Claims 2-4, 15, and 16 have been cancelled. App. Br. 20-23 (Claims App’x). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants’ invention is directed to systems and methods for enabling replication targets to reclaim unused storage space on thin-provisioned storage systems. Spec. 14. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A computer-implemented method for enabling replication targets to reclaim unused storage space on thin- provisioned storage systems, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: receiving, at a replication target, replicated data from a replication source, wherein the replication target receives the replicated data from the replication source via a block-based replication technique that prevents the replication target from identifying unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source; identifying, at the replication target, unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source by receiving additional information from the replication source that identifies the unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source, wherein the additional information comprises an intercepted reclamation request originally sent from the replication source to a thin- provisioned storage system that provides thin-provisioned storage for the replication source; generating, at the replication target, a reclamation request for reclaiming the unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source from a thin- provisioned storage system that provides thin-provisioned storage for the replication target; issuing the reclamation request from the replication target to the thin-provisioned storage system that provides thin- 2 Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 provisioned storage for the replication target in order to reclaim the unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source from the thin-provisioned storage system that provides thin-provisioned storage for the replication target. REJECTIONS Claims 1, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, 17, 18, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Sugimoto et al. (US 2007/0113004 Al; published May 17, 2007) (“Sugimoto”), Pelts et al. (US 2009/0089516 Al; published Apr. 2, 2009) (“Pelts”), and Petruzzo (US 2006/0259723 Al; published Nov. 16, 2006). Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Sugimoto, Pelts, Petruzzo, and Gupta (US 6,779,093 Bl; issued Aug. 17, 2004). Claims 9—12 and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Sugimoto, Pelts, Petruzzo, and Atkinson et al. (US 5,506,983; issued Apr. 9, 1996) (“Atkinson”). ANALYSIS Dispositive Issue: Did the Examiner err in combining Sugimoto, Pelts, and Petruzzo? The Examiner relies on a combination of Sugimoto, Pelts, and Petruzzo to teach or suggest the limitation “identifying, at the replication target, unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source by receiving additional information from the replication source that identifies the unused storage space within the replicated data received from the replication source, wherein the additional information 3 Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 comprises an intercepted reclamation request originally sent from the replication source to a thin-provisioned storage system that provides thin- provisioned storage for the replication source.” Final Act. 3^4. The Examiner finds Sugimoto teaches identifying unused storage space, and is “capable of releasing and reclaiming unused areas in general.” Ans. 2—3, citing Sugimoto Tflf 208, 223; Final Act. 3. The Examiner finds Pelts teaches a thin-provisioned storage device where a reclamation request is issued in order to reclaim unused space, and the reclamation request identifies unused storage space within the storage system that receives the request. Final Act. 3, citing Pelts Fig. 5, Tflf 39, 43; Ans. 3. The Examiner finds it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to implement the reclamation function of Pelts in the replication source of the Sugimoto system to “enable the beneficial feature of allowing the P-VOL [(primary volume)] to identify and reclaim unused storage space, thus creating a bigger pool of available space for additional storage operations.” Ans. 3; see also Final Act. 3^4. The Examiner finds Petruzzo teaches a mirroring storage system, wherein commands executed at one storage location are intercepted to be mirrored at a second location, and that mirroring is used to form a substantial replica of a first storage location at the second location. Final Act. 4, citing Fig. 1, || 37, 38; Ans. 3. With regard to the combination, the Examiner finds it would have been obvious “to apply the command mirroring technique of Petruzzo to reclamation requests in order to ensure that the second storage location is a substantial replica of the first storage location both in data and available space.” Ans. 4; see also Final Act. 4. The Examiner further finds: 4 Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 If memory reclamation requests were not mirrored, a situation will arise where the first storage location has more available space to be used than the second location because unused memory has been reclaimed at the first location but not at the second. This would prevent the second location from being a substantial replica of the first location because the second location would not be able to accept additional write requests. Ans. 4—5. Appellants argue “the Examiner, with impermissible hindsight, has expanded Petruzzo’s disclosure to suggest that its technique applies to generic ‘commands’ that would obviously encompass reclamation requests.” App. Br. 13. According to Appellants, “reclamation requests and input/output commands are fundamentally different” and reclamation requests “do not constitute obvious substitutes for input/output commands.” App. Br. 14. Appellants argue data operations alter the content of a volume, whereby reclamation operations alter the delivered size of a volume without altering its contents or its advertised size. App. Br. 15. Appellants further argue “the skilled person would not have obviously applied Petruzzo’s method for replicating input/output operations to the reclamation operation in Pelts, because these are fundamentally different operations that serve fundamentally different purposes.” App. Br. 16. Appellants further address the Examiner’s reasoning, arguing “it was not obvious to create a replica of ‘available space’ (i.e., free space)” because “[t]o successfully create a replica, the source and the target only need to contain sufficient space to store the content, which does not suggest that the source and the target should have the same amount of free space.” Reply Br. 8; see also Reply Br. 9 (discussing known solutions to address the problem of shortage in space). Appellants argue “[n]o reference suggests creating a 5 Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 replica of free space.” Reply Br. 10. Finally, Appellants argue “new write requests affect the content of the replicated storage space without obviously affecting the size of the replicated storage space. The target will almost always include some storage space that is currently unused.” Reply Br. 11. On this record and in light of Appellants’ arguments, we are persuaded that the Examiner’s conclusion lacks the required rational underpinning insofar as the Examiner has not provided an adequate reason why one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to the claimed configuration. SeeKSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007). In particular, we agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not sufficiently explained why one of ordinary skill in the art would be led to create a substantial replica of both data and storage, rather than merely data alone as evinced by the cited references. Appellants have presented a series of arguments challenging the Examiner’s reasoning, to which the Examiner does not respond. In the absence of such an explanation, the rejection must be reversed. In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006); In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1358 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (“hindsight” is inferred when the specific understanding or principal within the knowledge of one of ordinary skill in the art leading to the modi fication of the prior art in order to arrive at appellant’s claimed invention has not been explained). Accordingly, we are persuaded the Examiner erred. Because we agree with at least one of the arguments advanced by Appellants, we need not reach the merits of Appellants’ other arguments. We, therefore, do not sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claims 1, 5—14, and 17-20. 6 Appeal 2015-007850 Application 12/712,186 DECISION We reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 5—14, and 17—20. REVERSED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation