Ex Parte WALKAUSKAS

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 30, 2018

13459722 (P.T.A.B. May. 30, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO.
13/459,722
146568 7590
Entit Software LLC
500 Westover Drive
#12603
Sanford, NC 27330
FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
04/30/2012 Stephen Gregory W ALKAUSKAS
06/01/2018
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.
82850153 4171
EXAMINER
VO,CECILEH
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2153
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/01/2018 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):
software.ip.mail@microfocus.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte STEPHEN GREGORY W ALKAUSKAS 1
Appeal2017-011825
Application 13/459,722
Technology Center 2100
Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, JOSEPH P. LENTIVECH, and
DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges.
STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
1 According to Appellant, the real part in interest is Hewlett-Packard
Enterprise Development LP. See Appeal Brief 1.
Appeal2017-011825
Application 13/459,722
STATEMENT OF THE CASE2
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We reverse.
THE INVENTION
The claims are directed to efficiently recovering a container of a
database by directly copying a source container from a source node to a
recovering node. Non-Provisional Spec. ,r,r 0015---0016; see also,
Provisional Spec. ,r 0006. Claim 15, reproduced below with a dispositive
limitation emphasized in italics, is representative of the claimed subject
matter:
15. A system comprising:
a processing umt m communication with a computer
readable medium, wherein the computer readable medium
contains a set of instructions wherein the processing unit is
designed to carry out the set of instructions to:
identify a recovering node of a database system;
identify a buddy database projection that is a copy of a
recovering database projection of a database, wherein the
recovering database projection is stored on the recovering node,
wherein the buddy database projection is stored on a source node
of the database system, the buddy database projection and the
2 Throughout this Decision, we refer to: (1) Appellant's Non-Provisional
Application's Specification filed Apr. 30, 2012 ("Non-Provisional Spec.");
(2) Appellant's Provisional Application's Specification filed May 13, 2011
("Provisional Spec."); (3) the Final Office Action mailed Sept. 13, 2016
("Final Act."); (4) the Appeal Brief filed January 20, 2017 ("App. Br."); (5)
the Examiner's Answer mailed May 18, 2017 ("Ans."); and (6) the Reply
Brief filed July 18, 2017 ("Reply Br.").
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Appeal2017-011825
Application 13/459,722
recovering database projection each providing a first view of a
first database table;
identify, based on the identified buddy database
projection, a source container on the source node of the database
system, the source container containing data of the buddy
database projection; and
in response to a determination that a range of epochs of the
identified source container includes an epoch for which data is to
be recovered to the recovering database projection from the
buddy database projection, direct copy the identified source
container on the source node to the recovering node.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
George et al.
(hereinafter "George")
Stokes et al.
(hereinafter "Stokes")
US 8,793,531 B2 July 29, 2014
US 2007/0180313 Al Aug. 2, 2007
Schottland et al. US 2003/0220944 Al Nov. 27, 2003
(hereinafter "Schottland")
Nguyen et al. US 2006/0015696 Al Jan. 19, 2006
(hereinafter "Nguyen")
Puig US 2009/0100236 Al Apr. 16, 2009
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections, for which Appellant
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Application 13/459,722
seeks our review: 3
Claims 1, 6-8, 13-16, and 19 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 (a) as being unpatentable over the combination of George and Stokes.
Final Act. 4--7.
Claims 2, 3, 9, 10, 17, and 20 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 (a) as being unpatentable over the combination of George, Stokes, and
Schottland. Final Act. 7-8.
Claims 4, 5, 11, and 12 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over George, Stokes, Schottland, and
Nguyen. Final Act. 8-10.
Claim 18 stands rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over George, Stokes, Nguyen, Schottland, and Puig. Final
Act. 10-11.
APPELLANT'S CONTENTIONS
Appellant contends that George's disclosure of a hash table mapping
of object keys to locations in a FIFO queue does not teach or suggest "the
buddy database projection and the recovering database projection each
providing a first view of a first database table," as required in the disputed
limitation. App. Br. 8-9.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellant's
arguments that the Examiner has erred in rejecting independent claims 1-20
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). We agree with Appellant's conclusions as to the
rejection of the claims.
3 The rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, has
been withdrawn. Ans. 3.
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Application 13/459,722
The Examiner finds George discloses a new object being appended to
a FIFO queue. Final Act. 4--5 (citing George col. 19, 11. 1-11). The
Examiner also finds that George discloses a hash table that maps object keys
to their location in the FIFO queue. Id. Further, the Examiner asserts that
the hash table's objects can be viewed by a survivor node. Ans. 5.
According to the Examiner, new objects appended to the head of the FIFO
queue provide a view of the hash table and thus teach or suggest the disputed
limitation of the projections providing view of a first database table. Final
Act. 4--5; Ans. 5.
Appellant contends that the objects in George's FIFO queue or the
elements in George's hash table do not provide a view of the hash table, and
thus do not teach projections providing a view of a database table. App.
Br. 8-9. Appellant explains that a hash table is an associative array for
mapping keys to values, and that the hash table maps object keys to their
location in the FIFO queue. Reply Br. 5 (citing George col. 19, 11. 5-7).
According to Appellant "the hash table in George, at best, may be construed
as a reference to data in a database and not the data itself." Id. We agree
with Appellant.
Appellant defines a "projection" as "an instance of a materialized
view that provides physical storage for data," and explains that "[a]
projection may contain some or all columns of a table of data to be
analyzed." Provisional Spec. ,r 0004. Appellant refers to a "database
projection" as a form of representing tuples of the database table and
explains that a projection may "define a particular view of the database
table, defined by, for example, a selected subset of table columns (or fields),
a sorting order of the tuples, an encoding or compression of the data, or a
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segmentation of the data (for storage on multiple nodes)." Non-Provisional
Spec. ,r 0008. We determine the recited "providing a first view of a first
database table" is a required feature of the claimed projection.
Here, George discloses appending objects to a FIFO queue. George,
col. 19, 11. 3--4. Per George's disclosure and Appellant's contention, the
hash table maps object keys to locations of the objects in the FIFO queue.
See George, col. 19, 11. 6-7; App. Br. 8-9; Reply Br. 5. Even if an "object"
is a "projection," as interpreted by the Examiner, appending a projection into
a FIFO queue does not create a view of its hash table. Instead, under that
interpretation, we understand a hash table would map a projection key to the
location of the corresponding projection in the FIFO queue but would not
provide a view of the underlying data itself. Therefore, because the
Examiner has not sufficiently explained why appending objects to a FIFO
queue is equivalent to providing a view of the hash table, we agree with
Appellant that George fails to teach or suggest the disputed limitation.
Because we agree with at least one of the arguments advanced by
Appellant, we need not reach the merits of Appellant's other arguments.
Therefore, for the reasons discussed above, we do not sustain the rejection of
independent claims 1, 8, and 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and for the same
reason, we do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and
16-20 because the Examiner's applications of the Schottland, Nguyen, and
Puig references fail to cure the deficiency in the base rejection addressed
above.
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DECISION
We reverse the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-20 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
REVERSED
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