Ghosh, Rahul et al.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardNov 22, 201914839227 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Nov. 22, 2019) 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. 14/839,227 08/28/2015 Rahul Ghosh RSW920140137US2 6028 103765 7590 11/22/2019 IBM Corp-Rochester Drafting Center 1701 North Street Building 256-3 Department SHCB Endicott, NY 13760 EXAMINER SAYOC, KRISTOFFER L S ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2443 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 11/22/2019 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): rocdrctr@us.ibm.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte RAHUL GHOSH and AARON J. QUIRK Appeal 2019-000367 Application 14/839,227 Technology Center 2400 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, SCOTT E. BAIN, and MICHAEL T. CYGAN, Administrative Patent Judges. CYGAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 3, 4, and 6–8. Appeal Br. 13, 14 (Claims App.). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as International Business Machines Corporation. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The claims are directed to a computer program product for reducing workloads of neighboring virtual machine tenants in a cloud environment having shared storage. Abstract. Such workloads may be data intensive and may require frequent writes to large databases, including logging activity. Spec. ¶ 3. A computer may determine current input/output characteristics of an application enabled on a virtual machine, select and offload logs based on trends found in the input/output characteristics, and aggregate portions of the logs that have been directed to separate file locations. Id. ¶ 5. Independent claim 1 is illustrative, with limitations at issue italicized for emphasis: 1. A method to enhance tenant performance in a cloud shared-storage environment, comprising: determining current input/output characteristics of an application enabled on a virtual machine; predicting a future workload on a disk system associated with the virtual machine using the input/output characteristics; selecting and offloading logs based on trends found in the input/output characteristics; and aggregating portions of the logs that have been directed to separate file locations to reconcile portions that may have been separated, wherein aggregating portions of the logs includes pulling the portions of the logs from remote locations and relocating the portions back into original positions in the virtual machine. Dependent claims 3, 4, and 6–8 each incorporate the limitations of claim 1. Claims 2 and 5 have been cancelled. Final Act. 1. Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 3 REFERENCES Name Reference Date Colgrove et al. (Colgrove) US 2013/0086006 A1 Apr. 4, 2013 Nirantar US 2014/0310709 A1 Oct. 16, 2014 Gladkikh et al. (Gladkikh) US 9,128,779 B1 Sep. 8, 2015 Filed July 31, 2014 REJECTIONS Claims 1, 3, 4, and 6–8 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1–4, 13, 15, 16, and 18–20 of copending Application number 14/562,457. Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 are rejected as being obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Nirantar in view of Gladkikh. Claim 7 is rejected as being obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over the combination of Nirantar, Gladkikh, and Colgrove. ANALYSIS A. Double Patenting The Examiner has provisionally rejected claims 1, 3, 4, and 6–8 on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1–4, 13, 15, 16, and 18–20 of U.S. Application number 14/562,457. Final Rej. 5. Appellant has not contended that the Examiner erred in this rejection. Due to its provisional nature, we do not reach the Examiner’s provisional rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, and 6–8 on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting. Ex parte Moncla, 95 U.S.P.Q.2d 1884 (BPAI 2010) (precedential). B. Obviousness Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Nirantar in view of Gladkikh. With respect to claim 1, the Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 4 Examiner has determined that Nirantar teaches or suggests each limitation except for the operational data being input/output characteristics, and for monitoring the select and offload activity of logs to control a configuration of a disk system, aggregating portions of the logs that have been directed to separate file locations to reconcile portions that have been separated, and pulling the portions of the logs from remote locations and relocating those portions back into original positions in the virtual machine. The Examiner finds each of these limitations to be taught or suggested by Gladkikh. Final Act. 6–8. Appellant first argues that the combination of Nirantar and Gladkikh does not teach a cloud shared-storage medium and computer-usable code stored on the cloud shared-storage medium that performs the recited features. Appeal Br. 7; Reply Br. 5. The Examiner finds that Nirantar teaches or suggest that feature through a virtual machine that receives configuration data to establish a copy of a mobile application and execute the copy of the mobile application. Final Act. 2. Appellant characterizes Nirantar as “offloading applications from a mobile device to a cloud-based virtual machine.” Appeal Br. 10. We do not find Appellant’s argument persuasive, because claim 1 does not recite any limitation to a cloud shared-storage medium. To the extent that Appellant argues that claim 1 recites a limitation to a cloud shared-storage environment, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that Nirantar teaches or suggests a cloud shared-storage environment that performs the recited features. Appellant’s characterization of Nirantar as merely offloading applications from a mobile device is not persuasive of error in the Examiner’s finding, because Nirantar teaches the use of a cloud- Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 5 based server to perform the operations of traffic management, content caching, resource conservation, and facilitating mobile application offloading between mobile devices. Nirantar ¶¶ 32, 37, 41. Accordingly, we are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that Nirantar fails to teach or suggest a cloud shared-storage medium having computer-usable code stored thereon that performs the recited features. Appellant next argues that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not have had a reason to combine the references because of the “substantial deficiencies” of Nirantar. Appeal Br. 10. We are not persuaded by Appellant that the Examiner has erred. The test for obviousness is “what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986). The Examiner finds that the references would have suggested to a person of ordinary skill combining Nirantar and Gladkikh “for the purpose of synchronizing supplemental job information between multiple machines, thereby ensur[ing] that the root cause of performance problem of primary and secondary machines is quickly diagnosed.” Final Act. 8. (citing Gladkikh 12:1–17). We find the Examiner’s rationale is supported by the record, Gladkikh 12:1–17, and the Examiner has provided “articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness.” KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007). Moreover, Appellant has provided no evidence or reasoning to rebut the Examiner’s findings. Accordingly, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred. Appellant next argues that Nirantar teaches operational data, but not input/output characteristics. Appeal Br. 10. However, one cannot show Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 6 nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejection is based on combinations of references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986). The Examiner, however, relied on Gladkikh as teaching the claimed input/output characteristics (Final Act. 7–8). Accordingly, Appellant’s argument regarding Nirantar does not persuade us of error. Appellant next argues that the combination of Nirantar and Gladkikh does not teach or disclose aggregating portions of logs to reconcile separated portions, and pulling portions of logs and relocating those portions back into original positions in the virtual machine. Appeal Br. 10–11; Reply Br. 7. Specifically, Appellant argues that Gladkikh’s action of synchronizing distributed tasks from multiple remote and local data stores does not teach or suggest those limitations of distributing logs. Appeal Br. 11 (citing Gladkikh 2:13–26, 6:38–52), Reply Br. 7. We are not persuaded. Contrary to Appellant’s argument, the Examiner has not solely relied upon Gladkikh’s teaching of task distribution, but instead relies on other teachings of Gladkikh relating to log distribution. Ans. 11. The Examiner finds that Gladkikh teaches distributed logs in a data store, in which the data store exists at separate locations and is synchronized. Id. (citing Gladkikh Fig. 1, 2:13–26, 4:60–67, 5:1–2, 6:38–52). The Examiner’s findings are supported by Gladkikh, which teaches aggregating machine-generated data, such as logs, from sources such as servers, and using distributed tasks to perform synchronizing data from a secondary data store to a primary data store. Gladkikh 3:9–21, 5:1–2, 9:6–13. Accordingly, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claim 1, and we sustain that rejection. Appellant relies upon the same Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 7 arguments for claims 3, 4, 6, and 8; however, because those claims are rejected under the same grounds, they stand or fall with claim 1, and we consequently sustain the Examiner’s rejection of those claims. With respect to dependent claim 7, the Examiner’s rejection relies upon the base combination of Nirantar and Gladkikh, further in view of Colgrove. However, Appellant relies upon the same arguments against the rejection of claim 7 as for claim 1. Reply Br. 8. Accordingly, for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to Appellant’s arguments against the rejection of claim 1, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s rejection of claim 7. CONCLUSION For the above-described reasons, we affirm Examiner’s obviousness rejections of claims 1, 3, 4, and 6–8. We do not reach the Examiner’s provisional nonstatutory rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, and 6–8. DECISION SUMMARY In summary, Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § References/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 3, 4, 6–8 Provisional Obviousness-type Double Patenting2 1, 3, 4, 6, 8 103 Nirantar, Gladkikh 1, 3, 4, 6, 8 7 103 Nirantar, Gladkikh, Colgrove 7 2 As explained above, we do not reach this rejection per Ex parte Moncla, 95 U.S.P.Q.2d 1884 (BPAI 2010) (precedential). Appeal 2019–000367 Application 14/839,227 8 Overall Outcome 1, 3, 4, 6–8 TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation