John Matthew. Holt

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Nov 20, 2019

15027093 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Nov. 20, 2019)

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.
15/027,093 04/04/2016 John Matthew Holt FOS-P0058 1002
35775 7590 11/20/2019
DESIGN IP, P.C.
1575 POND RD.
SUITE 201
ALLENTOWN, PA 18104
EXAMINER
KIM, SISLEY NAHYUN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2196
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/20/2019 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):
eofficeaction@appcoll.com
pair@designip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte JOHN MATTHEW HOLT
____________

Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,0931
Technology Center 2100
_______________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, HUNG H. BUI, and JON M. JURGOVAN,
Administrative Patent Judges.

BUI, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
Examiner’s Final rejection of claims 1–22, which are all the claims pending
in the application. Appeal Br. 12–15, Claims App. We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.2

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. The real party in interest is Waratek Limited. Appeal Br. 3.
2 Our Decision refers to Appellant’s Appeal Brief filed May 29, 2018
(“Appeal Br.”); Reply Brief filed September 17, 2018 (“Reply Br.”);
Examiner’s Answer mailed July 16, 2018 (“Ans.”); the Final Office Action
mailed December 15, 2017 (“Final Act.”); and the original Specification
filed April 4, 2016 (“Spec.”).
Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,093

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s invention is directed to a method and system for “saving
computer resources in a multi-tenanted computer environment in which a
plurality of tenants operate,” by “identif[ying] which tenants or applications
of a multi-tenant server are idle, and when a tenant or application is
identified as idle . . . reduc[ing] the reserved computational capacity
footprint of the application or tenant without shutting down the tenancy or
exiting the application.” Spec. 4:2–5; Abstract.
Claims 1 and 12 are independent. Independent claim 1, reproduced
below, is exemplary of the subject matter on appeal.
1. A method of saving computer resources in a multi-
tenanted computer environment in which a plurality of tenants
operate within a single JAVA virtual machine, or equivalent,
said method comprising the steps of:
(i) monitoring predetermined characteristics of the
operation of each tenant;
(ii) upon said predetermined characteristics achieving
a first predetermined state, or crossing a first predetermined
threshold, inactivating the corresponding tenant; and
(iii) upon said predetermined characteristics of an
inactivated tenant achieving a second predetermined state, or
crossing a second predetermined threshold, re-activating the
tenant,
wherein the inactivating includes reducing a reserved
heap memory quota of the corresponding tenant to create
released memory, and transferring the released memory
elsewhere.

Appeal Br. 12 (Claims App.).

Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,093

3
Evidence Considered

Name Reference Date
Creamer et al. (“Creamer”) US 2005/0065992 A1 Mar. 24, 2005
Vengerov US 2011/0107050 A1 May 5, 2011
Higuchi US 2010/0325077 A1 Dec. 23, 2010
Arcese et al. (“Arcese”) US 2012/0137101 A1 May 31, 2012

Examiner’s Rejections
(1) Claims 1, 5–7, 12, and 16–18 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Creamer and Vengerov. Final
Act. 5–12, 24.3
(2) Claims 2–4 and 13–15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Creamer, Vengerov, and Higuchi. Final Act. 12–
15, 24.
(3) Claims 8–11 and 19–22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Creamer, Vengerov, and Arcese. Final Act. 16–25.

ANALYSIS
In support of the obviousness rejection, the Examiner, among other
things, finds Vengerov teaches “inactivating [that] includes reducing a
reserved heap memory quota of the corresponding tenant to create released
memory, and transferring the released memory elsewhere,” as recited in

3 The Examiner’s rejection incorrectly refers to pre-America Invents Act
(“pre-AIA”) § 103(a) instead of AIA § 103. See Final Act. 5. We are aware
of no prejudice to Appellant or the Examiner resulting from this error, and
thus we consider this to be harmless error.
Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,093

4
claim 1. Final Act. 8–9 (citing Vengerov ¶¶ 5, 47–61, 71, Figs. 1–5); Ans.
4–5 (citing Vengerov ¶¶ 2–4, 45). Particularly, the Examiner finds
Vengerov teaches “the allocated/used (i.e. reserved) heap memory to
execute an application is reduced to create released/free memory by
performing GC (garbage collection).” Ans. 5 (emphasis added). We do not
agree.
We agree with Appellant’s arguments that Vengerov does not teach or
suggest “reducing a reserved heap memory quota of the corresponding
tenant to create released memory,” as recited in claim 1. Appeal Br. 5–8;
Reply Br. 3–4. As Appellant explains, the claimed term “‘reserved heap
memory quota’ refers to a set amount of memory that is dedicated to a
particular tenant and not available for use by any other tenant or
application.” Appeal Br. 7 (emphasis added) (citing Spec. 3:21–25 (“any
computational capacity reserved for idle tenants/applications is by definition
not available for use by other active tenants/applications”); Emma Shepherd,
Martin Trotter, Caroline Maynard, and Matthew Peters, Don’t Forget about
Memory: How to Monitor Your Java Applications’ Windows Memory
Usage, IBM developerWorks® (November 16, 2004)). Vengerov’s memory
that is allocated to or used by an application is the portion of free memory
(memory available for use by all applications) that is actually used when the
application is executing on the computing apparatus, however, the
application’s used memory is not a reserved heap memory quota of the
application (tenant) as claimed. Reply Br. 2–3; see Vengerov ¶¶ 8, 17, 29,
53, 64–65 (a “[g]arbage collection apparatus 420 is adapted to recycle
memory 412 used by applications and/or other programs executing on the
computing apparatus” and a “[m]emory allocation rate measurement
Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,093

5
apparatus 424 is adapted to periodically measure the amount of free memory
within memory 412, and to calculate a rate at which the free memory is
being allocated” (emphases added)).
Thus, we do not agree with the Examiner’s interpretation of the
claimed term “reserved heap memory quota” as being “the allocated/used
. . . heap memory to execute an application [in Vengerov].” Ans. 5. We
agree with Appellant that Vengerov’s “garbage collection is a process of
recycling or freeing used memory . . . it is not a process of changing the
amount of heap memory which is reserved for a particular tenant” as
claimed. Appeal Br. 7; see also Reply Br. 2–4.
We further note, although Vengerov also mentions the term allotted
memory (e.g., Vengerov measures “memory allotted to just one application”
and performs “[g]arbage collection . . . for recycling free memory within
computing device . . . [which] may operate on . . . memory allotted to a
particular application”), Vengerov does not teach changing an application’s
allotted memory; rather, Vengerov merely cleans the application’s allotted
memory (through garbage collection) without changing the amount of the
application’s allotted memory. See Vengerov ¶¶ 33, 70–71; Appeal Br. 6–7.
In contrast, Appellant’s claimed “reducing a reserved heap memory quota of
the corresponding tenant to create released memory” changes (reduces) an
amount of memory that is dedicated (reserved) to an idle tenant/application
and is unavailable for use by other idle or active tenants. See Spec. 3:21–25;
Appeal Br. 6–7.
The Examiner also has not shown that the additional teachings of
Creamer, Higuchi, and Arcese make up for the above-noted deficiencies of
Vengerov. Creamer (also relied on to reject claim 1) merely describes
Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,093

6
inactivating ghost agents (software objects), but does not teach that
inactivating is by reducing a reserved heap memory quota of a tenant (or
ghost agent) as claimed. See Creamer ¶¶ 19–20, 24–25.
Thus, for the reasons set forth above, we do not sustain the
Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claim 1, independent claim
12 argued for substantially the same reasons as claim 1, and claims 2–11 and
13–22 dependent therefrom. Appeal Br. 9–10. Because the above-discussed
issues are dispositive as to the obviousness rejections of all claims on appeal,
we do not reach additional issues raised by Appellant’s arguments as to the
§ 103 rejection of claim 1.

CONCLUSION
On the record before us, we conclude Appellant has demonstrated the
Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1–22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

DECISION SUMMARY
As such, we REVERSE the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1–22
under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. §  Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 5–7, 12, 16–18 103  Creamer, Vengerov 1, 5–7, 12,
16–18
2–4, 13–15 103 Creamer,
Vengerov, Higuchi
2–4, 13–15
8–11, 19–22 103 Creamer,
Vengerov, Arcese
8–11, 19–
22
Appeal 2018-008957
Application 15/027,093

7
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. §  Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
Overall
Outcome
1–22

REVERSED