Nicira, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Oct 28, 2020

2019002979 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 28, 2020)

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.
15/196,518 06/29/2016 Radha Popuri N273.03 1015
109858 7590 10/28/2020
ADELI LLP
P.O. Box 516
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
EXAMINER
TRAN, ELLEN C
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2433
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/28/2020 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):
ipadmin@vmware.com
mail@adelillp.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte RADHA POPURI, SHADAB SHAH, JAMES JOSEPH STABILE,
SAMEER KURKURE, and KAUSHAL BANSAL
___________________

Appeal 2019-002979
Application 15/196,518
Technology Center 2400
____________________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., and
MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges.

HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant2 appeals from the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–20, which constitute all of the pending
claims. Appeal Br. 2. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.

1 We refer to the Specification, filed June 29, 2016 (“Spec.”); the Final
Office Action, mailed May 23, 2018 (“Final Act.”); the Appeal Brief, filed
Nov. 26, 2018 (“Appeal Br”); the Examiner’s Answer, mailed Dec. 31, 2018
(“Ans.”); and the Reply Brief (“Reply Br.”) filed Feb. 28, 2019.
2 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in
37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies VMware, Inc. and Nicira, Inc. as
the real parties in interest. Appeal Br. 2.
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II. CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
According to Appellant, the claimed subject matter relates to a
queueing procedure for adding or moving multiple sections to an ordered set
of firewall sections by concurrently manipulating firewall sections and rules
to thereby provide firewall protection to associated tenants without requiring
knowledge of the entire firewall configuration. Spec. ¶¶ 5, 48, 52, 68, 81.
Figure 10 is discussed and reproduced below:

Figure 10 illustrates software defined data center (100) including a network
virtualization platform providing firewall services in sections (920–931),
each containing a set of rules associated with a tenant, wherein the sections
are sorted according to their assigned priority values. Spec. ¶¶ 5, 6, 62–72,
96, 97.
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As depicted in Figure 10 above, while processing a first request to add
or move a first section to a specified position relative to a second section,
network manager (105) receives a second request to add or move a third
section to a position relative to a fourth section into the firewall
configuration. Id. ¶¶ 98–108. Network manager (105) stores the first
request in a queue at an assigned position as the second section has not been
assigned a position in the list of firewall sections, whereas network manager
(105) processes the second request to add or move the third section to the
requested position as the fourth section has an assigned position in the list of
firewall sections. Id.
Illustrative Claim
Claims 1 and 12 are independent. Claim 1, reproduced below with
disputed limitations emphasized, is illustrative:
1. A method of providing firewall services at a software
defined data center, the method comprising:
in a firewall rule collection, specifying an order for a
plurality of firewall sections in a list of firewall sections in the
firewall rule collection, each section comprising a set of
firewall rules;
while processing a first request to add or move a first
section to a position defined in relation to a second section,
receiving a second request to add or move a third section to a
position defined in relation to a fourth section;
storing the first request in a queue for later execution as
the second section has not been assigned a position in the list of
firewall sections; and
processing the second request to add or move the third
section to the position in the list of firewall sections defined in
relation to the fourth section, as the fourth section has an
assigned position in the list of sections.
Appeal Br. 18 (Claims App.).
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III. REFERENCES
The Examiner relies upon the following references.3
Name Reference Publ’d/Issued
Ahn US 2011/0055916 A1 Mar. 3, 2011
Pernicha US 2016/0191466 A1 June 30, 2016

IV. REJECTION
The Examiner rejects claims 1–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over the combined teachings of Ahn and Pernicha. Final Act.
6–14.
V. ANALYSIS
We consider Appellant’s arguments in the Appeal Brief, pages 5–16
and the Reply Brief, pages 2–8.
Regarding the rejection of claim 1, Appellant argues, inter alia, that
the Examiner erred in finding that Pernicha cures the admitted deficiencies
of Ahn by teaching storing a first request in a queue for later execution as a
second section defined in relation thereto has not been assigned a position in
the list of firewall sections. Appeal Br. 10 (citing Pernicha ¶¶ 10, 20, 30, 31,
33, 43, 44, 46, 53). According to Appellant, the cited paragraphs of
Pernicha relate to an optimization procedure that takes place after a request
to add a firewall rule has been received such that disjoint rules characterized
by the lack of functional dependencies therebetween can be applied
independently of each other without changing the behavior of the firewall.
Id. at 10–11. Further, Appellant argues that although Pernicha discloses a

3 All reference citations are to the first named inventor only.
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queue for storing policy rules, the disclosed queue is for an administrator to
approve a new rule before implementing the rule in the firewall system, but
it is otherwise unrelated to storing a first request associated with a first
section when a second section defined in relation thereto has not been
assigned. Id. at 11; Reply Br. 4–5 (citing Pernicha ¶¶ 59, 61, 62, 64).
In response, the Examiner finds the following:
Pernicha clearly suggests security requirements change over time,
therefore it is clear Pernicha anticipates subsequently rule section to
be inserted in the firewall rules or “storing the first request in a
queue”, to prepare for this need “firewall ... can be configured to use
the method of the present disclosure so as to overcome the limitation
of existing static rule based policy by incorporating dynamic
addition/modifications of one or more policy rules”. This clearly
suggests ‘making priority numbers available for assignment to rules
subsequently inserter into sections’ as well as storing requests in a
queue, see the Abstract, paragraphs 10, 59, 61-62, and 64. Also note
the invention teaches in one embodiment, validation, optimization
functionality can be performed in the background in paragraph 43-44,
46 as well as ‘rules can also be accounted for while forming the
updated set of policy rules (i.e. therefore they are queued/stored for
later assignment), in paragraph 53, in addition network security policy
management system can have a front end interface module to create
and/or upload one or more new security policy rules (queue),
‘proposed changes to the policy rule database can be brought to the
attention ... and/or confirmation before taking effect[’] (queue).
Ans. 15
Appellant’s arguments are persuasive of reversible Examiner error.
Ahn discloses a subset of rules in an ordered set of firewall packets filtering
rules that define a firewall policy containing disjoint rules, whose order can
be changed without changing the integrity of the firewall policy. Ahn ¶¶ 7,
18. Ahn discloses that each rule set can be partitioned into a list of ordered
groups. Id. ¶ 39. Further, Pernicha discloses a method and system for
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dynamically optimizing rule-based security policies, whereupon receiving a
request by a network security management device to add a new traffic flow
policy rule to an existing policy rule, an updated policy rule is formed to
incorporate the new traffic flow policy based on determined dependencies.
Pernicha ¶¶ 10, 30, 31. Furthermore, Pernicha discloses reordering a second
subset of policy rules having identifiers according to their assigned weights,
priorities to update and change the order of the rules thereby optimizing the
updated set of policy rules so as to configure the firewall. Id. ¶¶ 33, 42, 59,
69–75. Moreover, Pernicha discloses a policy database for storing and
accounting for new traffic flow policy rules while forming an updated set of
policy rules. Id. ¶ 53. Pernicha also discloses a storage device coupled to a
processor for storing a policy rule optimization module configured to
retrieve rules to optimize the set of policy rules. Id. ¶ 62. Additionally,
Pernicha discloses maintaining a log of changes to allow an administrator to
selectively undo certain optimizations or revert to a prior sate of a policy if
desired. Id. ¶ 60.
Pernicha’s disclosure of a storage device including a database for
recording rules and a log for tracking updates to the firewall policy teaches
at best queueing all received updates to a log to process requests to update
the firewall policy or to undo updates to the policy. Although Pernicha
discloses storing all received update requests, Pernicha is silent as to storing
an update to a section because another section in relation thereto has not
been assigned in the list of firewall sections. Because Pernicha discloses
indiscriminately storing all update requests to firewall sections irrespective
of their assignments relative to other sections, we agree with Appellant that
Pernicha does not teach storing the update request under the specific
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condition when a subsequent section has not been assigned a position in the
list of sections as required by the disputed limitation. Consequently, we do
not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1 over the
combination of Ahn and Pernicha.
Because Appellant has shown at least one reversible error in the
Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claim 1, we do not reach
Appellant’s remaining arguments. Accordingly, we do not sustain the
Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 12 which includes the argued
disputed limitations. Likewise, we do not sustain the rejection of dependent
claims 2–11, and 13–20, which also recite the disputed limitation.
VI. CONCLUSION
For the above reasons, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims
1–20.
VII. DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:

Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C.
§
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–20 103 Ahn, Pernicha 1–20

REVERSED