Ex Parte Moertl et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 14, 2014

11550191 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 14, 2014)

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.
11/550,191 10/17/2006 Daniel F. Moertl AUS920060553US1 8269
50170 7590 02/14/2014
IBM CORP. (WIP)
c/o WALDER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, P.C.
17304 PRESTON ROAD
SUITE 200
DALLAS, TX 75252
EXAMINER
TSENG, CHENG YUAN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2184
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/14/2014 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte DANIEL F. MOERTL, RENATO J. RECIO,
CLAUDIA A. SALZBERG, and STEVEN M. THURBER
____________

Appeal 2011-001144
Application 11/550,191
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, JEAN R. HOMERE, and
DANIEL N. FISHMAN, Administrative Patent Judges.

RUGGIERO, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1, 2, 4-10, and 21-23, which are all of the pending claims. Claims
3 and 11-20 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We reverse.
Appeal 2011-001144
Application 11/550,191

2
Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the Examiner,
we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed June 25, 2010), the Answer (mailed Aug.
19, 2010), and the Reply Brief (filed Oct. 18, 2010).

Appellants’ Invention
Appellants’ invention relates to communication with a network
input/output (I/O) adapter using a queue data structure and cached address
translations. The cache management of address translation information
associated with the queue data structure is distributed between a device drive
and device driver services. See generally Spec. ¶ [0017].

Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows:

1. A method, in a data processing system, for managing address
translations for accessing a buffer data structure used by a device driver
associated with a network input/output (I/O) adapter to communicate with
the network I/O adapter, comprising:
creating, by the device driver, a buffer data structure for storing data
communicated with the network I/O adapter;
invoking, by the device driver, device driver services for initializing
one or more address translation entries for the buffer data structure in an
address translation data structure associated with a root complex of the data
processing system, wherein the one or more address translation entries
specify translations of one or more untranslated addresses into one or more
translated addresses associated with the buffer data structure;
providing, by device driver services, the one or more untranslated
addresses associated with the buffer data structure to the device driver;
creating a queue element (QE) in a queue data structure, wherein the
QE references at least one of the one or more untranslated memory
addresses associated with the buffer data structure; and
retrieving, by the network I/0 adapter, the QE from the queue data
structure, wherein the device driver is provided in one of a system image or
untrusted logical partition of the data processing system and the device
driver services are provided in a trusted virtualization intermediary.
Appeal 2011-001144
Application 11/550,191

3

The Examiner’s Rejections
The Examiner’s Answer cites the following prior art references:
Aslot US 2005/0268047 A1 Dec. 1, 2005
Arndt US 2006/0195675 A1 Aug. 31, 2006

PCI-SIG, “Address Translation Service,” Rev. 0.7, 1-35, March 2006.

Claims 1, 2, 4-9, and 21-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Arndt in view of Aslot.
Claim 10 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Arndt in view of Aslot and PCI-SIG.

ANALYSIS
Claims 1, 2, 4-9, and 21-23
Appellants contend, with respect to the obviousness rejection of
independent claim 1, that Aslot does not overcome what the Examiner (Ans.
6) has identified as the deficiencies in Arndt. These deficiencies are the
failure to teach or suggest the features of a device driver and device driver
services to perform the specified functions recited in claim 1. According to
Appellants, while Aslot generally teaches physical and virtual device
drivers, there is no teaching or suggestion that these drivers perform the
specific operations as claimed. App. Br. 8-9; Reply Br. 6, 10. In a related
argument, Appellants contend that the Examiner has not established a proper
Appeal 2011-001144
Application 11/550,191

4
basis for the proposed combination of Aslot with Arndt.
1
App. Br. 10-11;
Reply Br. 3.
We agree with Appellants. While the Examiner (Ans. 6) has pointed
to Aslot’s use of virtual drivers and physical device drivers, we find no
adequate explanation as to how these drivers correspond to the claimed
device drivers and device driver services. Further, we find no adequate
explanation from the Examiner as to how and in what manner Aslot would
be combined with Arndt to result in the performance of the specifically
claimed address translation operations.
We also find that the Examiner has not provided an articulated line of
reasoning with a rational underpinning to support the proposed combination
of Aslot with Arndt. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418.
The Examiner has pointed to Aslot’s teaching of the advantages of easily
passing down a client’s partition memory to a server partition’s I/O stack as
a rationale for the combination with Arndt. Ans. 7 (citing Aslot, ¶ [0008]).
We agree with Appellants (App. Br. 10), however, while the discussed
advantages perhaps provide a motivation for the invention described by
Aslot, they have little relevance to the system disclosed by Arndt which is
not concerned with the problems addressed by Aslot.
Finally, we recognize that the Examiner, in the “Response to
Argument” portion of the Answer has expanded upon the stated
obviousness rationale for combining Arndt and Aslot. According to the
Examiner, the ordinarily skilled artisan would have recognized the
obviousness of combining Arndt and Aslot because both Aslot and the PCI-

1
Appellants have made other arguments. We do not reach these arguments
because the arguments discussed infra are dispositive of this appeal.

Appeal 2011-001144
Application 11/550,191

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SIG document (cited in the rejection of dependent claim 10) show that the
use of operating systems containing device drivers and device driver
services is well known in virtualization environments. Ans. 16-17.
As previously discussed and as argued by Appellants (Reply Br. 6-
10), however, while device drivers are generally known in the art, the claims
do not merely recite device drivers and device driver services. To the
contrary, the claims recite specific address translation operations performed
by the device drivers and the device driver services, as well as the placement
of the device driver and device driver services, and the specific interaction
between the device drivers and the device driver services.
In view of the above discussion, we are of the opinion that the
proposed combination of references set forth by the Examiner does not
support the obviousness rejection. We, accordingly, do not sustain the
rejection of independent claim 1, or the rejection of claims 2, 4-9, and 21-23
which are dependent thereon.

Dependent claim 10
We also do not sustain the obviousness rejection of dependent claim
10 in which the Examiner has applied PCI-SIG in combination with Aslot
and Arndt to address the invalidation completion feature of the rejected
claim. We find nothing in PCI-SIG which overcomes the innate deficiencies
of the Arndt/Aslot combination as discussed supra.

Appeal 2011-001144
Application 11/550,191

6
CONCLUSION OF LAW
Based on the analysis above, we conclude that the Examiner erred in
rejecting claims 1, 2, 4-10, and 21-23 for obviousness under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a).

DECISION
The Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claims 1, 2, 4-10, and
21-23 all of the appealed claims, is reversed.

REVERSED

ELD