Ex Parte Seeger et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 23, 2016

12904291 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 23, 2016)

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.
12/904,291 10/14/2010 James John Seeger JR. BEA020050043US2 5616
49056 7590 11/25/2016
LIEBERMAN & BRANDSDORFER, LLC
802 STILL CREEK LANE
GAITHERSBURG, MD 20878
EXAMINER
SANTOS-DIAZ, MARIA C
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3689
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/25/2016 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 JAMES JOHN SEEGER, JR. and JASON CHRISTOPHER
YOUNG
Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,2911
Technology Center 3600
Before, JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, JAMES A. WORTH, and MATTHEW S.
MEYERS, Administrative Patent Judges.
FISCHETTI, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s
final rejection of claims 1—6 and 8—14. We have jurisdiction under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b).
1 Appellants identify International Business Machines Corporation, a New
York Corporation as the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 4.
Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,291
SUMMARY OF DECISION
We REVERSE.
THE INVENTION
Appellants claim a storage system accounting method for providing
real-time file system charge-back accounting with real time historical
minimum and maximum usage per user or group during a report cycle (Spec.
p.1,11. 12-15).
Claim 14 reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter
on appeal.
14. A method for providing file system average allocation data,
comprising:
monitoring and persistently maintaining, by a processing unit,
in a first storage area of file system memory, space allocation data for
a current accounting period, and calculating allocation data derived
from the space allocation data comprising a minimum, a maximum
and an average space allocation calculated based upon the actual
space allocation data;
re-calculating, by the processing unit, said calculated allocation
data in response to an event selected from the group consisting of:
allocation event and deallocation event;
wherein the average space allocation associated with the event
is calculated based upon the average space allocation associated with
a previous event, factors of time, and a current event allocation space,
absent directly using actual space allocation data associated with all
previous events.
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Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,291
THE REJECTION
The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of
unpatentability:
Kamionka
Aschoff
Colgrove
Qiu
Faiman
U.S. 4,528,624
U.S. 5,499,354
U.S. 7,225,211 B1
US 2003/0061362 A1
US 2004/0059758 A1
July 9, 1985
Mar. 12, 1996
May 29, 2007
Mar. 27, 2003
Mar. 25, 2004
The following rejections are before us for review.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) or 112 (pre-AIA) first
paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) over Faiman.
Claims 1—4, and 9-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over
Faiman in view of Aschoff.
Claims 5 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Faiman in
view of Aschoff, and in further view of Kamionka.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Faiman in view of
Aschoff, and in further view of Colgrove.
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Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,291
Claims 8 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Faiman in
view of Aschoff, and in further view of Qiu.
ANALYSIS
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) REJECTION OF CLAIM 14
Independent claim 14, the only claim rejected as anticipated by
Faiman, recites in pertinent part, wherein the average space allocation
associated with the event is calculated based upon the average space
allocation associated with a previous event, factors of time, and a current
event allocation space, absent directly using actual space allocation data
associated with all previous events.
Appellants argue, concerning this limitation, that:
...Faiman teaches periodically recalculating a
mean usage rate by deleting information used to
generate a prior usage rate. Specifically, Faiman
describes, "each time a new rate is calculated [for a
stream file] ... the file system will subtract the old
rate for the file and the square of the old rate from
the stored values, then add the new rate and rate
squared to the stored values ... [to] periodically
(e.g., once an hour) recalculate the mean usage rate
and the standard deviation of the usage rate." In
essence, Faiman teaches an updated average usage
rate for the file system, with an updated individual
stream file usage rate reflecting an increase in time
since the file manager began collecting usage
statistics.
(Appeal Br.15 (footnote omitted)).
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Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,291
The Examiner found:
in Faiman [0018], Faiman discloses that the mean
usage average takes into consideration the old or
previous event to calculate the mean usage rate for
the file for a given period of time, the paragraph
clearly discloses that the previous usage rate is
taken into consideration to calculate the actual or
current mean usage, not every usage calculation
for all the previous events of the file.
(Answer 6).
We disagree with the Examiner. We find that claim 14 requires
calculating average space allocation based on 1. the average space allocation
associated with a previous event, 2. factors of time, 3. a current event
allocation space, and 4. absent directly using actual space allocation data
associated with all previous events. The Examiner maintains that these
elements are met by Faiman, because in Faiman,
the file system manager 130 calculates] a rate of
use for the usage of file 136 based on the current
time and the time the system manager began
collecting the usage. The file system manager
calculates the mean, for the usage of all the files,
minimum amount, the maximum amount based on
the usage rate);... .
(Final Act. 4). We do not agree with the Examiner that calculating the
mean usage in Fiaman meets the claim requirement. The claim requires the
average space allocation associated with the event is calculated based upon
the average space allocation associated with a previous event and absent
directly using actual space allocation data associated with all previous
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Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,291
events. In contrast, Faiman at paragraph 18, discloses .. the file system
manager 130 computes the mean ("g") and standard deviation ("o") of the
usage rate for all of the files in the file system 134 selected for dynamic
allocation mode.” Thus, Faiman cannot anticipate because it calculates an
average space allocation based on usage rates of all the files with their
corresponding events, and thus does not disclose calculating an average
space allocation associated with just a previous event (absent all previous
events), and which event is one of an allocation event and deallocation
event.
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) REJECTION of claims 1, 2, 4, and 9-1
Independent claims 1 and 9 recite in pertinent part, wherein the
weighted average space allocation associated with the event is calculated
based upon the weighted average space allocation associated with a
previous event, factors of time, and a current event allocation space, absent
directly using actual space allocation data associated with all previous
events.
Claims 1 and 9 are rejected as obvious over Faiman in view of
Aschoff. (Final Act. 5). The obvious rejection does not make any additional
fmding(s) as to why one of ordinary skill in the art would use one of an
allocation event and deallocation event associated with a previous event
absent directly using actual space allocation data associated with all
previous events to calculate an average space allocation, as discussed supra.
Therefore, we will not sustain the obviousness rejection of independent
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Appeal 2014-006200
Application 12/904,291
claims 1 and 9, because the obviousness rejection adds nothing to resolve the
claim shortfall discussed above.
Since 2, 4—6, 8, and 10-13 depend from claim 1 and 9, and since we
cannot sustain the rejection of claims 1 and 9, the rejection of claims 2, 4—6,
8, and 10—13 likewise cannot be sustained.
35 U.S.C. § 112 (first paragraph) REJECTION
The Examiner rejected claim 10 finding that the limitation of claim 10
does not match that described in the Specification on page 21 Equation 3.
(Answer 3-4).
Appellants ague that
The Examiner's rejection of claim 10 under 35
U.S.C. §112, first paragraph, rests solely on the
similarity between the equation recited in claim 10
and Equation 3 recited in Appellants' specification.
However, Appellants' specification adequately
describes the variables, meaning of the variables,
and application of the variables, as recited in claim
10.
(Appeal Br. 13).
We agree with Appellants that the Specification does adequately
describe Current Avg to encompass the claimed subject matter for the
reasons set forth by Appellants on page 13 of their Brief.
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Application 12/904,291
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
We conclude the Examiner did err in rejecting claim 14 under 35
U.S.C. § 102(b).
We conclude the Examiner did err in rejecting 1—6, 8, 9, 11, 12 and 13
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
We conclude the Examiner did err in rejecting claim 10 under 35
U.S.C. § 112 second paragraph.
DECISION
REVERSED.
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