Ex Parte Seeger et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardNov 23, 201612904291 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 23, 2016) 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. 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. 2 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. 3 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)). 4 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 5 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 6 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. 7 Appeal 2014-006200 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. 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation