Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLCDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardFeb 9, 20222021001066 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 9, 2022) 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. 15/720,066 09/29/2017 Reza Sherafat Kazemzadeh 402148-US-NP 8630 69316 7590 02/09/2022 MICROSOFT CORPORATION ONE MICROSOFT WAY REDMOND, WA 98052 EXAMINER PAULINO, LENIN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2193 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/09/2022 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): chriochs@microsoft.com ljohnson@microsoft.com usdocket@microsoft.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte REZA SHERAFAT KAZEMZADEH, HARSH GUPTA, BINIT R. MISHRA, YEVGENIY OLEGOVICH RAZUVAYEV, MUHAMMAD USMAN SHARIF, LI-FEN WU, CRISTINA DEL AMO CASADO, AVNISH KUMAR CHHABRA, HARIHARAN JAYARAMAN, LI XIONG, and ABHISHEK SINGH Appeal 2021-001066 Application 15/720,066 Technology Center 2100 Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, CHRISTA P. ZADO, and DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges. CUTITTA, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1-20, which are all the pending claims under appeal. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 “Appellant” refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC as the real party in interest. Appeal Brief filed August 26, 2020 (“Appeal Br.”) at 1. Appeal 2021-001066 Application 15/720,066 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Summary The subject matter of Appellant’s application relates to “achiev[ing] a safe rollout of infrastructure software in a cloud services system, such as in a production datacenter.” Spec. ¶ 22.2 By way of background, Appellant explains that “malfunctioning infrastructure software that is not identified in the early stages of a rollout may be detected only after impacting large swaths of production machines.” Id. ¶ 23. Appellant seeks to address this issue by limiting a test version of infrastructure software to execute on only an operationally-isolated group of commonly-managed computing devices comprised of a subset of nodes within a cluster, so as to not impact the entire cluster in the event of a malfunction. Id. ¶ 40. Illustrative Claim Claim 1, reproduced below with certain dispositive limitation at issue italicized, illustrates the claimed subject matter: 1. A system, comprising: an interface executing on at least one of one or more computers, the interface being configured to receive from a user a request for resources of a cloud services system; a resource provider executing on at least one of the one or more computers, the resource provider being configured to determine that the user is authorized to receive cloud services via nodes running test versions of infrastructure software, the nodes comprising datacenter machines or virtual machines 2 In addition to the above-noted Appeal Brief, throughout this Decision we refer to: (1) Appellant’s Specification filed September 29, 2017 (“Spec.”); (2) the Final Office Action (“Final Act.”) mailed March 26, 2020; (3) the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”) mailed September 28, 2020; and (4) the Reply Brief filed November 30, 2020 (“Reply Br.”). Appeal 2021-001066 Application 15/720,066 3 running on datacenter machines of the cloud services system, to select a cluster that comprises a plurality of nodes and is capable of providing the requested resources on a portion of the plurality of nodes that run test versions of infrastructure software, and to dispatch the request to a cluster management unit associated with the selected cluster, the selected cluster comprising an operationally-isolated group of commonly- managed computing devices; the cluster management unit executing on at least one of the one or more computers, the cluster management unit being configured to provide the requested resources to the user via a first subset of nodes of the selected cluster, the cluster management unit being further configured to cause each node of the first subset to run a test version of an infrastructure software component that is not being run on nodes of the cluster that are not within the first subset; and an infrastructure deployer executing on at least one of the one or more computers, the infrastructure deployer being configured to provide the test version of the infrastructure software component to the cluster management unit. Appeal Br. 19-20 (Appendix of Claims). REFERENCES AND REJECTION The Examiner rejects claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over the combined teachings of Mathur (US 2018/0253373 A1, published Sept. 6, 2018), Cignetti et al. (US 2017/0171191 A1, published June 15, 2017) (“Cignetti”), Troutman et al. (US 2019/0065165 A1, published Feb. 28, 2019) (“Troutman”), and Leung et al. (US 2014/0040174 A1, published Feb. 6, 2014) (“Leung”). Final Act. 2-23. Appeal 2021-001066 Application 15/720,066 4 OPINION We review the appealed rejection for error based upon the issues identified by Appellant and in light of Appellant’s arguments and evidence. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential). The Examiner determines claim 1 is unpatentable over the combined teachings of Mathur, Cignetti, Troutman, and Leung. Final Act. 2-10. Of particular relevance, the Examiner relies on Troutman’s deployment group 114 to teach or suggest “the cluster management unit being further configured to cause each node of the first subset to run a test version of an infrastructure software component that is not being run on nodes of the cluster that are not within the first subset.” Final Act. 8-9 (citing Troutman ¶ 53). The portion of Troutman cited by the Examiner discloses, in part: It should be appreciated that different deployment groups 114 might be created to execute different versions of an application. For example, and without limitation, a deployment group 114 might be created to run a development version of an application, another deployment group 114 might be created to run a test version of an application, and another deployment group 114 might be created to run a production version of an application. Appellant argues that Troutman’s deployment group 114 fails to teach a cluster comprised of a first subset nodes executing a test version of a software application and other nodes within the same cluster not executing the test version: Even assuming, arguendo, that the deployment group and its hosts of Troutman can be considered to be the “cluster” and “nodes” respectively recited by claim 1 (a position to which Appellant does not acquiesce), what is noticeably missing in Troutman is any teaching that a subset of hosts within a deployment group are configured to run a test version of an application, and another subset of hosts within the same Appeal 2021-001066 Application 15/720,066 5 deployment group are not running the test version of the application. In Troutman, it’s all or nothing. Either all the hosts within a deployment group run a test version, or none of the hosts within a deployment group run a test version. Thus, Troutman does not and cannot teach or suggest this limitation. Final Act. 8 (citing Troutman ¶ 53). In response, the Examiner finds that in Troutman ‘[t]here are various subsets of nodes running a test version of an infrastructure software, [and] this subset belongs to a cluster sets of nodes” because Troutman discloses: For example, nodes 1-10 belong to a given cluster of nodes, nodes 1-5 belongs to a first subset of nodes and nodes 6-10 belong to a second subject of nodes. The first subset of nodes 1- 5 are running the test version while subsets 6-10 are not running the test version. Nodes 6-10 are not in the first subset since they are in the second subset. Ans. 4. We are persuaded by Appellant’s argument that Troutman’s deployment group 114 running a development version of an application does not teach or suggest the limitation at issue. The Examiner relies on Troutman’s alleged disclosure of “nodes 1-10 [that] belong to a given cluster of nodes.” Id. However, the Examiner has not cited any particular passage from Troutman, nor are we are able to locate any portion of Troutman that discusses such nodes or clusters. We agree with Appellant, therefore, that the Examiner has not shown that Troutman’s deployment group 114 teaches or suggests a cluster comprised of a first subset nodes executing a test version of a software application and other nodes within the same cluster not executing the test version. Indeed, the Examiner has not identified any portion of Troutman that even mentions clusters or nodes or their equivalent. Appeal 2021-001066 Application 15/720,066 6 Given the current record, the Examiner has not demonstrated that Troutman teaches or suggests the limitation at issue in claim 1. Nor does the Examiner show that any of the other cited references, alone or in combination, compensate for the noted deficiencies of Troutman. Therefore, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1. Because we agree with at least one of the dispositive arguments advanced by Appellant, we need not reach the merits of Appellant’s other arguments seeking to distinguish claim 1. We also do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 10 and 16, which recite a limitation commensurate in scope with the limitation at issue here, and of dependent claims 2-9, 11-15, and 17-20, for similar reasons. CONCLUSION We reverse the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1-20. DECISION SUMMARY In summary: REVERSED Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/ Basis Affirmed Reversed 1-20 103 Mathur, Cignetti, Troutman, Leung 1-20 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation