Nicira, Inc.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardFeb 26, 20212019006147 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 26, 2021) 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. 15/374,344 12/09/2016 Harold Vinson C. Lim N429 4798 152691 7590 02/26/2021 Setter Roche LLP 1860 Blake Street Suite 100 Denver, CO 80202 EXAMINER KAO, JUTAI ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2473 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/26/2021 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 uspto@setterroche.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte HAROLD VINSON C. LIM ________________ Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before JAMES R. HUGHES, JOYCE CRAIG, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–5, 7–13, and 15–20.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies VMware, Inc., and Nicira, Inc., as the real parties in interest. Appeal Br. 2. 2 The Examiner has withdrawn the rejection of claims 6 and 14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Ans. 3. Therefore, claims 6 and 14 are not before us on appeal. Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellant’s application relates to “enhanc[ing] packet capture in a virtual switch.” Spec. ¶ 3. Claim 1 is illustrative of the appealed subject matter and reads as follows: 1. A method of capturing packets of interest in a virtual switch, the method comprising: identifying a request to capture packets associated with first packet attributes; assigning one or more virtual ports to capture the packets associated with the first packet attributes, wherein at least one of the one or more virtual ports is coupled to a log file; in response to the request to capture packets associated with the first packet attributes, implementing a forwarding rule in the virtual switch to forward the packets associated with the first packet attributes to at least the one or more virtual ports, wherein the forwarding rule is allocated a higher priority value than one or more other forwarding rules associated with the first packet attributes; receiving a packet at the virtual switch; determining whether the packet qualifies to be forwarded to the one or more virtual ports based on the forwarding rule; and if the packet qualifies to be forwarded to the one or more virtual ports, forwarding the packet to at least the one or more virtual ports. The Examiner’s Rejections Claims 1‒5, 7, 9–13, 15, and 17–19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Maier (US 2016/0021032 A1; Jan. 21, 2016), Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 3 McFadden (US 8,336,029 B1; Dec. 18, 2012)), and Liao (US 2015/0172222 A1; Jun. 18, 2015).3 Final Act. 3‒10. Claims 8, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Maier, McFadden, Liao, and Agarwal (US 2018/0152519 A1; May 31, 2018). Final Act. 12. ANALYSIS Appellant argues the Examiner errs in rejecting claim 1 for several reasons. First, Appellant argues “the Examiner fails to identify any suggestion in Maier of a particular type of request that can be construed as a ‘request to capture packets’ as set forth in claim 1.” Appeal Br. 7. Second, Appellant argues McFadden’s “[d]etermining a port associated with a virtual machine using log files is neither equivalent nor suggestive to coupling virtual ports to a log file.” Id. at 8. Finally, Appellant argues Liao fails to teach “implementation of a new forwarding rule with a higher priority value than one or more other forwarding rules associated with the first packet attributes.” Id. Appellant has not persuaded us of Examiner error. First, the Examiner finds, and we agree, that Maier teaches “identifying a request to capture packets associated with first packet attributes,” as recited in claim 1. See Final Action 3, Ans. 4–5. Specifically, Maier describes switch 130 in which “[a] network packet received at one of the switch ports may be processed by one or more of the modules in determining how to forward the network 3 Although the Examiner omits claim 17 from the statement of the rejection based on Maier, McFadden, and Liao (see Final Action 3), the Examiner analyzes claim 17 in the body of the rejection (see id. at 6–8, 10). Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 4 packet.” Maier ¶ 86; Fig. 9. “[C]ontroller 18 may receive combined access control list and network routing rules from a user as the network policy rules” and “[c]ontroller 18 may provide forwarding rules implementing the access control list policy rules and network routing rules (e.g., as flow table entries) for implementation on module 140 of switches 130).” Id. ¶ 94. An exemplary flow table 28 is shown in Maier’s Figure 4. A switch that uses flow table 28 “compares the fields of the received packet to the fields of the flow table entries in the flow table 28” (id. ¶ 55), and, if “there is a match between the packet and a flow table entry, [the switch] may perform the action that is associated with that flow table entry” (id. ¶ 57). We agree with the Examiner that in Maier a “packet must first be intercepted and examined, or in another word, captured, by the network device in order to be analyzed against the forwarding rules to determine actions to be taken on the received packet.” Ans. 5. Appellant has not shown the term “capture” as recited in claim 1 requires any more than this. We have not found an explicit definition of “capture” in the Specification, and Appellant’s proffered definition—“intercepting a data packet that is crossing or moving over a specific computer network” such that “it is stored temporarily so that it can be analyzed” (Appeal Br. 7)—is exactly what Maier’s switch does. Appellant has not specifically explained how Maier could determine “that there is a match between the packet and a flow table entry” (Maier ¶ 57) if the switch does not at least temporarily store the packet to analyze it. In the Reply Brief, Appellant argues that “[c]apturing all packets for inspection as asserted by the Examiner and provided for in Maier is neither equivalent nor suggestive to capturing packets associated with specific Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 5 attributes.” Reply Br. 2. Appellant’s argument is not persuasive of Examiner error. Claim 1 recites “identifying a request to capture packets associated with first packet attributes.” But nothing in claim 1 precludes also capturing packets with attributes other than “first packet attributes.” In any case, Maier at least suggests that there are packets with attributes for which there is no specific capture request, by providing that if “there is no match between the fields of the packet and the corresponding fields of the flow table entries, switch 14 may send the packet to controller server 18.” Maier, ¶ 56. Second, the Examiner finds, and we agree, that McFadden teaches “wherein at least one of the one or more virtual ports is coupled to a log file.” See Final Act. 10, Ans. 5–6. McFadden describes “a method that includes establishing a connection with one or more virtual machines using a debugger protocol configured to communicate debug commands to applications executed by the one or more virtual machines.” McFadden, Code (57). In particular, McFadden describes a debug monitor that “can negotiate connections between multiple debuggers and virtual machines” by “automatically detect[ing] the ports that virtual machines are using and connect a corresponding debugger to the appropriate port.” Id. at 3:33–39. “These ports can be determined via a query of logs output by the virtual machines using a log query process . . . .” Id. at 10:20–22. The broadest reasonable interpretation of “coupled to a log file” encompasses an association between a port and a log file such as that described in McFadden, namely, where a virtual machine’s use of a port is recorded in a log file. In the Reply Brief, Appellant asserts “the Specification indicates, and one of ordinary skill in the art would understand, that ‘coupling’ the virtual Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 6 port to the log file is used to ensure that packets sent to the virtual port are forwarded to the log file in a particular file path.” Reply Br. 3. The language of claim 1, however, merely recites “wherein at least one of the one or more virtual ports is coupled to a log file.” There is no further recitation limiting the structure or function of the “log file.” Claim 1 does not recite that the virtual port is coupled to the log file via a file path, or that packets sent to the virtual port are forwarded to the log file. Accordingly, Appellant’s argument is not commensurate with the scope of claim 1. Even if claim 1 were so limited, McFadden teaches saving log information related to a particular virtual machine in a log file. See, e.g., McFadden, 14:10‒60. Although McFadden may not explicitly teach that the log file is associated with a particular file path, an ordinarily skilled artisan would understand this teaching to at least suggest that the file is stored at a particular location in the file system represented by a file path. Finally, the Examiner finds, and we agree, that Liao teaches “wherein the forwarding rule is allocated a higher priority value than one or more other forwarding rules associated with the first packet attributes.” See Final Act. 10; Ans. 6–8. Liao describes a system comprising “a number of interconnected Ethernet switches, a number of virtual switches running on host machines, and a controller.” Liao ¶ 17. The controller “programs the Ethernet switches and the virtual switches to forward traffic by the location- based MAC addresses” of virtual machines. Id. Liao further describes that “[t]he forwarding rules are ordered by their priorities.” ¶ 26. Appellant argues that “Liao teaches the use of prioritized forwarding rules in general,” and that “the prior art cited by the Examiner fails to indicate that multiple forwarding rules may be associated with the same Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 7 attributes at all, let alone prioritizing a new forwarding rule to capture packets over other forwarding rules with the same attributes.” Appeal Br. 8. Appellant’s argument is not persuasive of Examiner error. The Examiner responds to Appellant’s argument by pointing to Liao’s Figure 3a (Ans. 6– 8), which shows, for instance, that rules 11 and 12 both apply to packets where “VNI=3,” i.e., packets matching the particular ingress virtual network interface 3 of virtual switch 106 of host machine 104. See id. ¶¶ 21, 25–27, Fig. 3a. This disclosure meets the claim 1 limitation of a forwarding rule with a higher priority value than at least one other forwarding rule associated with a packet attribute because Liao’s rules 11 and 12 are ordered by priority (see id. ¶ 26) and both rules relate to the same packet attribute “VNI=3” (see id. Fig. 3a). Appellant does not specifically address Liao’s Figure 3a in the Reply Brief. See generally Reply Br. For these reasons, we sustain the obviousness rejection of claim 1. We also sustain the obviousness rejection of independent claims 9 and 17, and dependent claims 2–5, 7, 8, 10–13, 15, 16, and 18–20, for which Appellant provides no separate arguments. See Appeal Br. 9‒10. CONCLUSION In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1‒5, 7, 9– 13, 15, 17– 19 103 Maier, McFadden, Liao 1‒5, 7, 9– 13, 15, 17– 19 8, 16, 20 103 Maier, McFadden, Liao, Agarwal 8, 16, 20 Overall Outcome: 1–5, 7–13, 15–20 Appeal 2019-006147 Application 15/374,344 8 No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation