Ex Parte Allegrezza

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Aug 21, 2012

09839581 (B.P.A.I. Aug. 21, 2012)

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.
09/839,581 04/20/2001 Fred Allegrezza BPCUR0001FA (C-1) 1423
27939 7590 08/21/2012
PHILIP H. BURRUS, IV
460 Grant Street SE
Atlanta, GA 30312
EXAMINER
PARRY, CHRISTOPHER L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2421
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/21/2012 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 BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________
Ex parte FRED ALLEGREZZA
___________
Appeal 2010-005116
Application 09/839,581
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before DEBRA K. STEPHENS, MICHAEL R. ZECHER, and
RAMA G. ELLURU, Administrative Patent Judges.

ELLURU, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2010-005116
Application 09/839,581

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I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9-14, 16-19, and 21-24. (App. Br. 5). Claims
53 and 54 have been withdrawn. Claims 3, 8, 15, 20, and 23-52 have been
canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Appellant’s Invention
Appellant’s invention “is directed to a method and system for
retrieving and storing multimedia data on a plurality of storage devices.”
(Spec., page 1, ll. 5-7).
Illustrative Claims
1. A system for retrieving data distributed across a plurality
of storage devices, the system comprising:
a plurality of processors, wherein upon receipt of a
request for retrieving data, a processor is designated for
handling the request; and
a switch arranged between the processors and the storage
devices, wherein the switch independently routes a request for
retrieving data from the designated processor directly to the
storage devices containing the requested data based on directory
information obtained by the processor, and independently
routes responses from the storage devices directly to the
designated processor based on the directory information
obtained by the processor, and wherein the data comprises
video stream data.

13. A method for retrieving data distributed across a plurality
of storage devices, the method comprising the steps of:
receiving a request for retrieving data, wherein the data
comprises video stream data;
designating a processor for handling the request;
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forwarding the request directly from the designated
processor to the storage devices containing the data via a
switch; and
returning responses from the storage devices directly to
the designated processor via the switch, wherein the switch uses
directory information obtained by the processor to
independently route the request for retrieving data and the
responses between the storage devices and the processor. 1

Prior Art Relied Upon
Rege US 6,128,467 Oct. 3, 2000
Belknap US 5,586,264 Dec. 17, 1996

Rejections on Appeal
Claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9-14, 16-19, and 21-24 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rege in view of Belknap. (Ans.
5-10).

Appellant’s Contentions
Appellant contends that:
1. the Examiner has not articulated any rational underpinning
explaining why the combination of Rege and Belknap is proper, or why one
of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Rege and
Belknap to obtain Appellant’s claimed invention without using Appellant’s
disclosure as hindsight (App. Br. 15);
2. the prior art, which discloses connecting disks to servers in
response to, and based upon, switching requests having destination address

1 If further prosecution of these claims occur, we suggest the Appellant
expressly clarify whether the recited “the processor” is the same claim
element as the recited “the designated processor.” See MPEP § 2173.05(e)
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information embedded therein, teaches away from Appellant’s invention of
independently routing requests and responses based upon directory
information obtained by the processor, as recited for example, in claim 1
(App. Br. 19);
3. claims 1 and 13 recite independently routing requests and
responses based upon directory information obtained by the processor,
which is distinct from Rege’s disclosure of conventional routing, i.e.,
dependent upon switching requests having source and destination address
information embedded therein (App. Br. 16-21, 26-27);
4. Belknap’s “low latency” fails to teach a switch that
independently routes requests for retrieving data from the designated
processor directly to the storage devices containing the requested data, as
recited in claim 1 (App. Br. 22-23, 25); and
5. in combining Rege and Belknap, the proposed modification
would change the principle of operation of the Rege reference, which is
insufficient to render the claims prima facie obvious (App. Br. 25-26).

II. ISSUE
Did the Examiner err in concluding that the combination of Rege and
Belknap renders claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9-14, 16-19, and 21-24 unpatentable? In
particular, the issue turns on whether the combination of Rege and Belknap
teaches or suggests the claim limitations as recited and whether they were
properly combined.

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III. ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellant’s
contention that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellant’s
conclusions and instead agree with and adopt the Examiner’s findings and
conclusions. We highlight and address specific arguments for emphasis as
follows.
The claims are construed broadly. In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech. Ctr.,
367 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (during prosecution, an application is
given the broadest reasonable interpretation).
Appellant argues that the prior art’s conventional routing is distinct
and teaches away from the present invention because it teaches routing that
depends on a switching request that contains embedded source and
destination information (App. Br. 16-19). We do not agree that the
teachings of Rege are distinct or further, that Rege teaches away from the
present invention.
Appellant’s Specification discloses an embodiment of “independent
routing” in which a switch similarly routes data between the multiple storage
area networks based on address information provided by the designated
CPU. (Ans. 11 (citing Spec. page 3, line 28 – page 4, line 6)). Specifically,
when a client device requests data (i.e., video stream), the present invention
designates a CPU to handle the request. (Ans. 12-13 (citing Spec. page 5,
l.19 – page 6, l. 2)). The designated CPU has access to all of the disk drives
and reads the directory information from these drives to identify where the
blocks of requested data are stored on the drives. (Id.). CPU 300 sends the
data request, including the storage device address identifying the blocks of
data to be read and the source CPU device address (Id.). The SAN switch
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250 routes the block read command to the identified storage device using the
device address. (Id.). The disk storage device 100 accesses the data and
return the data in one or more responses to the original requesting CPU
device address. (Id.). The SAN switch 250 routes the requested data
response to the designated CPU 300 using the device address. (Id.).
Thus, as the Examiner concludes, the Specification discloses an
embodiment in which the switch receives a request from CPU 300 (i.e, the
“switching request” in the prior art) and reads the device address contained
in the request to route the block read command to the designated storage
device. (Ans. 13). Therefore, taking a broad but reasonable interpretation of
“independently routes a request for retrieving data from the designated
processor directly to the storage devices containing the requested data based
on directory information” in light of the Specification, the Examiner’s
proposed combination of Rege and Belknap teaches or suggests the recited
claim limitations.
Additionally, Appellant has not persuaded us that Rege teaches away
from the present invention, i.e., Rege criticizes, discredits, or otherwise
discourages modifying the teachings to arrive at the present invention as
recited in claim 1.
In contrast to Appellants’ arguments, the modification to Rege in view
of Belknap does not change the principle operation of the Rege switch,
thereby obviating the obviousness of the disputed claims based on the
combination of Rege and Belknap. (App. Br. 25-26). By adding Belknap’s
RAIP mapping (i.e, the claimed “directory information”) to Rege2, Rege has

2 The Examiner acknowledges that Rege does not expressly disclose how
servers 300 obtains the data for each data request, and thus, fails to disclose
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the ability to quickly locate where requested content is stored, as opposed to
searching each disk storage device for the requested content. (Ans. 19).
Specifically, Rege’s servers 300 can use the storage device data address
obtained from the RAID mapping to generate each request pack and, thus,
the Rege switch would operate the same by reading the address from the
request and routing the request accordingly. (Ans. 19).
Furthermore, we agree with the Examiner that Belknap provides a
motivation to combine Rege and Belknap because it provides a hierarchical
solution to different performance requirements and results in a modular
system that can be customized to meet market requirements. (Ans. 11
(citing Belknap 2:42-48)). In addition, one of ordinary skill in the art would
have recognized that a directory, which stores data relating to content
availability and location, is beneficial to any system that distributes content
because the directory would minimize the processing required by the
processor to locate all instances of requested content. (Ans. 11). For the
foregoing reason, we are not persuaded that the Examiner improperly used
hindsight in identifying the motivation to combine.
Accordingly, we agree with the Examiner’s conclusion that the
combination of Rege and Belknap teaches or suggests the disputed claim
limitations of claims 1 and 13.

generating requests (i.e. the “switching requests”) based on directory
information obtained from the storage devices. (Ans. 15). However,
Belknap discloses that the processors obtain “RAID mapping” (i.e., the
claimed “directory information”) to facilitate routing data requests. (Ans.
15-18 (citing Belknap 7:4-10, 7:53-8:3, 8:41-53, 9:8-31; Figs. 1, 2)).
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IV. CONCLUSION
The Examiner has not erred in rejecting claims 1 and 13, as being
unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for the reasons discussed above, and
claims 2, 4-7, 9-12, 14, 16-19, and 21-24, which were not separately argued
are unpatentable for the same reasons.
Claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9-14, 16-19, and 21-24 are unpatentable.

V. DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9-14, 16-
19, and 21-24.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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