Ex Parte Choudhary et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 14, 2018

14679300 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 14, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
14/679,300 04/06/2015
152691 7590
Setter Roche LLP
14694 Orchard Parkway
Building A, Suite 200
Westminster, CO 80023
09/18/2018
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Jairam Choudhary
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
C217 2876
EXAMINER
RANKIN, CANDICE A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2132
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/18/2018 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):
uspto@setterroche.com
ipadmin@vmware.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JAIRAM CHOUDHARY and MATTHEW CONOVER
Appeal2018-001449
Application 14/679,300 1
Technology Center 2100
Before JOHN A. EVANS, BETH Z. SHAW, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL,
Administrative Patent Judges.
McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
rejection of claims 1-20, which are all the claims pending in this application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We reverse.
1 Appellants identify the Applicant, VMWARE, INC. as the real party in
interest. App. Br. 2.
Appeal2018-001449
Application 14/679,300
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants' application relates to managing the provisioning of
applications for multiple virtual machine environments. Spec. ,r 2. Claim 1
is illustrative of the appealed subject matter and reads as follows:
1. An apparatus to provision application volumes for
attachment to virtual machines, the apparatus comprising:
one or more non-transitory computer readable media; and
processing instructions stored on the one or more non-
transitory computer readable media that, when executed by
processing circuitry, direct the processing circuitry to:
provision an application in a first virtual volume of a first
virtual drive format;
identify one or more alternative virtual drive formats for
the application;
duplicate the application in the virtual volume to one or
more additional virtual volumes corresponding to the one or
more alternative virtual drive formats; and
store the virtual volume and each of the one or more
additional virtual volumes in separate storage locations,
wherein each of the storage locations is accessible by a different
set of virtual machines associated with a particular virtual drive
format.
The Examiner's Rejections
Claims 1, 4-6, 8, 10, 11, and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ I03(a) as being unpatentable over Naik (US 8,453,145 Bl; May 28, 2013)
and Dowers, II et al. (US 8,566,297 Bl; Oct. 22, 2013). Final Act. 3-6.
Claims 2, 3, 9, 12, and 15-18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a)
as being unpatentable over Naik, Dowers, and Bushman et al. (US 8,943,105
Bl; Jan. 27, 2015). Final Act. 6-8.
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Application 14/679,300
Claims 7, 13, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as being
unpatentable over Naik, Dowers, and Govindankutty et al. (US
2015/0058837 Al; Feb. 26, 2015). Final Act. 8-9.
Claim 20 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as being
unpatentable over Naik, Dowers, and van der Linden et al. (US 8,578,076
B2; Nov. 5, 2013). Final Act. 10.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in consideration of
Appellants' contentions and the evidence of record. Appellants persuade us
the Examiner fails to establish, on this record, that the claims are
unpatentable over the cited references.
The Examiner finds the combination of Naik and Dowers teaches or
suggests "identify[ing] one or more alternative virtual drive formats for the
application" and "stor[ing] the virtual volume and each of the one or more
additional virtual volumes in separate storage locations, wherein each of the
storage locations is accessible by a different set of virtual machines
associated with a particular virtual drive format," as recited in claim 1. Final
Act. 4 (citing Naik Fig. 2, Fig. 3, 6:50-51, 8:54-65, 10:25-27).
Appellants argue the Examiner erred because the combination of Naik
and Dowers does not teach or suggest the "identify" or "store" steps. See
App. Br. 7-8; Reply Br. 2-3. In particular, Appellants argue Naik teaches a
source volume or clone volume may reside on the same or different data
stores. App. Br. 7 (citing Naik 10:25-27). Appellants argue Dowers teaches
a virtual disk image file may be formatted to use various formats, including
VHD, V2I, and VMDK. Id. (citing Dowers 3:56--4:3). According to
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Application 14/679,300
Appellants, neither Naik nor Dowers teaches a configuration with multiple
sets of virtual machines that each access a particular storage location
associated with a particular virtual drive format, as claimed. Id. Appellants
further contend the Examiner has failed to establish the combination teaches
or suggests identifying one or more alternative drive formats, instead merely
teaching different virtual disk file types. Id. at 8.
The Examiner responds in the Answer that Naik teaches source and
clone volumes may be located on different data stores that may be accessed
by different virtual machines. Ans. 2 (citing Naik 4:41-56, 6:43, 8:54-65).
The Examiner finds the virtual disk files stored therein can include VHD,
VMDK, VDI, and other formats. Id. The Examiner further finds the user is
able to access the format they choose. Id. The Examiner finds Dowers
teaches virtual machines operating in any particular virtualization platform,
where the data may be converted to the format of a particular virtual
machine. Id. (citing Dowers Fig. 2, Fig. 6, 3:56--4:2, 8:32-27 [sic], 9:32-
10:8, 11:41--43).
Appellants have persuaded us of Examiner error. The Examiner does
not sufficiently establish the combination of Naik and Dowers teaches
"identify[ing] one or more alternative virtual drive formats for the
application" and "stor[ing] the virtual volume and each of the one or more
additional virtual volumes in separate storage locations, wherein each of the
storage locations is accessible by a different set of virtual machines
associated with a particular virtual drive format," as recited in claim 1. In
particular, the Examiner finds Naik teaches locating volumes on different
data stores using different drive formats and that these stores may be
accessed by different virtual machines, but the Examiner does not address
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Application 14/679,300
the limitation requiring "identify[ing] one or more alternative virtual drive
formats for the application." See Final Act. 3-5, Ans. 2-3. Moreover, the
Examiner's findings do not directly address the relationship between the
different sets of virtual machines and particular virtual drive formats recited
in the claim. See id.
Accordingly, we are constrained by the record to find the Examiner
has not sufficiently established the combination of Naik and Dowers teaches
the "identify" and "store" steps recited in claim 1. We, therefore, do not
sustain the rejection of independent claim 1 as unpatentable over Naik and
Dowers. 2 We also do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 8 and
14, which recite commensurate limitations, and claims 4-6, 10, and 11,
dependent therefrom.
The Examiner finds dependent claims 2, 3, 7, 9, 12, 13, and 15-20 are
unpatentable over Naik, Dowers, and an additional reference from the group
of Bushman, Govindankutty, and van der Linden. See Final Act. 6-10. The
Examiner does not find the additional cited references teach or suggest the
disputed limitations from the independent claims discussed above.
Accordingly, we also do not sustain the rejections of claims 2, 3, 7, 9, 12,
13, and 15-20.
2 Because we agree with at least one of the dispositive arguments advanced
by Appellants with respect to claim 1, we need not reach the merits of
Appellants' other arguments.
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DECISION
We reverse the decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1-20.
REVERSED
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