Ex Parte Hwang et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 27, 2013

11717061 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 27, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte JOO-YOUNG HWANG, MIN-SUNG JANG,
JAE-KYOUNG BAE, HA-YOUNG KIM,
and ALEXANDER KIRNASOV
____________

Appeal 2011-006149
Application 11/717,061
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, and
CARLA M. KRIVAK, Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2011-006149
Application 11/717,061

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1-15. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

INVENTION
The invention is directed to managing metadata of a file system using
a database management system (DBMS) while performing input and output
of file data from a disk without involvement of the DBMS (Spec. ¶ [11]).
Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method of managing data in a file system
comprising:

searching for a free space in a storage device by using a
database management system (DBMS) managing metadata of
the file system, when a data write request is received from an
application;

writing the data in the free space in the storage device
without involvement of the DBMS, by referring to the search
result; and

updating a part of the metadata changing with the data
being written, by using the DBMS.

REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Sedlar

O’Brien

US 6,922,708 B1

US 2005/0193132 A1

July 26, 2005

Sept. 1, 2005

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Application 11/717,061

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Bezilla

Long
US 2006/0053476 A1

US 2008/0162485 A1
Mar. 9, 2006

July 3, 2008
(div. of app. no.
10/452,163, filed May
30, 2003)

REJECTIONS
Claims 1-4, 10, and 11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Long, O’Brien, and Bezilla.
Claims 5-8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Long, O’Brien, Bezilla, and Sedlar.
Claims 9 and 12-15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Long and O’Brien.

ANALYSIS
With respect to claims 1-4, 10, and 11, Appellants present arguments
to these claims as a single group. Therefore, we select independent claim 1
as the representative claim for this group and will address Appellants'
arguments thereto. Appellants further rely upon the same arguments with
respect to the groupings of claims 5-8 and claims 9, and 12-15. Therefore,
we will group these claims as standing or falling with respect to
representative independent claim 1.
Regarding representative independent claim 1, Appellants contend
that “neither Long, O’Brien, nor Bezilla, taken alone or in combination,
discloses the combination of ‘a database management system (DBMS)
managing metadata of the file system’ and ‘writing data . . . in the storage
device without involvement of the DBMS’” (App. Br. 11). We disagree.
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Application 11/717,061

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O’Brien discloses the following:
The X:Drive system 100 stores file metadata (such as directory
structure, file name, file attributes, etc.) in the database 152 for
fast retrieval, sorting, searching, linking, and other capabilities
beyond standard file systems. The actual file data is stored by
the X:Drive system 100 in network-attached storage units or
storage area networks such as those shown in FIG. 1, the NFS
disk arrays 150.
To access files that exist in this hybrid environment
(bifurcated between file information and file data), X:Drive
uses the XDFile object 210 to manipulate both files and file
data in two-phase committal transactions.

(O’Brien, ¶¶ [0096]-[0097]). As shown in Figure 2, the X:Drive system
uses database-related objects 214, 216, 222, and 236 to perform database
searches and transactions on the file metadata stored in database 202, and
uses file IO object 212 to manipulate the actual file data stored in OS file
system 204 (see O’Brien, ¶¶ [0077]-[0081]). The Examiner finds that “the
FILE IO (write/read) is done [by object] 212 which does not involve DBMS
202,” and that “the DBMS is involved during plurality of activities except
the I/O operations (write/read)” (Ans. 15-16).
Appellants have not shown that O’Brien’s database or database-
related objects are involved in manipulating the actual data in the file system
204, such as writing data to the file system. Rather, Appellants argue that
“O’Brien requires that the system 200 of Java library objects acts as an
intermediary for all data transactions involving the metadatabase 202 and
the OS File System 204,” and that “XDFile object (210) manipulates files
and file data to perform a database action for every data transaction” (App.
Br. 15-16). Indeed, O’Brien discloses that the XDFile object 210
“manipulate[s] both files and file data in two-phase committal transactions”
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(O’Brien, ¶ [0097]). O’Brien further discloses that “XDFile object 210
coordinates transactions for both the FileIO object 212 and the
Database.Transaction file object 214 to keep both synchronized and to
handle failure should it occur” (O’Brien, ¶ [0083]). However, as mentioned
above, the Examiner does not rely on the whole system 200, nor XDFile
object 210, for meeting the limitation of “a database management system
(DBMS) managing metadata of the file system,” as recited in claim 1.
Rather, the Examiner relies on the database 202 for this feature (see Ans.
15). Thus, the fact that the XDFile object coordinates file system operations
does not persuade us that O’Brien fails to disclose the limitation “writing the
data in the free space in the storage device without involvement of the
DBMS,” as recited in claim 1.
We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
representative claim 1, and claims 2-15 not separately argued with
specificity.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-15 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a).

DECISION
For the above reasons, we affirm the rejections of claims 1-15.
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). See 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(f).

Appeal 2011-006149
Application 11/717,061

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AFFIRMED

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