Ex Parte Krishnamurthy

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 24, 2016

12851571 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 24, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/851,571 08/06/2010
57299 7590 06/28/2016
Kathy Manke
A vago Technologies Limited
4380 Ziegler Road
Fort Collins, CO 80525
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
NA VEEN KRISHNAMURTHY
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.
L09-0376US1 1986
EXAMINER
SAIN, GAUTAM
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2135
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/28/2016 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):
kathy.manke@broadcom.com
patent.info@broadcom.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte NA VEEN KRISHNAMURTHY
Appeal2015-000445
Application 12/851,571
Technology Center 2100
Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, JOHN A. EVANS, and ALEX S. YAP,
Administrative Patent Judges.
SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant 1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
Final Rejection of claims 1-16, which are all the pending claims in this
application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We affirm.
1 Appellant identifies LSI Corporation as the Real Party in Interest (Br. 1 ).
Appeal2015-000445
Application 12/851,571
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellant's invention relates to a system and method for performing a
consistency check operation on a degraded redundant array of independent
disks (RAID) IE disk array (see Spec. i-f 9).
Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows:
1. A method for performing a consistency check
(CC) operation on a degraded redundant array of independent
disks (RAID) IE disk array, wherein the RAID IE disk array is
formed using a plurality of mirror sets having a plurality of
rows and wherein each mirror set includes a pair of disks,
compnsmg:
sending a read request to a first row in all mirror sets
having no missing disks in the degraded RAID 1 E disk array by
skipping mirror sets having missing disks, wherein the
degraded RAID IE disk array is a RAID IE disk array having a
missing disk in at least one mirror set;
performing an exclusive OR (XOR) operation on the first
row in all the mirror sets having no missing disks for
determining data consistency between the pair of disks in the
mirror set; and
updating data on a mirrored disk in all the mirror sets
having no missing disks based on the outcome of the perforated
XOR operation.
The Examiner's Rejections
The Examiner rejected claim 1-15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
obvious over Sundrani (US 2010/0037019 Al; Feb. 11, 2010), Archibald Jr.
et al. (US 2002/0169995 Al; Nov. 14, 2002) (Archibald), Yamato et al. (US
2006/0206753 Al; Sept. 14, 2006) (Yamato), Manoj (US 2008/0133969 Al;
June 5, 2008), and Chawla et al. (US 2006/0112219 Al; May 25, 2006)
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Appeal2015-000445
Application 12/851,571
(Chawla); and further added Goel et al. (US 7,958,304 Bl; June 7, 2011)
(Goel) to reject claim 16 (Ans. 3-8).
Appellant's Contentions
1. Appellant contends the Examiner erred in rejecting independent
claims 1, 6, and 11 by combining Sundrani, Archibald, Yamato, Manoj, and
Chawla because:
Sundrani teaches checking consistency of data read from a
RAID I or I E, Archibald teaches determining inconsistencies
between parity data and user data stored in a stripe of data,
Yamato teaches rebuilding of a disk drive in array of the
redundant configuration such as the RAID l, 5, or 10, Mano}
teaches Raid 5 error recovery logic, and Chawla teaches about
RAID 1 +O configuration which is a stripe set made up from N
mirrored pairs of disk drives.
(Br. 11).
2. Appellant further argues "the cited references, even if
combined, do not teach or suggest performing consistency cheek (CC)
operation on a degraded RAID lE disk array, the degraded RAID IE
disk array is a RAID IE disk array having a missing disk in at least one
mirror set" (id.).
3. With respect to the remaining claims, Appellant argues that
those claims are patentable based on the same reasons presented for the
patentability of claims 1, 6, and 11, or because of their dependency from the
independent claims discussed above (Br. 12-13).
Issue on Appeal
Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1, 6, and 11 as being obvious
because the references fail to teach or suggest the disputed claim limitation?
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Appeal2015-000445
Application 12/851,571
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellant's
arguments that the Examiner has erred. In our view, the Examiner has
provided a comprehensive response, supported by sufficient evidence based
on the teachings of Sundrani, Archibald, Yamato, Manoj, and Chawla, to
each of the above-noted contentions raised by Appellant. We adopt as our
own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action
from which this appeal is taken and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner
in the Examiner's Answer in response to Appellant's Appeal Brief (see
Ans. 8-13). We highlight the following for emphasis.
We specifically agree with the Examiner's claim interpretation, in
view of Appellant's disclosure in paragraphs 2, 12, 15, and 16 of the
Specification, that a request is sent "to only good mirror sets in an array ... ,
thereby skipping the mirror set having a failed/offline disk" (Ans. 8-9). We
also agree with the Examiner that "Chawia's disclosed RAID 1 +O
configuration is a strip set made of from [sic] N mirrored pairs of disk drives
(0053)( RAID 1 +O can be interpreted as claimed RAID 1 E because both
include pairs of disk drives)" (Ans. 12). Furthermore, the Examiner
properly finds that:
(Id.).
Based on these disclosures, one of ordinary skill in the art
at the time of the invention would have known that to read from
a collection of RAID mirrored disks, by skipping a collection of
disks that contain an error or are failed, and thereby reading
only from the collection of disks that are not failed or contain
an error, and then performing an XOR operations only on the
collection of disks that do not contain an error, for performing a
consistency check.
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Application 12/851,571
Therefore, because Appellant's contentions have not persuaded us of
Examiner error, we sustain the rejection of claims 1, 6, and 11 under
35 U.S.C. §103(a) as unpatentable over Sundrani, Archibald, Yamato,
Manoj, and Chawla. Similarly, for the same reasons discussed above for
claim 1, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. §103(a) rejections of the remaining claims.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-16.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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