Ex Parte SEPPANEN

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 23, 2018

14789421 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 23, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
14/789,421 07/01/2015
130608 7590 10/25/2018
Pure Storage, Inc.
c/o Kennedy Lenart Spraggins LLP
301 Congress Avenue
Suite 1350
Austin, TX 78701
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
ERIC D. SEPPANEN
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.
2989US01 1047
EXAMINER
WESTBROOK, MICHAEL L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2139
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/25/2018 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):
office@klspatents.com
kate@klspatents.com
hanna@klspatents.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Exparte ERIC D. SEPPANEN
Appeal2018-004174 1
Application 14/789,421 2
Technology Center 2100
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JAMES B. ARPIN, and
DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges.
ARPIN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of a rejection of claims 1-
18. Final Act. 2. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 In this Decision, we refer to Appellant's Appeal Brief ("Br.," filed October
26, 2017) and Reply ("Reply", March 9, 2018); the Final Office Action
("Final Act.," mailed July 13, 2017); the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.,"
mailed February 8, 2018); and the originally-filed Specification ("Spec.,"
filed July 1, 2015).
2 According to Appellant, the real party-in-interest is Pure Storage, Inc.
Br. 2.
Appeal2018-004174
Application 14/789,421
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant's claimed subject matter relates to methods, controllers, and
computer program products for "offloading device management
responsibilities from a storage device in an array of storage devices [which]
can include: retrieving, from the storage device, control information
describing the state of one or more memory blocks in the storage device and
performing, in dependence upon the control information, a storage device
management operation." Spec. 1:28-2:3. Claims 1-18 are pending. Claims
1, directed to methods of offloading device management responsibilities
from a storage device, 7, directed to storage array controllers for performing
such methods, and 13, directed to computer program products including
computer program instructions for performing such methods, are
independent. Br. Claims App 'x. Claims 2-6 depend directly from claim 1,
claims 8-12 depend directly from claim 7, and claims 14--18 depend directly
from claim 13. Id.
Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative.
1. A method of offloading device management responsibilities
from a storage device in an array of storage devices, the method
compnsmg:
retrieving, by a Redundant Array of Independent Drives (RAID)
controller coupled to the array of storage devices, from the
storage device, control information describing the state of one or
more memory blocks in the storage device, including:
querying, by the RAID controller, the storage device for a
location of a memory block tagged with a special identifier
indicating that the memory block contains control
information having memory access channel information
identifying a plurality of memory access channels and a
range of memory addresses associated with each memory
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Application 14/789,421
access channel, wherein querying the storage device
includes executing, by the RAID controller, an instruction
that causes the storage device to scan a portion of each
memory block to identify those memory blocks that
include the control information for the storage device;
receiving, based on the special identifier, from the storage
device, the location of the memory block containing the
memory access channel information; and
selecting the memory access channel information stored at
the location in the storage device; and
performing, in dependence upon the control information, a
storage device management operation.
Id.; see Br. 4---6 (describing each of claims 1, 7, and 13 with respect to
the methods of claim 1 ); Reply 4--6.
REFERENCES
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art in rejecting the
pending claims:
Chow et al. ("Chow")
Gong
Iida et al. ("Iida")
Jeddeloh et al. ("Jeddeloh")
Dancho et al. ("Dancho")
US 2003/0225961 Al Dec. 4, 2003
US 2015/0006816 Al Jan. 1, 2015
US 6,591,328 Bl July 8, 2003
US 2010/0250826 Al Sep. 30, 2010
US 2015/0113203 Al Apr. 23, 2015
THE REJECTIONS
Claims 1--4, 6-10, 12-16, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as rendered obvious over the combined teachings of Chow, Gong, Iida, and
Jeddeloh. Final Act. 3--4. Claims 5, 11, and 17 stand rejected under 35
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U.S.C. § 103 as rendered obvious over the combined teachings of Chow,
Gong, Iida, Jeddeloh, and Dancho. Id. at 15.
ANALYSIS
The Examiner finds that Chow and Gong teach or suggest the
"retrieving" and "performing" steps of claims 1, 7, and 13. Final Act. 5---6.
However, the Examiner finds that neither of these references, alone or in
combination, teaches or suggests the "querying," "selecting," or receiving"
steps included within the "retrieving" step. Id. at 7 ("Chow and Gong do not
explicitly disclose what Iida teaches"). The Examiner finds instead that Iida
in combination with Jeddeloh teaches these steps. Id. at 7-10; Ans. 4---6.
The Examiner concludes obviousness, finding that a person of ordinary skill
in the relevant art would have had reason to combine the teachings of Chow,
Gong, Iida, and Jeddeloh to achieve the recited methods, controllers, and
computer program products of claims 1--4, 6-10, 12-16, and 18. Final
Act. 7, 9, 10.
Claim 1 recites the step of "querying the storage device include[ing]
executing, by the RAID controller, an instruction that causes the storage
device to scan a portion of each memory block to identify those memory
blocks that include the control information for the storage device." Br.
Claim Appx. Thus, in the "querying" step, the RAID controller causes the
storage device to scan a portion of each memory block. The Examiner
explains that:
Prior art teaches searching the storage device for a block with a
special identifier indicating the block contains control data
representing relations between logical and physical addresses.
See [Iida, 10:64--11:11], in which the [File Allocation Table
(FAT)] file system performs the search operation. The FAT file
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Application 14/789,421
system of Iida teaches the claimed function of the RAID
controller.
Final Act. 9; see Ans. 5-6 (citing Iida, 12:59---63; 15:10-21). As the
Examiner acknowledges, however, the FAT file system is a function of the
RAID controller, not of the storage device, e.g., Iida's non-volatile memory.
Appellant contends that, contrary to the recited "querying" step, Iida
teaches that the controller, and not the storage device, scans portions of the
memory block. Reply 13-14; see Br. 12. In particular, based on the
Examiner's citations to Iida, Appellant understands that:
in Iida, the controller is described as searching the memory (see
for example, Iida [13:55---62]) and this searching places a burden
on the controller (see for example, Iida [14:64--67], which
describes reducing the burden on the controller by reducing the
controller's searching). This is in direct contrast to the
"querying" recited in the claims of the present application, in
which the storage device scans a portion of each memory block
to identify those memory blocks that include the control
information for the storage device and based on the searching by
the storage device, the storage devices returns to the controller,
the location of the memory block. That is, in the claims of the
present application, the storage device - not the controller -
scans the memory blocks and returns the location of the memory
block to the controller.
Reply 13-14 (italicizing added, bolding in original); see, e.g., Spec. 7:5-8,
23-28. We agree.
The Examiner must show that the applied references, as combined,
teach or suggest all of the limitations of the rejected claims. Here, the
Appellant is correct that the Examiner has not shown that Iida, in
combination with Chow, Gong, and Jeddeloh, teaches or suggests the
"querying" step, as recited in independent claims 1, 7, and 13. Thus, we are
persuaded that the Examiner erred in the finding claims 1, 7, and 13, as well
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as claims 2---6, 8-10, 14--16, and 18, which depend therefrom, are rendered
obvious over the combined teachings of Chow, Gong, Iida, and Jeddeloh.
The Examiner also concludes that claims 5, 11, and 1 7, which depend
directly from independent claims 1, 7, and 13, respectively, are rendered
obvious over the combined teachings of Chow, Gong, Iida, Jeddeloh, and
Dancho. Final Act. 15. Appellant contends that, because the Examiner
erred in rejecting their base claims, claims 1, 7, and 13, we cannot sustain
the rejections of dependent claims 5, 11, and 17. Br. 13; Reply 16-17. We
agree.
Consequently, we are persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claims 1-18; and we do not sustain the rejections.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the Examiner's decision rejecting
claims 1-18.
REVERSED
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