Ex Parte Suryanarayanan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 20, 2018

13928284 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 20, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/928,284 06/26/2013 Deepak Suryanarayanan
79502 7590 07/24/2018
Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, LLP
AMAZON TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (SEAZN/ AMAZON)
2040 Main Street
Fourteenth Floor
Irvine, CA 92614
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.
SEAZN.796A 2798
EXAMINER
JAKOVAC,RYANJ
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2445
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/24/2018 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):
j ayna.cartee@knobbe.com
efiling@knobbe.com
SEAZN.Admin@knobbe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte DEEP AK SURYAN ARA YANAN,
EUGENE MICHAEL FARRELL,
DAVID EVERARD BROWN,
ERIC JASON BRANDWINE, and
AJIT NAGENDRA P ADUKONE
Appeal2018-002131
Application 13/928,284
Technology Center 2400
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, MICHAEL M. BARRY, and
MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges.
BARRY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
final rejection of claims 1-5, 8, 9, 11-13, and 15-20, which are all the
pending claims. Claims App'x. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b ).
We AFFIRM.
1 Appellants identify Amazon Technologies, Inc. as the real party in
interest. App. Br. 3. Appellants also identify U.S. Patent Application Nos.
13/928,278; 13/928,283; 13/928,286; and 13/928,290 as related applications
either on appeal or in preparation for appeal. Id. at 4.
Appeal2018-002131
Application 13/928,284
Introduction
Appellants describe their application as "disclos[ing] a system that
improves the hosting of remote computing sessions by dynamically adding
resources to virtual desktop instances during use." App. Br. 5.
Claim 1 is illustrative of the claims on appeal, shown here with the
disputed limitation in italics:
1. A system comprising:
one or more computers of a Program Execution Service
(PES) including processors and memory, the memory including
instructions that, upon execution, cause the one or more
computers to:
receive a policy, the policy establishing one or
more rules for respective users' access to variable
resources associated with virtual desktop instances;
receive a first request from a computing device to
access a virtual desktop instance, the request identifying
a user of the computing device;
provide, to the computing device, access to a first
virtual desktop instance configured with a set of
resources, the set of resources including at least one of a
specified amount of processing resources within the
configuration of the virtual machine and a specified
amount of memory resources within the configuration of
the virtual machine for use in executing the first virtual
desktop instance;
receive a second request from the user of the
computing device to cause a change in the set of
resources, wherein the second request is initiated by a
selection by the user of an application process requiring
resources greater than at least one of the specified
amount of processing resources and the specified amount
of memory resources, and the change in the set of
resources comprises a modification of the at least one of
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the specified amount of processing resources and the
specified amount of memory resources;
process the one or more rules associated with the
user's access to variable resources, to determine whether
the request to cause the change in the set of resources
should be granted; and
responsive to a determination that the request
should be granted, cause the change in the set of
resources without interrupting access to the first virtual
desktop instance.
App. Br. 27 (Claims App'x).
Rejections and References
Claims 1-5, 8, 9, 13, and 15-17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as unpatentable over Podvratnik et al. (US 2013/0097601 Al; Apr. 18,
2013), Thomas (WO 2013/006157 Al; Jan. 10, 2013), and Nishihara et al.
(US 2012/0324469 Al; Dec. 20, 2012). Final Act. 3-8.
Claims 11 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Podvratnik, Thomas, Nishihara, and Das et al.
(US 2013/0073703 Al; Mar. 21, 2013). Final Act. 9.
Claims 18-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable
over Podvratnik, Thomas, Nishihara, and Katiyar et al. (US 2012/0260248
Al; Oct. 11, 2012). Final Act. 10.
ANALYSIS
In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner specifically relies on Nishihara for
teaching the disputed limitation's wherein clause ("wherein the second
request is initiated by a selection by the user of an application process
requiring resources greater than at least one of the specified amount of
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processing resources and the specified amount of memory resources"). See
Final Act. 5 ( citing Nishihara ,r,r 81, 90).
Appellants argue the Examiner errs in finding Nishihara teaches the
disputed limitation's wherein clause. See App. Br. 11-13. Specifically,
Appellants contend the Examiner errs because:
the disclosure of Nishihara only permits a user to directly
request a change in an allocation parameter associated with an
application, such that the request is independent of the
application processes. An "increase/ decrease request" as
described in Nishihara does not "require" greater processing
resources, but simply changes how much of the total resources
each software program is permitted to utilize.
Id. at 13 ( citing Nishihara ,r,r 90-95).
Appellants' argument is unpersuasive. Nishihara discloses "a user
interface that is able to receive an increase/decrease request for each
application. This user interface is to input, for each of the applications, the
increase/decrease request indicating whether the user desires to increase or
decrease the amount of resources and the increase/decrease amount."
Nishihara ,r 90. Further, Appellants contend Nishihara's user-initiated
request for increased resources for an application does not teach or suggest
the disputed wherein clause because "the application processes contemplated
by Nishihara cannot 'require' greater processing resources" because "[a]ny
determination to increase resource allocation is [] based on a user's desire to
make an application process operate more quickly or efficiently while it is
already executing at a lower level of resource allocation." Reply Br. 4; see
also id. at 2-3.
Appellants' argument construes both the disputed wherein clause and
the disclosure of Nishihara too narrowly. The wherein clause recites
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"selection by the user of an application process requiring [greater]
resources." As discussed supra, Nishihara plainly discloses a user interface
for requesting greater resources for a selected application. Ordinarily skilled
artisans would have understood that a primary reason to request increased
resource allocation is because an application requires greater resources. See
Ans. 7 ("The user's request is indicative of, and/or is a plain example of, the
application requiring greater resources."). Thus, we agree with the
Examiner that this interface teaches or suggests selecting an application "in
order to input the increase/decrease request for that particular application,"
as required by the disputed wherein clause. Ans. 6. Further, as the
Examiner observes, and we further agree, the requirements of claim 1 and
the disputed limitation "do not preclude Nishihara' s user-based
determination that the application requires greater resources." Ans. 7.
Appellants also argue the Examiner errs because "[ o ]ne skilled in the
art could not combine the teachings of Podvratnik, Thomas, and Nishihara to
result in the system of Claim 1." App. Br. 14. Specifically, Appellants
contend there would have been no motivation to combine Nishihara with
Podvratnik and Thomas, because Nishihara "discloses no applicability
related to virtual desktop hosting, virtual machine functionality, or any other
type of computing application involving more than a single device." Id.
(citing Nishihara Abstract, ,r,r 1, 5, 12, 14, 42, 86, 129).
Although the teachings of Nishihara could possibly be
combined with the teachings of Podvratnik and Thomas, a
person of ordinary skill in the art would not look to the
teachings of Nishihara because they are directed to management
of limited resources within a single computing device, while
Podvratnik and Thomas pertain to the management of
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computing devices and virtual machine placement in distributed
network computing environments.
Reply Br. 5.
Appellants' argument is unpersuasive. Nishihara is at least reasonably
pertinent to the problem of allocating more resources to an application with
which the inventor is involved. See In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320, 1325 (Fed.
Cir. 2004); In re ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., 496 F.3d 1374, 1379-80
(Fed. Cir. 2007). Further, "[t]he test for obviousness is not whether the
features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the
structure of the primary reference. . . . Rather, the test is what the combined
teachings of those references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill
in the art." In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,425 (CCPA 1981) (citations
omitted); see also EWP Corp. v. Reliance Universal Inc., 755 F.2d 898, 907
(Fed. Cir. 1985) ("A reference must be considered for everything it teaches
by way of technology and is not limited to the particular invention it is
describing and attempting to protect."). On the record before us, see Final
Act. 5 and Ans. 8-9, the Examiner articulates reasoning with sufficient
rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness. In re
Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (cited with approval in KSR Int'!
Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398,419 (2007)).
Accordingly, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claim 1. In
doing so, we adopt the findings and reasons of the Examiner. We also,
therefore, sustain the rejections of claims 2-5, 8, 9, 11-13, 15, 16, and 18-
20, for which Appellants offer no arguments substantively separate from
claim 1. See App. Br. 15-25.
Appellants further argue the Examiner errs in rejecting claim 17.
App. Br. 25. Specifically, Appellants contend the Examiner errs in finding
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Thomas teaches the requirement to "notify an administrator associated with
a user account of the user," as recited. Id. (arguing that "Thomas is limited
to sending notifications to the management system and the client" but that
"[ n ]othing in Thomas teaches or suggests sending a notification to an
administrator associated with the user's account"). This argument is
unpersuasive. "A reference must be considered for everything that it
teaches, not simply the described invention or a preferred embodiment." In
re Applied Materials, Inc., 692 F.3d 1289, 1298 (Fed. Cir. 2012). Ordinarily
skilled artisans would have understood that, in the context of Thomas' s
disclosure of a system for managing computing resources, in which the
client is a user, a notification to a management system and the client teaches
or suggests "notify[ing] an administrator associated with a user account of
the user," as recited in the claim. Ans. 10 (citing Thomas ,r 29).
Accordingly, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claim 17.
DECISION
We affirm the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 1-5, 8, 9, 11-13,
and 15-20.
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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