Ex Parte Vogel

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 19, 2013

11516232 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 19, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
11/516,232 09/05/2006 Danny Vogel LSI.178US01 (06-0654) 9314
27683 7590 11/20/2013
HAYNES AND BOONE, LLP
IP Section
2323 Victory Avenue
Suite 700
Dallas, TX 75219
EXAMINER
PYZOCHA, MICHAEL J
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2437
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/20/2013 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte DANNY VOGEL
____________

Appeal 2011-005031
Application 11/516,232
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, JASON V. MORGAN, and
JUSTIN BUSCH, Administrative Patent Judges.

RUGGIERO, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1-20, which are all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellant and the Examiner,
we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed Aug. 24, 2010) and the Answer (mailed
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Application 11/516,232

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Oct. 28, 2010) for the respective details. We have considered in this
decision only those arguments Appellant actually raised in the Brief. Any
other arguments which Appellant could have made but chose not to make in
the Brief are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).

Appellant’s Invention
Appellant’s invention relates to encrypting and decrypting
information stored in a plurality of disk drives within a large storage system
utilizing encryption and decryption processes implemented within storage
controllers in the storage system. If the number of drives becomes too large
and creates a bottleneck, some drives may be associated with a previously
installed, less burdensome controller, or some drives may be associated with
a new controller with data encryption installed within the system. See
generally Abstract and Spec. ¶ [0033].

Claim 1 is illustrative of the claimed invention and reads as follows:

1. A security-enabled storage apparatus comprising:
a first encryption-enable controller of a plurality of encryption-
enable controllers, the first encryption-enable controller
to associate with a plurality of disk drives;
a second encryption-enable controller of said plurality of
encryption-enable controllers, the second encryption-
enable controller to associate with a subset of said
plurality of disk drives based on the number of said
plurality of disk drives becoming too large;
said plurality of encryption-enabled controllers, each
comprising:
a first interface on which data and control information is
received from a host system;
a system interface processor sub-system, coupled to
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receive control information from the first interface,
that processes the control information to determine
a storage location within said plurality of disk
drives for the data;
an encryption block module, coupled to receive the data
from the first interface and coupled to the system
interface processor sub-system, that generates a
plurality of security keys and encrypts the data
using at least one of the security keys;
a storage device, coupled to the encryption block module,
that stores the security keys and the storage
location; and
a plurality of drive controller modules, coupled to the
system interface processor sub-system, the
encryption block module, and the at least one disk
drive, that transmits at least some of the control
information and encrypted data to said plurality of
disk drives for storage.

The Examiner’s Rejection
The Examiner’s Answer cites the following prior art references:
Klein US 6,857,076 B1 Feb. 15, 2005
Marks US 2005/0154826 A1 July 14, 2005
Lee US 7,457,897 B1 Nov. 25, 2008
(filed Mar. 17, 2004)

IEEE P1619 D5 (hereinafter “IEEE”), “Draft Standard Architecture for
Encrypted Shared Storage Media,” 1-27 (March 2006).

Claims 1-3, 5-16, and 18-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Klein in view of IEEE and Marks.
Claims 4 and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Klein in view of IEEE, Marks, and Lee.

Appeal 2011-005031
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ANALYSIS
Claims 1-3, 5-16, and 18-20
Appellant argues, with respect to independent claims 1, 10, and 16,
that Marks does not overcome the deficiency of Klein and IEEE in teaching
or suggesting the assignment of a second controller to a subset of a plurality
of disk drives “based on the number of said plurality of disk drives
becoming too large” as claimed. According to Appellant, Marks discloses a
storage drive division that is based on whether a drive slot identification
number exceeds a stored value, not whether the total number of drives
served by a particular controller becomes too large. Br. 8-9.
We find Appellant’s arguments unpersuasive of any error in the
Examiner’s stated position. Initially, we note that there is no claimed
requirement that particular drives are assigned to particular controllers but,
instead, only that a second controller will be associated with a subset of
drives if the number of drives is too large. We agree with the Examiner that
this condition is satisfied in Marks when the number of drives exceeds a
prestored number, regardless of the order in which drives are added to the
system.
The Examiner directs attention to the exemplary situation in Marks in
which drives are sequentially added to drive slots 1 through 4 and the
number 4 is stored in memory. Ans. 8 (citing Marks, ¶ [0017]). As
explained by the Examiner, once a fifth drive is added into drive slot 5, the
number of drives will exceed the prestored value of 4 and the fifth drive, i.e.,
a subset of the plurality of drives, will be assigned to the second controller.
It is noteworthy that, even in Appellant’s hypothetical scenario (Br. 9) in
which all drive slots are not populated, a subset of drives in Marks will be
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Application 11/516,232

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assigned to a second controller when the total number of drives (6, in
Appellant’s example) exceeds the prestored value of 4.
We also find unpersuasive Appellant’s contention that modifying
Marks to assign controllers based on the total number of drives would be
unsatisfactory for its intended purpose of assigning a particular drive to a
particular domain. Br. 9-10. We find no modification of Marks is necessary
to satisfy the claimed drive subset associating feature since, as pointed out
by the Examiner (Ans. 9), Marks discloses that a subset of drives is assigned
to controllers based on the number of drives becoming too large, i.e.,
exceeding a prestored value as discussed supra.
In view of the above discussion, we sustain the Examiner’s
obviousness rejection of independent claims 1, 10, and 16, as well as the
rejection of dependent claims 2, 3, 5-9, 11-15, and 18-20 not separately
argued by Appellant.

Claims 4 and 17
We also sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of dependent
claims 4 and 17 in which Lee was applied to the Klein/IEEE/Marks
combination to address the PCI controller card feature of the rejected claims.
Appellant has provided no separate arguments for the patentability of these
claims but instead relies on arguments asserted with respect to independent
claims 1, 10, and 16, which arguments we found unpersuasive as previously
discussed.

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Application 11/516,232

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CONCLUSION OF LAW
Based on the analysis above, we conclude that the Examiner did not
err in rejecting claims 1-20 for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-20 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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).

AFFIRMED

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