Ex Parte XIEDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 16, 201611876225 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 16, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 111876,225 10/22/2007 11280 7590 06/20/2016 Lee & Hayes , pllc 601 West Riverside Ave., Suite 1400 Spokane, WA 99201 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Tao XIE 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. MP1405 /MV1-0036US 5812 EXAMINER SHANMUGASUNDARAM, KANNAN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2158 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/20/2016 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): lhpto@leehayes.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte TAO XIE Appeal2014-008380 Application 11/876,225 Technology Center 2100 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, CARLA M. KRIVAK, and JEFFREY A. STEPHENS, Administrative Patent Judges. NAPPI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner's Final Rejection of claims 1-9, 12, and 14--18, which constitute all the claims pending in this application. App. Br. 12-13. Claims 10, 11, 13, and 19 have been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). We reverse. INVENTION The invention is directed to combined journaling and non-journaling Appeal2014-008380 Application 11/87 6,225 file systems for data storage. See Title and Abstract of Appellant's Specification. REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and is reproduced below. 1. A method for storing data, the method comprising: storing data on a first storage media of a device, the data being stored in accordance with a non-journaling file system; storing journal information on a second storage media of the device, wherein the second storage media is physically separate from the first storage media, and the journal information (i) comprises a recording of changes made to the data stored on the first storage media in accordance with the non-journaling file system and meta data representing changes to the file system, and (ii) is distinct from the non-journaling file system; assigning a virtual memory address that relates a physical memory address of the second storage media with a physical memory address of the first storage media such that both the first storage media and the second storage media appear to a processor to be located on a same physical computer-readable storage media; and in response to an interruption, providing a system-level journaling file system functionality for the first device by: combining the journal information and the non- journaling file system based upon the virtual memory address so that the recording of the changes made to the data stored on the first storage media in accordance with the non-journaling file system is usable to restore the non-journaling file system to a known good state that the non-journaling file system was in prior to the interruption. REFERENCES AND REJECTIONS AT ISSUE The Examiner has rejected claims 1---6, 8, 9, 12, 15, and 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Ram et al. (US 2005/0086241 Al; 2 Appeal2014-008380 Application 11/87 6,225 published Apr. 21, 2005) ("Ram"), Martin et al. (US 2003/0135703 Al; published July 17, 2003) ("Martin"), and Talagala et al. (US 2002/0161972 Al; published Oct. 31, 2002) ("Talagala"). Final Action 2-10. 1 The Examiner has rejected claims 7 and 14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Ram, Martin, Talagala, and Beenau et al. (US 2005/0004921 Al; published Jan. 6, 2005) ("Beenau"). Final Action 10-12. The Examiner has rejected claim 16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Ram, Martin, Talagala, and Elcock et al. (US 2005/0160308 Al; published July 21, 2005) ("Elcock"). Final Action 12-13. The Examiner has rejected claim 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Ram, Martin, Talagala, and Chen (US 2005/0207726 Al; published Sept. 22, 2005). Final Action 13. ISSUE Appellant presents several arguments on pages 5-8 of the Appeal Brief and pages 2-8 of the Reply Brief, directed to the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1. The issue raised by these arguments is: Did the Examiner err in finding Martin and Talagala teach assigning a virtual memory address that relates a physical memory address of a second storage media with a physical memory address of a first storage media, as required by claim 1? 1 Throughout this opinion we refer to the Appeal Brief dated Feb. 25, 2014, the Reply Brief dated Aug. 1, 2014, the Final Action mailed Dec. 11, 2013, and the Examiner's Answer mailed June 4, 2014. 3 Appeal2014-008380 Application 11/87 6,225 Appellant's arguments directed to independent claim 8 and dependent claims 2-7, 9, 12, and 14--18 present the same issues as discussed with respect to claim 1. App. Br. 8-9. ANALYSIS We have reviewed Appellant's arguments in the Briefs, the Examiner's rejection, and the Examiner's response to Appellant's arguments. Appellant's arguments have persuaded us of error in the Examiner's rejection of claims 1-9, 12, and 14--18. The Examiner finds Martin's virtual recovery mapping object (VRMO) is a virtual memory address that relates a physical memory address of a second storage media with a physical memory address of a first storage media as required in claim 1. Ans. 3-5, 7 (citing Martin, Fig. 5, logical address 500, physical address 504; i-fi-f 12, 46, 52, 55). Appellant argues although Martin maps two addresses, Martin "merely discloses mapping a logical address to a physical address ... [and] a logical address is different from a physical address"; thus, Martin does not relate two physical addresses as required in claim 1. App. Br. 6; Reply Br. 3 and 7. We agree with Appellant that Martin does not relate two different physical addresses to each other; rather, Martin relates a logical address to a single physical address found either in a journal or in a MIM (mirror in the middle). See Martin, Fig. 5, i-fi-152, 55; Reply Br. 6-8. The Examiner also finds Talagala's virtual block address relates physical memory addresses of different storage media as required in claim 1. Ans. 5 (citing Talagala i-f 12). We do not agree. Talagala discloses matching a virtual block address to a physical block address of a storage device; 4 Appeal2014-008380 Application 11/87 6,225 however, the cited portions of Talagala do not disclose the virtual block address relates multiple physical addresses with multiple storage devices, as claimed. App. Br. 6-7 (citing Talagala i-f 12). Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1 and dependent claims 2-6 and 17. Similarly, rejected independent claim 8 recites an assigned virtual memory address that relates a physical memory address of a second memory with a physical memory address of a first memory. App. Br. 8. For the same reasons as claim 1, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 8 and dependent claims 9, 12, and 15. The Examiner has not found that the additional references used in rejecting claims 7, 14, 16, and 18 make up for the above-noted deficiency in the rejection of claims 1 and 8. Accordingly, we will not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claims 7, 14, 16, and 18 for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to claims 1 and 8. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-9, 12, and 14--18 is reversed. REVERSED 5 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation