Ex Parte AkersDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 15, 201713027288 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 15, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office 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. 13/027,288 02/15/2011 David R. Akers 82580985 6561 56436 7590 Hewlett Packard Enterprise 3404 E. Harmony Road Mail Stop 79 Fort Collins, CO 80528 EXAMINER RAHMAN, SM AZIZUR ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2458 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/17/2017 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): hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com chris. mania @ hpe. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte DAVID R. AKERS Appeal 2015-008089 Application 13/027,2881 Technology Center 2400 Before, JEFFREY S. SMITH, IRVIN E. BRANCH, and NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection of claims 1, 2, and 4—15. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 Appellant identifies Hewlett-Packard Company and Hewlett-Packard Development Company as the real party in interest. App. Br. 3. Appeal 2015-008089 Application 13/027,288 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The Invention Appellant’s invention relates to network application availability monitoring (NAAM) used to confirm the availability of network applications and to identify periods in which a network application is unavailable. Spec. 12. NAAM may involve probing of a host site by a test site where the test site may repeatedly issue a probe sequence corresponding to a series of actions a client, e.g., customer, might take. NAAM result data can include datapoints, each of which identifies the network application under test (NAUT), the time the probe was issued, and the outcome (success versus failure) of the probe. Spec. 13. NAAM result data can be collected at multiple test sites to help distinguish test-site failures from network- application service failures. Spec. 14. Exemplary independent claim 1 is reproduced below. 1. A computer-implemented process comprising: transmitting, by test sites, probes to a network application under test (NAUT); generating, by said test sites, raw network-application availability monitoring (NAAM) data, said NAAM data including NAAM datapoints representing probe results of respective ones of said probes, each of said NAAM datapoints specifying a network application under test (NAUT), a respective test site that transmitted the respective probe, a time corresponding to a respective probe, and an indication whether the respective probe resulted in a success or a failure; transferring said NAAM datapoints from said test sites to a NAAM analyzer; filtering, by said NAAM analyzer, said NAAM data to remove false-indication NAAM datapoints to yield filtered NAAM data including some of said NAAM datapoints but not including said false-indication NAAM datapoints, said false- 2 Appeal 2015-008089 Application 13/027,288 indication NAAM datapoints including a NAAM datapoint determined to represent a test-site failure of one of said test sites rather than a failure of said NAUT; and detecting at least one service failure of said NAUT using said filtered NAAM data. References and Rejection Claims 1,2, and 4—15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Friedman (US 6,865,692 B2, iss. Mar. 8, 2005) and Gorin (US 2004/0006447 Al, publ. Jan. 8, 2004). Final Act. 3. ANALYSIS Claim 1 recites “filtering . . . said NAAM data to remove false- indication NAAM datapoints . . . said false-indication NAAM datapoints including a NAAM datapoint determined to represent a test-site failure of one of said test sites rather than a failure of said NAUT.” The Examiner relies on Gorin’s filter engine as teaching or suggesting this disputed limitation. Specifically, the Examiner finds Gorin “teaches the filter engine filters the raw test data set and may remove data corresponding to failures, missing data or other data.” Ans. 10 (citing Gorin 138). The Examiner further finds “[t]he filter engine may also analyze the data and generate a filtered set of test data without anomalies.” Ans. 10 (citing Gorin | 31). Appellant argues2 that although “Gorin indicates that failures of the device-under-test can be filtered from the data analyzed for the purpose of enhancing the test process” these failures of the device-under-test are not 2 Appellant presents additional arguments in their Appeal Brief. However, because the identified argument is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the merits of these additional arguments. 3 Appeal 2015-008089 Application 13/027,288 due to test site failures. App. Br. 14. “In other words, Gorin discloses that true positives are removed and does not teach that false positives are removed, as required by the Claim 1 filtering limitation.” Id. We are persuaded of Examiner error. While it is true that Gorin filters the test data by removing anomalies, outliers, and failures (see Gorin H 31, 38) the Examiner does not establish that any of these categories of data are “false-indication NAAM datapoints” as recited by claim 1. In particular, we agree with the Appellant that the data filtered by Gorin’s filter engine relates to actual failures of the device under test, rather than false indications caused by test site failures. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1. We also do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 6 and 11 which include limitations of commensurate scope. Finally, for the same reasons, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of the pending dependent claims. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 2, and 4—15 is reversed. REVERSED 4 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation