Ex Parte Barsness et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 28, 2014

12145181 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 28, 2014)

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. 12/145,181 06/24/2008 Eric L. Barsness ROC920080397US1 2863 46797 7590 08/28/2014 IBM CORPORATION, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW DEPT 917, BLDG. 006-1 3605 HIGHWAY 52 NORTH ROCHESTER, MN 55901-7829 EXAMINER GOLDBERG, ANDREW C ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2491 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/28/2014 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 APPEALS BOARD ____________ Ex parte ERIC L. BARSNESS, DAVID L. DARRINGTON, AMANDA E. PETERS, and JOHN M. SANTOSUOSSO ____________ Appeal 2012-001784 Application 12/145,1811 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, BIBHU R. MOHANTY, and NINA L. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judges. FISCHETTI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 124. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b) (2002). 1 The real party in interest, identified by Appellants, is International Business Machines Corporation. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2012-001784 Application 12/145,181 2 SUMMARY OF DECISION We REVERSE. THE INVENTION Appellants’ claims are drawn to “a method for process[ing] migration based on service availability in a multimode environment.” Spec. para.1. Claim 1 is representative: 1. A method for migrating an executing instance of an application program among a plurality of compute nodes of a parallel computing system having the plurality of compute nodes, comprising: receiving an application program to execute on at least a first compute node, of the plurality; initiating an executing instance of the application program on the first compute node; executing a sequence of one or more statements of the application program to access a service available from at least some compute nodes the parallel computing system; and upon determining the executing instance has thrown an exception due to the service being unavailable from the first compute node: identifying at least a second compute node, of the plurality of compute nodes, from which the service is available, migrating the executing instance of the application program to the second compute node, and resuming execution of the executing instance of the application program by resuming execution of the sequence of one or more statements. THE REJECTIONS and REFERENCES The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability: Appeal 2012-001784 Application 12/145,181 3 Roscoe US 7,200,865 B1 Apr. 3, 2007 Jairath US 7,444, 536 B1 Oct. 28, 2008 The following rejections are before us for review. Claims 1, 2, 510, 1318, and 2124 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Jairath. Claims 3, 11, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jairath. Claims 4, 12, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jairath in view of Roscoe. ANALYSIS Each of independent claims 1, 9, and 17 requires, in one form or another, (emphasis added): executing a sequence of one or more statements of the application program to access a service available from at least some compute nodes the parallel computing system; and upon determining the executing instance has thrown an exception due to the service being unavailable from the first compute node: . . . . migrating the executing instance of the application program to the second compute node . . . . The Examiner found with respect to this claim requirement that, “Jairath teaches in col. 9, lines 1-2, ‘In FIG. 1A, client 104 is accessing an object (e.g., an EJB) in server instance 102A of cluster 100.’” Answer 5. Appeal 2012-001784 Application 12/145,181 4 The full context of the cited portion of Jairath at column 9, which discloses a failover for a Remote Method Invocation (“RMI”) Internet Inter-Object Request Broker (“ORB”) Protocol (“IIOP”) client accessing an application server, is as follows: In FIG. lA, client 104 is accessing an object (e.g., an EJB) in server instance 102A of cluster 100. Cluster 100 also includes server instances 102B and 102C, which each include[s] a replica of the same object. To access the object (not shown), server instance 102A may provide a cluster-aware remote reference (not shown) to the object to client 104. A cluster-aware remote reference includes endpoint information for all of the application server instances 102 in the cluster 100, as indicated by the dotted lines. Jairath, col. 9, ll. 1–9. Appellants argue that: [I]nvoking an RMI-IIOP request is not migrating an “executing instance of an application program,” as claimed or otherwise. Instead, an RMI-IIOP request is a message that asks a remote application program to invoke a method of an object on a remote system. See, Jairath, 1:18-44. The passage cited by the Examiner merely points out that the request may include information used to identify the particular object instance (and method) that a calling program desires to be invoked; namely, an “application name, the EJB jar name, and the EJB name.” Plainly however, sending a request to an alternate endpoint to invoke a method on an object on the alternate endpoint in no way teaches, shows, or even suggests migrating an actual running instance of an application program from one compute node to another. Instead, it describes a process where a client can learn an alternative endpoint to specify in an RMI request. When the request is invoked parameters are marshaled and passed to the alternate endpoint, which invokes the method specified in the request and provides a response. Appeal Br. 14. Appeal 2012-001784 Application 12/145,181 5 We agree with Appellants. We find that the term “migrate” means to move from one place to another.2 In this circumstance, the claim requires “migrating the executing instance of the application program to the second compute node,” as recited in claims 1, 9, and 17. Here, Jairath, as set forth supra, discloses replicas of the same object at plural server instances that can be invoked as alternatives to a failover in the event of an exception at the first node. Thus, in Jairath, there is no movement of the executing instance of the application program to a second compute node from a first node, as required by the claims, because the client application invokes the methodology of the remote object at which the process is moved. Accordingly, we do not sustain the anticipation rejection of independent claims 1, 9, and 17 nor the dependent claims 2, 58, 10, 1316, 18, and 2124, which depend therefrom. “A claim is anticipated only if each and every element as set forth in the claim is found, either expressly or inherently described, in a single prior art reference.” Verdegaal Bros. v. Union Oil Co., 814 F.2d 628, 631 (Fed. Cir. 1987) (citations omitted). We also do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 3, 4, 11, 12, 19, and 20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because they depend on independent claims which have been reversed. 2 The ordinary and customary definition of the term migrate as defined by Merriam Webster’s Dictionary at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/migrate (last visited on August 19, 2014). Appeal 2012-001784 Application 12/145,181 6 DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 124 is reversed. REVERSED llw