Ex Parte Petrescu et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 3, 2015

11675556 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 3, 2015)

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. 11/675,556 02/15/2007 MIHAI G. PETRESCU HAR59 026 6507 77617 7590 03/03/2015 Duane Morris LLP (Harris Corp.) IP Department 505 9th Street N.W. Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20004-2166 EXAMINER OTTO, ALAN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2132 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/03/2015 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 MIHAI G. PETRESCU, TODD S. ROTH, HILTON S. CREVE, and TUNG M. TRAN ____________________ Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, JOHN A. EVANS, and JOHN F. HORVATH, Administrative Patent Judges. HORVATH, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek review of the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–24 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE, and enter NEW GROUNDS OF REJECTION pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) (2011). SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The invention is directed to a method for storing data in a data storage system. Abstract. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method for storing data in a data storage system, the method comprising the steps of: providing a data storage system having a plurality of hard disk drive units, wherein each of said hard disk drive units comprises a plurality of hard disk storage devices; forming a first logical volume for storing data, wherein said first logical volume comprises a first set of said hard disk storage devices, said first set of hard disk storage devices including at least two hard disk storage devices from each of said hard disk drive units; forming a second logical volume for storing data, wherein said second logical volume comprises a second set of said hard disk storage devices, said second set of hard disk storage devices including at least two hard disk storage devices from each of said hard disk drive units; storing a first data set in said first logical volume, wherein said first data set is striped across the first logical volume; and storing a second data set in said second logical volume, wherein said second data set is striped across the second logical Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 3 volume, and, wherein said first and second set of hard disk storage devices are mutually exclusive. REFERENCES AND REJECTIONS Bruning US 7,000,069 B2 Feb. 14, 2006 Ulrich US 2002/0124137 A1 Sep. 5, 2002 Claims 1–4, 6, 7, 10–13, 15, 16, and 19–23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Bruning. Ans. 5. Claims 5, 8, 9, 14, 17, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning. Ans. 14. Claim 24 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning and Ulrich. Ans. 15. ISSUES AND ANALYSIS The dispositive issue presented by Appellants’ arguments is as follows: Does Bruning disclose striping data across all of the disks in the mirror set M1-M2, when the members M1 and M2 of the mirror set M1-M2 form a RAID-1 mirror set? Claims 1–24 require data to be striped across a first logical volume that includes at least two hard disk storage devices from each of a plurality of hard disk drive units. Claims App’x. The Examiner finds Bruning discloses a first logical volume in the sixty disks that make up mirror sets M1 and M2. Ans. 5–6 (citing Bruning 4:26–36, Figs. 1A and 1B). That is, the Examiner finds Bruning discloses the first logical volume comprises 6 disk storage devices from each of the following: logical volumes PL1 and PL2 in primary local disk 24, RL1 and RL2 in redundant local disk 28, C1 Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 4 and C2 in clone disk 30, PR1 and PR2 in primary remote disk 32, and RR1 and RR2 in redundant remote disk 34. Id. at Figs. 1A, 1B, and 2. The Examiner finds Bruning discloses striping data across the first logical volume via controller 22, which “forms the mirror sets . . . and then stripes them so as to present them to the local host computer 20 as [a] very large volume.” Id. (citing Bruning 3:63–4:4, 4:26–36). Appellants argue the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1, 10, and 22 because “Bruning only discloses striping of a Raid Unit which, as described, is not across disk drive units but rather is block wise striping across disk storage devices.” App. Br. 7–8. Appellants further argue: [T]he Office relies upon primary local storage copy, redundant local storage copy, cloning storage copy, primary remote storage copy and redundant remote storage copy as the hard disk drive units. . . . The data stored on the disk drive units relied upon by the Office are not part of the same sequential data, rather they represent copies, parity bits etc.[,] which are not part of the data being striped. Data is not striped across the drives, but rather for each drive, data is striped across its storage devices. App. Br. 8. The Examiner finds Bruning discloses striping “redundant arrays of disks and present[ing] the striped arrays as a very large storage volume,” and this disclosure constitutes striping across a logical volume as required by the claims. Ans. 17 (citing Bruning 1:54–59, 2:23–27). We are persuaded by Appellants’ argument. Bruning discloses writing data D to the first logical volume M1-M2, which is a RAID-0 stripe set having members M1 and M2, by striping D across M1 and M2. Bruning 2:46–49, 2:63–66, and 4:29–33. That is, Bruning discloses cleaving D into two stripes (e.g., D1 and D2), and writing Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 5 stripe D1 to M1, and stripe D2 to M2. Bruning discloses that logical volume M1 is a RAID-1 mirror set, having logical volumes PL1, RL1, C1, PR1 and RR1 as members. Id. at 2:46–49, 3:3–4. Bruning discloses that when data is written to a RAID-1 mirror set, an identical copy of the data is written to each member of the mirror set. Id. at 2:66–3:2. Thus, when data stripe D1 is written to M1, an identical copy of D1 is written to each of the logical volumes PL1, RL1, C1, PR1, and RR1. Likewise, Bruning discloses mirror set M2 is also a RAID-1 mirror set, and therefore, when data stripe D2 is written to M2, an identical copy of D2 is written to logical volumes PL2, RL2, C2, PR2 and RR2. Thus, although Bruning teaches striping data D across M1 and M2 by writing a first data stripe D1 to M1 and a second data stripe D2 to M2, Bruning does not teach further striping D1 across the members of M1 (i.e., across logical volumes PL1, RL1, C1, PR1, and RR1 of M1), or further striping D2 across the members of M2 (i.e., across PL2, RL2, C2, PR2 and RR2). As noted supra, the Examiner finds Bruning discloses the first logical volume comprises six physical disk storage devices from each of the following: logical volumes PL1 and PL2 in primary local disk 24, RL1 and RL2 in redundant local disk 28, C1 and C2 in clone disk 30, PR1 and PR2 in primary remote disk 32, and RR1 and RR2 in redundant remote disk 34. Ans. 5–6. Because we do not find Bruning teaches striping data D across all of these disks, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 10, and 22. Moreover, because claims 2–9, 11–21, 23, and 24 depend from claims 1, 10, and 22, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejections of these claims for the same reasons. Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 6 NEW GROUND OF REJECTION WITHIN 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) Claims 1–23 are rejected on a new ground of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning. Claim 24 is rejected on a new ground of rejection as unpatentable over Bruning and Ulrich. We note that although Bruning discloses configuring logical volumes M1 through M11 as RAID-1 mirror sets, Bruning teaches “the invention is not limited to the use of any particular redundant array technology (e.g., RAID) and, consequently, is not limited to the use of any particular RAID levels (e.g., RAID-0, RAID-1).” Bruning 2:54–58. Thus, Bruning teaches or suggests that logical volumes M1 through M11 can be configured as RAID-0 sets whose members receive stripes of the data written to them. A person of skill in the art would be motivated to configure volumes M1 through M11 as RAID-0 sets to predictably increase the storage capacity of Bruning’s system by eliminating the storage of data copies. As further explained below, when Bruning is modified in this way, we find independent claims 1, 10, and 22 to be unpatentable over Bruning under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and reject the claims on that basis. Claims 1, 10, and 22 Claim 1 recites a method for storing data in a data storage system. Bruning teaches using “multiple RAID sets [that] are striped by a front-end controller connected to [a] back-end controller and presented to a host computer as a very large virtual storage volume.” Bruning, Abstract. Claim 1 further recites providing a data storage system having a plurality of hard disk drive units, each having a plurality of hard disk storage devices. Bruning teaches data storage system 10 is composed of primary local drive 24, redundant local drive 28, clone drive 30, primary remote Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 7 drive 32, and redundant remote drive 34. Bruning 4:4–17, Fig. 2. Each of these hard disk drive units includes a plurality of hard disk storage devices. Id. at Figs. 1A, 1B. For example, primary local drive 24 includes the hard disk storage devices 12 that make up RAID-5 logical volume PL1, and the hard disk storage devices 14 that make up RAID-5 logical volume PL11. Id. at 3:36–40, Fig. 1A. Claim 1 further recites forming first and second logical volumes for storing data, wherein said first and second logical volumes comprise first and second sets of said hard disk storage devices, including at least two hard disk storage devices from each of said hard disk drive units, wherein the first and second sets of hard disk storage devices are mutually exclusive. Bruning teaches forming a total of fifty five RAID-5 logical volumes (i.e., PL1-PL11, RL1-RL11, C1-C11, PR1-PR11, and RR1-RR11), where each of the logical volumes is made from six of the hard disk storage units in one of the following: the primary local drive 24, redundant local drive 28, clone drive 30, primary remote drive 32, and redundant remote drive 34. Id. at 3:3–45; Figs. 1A, 1B, and 2. For example, Bruning forms the RAID-5 volume PL1 from the six disk storage units 12 in primary local hard drive 24, and the RAID-5 volume PL11 from the six disk storage units 14 in primary local hard drive 24. Id. at 3:36–40. Bruning next teaches forming a total of eleven RAID-0 striped sets or logical volumes (i.e., M1–M11) 1 from 1 Bruning literally discloses forming the logical volumes M1-M11 as RAID- 1 mirror sets, Bruning 2:46–49, but suggests they can be formed as RAID-0 striped sets by teaching “the invention is not limited to the use of any particular redundant array technology (e.g., RAID) and, consequently, is not limited to the use of any particular RAID levels (e.g., RAID-0, RAID-1).” Bruning 2:54–58. Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 8 the fifty five RAID-5 logical volumes PL1-PL11, RL1-RL11, C1-C11, PR1- PR11, and RR1-RR11 as explained supra. Id. at 3:3–8, 2:54–58, Figs. 1A, 1B. For example, Bruning teaches forming logical volume M1 as a RAID-0 striped set having logical volumes PL1, RL1, C1, PR1, and RR1 as members. Id. Finally, Bruning teaches grouping the logical volumes M1 through M11 into between one and eleven RAID-0 sets or virtual volumes. Id. at 2:46–49, 4:26–36. Thus, as the Examiner found, Bruning teaches grouping logical volumes M1 and M2 into a first logical volume M1-M2, and grouping logical volumes M3 through M11 into a second logical volume M3-M11. See Ans. 5. Based on Bruning’s teachings, logical volume M1-M2 consists of twelve hard disk storage units from each of: logical volumes PL1 and PL2 in primary local drive 24, logical volumes RL1 and RL2 in redundant local drive 28, logical volumes C1 and C2 in clone drive 30, logical volumes PR1 and PR2 in primary remote drive 32, and logical volumes RR1 and RR2 in redundant remote drive 34. Bruning 3:3–45, Figs. 1A, 1B, and 2. These constitute all of the disk storage units in the first two rows of the disk storage unit arrays in the primary local drive 24, redundant local drive 28, cloning drive 30, primary remote drive 32, and redundant remote drive 34. Id. at Figs. 1A and 1B. Similarly, logical volume M3-M11 consists of fifty four hard disk storage units from each of the following: logical volumes PL3- PL11 in primary local drive 24, logical volumes RL3- RL11 in redundant local drive 28, logical volumes C3-C11 in clone drive 30, logical volumes PR3-PR11 in primary remote drive 32, and logical volumes RR3-RR11 in redundant remote drive 34. Id. at 3:3–45, Figs. 1A, 1B, and 2. These constitute all of the disk storage units in rows 3–11 of the disk storage unit Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 9 arrays in the primary local drive 24, redundant local drive 28, cloning drive 30, primary remote drive 32, and redundant remote drive 34. Id. at Figs. 1A and 1B. Thus, Bruning’s first (M1-M2) and second (M3-M11) logical volumes are composed of first and second sets of hard disk storage devices, including at least two hard disk storage devices from each of said hard disk drive units, wherein the first and second sets of hard disk storage devices are mutually exclusive as required by claim 1. Finally, claim 1 recites storing first and second data sets in the first and second logical volumes by respectively striping the first and second data sets across the first and second logical volumes. When Bruning’s logical volumes M1 and M2 are configured as RAID-0 sets (e.g., M1 is a RAID-0 set of PL1, RL1, C1, PR1, and RR1), and the first logical volume is formed as a RAID-0 set of M1 and M2, data D is written to the first logical volume as follows. First, data D is cleaved into two data stripes (e.g., D1 and D2), which are respectively written to the members M1 and M2 of the RAID-0 striped set M1-M2 (i.e., the first logical volume). Bruning 2:46–49, 2:63– 66, and 4:29–33. That is, data stripe D1 (a portion of D) is written to M1 and data stripe D2 (a different portion of D) is written to M2. Next, because logical volume M1 is itself a RAID-0 set having six members (i.e., PL1, RL1, C1, PR1, and RR1), data stripe D1 is further cleaved into six data stripes (e.g., D1A, D1B, D1C, D1D, and D1E) that are respectively written to those members. Bruning 2:54–58, 2:63–66. Thus, for example, data stripe D1A is written to PL1, data stripe D1B is written to RL1, and so forth. Likewise, because logical volume M2 is a RAID-0 set having six members (i.e., PL2, RL2, C2, PR2 and RR2), data stripe D2 is further cleaved into six data stripes (e.g., D2A, D2B, D2C, D2D, and D2E) Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 10 that are respectively written to those members. Note that a different portion or stripe of the data D written to the first logical volume M1-M2 is written to each of the RAID-5 logical volumes P1, P2, RL1, RL2, C1, C2, PR1, PR2, RR1, and RR2. For example, stripe D1A is written to PL1, while stripe D2C is written to C2. Next, each of the RAID-5 logical volumes cleaves the data stripe written to it into even smaller unique data stripes, and writes these data stripes together with parity information to the six physical data storage devices that form the RAID-5 volume. For example, volume PL1 is a RAID-5 set consisting of the six hard disk storage units 12 shown in the first row of the primary local disk drive 24. Bruning 3:36–38, Figs. 1A and 2. Thus, the data stripe D1A written to volume PL1 is cleaved into smaller data stripes, and these data stripes and parity information are written to the six disk storage units 12 in the first row of primary local disk drive 24. Id. Similarly, the data stripe D2C written to volume C2 is cleaved into smaller data stripes, and these data stripes and parity information are written to the six disk storage units shown in the second row of the clone disk drive 30. Id. at Figs. 1A, 2. Note that each of the logical volumes P1, P2, RL1, RL2, C1, C2, PR1, PR2, RR1, and RR2 cleave and write a unique slice of the data D that was written to the first logical volume M1-M2 to the physical storage disks that make up the first logical volume. Thus, the data D written to the first logical volume M1-M2 is striped across all of the physical storage disks that comprise the logical volume M1-M2. The same analysis applies to the data written to the second logical volume M3-M11, so that data written to the second logical volume is striped across all of the physical storage disks that Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 11 comprise the second logical volume. Thus, Bruning teaches storing first and second data sets in the first and second logical volumes, by respectively striping the first and second datasets across the first and second logical volumes and all of the disk storage devices that comprise the first and second logical volumes. Because Bruning teaches or suggests each and every limitation of claim 1 as explained supra, we conclude claim 1 would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, and, therefore, reject claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning. Claim 10 differs from claim 1 in that it recites a data storage system, whereas claim 1 recites a method for storing data using such a system. Claims App’x. Consequently, claim 10 recites a controller and first and second writing circuits for performing the steps recited in claim 1. Id. However, Bruning teaches a data storage system that includes a front-end controller 22 that forms and combines logical volumes M1-M2 and M3-M11 into first and second logical volumes as explained supra, and writes data to these logical volumes by striping the data across the volumes. Bruning 3:63–4:3, 4:26–36. Consequently, we conclude claim 10 would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, and, therefore, reject claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning for substantially the same reasons as discussed supra regarding claim 1. Claim 22 differs from claim 1 in several ways. First, its preamble purports to limit the field of use to a method for increasing the bandwidth of a video storage system. Setting aside the question of whether this in fact Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 12 distinguishes claim 22 from claim 1, we find a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of Appellants’ invention would have found it obvious to use Bruning’s system in any field requiring the rapid storage and retrieval of large amounts of data, such as in a video storage system, because the results would have been predictable in any such field. Next, claim 22 recites the hard disk drive units that make up the first and second volumes have respective bandwidths. But all hard disk drive units have bandwidths that constrain their ability to store and retrieve data, including those shown in Bruning. In other words, having a data bandwidth is an intrinsic or inherent property of any hard disk drive unit, including Bruning’s. Next, claim 22 requires the data written to the logical volumes to be striped across the hard drive units that make up the volumes. We explained supra, how Bruning teaches striping data written to the first and second logical volumes across all the hard drive units that make up the logical volumes. Lastly, claim 22 requires data to be concurrently retrieved from the plurality of disk drive units. As shown in Figures 1A, 1B, and 2, Bruning’s system is highly parallel. We find a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of Appellants’ invention would have found it obvious to retrieve data in parallel (i.e., concurrently) from each of the disk drive units in Bruning’s highly parallel system. Such a person would have recognized that doing so would have predictably increased the system’s information retrieval bandwidth. Consequently, we conclude claim 22 would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, and, therefore, reject claim 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning for substantially the same reasons as discussed supra regarding claim 1. Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 13 Claims 2–9, 11–21, 23, and 24 The Examiner has made detailed additional findings citing to Bruning, Ulrich, and the knowledge available to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of Appellants’ invention to explain why claims 2–9, 11–21, 23, and 24 are not patentable. Ans. 7–16. Except to the extent discussed above with regard to the independent claims from which claims 2–9, 11–21, 23, and 24 depend, we agree with and adopt these findings as our own. We, therefore, conclude claims 2–9, 11–21, and 23 would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, and reject dependent claims 2–9, 11–21, and 23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning for the substantially the same reasons as independent claims 1, 10, and 22 explained supra, together with the reasons stated in the Examiner’s Answer specific to these claims. Id. at 7–15. We similarly conclude claim 24 would have been obvious to person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention, and reject dependent claim 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning for the substantially the same reasons as independent claim 22 explained supra, together with the reasons stated in the Examiner’s Answer specific to this claims. Id. at 15–16. Because our rejections of claims 2–9, 11–21, 23, and 24 rely on different facts and rationales than the Examiner’s rejection, we designate them new grounds of rejection. DECISION For the reasons noted above, we reverse the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–24. Appeal 2012-010241 Application 11/675,556 14 Pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b), we enter new grounds of rejection, rejecting claims 1–23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning, and claim 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bruning and Ulrich. This decision contains new grounds of rejection pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b). Section 41.50(b) provides that “[a] new ground of rejection pursuant to this paragraph shall not be considered final for judicial review.” Rather, WITHIN TWO MONTHS FROM THE DATE OF THE DECISION, Appellants must exercise one of the following two options with respect to the new ground of rejection to avoid termination of the appeal as to the newly rejected claims: (1) Reopen prosecution. Submit an appropriate amendment of the claims so rejected or new evidence relating to the claims so rejected, or both, and have the matter reconsidered by the examiner, in which event the proceeding will be remanded to the examiner. . . . (2) Request rehearing. Request that the proceeding be reheard under § 41.52 by the Board upon the same record. . . . 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) (2009). REVERSED 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) Gvw