Ex Parte Plank et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 15, 2016

12787642 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 15, 2016)

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. 12/787,642 05/26/2010 JEFFREY A. PLANK 82259861 5018 56436 7590 12/19/2016 Hewlett Packard Enterprise 3404 E. Harmony Road Mail Stop 79 Fort Collins, CO 80528 EXAMINER NAMAZI, MEHDI ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2139 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/19/2016 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): 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 JEFFREY A. PLANK, JOSEPH E. FOSTER, VINCENT NGUYEN, and ROBERT E. VAN CLEVE Appeal 2015-006737 Application 12/787,642 Technology Center 2100 Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, JASON V. MORGAN, and SHARON FENICK, Administrative Patent Judges. THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—17, and 20-22, all the pending claims in the present application. Claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 18, and 19 are canceled. See Claim Appendix. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. Appeal 2015-006737 Application 12/787,642 The present invention relates generally to migrating data from a first storage system to a second storage system. See Abstract. Claim 1 is illustrative: 1. A method of performing data migration from a first storage system to a second storage system, comprising: detecting, at the second storage system, a migration of a persistent storage media from the first storage system to the second storage system, the migration comprising one of physically moving the persistent storage media from an enclosure of the first storage system to an enclosure of the second storage system, and electrically switching the persistent storage media from the first storage system to the second storage system by activating a switch subsystem to disconnect the persistent storage media from the first storage system and connect the persistent storage media to the second storage system; and in response to detecting the migration of the persistent storage media, copying write information from a write cache, separate from the persistent storage media, in the first storage system to a write cache in the second storage system, wherein the write caches in the first and second storage systems were not maintained synchronously before the write information from the write cache in the first storage system is copied to the write cache in the second storage system. Appellants appeal the following rejection: Claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—17, and 20-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Ash (US 2008/0250210 Al, Oct. 9, 2008) and HP Smart Array 641 Controller, Version 12 (Sept. 5, 2007), original URL: http://hl 8000.wwwl .hp.com/products/quickspecs/12067_na/ 12067_na.HTML, archived version available at https://web.archive.org/web/ 20080619140904/http://hl8000.wwwl.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12067_ na/12067_na.html (archived version last visited Dec. 14, 2016) (“HP Smart 2 Appeal 2015-006737 Application 12/787,642 Array”). ANALYSIS Issue: Did the Examiner err in finding that Ash and HP Smart Array collectively teach or suggest in response to detecting the migration of the persistent storage media, copying write information from a write cache, as set forth in claim 1? Appellants contend that “in HP Smart Array, there would be no detection of a migration of a persistent storage media (separate from the write cache in the first storage system). . . where the migration of the persistent storage media triggers copying of write information” (App. Br. 10). In response, the Examiner finds that “nowhere in claim 1 [recites] ‘that the migration of the persistent storage media triggers copying of write information from the write cache in the first storage system to the write cache in the second storage system’” (Ans. 10). We disagree with the Examiner. First, we note as a matter of claim construction, although claim 1 does not recite the exact phrase “the migration of the persistent storage media triggers copying of write information,” claim 1 does recite, inter alia, in response to detecting the migration . . . copying write information . . . (see claim 1). We find that the aforementioned claim language, i.e., in response to, is in essence a triggering condition for copying write information from the write cache. Thus, the Examiner erred in concluding that claim 1 does not recite such a trigger limitation. As a result of this improper interpretation by the Examiner, the Examiner fails to make any finding regarding a trigger between detecting 3 Appeal 2015-006737 Application 12/787,642 migration of a persistent storage media and copying write information from a write cache, in either HP Smart Array or Ash. HP Smart Array is merely being used by the Examiner to illustrate the use of transportable persistent storage media (see Ans. 7). Similarly, Ash discloses that “[t]he cache controller 18a initiates operations (at block 200) to copy data from the first cache 12a to the second cache 12b ... in response to a request from the storage management software 16a” (137). Ash further discloses that messages are transmitted between the first cache controller and second cache controller in order to create control blocks and to allocate segments in the second cache for the data (137). However, we find that Ash’s messages, which are included in the copy operations, are also in response to a request from the storage management software, not in response to detecting a migration of a persistent storage media, as required by the claims. Ash does not even considers the physical or electrical migration of a persistent storage media, merely the migration of cache data. Even if we agree with the Examiner that one of ordinary skill in the art would know that “disconnecting a storage from it’s system is detected the same way as . . . unplug [ging] a USB flash memory from any computer system is detected by the system” (see Final Act. 3), the Examiner still has not tied such a detection to copying write information from a write cache, as required by the claims. Thus, we disagree with the Examiner’s finding that Ash and HP Smart Array collectively teach or suggest in response to detecting the migration of the persistent storage media, copying write information from the first write cache, as recited in each of the independent claims 1,11, and 16. Since we agree with at least one of the arguments advanced by Appellants, we need 4 Appeal 2015-006737 Application 12/787,642 not reach the merits of Appellants’ other arguments. Accordingly, we will not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 1—5, 8—12, 15— 17, and 20-22. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1—5, 8—12, 15—17, and 20—22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is reversed. REVERSED 5