Ex Parte Walkauskas

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 30, 2018

13459722 (P.T.A.B. May. 30, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. 13/459,722 146568 7590 Entit Software LLC 500 Westover Drive #12603 Sanford, NC 27330 FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 04/30/2012 Stephen Gregory W ALKAUSKAS 06/01/2018 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. 82850153 4171 EXAMINER VO,CECILEH ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2153 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/01/2018 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): software.ip.mail@microfocus.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte STEPHEN GREGORY W ALKAUSKAS 1 Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 Technology Center 2100 Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, JOSEPH P. LENTIVECH, and DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL 1 According to Appellant, the real part in interest is Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Development LP. See Appeal Brief 1. Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 STATEMENT OF THE CASE2 Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) from a rejection of claims 1-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b ). We reverse. THE INVENTION The claims are directed to efficiently recovering a container of a database by directly copying a source container from a source node to a recovering node. Non-Provisional Spec. ,r,r 0015---0016; see also, Provisional Spec. ,r 0006. Claim 15, reproduced below with a dispositive limitation emphasized in italics, is representative of the claimed subject matter: 15. A system comprising: a processing umt m communication with a computer readable medium, wherein the computer readable medium contains a set of instructions wherein the processing unit is designed to carry out the set of instructions to: identify a recovering node of a database system; identify a buddy database projection that is a copy of a recovering database projection of a database, wherein the recovering database projection is stored on the recovering node, wherein the buddy database projection is stored on a source node of the database system, the buddy database projection and the 2 Throughout this Decision, we refer to: (1) Appellant's Non-Provisional Application's Specification filed Apr. 30, 2012 ("Non-Provisional Spec."); (2) Appellant's Provisional Application's Specification filed May 13, 2011 ("Provisional Spec."); (3) the Final Office Action mailed Sept. 13, 2016 ("Final Act."); (4) the Appeal Brief filed January 20, 2017 ("App. Br."); (5) the Examiner's Answer mailed May 18, 2017 ("Ans."); and (6) the Reply Brief filed July 18, 2017 ("Reply Br."). 2 Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 recovering database projection each providing a first view of a first database table; identify, based on the identified buddy database projection, a source container on the source node of the database system, the source container containing data of the buddy database projection; and in response to a determination that a range of epochs of the identified source container includes an epoch for which data is to be recovered to the recovering database projection from the buddy database projection, direct copy the identified source container on the source node to the recovering node. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: George et al. (hereinafter "George") Stokes et al. (hereinafter "Stokes") US 8,793,531 B2 July 29, 2014 US 2007/0180313 Al Aug. 2, 2007 Schottland et al. US 2003/0220944 Al Nov. 27, 2003 (hereinafter "Schottland") Nguyen et al. US 2006/0015696 Al Jan. 19, 2006 (hereinafter "Nguyen") Puig US 2009/0100236 Al Apr. 16, 2009 REJECTIONS The Examiner made the following rejections, for which Appellant 3 Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 seeks our review: 3 Claims 1, 6-8, 13-16, and 19 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103 (a) as being unpatentable over the combination of George and Stokes. Final Act. 4--7. Claims 2, 3, 9, 10, 17, and 20 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103 (a) as being unpatentable over the combination of George, Stokes, and Schottland. Final Act. 7-8. Claims 4, 5, 11, and 12 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over George, Stokes, Schottland, and Nguyen. Final Act. 8-10. Claim 18 stands rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over George, Stokes, Nguyen, Schottland, and Puig. Final Act. 10-11. APPELLANT'S CONTENTIONS Appellant contends that George's disclosure of a hash table mapping of object keys to locations in a FIFO queue does not teach or suggest "the buddy database projection and the recovering database projection each providing a first view of a first database table," as required in the disputed limitation. App. Br. 8-9. ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellant's arguments that the Examiner has erred in rejecting independent claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a). We agree with Appellant's conclusions as to the rejection of the claims. 3 The rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 112, first paragraph, has been withdrawn. Ans. 3. 4 Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 The Examiner finds George discloses a new object being appended to a FIFO queue. Final Act. 4--5 (citing George col. 19, 11. 1-11). The Examiner also finds that George discloses a hash table that maps object keys to their location in the FIFO queue. Id. Further, the Examiner asserts that the hash table's objects can be viewed by a survivor node. Ans. 5. According to the Examiner, new objects appended to the head of the FIFO queue provide a view of the hash table and thus teach or suggest the disputed limitation of the projections providing view of a first database table. Final Act. 4--5; Ans. 5. Appellant contends that the objects in George's FIFO queue or the elements in George's hash table do not provide a view of the hash table, and thus do not teach projections providing a view of a database table. App. Br. 8-9. Appellant explains that a hash table is an associative array for mapping keys to values, and that the hash table maps object keys to their location in the FIFO queue. Reply Br. 5 (citing George col. 19, 11. 5-7). According to Appellant "the hash table in George, at best, may be construed as a reference to data in a database and not the data itself." Id. We agree with Appellant. Appellant defines a "projection" as "an instance of a materialized view that provides physical storage for data," and explains that "[a] projection may contain some or all columns of a table of data to be analyzed." Provisional Spec. ,r 0004. Appellant refers to a "database projection" as a form of representing tuples of the database table and explains that a projection may "define a particular view of the database table, defined by, for example, a selected subset of table columns (or fields), a sorting order of the tuples, an encoding or compression of the data, or a 5 Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 segmentation of the data (for storage on multiple nodes)." Non-Provisional Spec. ,r 0008. We determine the recited "providing a first view of a first database table" is a required feature of the claimed projection. Here, George discloses appending objects to a FIFO queue. George, col. 19, 11. 3--4. Per George's disclosure and Appellant's contention, the hash table maps object keys to locations of the objects in the FIFO queue. See George, col. 19, 11. 6-7; App. Br. 8-9; Reply Br. 5. Even if an "object" is a "projection," as interpreted by the Examiner, appending a projection into a FIFO queue does not create a view of its hash table. Instead, under that interpretation, we understand a hash table would map a projection key to the location of the corresponding projection in the FIFO queue but would not provide a view of the underlying data itself. Therefore, because the Examiner has not sufficiently explained why appending objects to a FIFO queue is equivalent to providing a view of the hash table, we agree with Appellant that George fails to teach or suggest the disputed limitation. Because we agree with at least one of the arguments advanced by Appellant, we need not reach the merits of Appellant's other arguments. Therefore, for the reasons discussed above, we do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 1, 8, and 15 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a), and for the same reason, we do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 because the Examiner's applications of the Schottland, Nguyen, and Puig references fail to cure the deficiency in the base rejection addressed above. 6 Appeal2017-011825 Application 13/459,722 DECISION We reverse the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a). REVERSED 7