Guang Gong et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardAug 28, 2019

14216812 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Aug. 28, 2019)

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. 14/216,812 03/17/2014 Guang Gong B419 7671 152569 7590 08/28/2019 Patterson & Sheridan, LLP - VMware 24 Greenway Plaza Suite 1600 Houston, TX 77046 EXAMINER YEW, CHIE W ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2131 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/28/2019 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): ipadmin@vmware.com psdocketing@pattersonsheridan.com vmware_admin@pattersonsheridan.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte GUANG GONG, QI KANG, LE TIAN, CHENGXIAO WANG, YIMIN ZHAO, and SHIYAO YUAN ____________________ Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, CATHERINE SHIANG, and JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges. DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims 1, 2, 7–10, 15–18 and 21–25. Claims 3–6, 11–14, 19, and 20 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. The claims are directed to an optimizing memory sharing in a virtualized computer system with address space layout randomization enabled in guest operating systems. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A computer-implemented method of optimizing memory sharing on a virtualized computer system including a plurality of virtual machines, the method comprising: grouping a plurality of virtual machines, including first, second, and third virtual machines, into one or more groups including at least a first group and a second group, so that the first and second virtual machines are in the first group and the third virtual machine is in the second group, and the virtual machines in the first group and the second group are executed on a same physical machine; and loading a file having the same contents into memory of each of the first, second, and third virtual machines while address space layout randomization (ASLR) is enabled for only one of the virtual machines in the first group and disabled for all other virtual machines in the first group, and is enabled for only one of the virtual machines in the second group and disabled for all other virtual machines in the second group, such that, a memory location of the file in a virtual address space of the first virtual machine is randomly determined, and a memory location of the 1 Appellants indicate that VMware, Inc. is the real party in interest. (App Br, 3). Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 3 file in a virtual address space of the third virtual machine is randomly determined, and a memory location of the file in a virtual address space of other virtual machines in the first group, including the second virtual machine, is the same as the memory location of the file in the virtual address space of the first virtual machine, and a memory location of the file in a virtual address space of other virtual machines in the second group is the same as the memory location of the file in the virtual address space of the third virtual machine. App. Br. 15 (Claims Appendix). REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Goud et al. US 2005/0138370 A1 June 23, 2005 Kiriansky US 2010/0030998 A1 Feb. 4, 2010 Colbert US 2011/0066786 A1 Mar. 17, 2011 Bhattacharjee et al. US 2013/0091318 A1 Apr. 11, 2013 Gupta et al. US 8,510,596 B1 Aug. 13, 2013 Sean Barker et al., An Empirical Study of Memory Sharing in Virtual Machines, Proceedings of the 2012 USENIX conference on Annual Technical Conference, p. 1–12, (June 13–15, 2012, Boston, MA) REJECTIONS The Examiner made the following rejections: Claims 1, 9, and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) as failing to comply with the written description requirement.2 Claims 1, 8, 9, 16, 17, and 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim 2 We additionally note that the written description rejection also extends to all the defendant claims from the three independent claims. Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 4 the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.3 Claims 1, 2, 7–10, 15–18, and 21–25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Barker in view of Bhattacharjee, Gupta, Kiriansky, Gould, and Colbert. ANALYSIS 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) With respect to the written description rejection of claims 1, 9, and 17, Appellants identify paragraph 22 of the Specification to support the claim language in the rejection. Appellants rely upon the determination of a first booted virtual machine as to the condition precedent for either assigning a random base address or using a stored group randomization driver on the virtual machine that reads the saved base address for the group to support the claim language “while address space layout randomization (ASLR) is enabled . . . and disabled for all other virtual machines.” (App. Br. 9). The Examiner maintains that the claim language while address space layout randomization (ASLR) is enabled for only one of the virtual machines in the first group and disabled for all other virtual machines in the first group, and is enabled for only one of the virtual machines in the second group and disabled for all other virtual machines in the second group, requires an active step of enabling or disabling. (Final Act. 3–4; Ans. 2–3). 3 The rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) has been withdrawn by the Examiner. (Ans. 2). Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 5 Appellants further contend that the claim language does not require an active step of disabling ASLR because “disabling ASLR” is not recited in the language of independent claim 1. Appellants identify paragraph 22 of the Specification to support the disputed claim language. (App. Br. 9; Reply Br. 2). Although we agree with Appellants that “disabling,” is not recited in the language of the claim, we determine that the claim requires some action to have disabled the ASLR for all other virtual machines. Moreover, we find paragraph 22 of the Specification does not provide support to evidence written description support for a determination that the ASLR is disabled for all other virtual machines. Rather, Appellants identify a set of steps to determine which virtual machine is enabled and a subsequent use of the base address for the other virtual machines. Therefore, Appellants have not identified written description support for the disputed claim limitation, and we sustain the rejection of independent claim 1 and independent claims 9 and 17 not separately argued. Although the Examiner did not expressly include the dependent claims in the listing of claims in the introductory paragraph, we further note that the dependent claims contain the same deficient subject matter as their parent independent claims. 35 U.S.C. § 103 With respect to independent claims 1, 9, and 17, Appellants do not set forth separate arguments for patentability. Therefore, we select independent claim 1 as the representative claim and will address Appellants’ arguments thereto. (App. Br. 11; Reply Br. 2). (See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(iv) (2017).) Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 6 Appellants contend that the combination of prior art references does not teach or suggest “virtual machines in the first group and the second group are executed on a same physical machine.” (App. Br. 11). Appellants further contend that the Barker reference does not teach or suggest that there are a group of virtual machines (VMs) within Machine A and a group of VMs within Machine B. Appellants further contend that, even if Machine A in FIG. 3 of Barker is the first group and Machine B is the second group, as the Examiner alleges, the Examiner still has not established plural “virtual machines in the first group” and plural “virtual machines in the second group.” (App. Br. 11) The Examiner maintains that Barker teaches plural virtual machines exist on a per machine basis and that each machine would have a group. (Ans. 4). We agree with the Examiner that Barker teaches groups. We further find that Barker teaches or suggests plural groups of virtual machines on a single physical machine because Barker discloses inter-VM sharing between pairs of VM’s. We disagree with Appellants’ argument that Barker does not teach plural virtual machines in groups. We find that Barker further details the types of sharing discussed on pages 3 and 4 and subsequently details the sharing on pages 5–10 of the Barker reference. Additionally, Barker discloses data collection between “pairs” of virtual machines, which we find to teach or suggest “groups.” (Barker 5–8 “Evaluation” sections 4–4.3). Consequently, we find Appellants’ argument does not show error in the Examiner’s factual findings or conclusion of obviousness of representative claim 1. Appellants further contend the combination of prior art references does not teach “while address space layout randomization (ASLR) is Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 7 enabled for only one of the virtual machines in the first group and disabled for all other virtual machines in the first group, and is enabled for only one of the virtual machines in the second group and disabled for all other virtual machines in the second group.” (App. Br. 12). Appellants set forth four sub-arguments regarding the ASLR being enabled and disabled for the virtual machines in the groups in the Appeal Brief and further emphasizes that the state of the ASLR “must be disabled” rather than inactive.”4 (App. Br. 12–13; Reply Br. 3–4). In the Reply Brief, Appellants withdraw their first sub-argument and modify their second sub- argument to rely upon a lack of teaching in the Barker reference for “groups.” We found this argument unpersuasive above. With respect to the third and fourth sub-arguments, Appellants rely upon the enabled and disabled ASLR limitations. (Reply Br. 3–4). The Examiner finds that “Goud teaches loading a first VM of a plurality of VM (Goud Fig. 2). When the first VM is loaded, subsequent VMs are not active because the subsequent VMs have yet to be loaded.” The Examiner further finds that dependent claim 2 further supports the Examiner’s position that the additional virtual machines in a group in the claimed invention are also not loaded because additional virtual machines initially use the stored address of the first virtual machine and do not use address space layout randomization (ASLR). (Ans. 5–6). Appellants do not specifically respond to the Examiner’s reliance upon dependent claim 2 to evidence the reasonableness of the Examiner’s claim interpretation. (Reply Br. 3–4). We find the Examiner’s line of 4 We note that Appellants argued with respect to the written description support rejection that “the above limitation does not require an active step of disabling ASLR.” (Reply Br. 2). Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 8 reasoning to be reasonable in light of the breath of independent claim 1 regarding the “disabled” limitation. Also, in response to Appellants’ argument regarding the claimed “a memory location . . . including the second virtual machine, is the same as the memory location of the file in the virtual address space of the first virtual machine,” we find that Barker further describes the use of memory security and sharing in section 6–6.2. Barker further describes address space layout randomization (ASLR) with regards to pairs of virtual machines. Barker discloses that ASLR is a security measure which has a negative impact on sharing memory. (Barker 9). Therefore, we find that Barker suggests that virtual machine pairs should use the same reference location set by the ASLR to optimize memory sharing. Also, Barker further discloses that “most popular OSes have at least rudimentary support and are moving towards more complete instrumentation. Most implementations allow for enabling or disabling randomization.” (Barker 10, Section 6.1). As a result, we find Appellants’ arguments do not show error in the Examiner’s factual findings or the conclusion of obviousness of representative independent claim 1 and independent claims 9 and 17 not separately argued, and dependent claims 2, 7, 8, 10, 15, 16, 18, and 21–25 not separately argued. CONCLUSIONS The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1, 2, 7–10, 15–18 and 21–25 based upon a lack of written description support under 35 U.S.C § 112(a), and the Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1, 2, 7–10, 15–18 and 21–25 based upon obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Appeal 2018-005612 Application 14/216,812 9 DECISION For the above reasons, we sustain the Examiner’s written description rejection of claims 1, 2, 7–10, 15–18 and 21–25, and we sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 1, 2, 7–10, 15–18 and 21–25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. 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) (2017). AFFIRMED