International Business Machines CorporationDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardDec 15, 20202019004958 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 15, 2020) Copy Citation 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. 15/464,855 03/21/2017 Itzhack Goldberg TUC920160250US1 5597 78650 7590 12/15/2020 Nelson and Nelson 775 High Ridge Drive Alpine, UT 84004 EXAMINER CHEONG, ANDREW J ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2138 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/15/2020 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): dan@nnpatentlaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte ITZHACK GOLDBERG, RICHARD HUTZLER, GREGORY T. KISHI, and NEIL SONDHI Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before JEREMY J. CURCURI, JUSTIN BUSCH, and ROBERT J. SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judges. SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), the Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. The Appellant identifies the real party in interest as International Business Machines Corporation. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 2 ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM 1. A method for minimizing head seek movement and improving I/O performance in a disk drive, the method comprising: dividing each disk drive of a disk array into a plurality of zones, wherein each zone in a corresponding disk drive is associated with a group of tracks; establishing characteristics for data stored in each of the zones; receiving data for writing to the disk array; analyzing characteristics of the received data to determine in which zone of the disk drives the data should be stored; selecting a disk drive in the disk array having a read/write head that is currently reading or writing to the determined zone; and writing the data to the determined zone on the selected disk drive. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is: Name Reference Date Ottesen US 5,463,758 Oct. 31, 1995 Khanna et al. (“Khanna”) US 2005/0057842 A1 Mar. 17, 2005 Friedman et al. (“Friedman”) US 2011/0138148 A1 June 9, 2011 REJECTIONS I. Claims 1–5, 8–12, and 15–18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Khanna and Ottesen. II. Claims 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Khanna, Ottesen, and Friedman. Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 3 FINDINGS OF FACT The findings of fact relied upon, which are supported by a preponderance of the evidence, are identified in the following Analysis. ANALYSIS The Appellant argues independent claims 1, 8, and 15 as a group. Appeal Br. 5–7. Claim 1 is selected for analysis herein. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv). According to the Appellant, claim 1 stands rejected erroneously, because the cited prior art does not teach or suggest the recited limitation of “selecting a disk drive in the disk array having a read/write head that is currently reading or writing to the determined zone.” In regard to the identified limitation, the Examiner relies on a combination of Khanna and Ottesen. See Final Act. 5–6. According to the Examiner (id. at 4–5), Khanna teaches reading or writing data to a “determined zone” of a rotating disk (of a hard disk drive) with a read/write head. See Khanna ¶¶ 7, 9, 17, 24–25, 27, 32. Further, the Examiner (Final Act. 5–6) finds that Ottesen teaches determining which hard disk drive (of a plurality of hard disk drives) has an actuator arm (equipped with a read/write head) that is nearest to a particular physical location on a rotating disk (of the respective hard disk drive). See Ottesen col. 6, ll. 25–52, 54–61. Ottesen characterizes the proximity of an actuator arm (to a particular physical location on a rotating disk) as a “seek distance” and teaches that employing the particular actuator arm (from among a plurality of hard disk drives) having the shortest “seek distance” improves performance, by decreasing the time needed to move an actuator arm to a particular physical location (i.e., a “track”) of a hard disk drive: Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 4 The improved performance resulting from the radially differentiated disposition of logical tracks stems from a possible reduction in the physical track to track seek distance that may occur when two drives use different dispositions for logical tracks. Any alteration of logical track disposition between disk drives, where two or more drives are used, can result in an improvement in access time for any given operation. Id. at col. 4, l. 64 – col. 5, l. 4. In view of these teachings of Khanna and Ottesen, the Examiner determines the obviousness of the identified limitation of claim 1: [I]t would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing of the invention, having the teachings of KHANNA and OTTESEN before them, to include OTTESEN’s drive selection based on the disk arm position in terms of track displacement in KHANNA’s storage system with disks having various zones. One would have been motivated to make such a combination in order to improve performance of disk access times by reducing the track seek distance of the drives as taught by OTTESEN (col. 4 line 64– col. 5 line 4). Final Act. 6. The Appellant argues that combining Khanna with Ottesen would not result in the claimed subject matter, because the proposed combination does not necessarily select the recited “read/write head that is currently reading or writing to the determined zone.” Appeal Br. 5 (emphasis added). Ottesen, the Appellant argues, “determines which actuator arm has to travel the shortest ‘seek distance.’” Id. (citing Ottesen col. 6, ll. 28–33). Therefore, the Appellant contends, an actuator arm having the shortest “seek distance” may be outside the claimed “determined zone”; consequently, “there is no guarantee that an actuator arm that is the shortest ‘seek distance’ from data is in the same zone that the data will be stored.” Id. at 6. Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 5 Yet, the Examiner addresses why the identified limitation would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill, at the relevant time, notwithstanding the possibility of Ottesen lacking an actuator arm positioned for “currently reading or writing to the determined zone,” per claim 1: [I]t is obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art that OTTESEN’s teaching covers the scenario of the disk drive arm of the first disk drive already being positioned at the determined physical address/determined zone, and the disk drive arm of a second disk drive being positioned at a different physical address/not the determined zone, then selecting the first disk drive to perform the operation because the disk drive arm of the first disk drive has the shorter seek distance compared to other disk drive(s). OTTESEN’s teaching additionally also covers an alternative scenario when none of the disk drive arms are positioned at the determined physical address/determined zone, in which case, the disk drive with the disk drive arm having the shortest seek distance is selected to perform the operation. When combined with KHANNA’s teaching writing to the active zone, KHANNA in view of OTTESEN teaches the limitations of the claim. Advisory Action (Jan. 28, 2019). The Appellant further argues that the cited references fail to teach or suggest the claimed feature of “writing the data to the determined zone on the selected disk drive,” because “Ottesen’s disclosed method applies to read data and not write data as required by Applicant’s independent claims.” Appeal Br. 6. According to the Appellant: Because write data has not yet been written to disk, the write data will not have an address or location from which to measure “seek distance.” Thus, Ottesen’s technique of measuring “seek distance” is not applicable to Appellant’s claimed invention because Appellant’s write data has not yet been written to disk. Id. Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 6 The foregoing argument is not persuasive, because the Examiner relies upon Khanna — not Ottesen — for the feature of “writing the data to the determined zone on the selected disk drive.” Final Act. 5. The Appellant’s argument amounts to the unpersuasive approach of “attacking the references individually where the rejection is based on a combination of references.” In re Young, 403 F.2d 754, 757–58 (CCPA 1968). Finally, the Appellant argues, “[a]t the very least, there would be no suggestion or motivation to combine Ottesen with Khanna to arrive at Appellant’s claimed invention since Ottesen’s disclosed method does not apply to write data.” Appeal Br. 7. We are not persuaded by the Appellant’s final argument, which presumes that Ottesen’s teachings apply only to disk drives containing previously written data. Yet, Ottesen teaches the concept of employing the disk drive with an actuator arm that is physically located in the best position, for performing a given task. See Ottesen col. 6, ll. 26–35. The Appellant’s position that Ottesen’s teaching may be applied only with other techniques that involve similar operational constraints (e.g., for obtaining previously written data) amounts to demanding the teachings of prior art references be capable of being physically incorporated into each other — a proposition that our reviewing court has soundly rejected. See In re Etter, 756 F.2d 852, 859 (Fed. Cir. 1985) (en banc). The relevant inquiry is “not whether the references could be physically combined but whether the claimed invention[ ] [is] rendered obvious by the teachings of the prior art as a whole.” Id. In view of the foregoing, the Appellant does not persuade us of error in the rejection of independent claim 1. Because the independent claims are Appeal 2019-004958 Application 15/464,855 7 argued as a group, with no dependent claim argued separately, we sustain the rejection of independent claims 1, 8, and 15, along with dependent claims 2–7, 9–14, and 16–20, under 35 U.S.C. § 103. CONCLUSION In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–5, 8–12, 15–18 103 Khanna, Ottesen 1–5, 8–12, 15–18 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 20 103 Khanna, Ottesen, Friedman 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, 20 Overall Outcome 1–20 TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation