International Business Machines Corporation

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Dec 15, 2020

2019004958 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 15, 2020)

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

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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.
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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:
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Application 15/464,855

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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.
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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.
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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
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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