Jayant Jain et al.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardDec 18, 201914569358 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Dec. 18, 2019) 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. 14/569,358 12/12/2014 Jayant Jain N102.02 (B512) (P0299) 1079 109858 7590 12/18/2019 ADELI LLP 11859 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 408 Los Angeles, CA 90025 EXAMINER LALCHINTHANG, VANNEILIAN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2414 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/18/2019 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 mail@adelillp.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte JAYANT JAIN, ANIRBAN SENGUPTA and MOHAN PARTHASARATHY1 ___________ Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR. and NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges. WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant is appealing the final rejection of claims 1–19 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). Appeal Brief 2. 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(a). Appellant identifies Nicira, Inc. which is a wholly owned subsidiary of VMware of which Dell Technologies is a majority owner, as the real party in interest. Appeal Brief 2. Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 2 Introduction According to Appellant, the invention is directed to providing “an elastic architecture for providing a service in a computing system. To perform a service on the data messages, the service architecture uses a service node (SN) group that includes one primary service node (PSN) and zero or more secondary service nodes (SSNs).” Specification ¶ 3. Representative Claim 1. A non-transitory machine readable medium of a primary service node (PSN), the medium storing a program for performing a service on data messages, the program comprising sets of instructions for: receiving a data message and identifying a service node (SN) in a SN group to perform the service on the data messages that are in a same flow as the received data message, said group comprising the PSN; when the PSN is the identified SN for the received data message's flow, performing the service on the received data message and on data messages in the same flow as the received data message; and when another SN is the identified SN for the received data message's flow, directing the received data message to the other SN for the SN to perform the service on the received data message. Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 3 References Name Reference Date Srivastava US 2006/0233155 A1 October 19, 2006 Sen US 2007/0214282 Al September 13, 2007 Nandagopal et al. US 2011/0055845 Al March 3, 2011 Ueno US 2012/0023231 A1 January 26, 2012 Rejections on Appeal Claims 1–9 and 14–16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Nandagopal and Ueno. Final Action 5–18. Claims 10–12 and 17–19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Nandagopal, Ueno and Sen. Final Action 18–24. Claim 13 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Nandagopal, Ueno and Srivastava. Final Action 24–26. ANALYSIS Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellant and the Examiner, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed June 28, 2017), the Reply Brief (filed November 7, 2017), the Final Action (mailed October 6, 2016) and the Answer (mailed September 7, 2017), for the respective details. The Examiner finds that Nandagopal discloses a service node (SN) in a service node group wherein “the PSN (Fig.1 primary load balancer LBA in service group A and Fig.2 [0020] lines 8–12, load balancer LBA of FIG. 1, multiple-load balancer 210 (i.e., primary service node).” Final Action 6 (emphasis removed). Nandagopal’s Figure 1 is reproduced below: Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 4 FIG. 1 illustrates a typical network arrangement 100 where client 102 requests a service from server system 104. The latter includes service-chain selector 108 and three service groups A, B, and C. Service group A includes load balancer LBA and four backend servers Al A2, A3, and A4. Service group B includes load balancer LBB and two backend servers Bl and B2. Service group C includes load balancer LBC and three backend servers Cl, C2, and C3. Dotted lines connecting a load balancer to a backend server indicate that the load balancer can route a packet to the backend server, depending on its share of workload. Nandagopal ¶ 8. Appellant argues, “the Office Action cites [Nandagopal’s] Figure 1 (a prior art ‘typical arrangement’) and Figure 2 (a ‘network arrangement embodying principles of the invention’) to identify the PSN.” Appeal Brief 8–9. Appellant contends, “[A]ny attempt to combine features of Figures 1 and 2 must explain how and why the prior art and the inventive embodiment, which is explicitly distinguished from the prior art, would be combined.” Appeal Brief 9. We find Appellant’s argument persuasive. The Examiner improperly combines Nandagopal’s disclosure of a typical network arrangement shown in Figure 1 with an embodiment of the invention shown in Figure 2. See Final Action 6; Nandagopal ¶¶ 8, 20. In fact, Nandagopal distinguishes Figure 1’s typical network arrangement from an embodiment of the invention shown in Figure 2: Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 5 In balancing the loads, balancer 210 [of FIG. 2] determines the entire server path, i.e., the sequence of specific backend servers in the respective clusters, through which packet 206 is to be routed before it sends the packet to the server clusters for processing thereof. Thus, unlike a typical load balancer, e.g., load balancer LBA of FIG. 1, which determines only the next hop or server in the server path, multiple-load balancer 210 determines the entire server path for packet 206, e.g., server path A4-B2-Cl in a single process. Nandagopal ¶ 20 (emphasis added). However, focusing on Nandagopal’s Figure 1 illustration of a typical network arrangement 100, there is one load balancer, PSN or SN per service group. Ueno addresses Nandagopal’s deficiency of having only one SN instead of a group of SNs by disclosing a network system where “each of the load balancers LBl and LB2 selects one of the plurality of subordinate real servers 30 and distributes the received packet to the real server (the processing is possible in any real server).” Ueno ¶ 125; see Final Action 7. Ueno further discloses, “[T]he destination IP address is common among the plurality of servers SV, and the single destination IP address is associated with the two load balancers LBl and LB2. This is equivalent to that each server SV is assigned to the two load balances LBl and LB2.” Ueno ¶ 125. Accordingly, we agree with the Examiner that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Nandagopal’s network arrangement 100 to perform service2 of data messages that is in the same flow as a 2 “[T]he services can be any one of the traditional middlebox services, such as load balancing, firewall, intrusion detection, intrusion protection, network address translation (NAT), WAN (wide area network) optimizer, etc.” Specification ¶ 10. Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 6 received data message by using multiple load balancers (SNs) as disclosed by Ueno. See Final Action 7, 8 and 16. Applicant further contends in regard to Nandagoal, “The disclosed server groups do not include the load balancer and the load balancer is not disclosed as being capable of directing messages to itself. Thus, the rejection fails to address the limitation that the PSN identifies itself as the service node to perform a service.” Appeal Brief 9. Claim 1 only recites, “when the PSN is the identified SN for the received data message’s flow, performing the service on the received data message and on data messages in the same flow as the received data message.” (emphasis added). It is noted that claim 1 does not physically distinguish a PSN from a SN. Accordingly, we find Appellant’s argument is not commensurate with the scope of the claim. There is no requirement in claim 1 that the PSN directs messages to itself nor is there a requirement that the PSN identifies itself. Consequently, we sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent claims 1 and 14 argued together, as well as, the obviousness rejections of dependent claims 2, 4–13 and 16–19 not argued separately. See Appeal Brief 12–14. We note that while we affirmed the Examiner’s rejection based upon the prior cited art of record, Nandagopal and Ueno, we relied upon Nandagopal’s Figure 1 only and altered the rationale of the obviousness rejection of independent claims 1 and 14. Accordingly, we designate the rejection as a new ground of rejection pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b). Dependent claims 3 and 15 Appellant contends that both claims 3 and 15, which dependend upon independent claims 1 and 14 respectively, recite that “the service is a non- load balancing service.” Appeal Brief 13. In claims 1 and 14, a service, Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 7 which is unspecified, is performed on the received data message and on data messages in the same flow as the received data message. Appellant argues that “[Ueno’s] paragraph 59 discusses a relay processing device being one of a load balancer or firewall, only the load balancing embodiment is used to reject the limitations of claims 3 and 15.” Appeal Brief 13. Appellant contends, “[E]ither LB2 is a SSN [secondary service node] and the service is a load balancing service or the servers are the SSNs and the SN group is providing the service of servers SV2-l to SV2-l0 (not the load balancing service of LB2).” Appeal Brief 13–14. We do not find Appellant’s argument persuasive because Ueno discloses, “The policy information POL indicates a policy of the relay processing device 20 (load balancer, fire wall).” Ueno does not draw the distinction that the processing device has to offer one or the other service. The processing device can offer more than one service. See Ueno ¶ 59. We sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 3 and 15. CONCLUSION Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–9, 14–16 103 Nandagopal, Ueno 1–9, 14– 16 10–12, 17– 19 103 Nandagopal, Ueno, Sen 10–12, 17- 19 13 103 Nandagopal, Ueno, Srivastava 13 Overall Outcome 1–19 Appeal 2018-001059 Application 14/569,358 8 This decision contains a new ground of rejection pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b). 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) provides that “[a] new ground of rejection…, shall not be considered final for judicial review.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) also provides that the Appellant, WITHIN TWO MONTHS FROM THE DATE OF THE DECISION, must exercise one of the following two options with respect to the new ground of rejection to avoid termination of the appeal as to the rejected claims: (1) Reopen prosecution. Submit an appropriate amendment of the claims so rejected or new evidence relating to the claims so rejected, or both, and have the matter reconsidered by the examiner, in which event the proceeding will be remanded to the examiner .... (2) Request rehearing. Request that the proceeding be reheard under § 41.52 by the Board upon the same record .... AFFIRMED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation