DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Objections
Claims 1-2, 4-6, 8-9, 11-13, 15-16, and 18-19 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 Ln. 25, Claim 2 Ln. 2, Claim 8 Ln. 23-24, Claim 9 Ln. 2, Claim 15 Ln. 23-24 and Claim 16 Ln 2 all recite, “the first user” which should be “the first end user”.
Claim 5 Ln. 3, Claim 12 Ln. 3 and Claim 19 Ln. 3 all recite, “the plurality of users” which should be “the plurality of end users”.
Claims 2, 4-6, 9, 11-13, 16 and 18-19 are also objected to since they depend from at least one of objected Claims 1, 5, 8, 12 and 15, and as such inherit the same deficiencies.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 6 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor.
Claim 6 Ln. 5 and Claim 13 Ln. 5 recites the phrase "the entity associated the user". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claims. These claims are indefinite since the phrase, ‘the user’ in Claim 6 Ln. 5 could refer to ‘a user’ as previously recited in either Claim 1 Ln. 19 or Claim 6 Ln. 4, and a similar issue exists for Claim 13 regarding ‘a user’ recited in either Claim 8 Ln. 17 or Claim 13 Ln. 4. For purposes of examination these claims have been interpreted as being directed to ‘a user’ as initially recited in Claim 6 Ln. 4 and Claim 13 Ln. 4.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-2, 8-9 and 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schneider et al. (US Patent 6,718,533; hereinafter “Schneider”) in view of Breternitz et al. (US PGPUB 2014/0047272; hereinafter “Breternitz”), Stetson et al. (US PGPUB 2017/0221240; hereinafter “Stetson”), Rao et al. (US PGPUB 2022/0207086; hereinafter “Rao”) and Herz et al. (US PGPUB 2009/0254971; hereinafter “Herz”).
Claim 1:
Schneider teaches one or more non-transitory computer readable media comprising instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, causes performance of operations comprising (Col. 38 Ln. 60: “FIGS. 30 and 31 illustrate a computer system 900 suitable for implementing embodiments of the present invention.” Col. 39 Ln. 42: “embodiments of the present invention further relate to computer storage products with a computer-readable medium that have computer code thereon… for the purposes of the present invention… Examples of computer-readable media include, but are not limited to: magnetic media such as hard disks”):
creating a process flow based on an indication of a data processing task (Col. 11 Ln. 2: “tool 10 allows an application programmer to graphically connect components in order to build up a diagram representing an intelligent control system. … In a general sense, components are the pieces or parts representing physical and/or logical entities that make up a control application. For example, a component may represent a controller, a state machine, a trajectory generator, a subsystem, etc.” Col. 15 Ln. 8: “FIG. 7 illustrates symbolically a state machine component 450. State machine component 450 is a composite component built graphically within a system diagram that represents a finite state machine.” Col. 5 Ln. 19: “An interface specifies both the data flow through the COG and the set of methods the COG [Composite Object Group] provides (implements) and uses.”);
determining, for the data processing task, a listing of a plurality of necessary states significant for the data processing task (Col. 15 Ln. 18: “In a preferred embodiment of the invention, creation of a state machine is performed graphically in which states, events and state transition components are identified and connected together.” Col. 15 Ln. 28: “Each state machine component has any number of states 462, 464, 466, etc.”);
determining data parameters used for designation of the necessary states (Col. 18 Ln. 34: “A component programmer 102 uses any suitable editor to create atomic, data flow and state transition components 106. Programmer 102 defines interfaces for these components… Programmer 108 defines the methods and attributes for each interface.” Col. 34 Ln. 52: “To design the state transition diagram for each state machine component, the states of the system are first determined and then added to the state machine. The domain engineer determines how the state machine will respond to events by defining these events and the transitions that will occur from one state to another. The events (stimuli) that occur may be discrete events, may be conditional statements using system parameters and constant values, or may even be Boolean expressions involving system parameters.”); and
creating a data structure associated with the data processing task, the data structure comprising the data parameters used for designation of the necessary states (Col. 5 Ln. 55: “The present invention provides specific data structures and reusable objects that fit specific problem domains.” Col. 19 Ln. 24: “Tool 131 results in the formation of an interface file (also termed a ‘definition file’) for each component defined. The interface file defined for each component is stored in repository 135 in association with that particular component.”).
With further regard to Claim 1, Schneider does not teach the following, however, Breternitz teaches
creating a plurality of nodes for representing the data processing task, each of the plurality of nodes being associated with a particular state, of the plurality of necessary states, each node being configured to perform a function associated with the particular state and to pass the data structure to another node, of the plurality of nodes, upon completion of the function ([0006] “In the ‘map’ phase of the map-reduce framework, a task or workload is partitioned into multiple portions (i.e., multiple groups of one or more processing threads), and the portions of the workload are distributed to the worker nodes that process the threads and the associated input data… The distributed file system (HDFS) of Hadoop is utilized to store data and to communicate data between the worker nodes,” wherein the nodes represent the state machine components as discussed above in Schneider. [0207] “At block 816, configurator 22 selects and configures the selected cluster of nodes 14 and deploys the workload to the cluster of nodes 14.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider with the creation of nodes as taught by Breternitz since “a need exists for methods and systems for automating the creation, deployment, provision, execution, and data aggregation of workloads on a node cluster of arbitrary size” (Breternitz [0016]).
With further regard to Claim 1, Schneider in view of Breternitz does not teach the following, however, Stetson teaches
a graph comprising a plurality of vertexes corresponding to the plurality of nodes, and a plurality of edges associated with transitions between the plurality of nodes ([0102] “Graph database manipulation devices in accordance with embodiments of the invention are configured to generate and visualize representations of graph databases. A process for visualizing a graph database in accordance with an embodiment of the invention is conceptually illustrated in FIG. 4. The process 400 includes obtaining (410) a source node. In many embodiments, node permissions are determined (412). The perspective of the node is determined (414). Node weights are determined (416) and a node layout is generated (418).” [0106] “The graph database visualization user interface 1100 includes a visualization 1110 of the graph database”);
receiving, from a first end user of the plurality of end users, a request to modify the published graph ([0075] “a user can encode new information into the graph by creating associations, or streamline existing information by pruning associations,” wherein the modification to the graph being able to be received from one of a plurality of end users is further taught below in Rao.);
creating a modified graph based on the published graph, the modified graph comprising a change to one or more of the vertexes of the graph ([0008] “wherein the graph database manipulation application further configures the processor to modify the nodes and edges within the graph database based on the graph manipulation data and refresh the generated representation of the source node and the set of related nodes based on the modified graph database.”); and
creating a modified process flow based on the modified graph ([0078] “manipulating the graph database includes creating, deleting, and/or modifying links between nodes within the database. In this way, the links between the nodes can be utilized to encode processes, workflows, and any other data as appropriate to the requirements of specific applications of embodiments of the invention.”),
wherein the creating the modified graph comprises:
modifying at least one vertex of the published graph; and modifying at least one node based on the modified vertex ([0008] “the system further includes an input device configured to receive graph manipulation data, wherein the graph database manipulation application further configures the processor to modify the nodes and edges within the graph database based on the graph manipulation data and refresh the generated representation of the source node and the set of related nodes based on the modified graph database,” wherein a “vertex” and a “node” are equivalent structures in a graph diagram and as such Stetson teaches that modifying a “node” within a “graph database”, i.e. the claimed “one vertex of the published graph”, causes a “generated representation of the source node” to be refreshed, i.e. the claimed “modifying at least one node based on the modified vertex.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Breternitz with the node graph and graph modification as taught by Stetson in order to “improve the graph's usefulness as a record for the same user, and a means of sharing information with other users and computational agents that operate within the graph” (Stetson [0075]).
With further regard to Claim 1, Schneider in view of Breternitz and Stetson does not teach the following, however, Rao teaches
publishing the graph associated with the data processing task ([0034] “The collaborative document graph-based user interface describes relationships between a group of collaborative document node elements each associated with a collaborative document via a group of document transition edge elements.” [0033] “The term ‘collaborative document’ refers to a data construct that describes contents of a text-based format file… where the contents of the text-based format file are configured to be editable/accessible by two or more user profiles… the document collaboration server system may enable a first user profile to share a collaborative document with one or more other user profiles, where each of the one or more user profiles may be given defined read/write access privileges,” wherein the ‘sharing’ of the “collaborative document” is the claimed “publishing a graph”.),
wherein the plurality of end users is independent of a user that created the process flow ([0034] “The term “collaborative document graph-based user interface” refers to an electronic display that is generated by a client computing device and then presented to an end-user of the client computing device.” [0022] “Each collaborative document may at each time be accessed by a group of user profiles that is larger than the group of user profiles that created the documents.”);
receiving, from a first end user of the plurality of end users, a request to modify the published graph ([0022] “Document collaboration server systems often store a large number of collaborative documents that may be accessible/editable by two or more user profiles.” [0033] “the document collaboration server system may enable a first user profile to share a collaborative document with one or more other user profiles, where each of the one or more user profiles may be given defined read/write access privileges. An example of a collaborative document is a Confluence® page.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Breternitz and Stetson with the node graph and graph modification as taught by Stetson in order to “improve the computational efficiency and reliability of performing document discovery tasks” (Rao [0027]).
With further regard to Claim 1, Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson and Rao does not teach the following, however, Herz teaches
setting a monetary price associated with access to the published graph ([0026] “Each data record has an associated price rule, that controls access to data. The pricing model allows a data owner to specify a price for different types and amounts of information access, and whether the identity of the information owner is required.” [0156] “In step (1) an agent makes a request for a query to be priced, stating the query, and providing certificates to allow the query to be priced. In step (2) the query execution module makes a call to the pricing module, and a price for the query is computed (described in the next section). In step (3) the agent receives a price quote, and can then decide whether or not to execute the query, and also a query ID,” wherein the “query” in Herz is a request to access the “published graph” as taught by Stetson in view of Rao above.);
receiving payment from the first user ([0026] “A query is priced before execution, to allow an agent to decide whether or not to execute a query, and select between alternative types of queries. Binding price quotes are provided to querying agents, and queries can be scaled to meet a budget.” [0088] “SDI enforces the price rules, with payment collected from agents before the results of queries are reported.” [0156] “In step (4) the query execution module receives a request to perform the query, and then in step (5) requests payment from the agent. When payment is received…”); and
permitting the first user to access the published graph. responsive to receiving the payment ([0156] “When payment is received the query is executed (6), and appropriate payment is credited to agents that provide information, scaled to make the budget balance as necessary (in the case of an over or under price quote). Finally, the response to the query is provided (7),” wherein execution of the “query” in Herz results in accessing the “published graph” as taught by Stetson in view of Rao above.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson and Rao with the monetary-based user permission as taught by Herz thereby “allowing agents to specify prices for data access” (Herz [0003]).
Claim 2:
Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz teaches the computer readable media of claim 1. Schneider in view of Stetson, Rao and Herz does not teach the following, however Breternitz teaches,
configuring a system associated with the first user to execute the modified process flow ([0098] “Configurator 22 modifies the operating parameter(s) prior to deploying the workload container module onto each node 16, or after deployment of the workload container module to each node 16 when updating configurations. The workload container module when executed by each node 16 is operative to coordinate execution of the workload on the cluster of nodes 14 based on the modified operational parameter.” [0141] “In one embodiment, synthesizer 79 operates in conjunction with batch processor 80 to execute multiple synthetic test workloads generated by synthesizer 79 from varying trace files. In one embodiment, synthetic test workloads are generated based on modified user-defined workload parameters of a table (e.g., table 150 of FIG. 32) that test different target processors, both CPU and GPU's, of the nodes 16.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Stetson, Rao and Herz with the modified system configuration as taught by Breternitz since “a need exists for methods and systems for automating the creation, deployment, provision, execution, and data aggregation of workloads on a node cluster of arbitrary size” (Breternitz [0016]).
Claims 8-9 and 15-16:
With regard to Claims 8-9 and 15-16, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claims 1-2 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 8-9 and 15-16 are rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claims 1-2.
With further regard to Claim 15, the claim recites additional elements not specifically addressed in the rejection of Claim 1. The Schneider reference also anticipates these additional elements of Claim 15, for example, wherein the system comprises:
at least one device including a hardware processor (Col. 38 Ln. 60: “FIGS. 30 and 31 illustrate a computer system 900 suitable for implementing embodiments of the present invention.” Col. 39 Ln. 3: “FIG. 31 is an example of a block diagram for computer system 900. Attached to system bus 920 are a wide variety of subsystems. Processor(s) 922 (also referred to as central processing units, or CPUs) are coupled to storage devices including memory 924.”).
Claims 4, 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz as applied to Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, and further in view of Tancredi et al. (US Patent 7,962,382; hereinafter “Tancredi”).
Claim 4:
Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz does not teach the following, however, Tancredi teaches wherein the listing of the plurality of necessary states significant for the data processing task comprises:
waiting for a bank customer in whose name an invoice is issued to enter a service channel, waiting for delivery of an invoice to customer, and waiting for customer consent to pay; and wherein the data parameters used for designation of the necessary states comprise: a service type, a customer ID, and an invoice amount (Col. 1 Ln. 22: “A financial institution such as a bank has many such payment origination systems to support a wide variety of business needs and customer channels such as the internet to service its customers.” Col. 4 Ln. 60: “The payment broker system of the present invention comprises a Finite State Machine (FSM) model which depicts the payment business process. An FSM is a model of behavior composed of a number of states, transitions between states, and actions,” wherein the specific states described in Claim 4 would have been obvious in light of the disclosure of Tancredi since the specific states are well-known to be common business tasks conducted in relation with a financial institution, such as a bank. See also Tancredi Figs. 3-11 showing a plurality of different state machine states representing different types of banking business processes.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz with the task states associated with a financial institution as taught by Tancredi since “These models provide a financial institution more control over the payment process and how to manage the flow of payments from beginning to end” (Tancredi Col. 5 Ln. 15).
Claims 11 and 18:
With regard to Claims 11 and 18, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claim 4 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 11 and 18 are rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 4.
Claims 5-6, 12-13 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz as applied to Claims 1, 8 and 15 above, and further in view of Richards et al. (US PGPUB 2014/0129936; hereinafter “Richards”).
Claim 5:
Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz does not teach the following, however, Richards teaches:
the operations further comprising limiting access to the published graph based on one or more user parameters associated with the published graph, such that a particular user, of the plurality of users, that does not meet the one or more user parameters is not permitted to access the published graph ([0008] “the graph is shared with the other users in the form of an automatically generated redacted graph omitting nodes, edges, and/or other presentation elements for which the other users do not have permission to view.” [0037] “the graph sharing user interface allows the user to specify other users that are to receive the graph. Based on the users specified, the graph application 130 automatically creates a redacted version of the graph in which nodes and edges that the specified users do not have permission to view are redacted.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz with the graph access permissions as taught by Richards as this “allows the sharing user to visualize how the results will be shared with the other users before they are shared” (Richards [0008]).
Claim 6:
Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao, Herz and Richards teaches all the limitations of claim 5 as described above. Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz does not teach the following, however, Richards teaches wherein the user parameters comprise at least one of the following:
a user type; a number of employees in an entity associated with the user; and an indication of a revenue earned by the entity associated with a user ([0051] “User access control level information 152 includes information identifying which access control levels users have. In some embodiments, there are two types of access control levels: groups and classifications. Groups may also be referred to as roles. The access control groups to which a user belongs determine what operations the user can perform on which data in the shared data repository 153,” wherein the “groups/roles” are the “user type”. [0054] “ When specifying an access control group, an access control item 159 includes an access control group name or identifier and a permission of that access control group.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable media as disclosed by Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson, Rao and Herz with the user permission parameter as taught by Richards in order to “allow reference to a set of one or more individual users by a single identifier” (Richards [0050]).
Claims 12-13:
With regard to Claims 12-13, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claims 5-6 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 12-13 are rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claims 5-6.
Claim 19:
With regard to Claim 19, this claim is equivalent in scope to Claim 5 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claim 19 is rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 5.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments, see Pages 8-14 of the Remarks filed February 6, 2026, with respect to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 of Claims 1-2, 4-6, 8-9, 11-13, 15-16 and 18-19 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The Office notes that the Applicant’s arguments filed February 6, 2026 are a substantial duplicate of the Applicant’s previous arguments filed September 23, 2025. The Office’s previous response, in the ‘Response to Arguments’ section of the Non-Final Office Action mailed December 2,2025, to the Applicant’s arguments filed September 23, 2025 do not appear to have been considered in the Applicant’s most recent response. As such the Office’s previous response has been substantially reproduced below.
With respect to the Applicant’s argument regarding Claim 1, Pages 8-10 of the Remarks, that Schneider does not teach the limitation which recites, “creating a process flow based on an indication of a data processing task,” since “There is no data processing task in Schneider that may be used by the control application,” the Office respectfully disagrees. With regard to this argument, the Applicant references the following citation in Schneider, as used in the outstanding rejection:
Col. 11 Ln. 2: “tool 10 allows an application programmer to graphically connect components in order to build up a diagram representing an intelligent control system. … In a general sense, components are the pieces or parts representing physical and/or logical entities that make up a control application. For example, a component may represent a controller, a state machine, a trajectory generator, a subsystem, etc.”
The Office would like to note that the following citations in Schneider were also cited in the outstanding rejection:
Col. 15 Ln. 8: “FIG. 7 illustrates symbolically a state machine component 450. State machine component 450 is a composite component built graphically within a system diagram that represents a finite state machine.”
Col. 5 Ln. 19: “An interface specifies both the data flow through the COG and the set of methods the COG [Composite Object Group] provides (implements) and uses.”
As such, in view of the above citations, it can be seen that Schneider discloses the creation of a data flow and method calls, i.e. a “process flow”, associated with a control application, i.e. a “data processing task”. Therefore, for at least the reasons discussed above, the Office maintains that the teachings of Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson and Rao do teach and make obvious the limitation of Claim 1 which recites, “creating a process flow based on an indication of a data processing task.”
With respect to the Applicant’s next argument regarding Claim 1, Page 10 of the Remarks, that Schneider does not teach the limitation which recites, “determining, for the data processing task, a listing of a plurality of necessary states significant for the data processing task,” since “the states of the state machine of Schneider are not associated with the data processing task,” the Office respectfully disagrees. The Office would like to first draw attention to the disclosure in Schneider cited in the outstanding rejection of the above limitation:
Col. 15 Ln. 18: “In a preferred embodiment of the invention, creation of a state machine is performed graphically in which states, events and state transition components are identified and connected together.”
Col. 15 Ln. 28: “Each state machine component has any number of states 462, 464, 466, etc.
Further, as discussed above, Schneider also discloses the following:
Col. 11 Ln. 2: “tool 10 allows an application programmer to graphically connect components in order to build up a diagram representing an intelligent control system. … In a general sense, components are the pieces or parts representing physical and/or logical entities that make up a control application. For example, a component may represent a controller, a state machine, a trajectory generator, a subsystem, etc.”
As such, in view of the above citations, it has been shown that Schneider discloses creation of a state machine is performed graphically, in which states are identified and connected together, as well as disclosing the use of a tool that allows a programmer to graphically connect components to build a control application, wherein the components can represent a state machine. The Office contends that since Schneider discloses that a control application, i.e. a “data processing task”, is comprised of state machine components, wherein the state machine components can be created by identifying and connecting together different states, then it can be said that Schneider does teach and make obvious the limitation of Claim 1 which recites, “determining, for the data processing task, a listing of a plurality of necessary states significant for the data processing task.”
With respect to the Applicant’s next argument regarding Claim 1, Page 10 of the Remarks, that Schneider does not teach the limitation which recites, “determining data parameters used for designation of the necessary states,” since “Schneider does not teach any state designation based on specific data parameters,” the Office respectfully disagrees. The Office would like to first draw attention to the disclosure in Schneider cited in the outstanding rejection of the above limitation:
Col. 18 Ln. 34: “A component programmer 102 uses any suitable editor to create atomic, data flow and state transition components 106. Programmer 102 defines interfaces for these components… Programmer 108 defines the methods and attributes for each interface.”
Col. 34 Ln. 52: “To design the state transition diagram for each state machine component, the states of the system are first determined and then added to the state machine. The domain engineer determines how the state machine will respond to events by defining these events and the transitions that will occur from one state to another. The events (stimuli) that occur may be discrete events, may be conditional statements using system parameters and constant values, or may even be Boolean expressions involving system parameters.”
The Office contends, in view of the above citations, that since Schneider discloses that an engineer defines state machine events and transitions, wherein the events are defined using system parameters, then it can be said that Schneider does teach and make obvious the limitation of Claim 1 which recites, “determining data parameters used for designation of the necessary states.”
With respect to the Applicant’s next argument regarding Claim 1, Pages 10-11 of the Remarks, that Schneider does not teach the limitation which recites, “creating a data structure associated with the data processing task, the data structure comprising the data parameters used for designation of the necessary states,” the Office respectfully disagrees. The Applicant’s associated argument relies upon the previous arguments presented in relation to Claim 1 discussed above, and as such the Office directs the Applicant to the responses above regarding these arguments.
With respect to the Applicant’s next argument regarding Claim 1, Pages 11-12 of the Remarks, that Schneider in view of Breternitz, Stetson and Rao does not teach the limitation which recites, “creating a plurality of nodes for representing the data processing task, each of the plurality of nodes being associated with a particular state, of the plurality of necessary states, each node being configured to perform a function associated with the particular state and to pass the data structure to another node, of the plurality of nodes, upon completion of the function,” the Office respectfully disagrees.
The Applicant first remarks, Page 11 Paragraph 5 of the Remarks, that “The worker nodes of Breternitz are not associated with a particular state, of the plurality of necessary states, required by the independent Claim 1.” The Office contends, as stated in the outstanding rejection, that the previous teachings of Schneider, i.e. that nodes can represent state machine components, have been relied upon to teach the portion of the limitation which recites, “each of the plurality of nodes being associated with a particular state, of the plurality of necessary states”.
The Applicant next remarks that, “The Office Action also relies on Stetson. However, in his disclosure Stetson does not teach that each node is being configured to perform a function associated with the particular state and to pass the data structure to another node”. The Office instead contends, as stated in the outstanding rejection, that the teachings of Breternitz, not Stetson, have been relied upon to teach this portion of the limitation, as Breternitz recites:
[0006] “In the ‘map’ phase of the map-reduce framework, a task or workload is partitioned into multiple portions (i.e., multiple groups of one or more processing threads), and the portions of the workload are distributed to the worker nodes that process the threads and the associated input data… The distributed file system (HDFS) of Hadoop is utilized to store data and to communicate data between the worker nodes.”
[0207] “At block 816, configurator 22 selects and configures the selected cluster of nodes 14 and deploys the workload to the cluster of nodes 14.”
As such, in view of the above citations and discussion, the Office maintains that the disclosure of Schneider in view of Breternitz does teach and make obvious the limitations of Claim 1 which recite, “creating a plurality of nodes for representing the data processing task, each of the plurality of nodes being associated with a particular state, of the plurality of necessary states, each node being configured to perform a function associated with the particular state and to pass the data structure to another node, of the plurality of nodes, upon completion of the function.”
With respect to the Applicant’s next argument regarding the independent claims, Page 12 of the Remarks, that “the creating of the modified graph comprises: modifying at least one vertex of the published graph; and modifying at least one node based on the modified vertex. These claimed features are not taught or suggested by neither of the cited references,” the Office respectfully disagrees. The Office refers to the disclosure in Stetson cited in the outstanding rejection of the above limitation:
[0008] “the system further includes an input device configured to receive graph manipulation data, wherein the graph database manipulation application further configures the processor to modify the nodes and edges within the graph database based on the graph manipulation data and refresh the generated representation of the source node and the set of related nodes based on the modified graph database.”
As such, in view of the above citations, it has been shown that Stetson discloses a system which allows for the nodes and edges in a graph to be modified, wherein a “vertex” and a “node” can be said to be equivalent structures in a graph diagram. The Office contends that since Stetson discloses that modifying a “node” within a “graph database”, i.e. the claimed “one vertex of the published graph”, causes a “generated representation of the source node” to be refreshed, then it can be said that Stetson does teach and make obvious the limitations of the independent claims which recites, “the creating of the modified graph comprises: modifying at least one vertex of the published graph; and modifying at least one node based on the modified vertex.”
Furthermore, the Applicant's arguments fail to comply with 37 CFR 1.111(b) because they amount to a general allegation that the claims define a patentable invention without specifically pointing out how the language of the claims patentably distinguishes them from the references.
With respect to the Applicant’s argument regarding Claims 4, 11 and 18, Pages 12-13 of the Remarks, that “Tancredi does not cure at least the deficiencies of Schneider discussed above with respect to the independent Claims 1, 8, and 15. Consequently, corresponding dependent Claims 4, 11, and 18 are not rendered obvious by the combination of Schneider with Breternitz, Stetson, Rao with Tancredi,” these arguments rely upon the arguments as presented in relation to Claims 1, 8 and 15 discussed above, and as such the Office directs the Applicant to the responses above regarding these arguments.
With respect to the Applicant’s arguments regarding Claims 5-6, 12-13 and 19, Page 13 of the Remarks, these arguments are substantially similar to the arguments presented in relation to Claims 4, 11 and 18 above, and as such these arguments also rely upon the arguments as presented in relation to Claims 1, 8 and 15 discussed above. Therefore, for the above reasons, the Office directs the Applicant to the responses above regarding these arguments.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is as follows:
Sugahara (US PGPUB 2006/0167700) discloses an analysis result providing method and system wherein a terminal can be used to pay a fee in order to receive analysis results, wherein the analysis results include data in a graph format.
Naous et al. (“Analytics as a service: Cloud computing and the trans-formation of business analytics business models and ecosystems,” 2017) discusses an analysis of 28 Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS) offerings, including discussion regarding the related archetype of Visualization-as-a-Service(VaaS) which enables end-users to visualize their data as part of a paid service.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Joanne G. Macasiano whose telephone number is (571)270-7749. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday, 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
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/JOANNE G MACASIANO/ Examiner, Art Unit 2197
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