DETAILED ACTION
This final rejection is responsive communication filed May 18, 2026. Claims 11, 20, 21, and 23 are currently amended. Claims 1-10, 12, 16-17, 19, 25-28 are cancelled. Claims 29-32 have been added. Claims 1, 3-5, 8, 10-11, 13-15, 18, 20-24, and 29-32 are pending in this application.
Election/Restrictions
Newly submitted claims 29-32 are directed to an invention that is independent or distinct from the invention originally claimed for the following reasons: Claims 29-32 are directed to a patentably distinct invention in which location of data in a plurality of ordered tiers is based on a lifecycle and age of the data, such that data stored on nodes corresponding to a higher tier can be moved to nodes of a lower tier when the age of the piece of data exceeds a pre-determined period of time. This is distinct from the present claims directed to data recovery based on differences between data stored on peer nodes and remote storage.
Since applicant has received an action on the merits for the originally presented invention, this invention has been constructively elected by original presentation for prosecution on the merits. Accordingly, claims 29-32 are withdrawn from consideration as being directed to a non-elected invention. See 37 CFR 1.142(b) and MPEP § 821.03.
To preserve a right to petition, the reply to this action must distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement. Otherwise, the election shall be treated as a final election without traverse. Traversal must be timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are subsequently added, applicant must indicate which of the subsequently added claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 11 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saad et al. (US 20210385275 A1) (‘Saad’) in view of Engbersen et al. (US 20170118279 A1) (‘Engbersen’).
With respect to claim 11, Saad teaches a method for data recovery, the method comprising:
storing, to a remote storage, a data snapshot of the plurality of nodes of a cluster (paragraphs 16 and 18);
determining, by the cluster, that a piece of data stored on a first node of the cluster (i.e. computing device B, C or D) should be copied to a second node (i.e. computing device A) of the cluster (paragraph 40);
determining, by the cluster, that the same file may exists at multiple sources, including cloud and peer devices (paragraph 41) and determining whether a copy of the file is stored on a particular storage source (paragraph 42);
in response to determining, identifying, by the cluster, a subset of files within the data snapshot that contain data that is identical to a corresponding subset of files in the piece of data stored on the first node (paragraphs 17 and 41);
in response to identifying the subset of files, causing a partial download of the subset of files from the data snapshot to the second node (i.e. retrieving copy of file or partial retrieval from cloud-based storage) (paragraphs 36, 41, 52-55).
Although Saad teaches determining, by the cluster, that the same file may exists at multiple sources, including cloud and peer devices and determining whether a copy of the file is stored on a particular storage source, Saad does not explicitly teach determining that the piece of data stored on the first node differs from the copy of the piece of data stored in the remote storage.
Engbersen teaches determining that the piece of data stored on the first node differs from the copy of the piece of data stored in the remote storage (paragraphs 26 and 28).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have modified Saad to determine that the piece of data stored on the first node differs from the copy of the piece of data stored in the remote storage to ensure that the best copy of the data is being recovered, thus supporting the goals of Saad to intelligently distribute retrieval of recovery data amongst peer-based and cloud-based storage resources (Saad, paragraph 57). Further, byte-by-byte comparison allows for determination of what needs to be updated, replaces or augmented with copied data (Engbersen, paragraph 28).
With respect to claim 13, Saad in view of Engbersen teaches wherein the first node is designated to store a primary copy of the piece of data on the cluster (Saad, paragraph 17).
Claims 14, 15, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saad et al. (US 20210385275 A1) (‘Saad’) in view of Engbersen et al. (US 20170118279 A1) (‘Engbersen’), and further in view of Wu et al. (US 2019/0235978 A1) (‘Wu’).
With respect to claim 14, Saad in view of Engbersen teaches first and second nodes and a plurality of cloud storage tiers (Saad, paragraph 19).
Saad in view of Engbersen does not explicitly teach wherein the first node and the second node belong to a same tier of a plurality of tiers.
Wu teaches wherein the first node and the second node belong to a same tier of a plurality of tiers (Fig. 1, paragraphs 17-18).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have modified the nodes of Saad to be stored in the same tier as taught by Wu to enable new and improved heterogeneous data protection architectures, systems and methods for supporting multiple tiers of data types having different availability, retention and protection requirements (Wu, paragraph 5). A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification because Saad already teaches tiering and thus it would only entail applying tiering to nodes as well as cloud storage.
With respect to claim 15, Saad in view of Engbersen and Wu teaches wherein, after downloading the copy of the piece of data to the second node, the cluster designates the copy of the piece of data as a replica of the piece of data on the cluster (Saad, paragraphs 17 and 21).
With respect to claim 18, Saad in view of Engbersen teaches first and second nodes and a plurality of cloud storage tiers (Saad, paragraph 19).
Saad in view of Engbersen does not explicitly teach wherein the first node and the second node belong to different tiers of a plurality of tiers.
Wu teaches wherein the first node and the second node belong to different tiers of a plurality of tiers (Fig. 1, paragraphs 17-18 and 20).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have modified the nodes of Saad to be stored in different tiers as taught by Wu to enable new and improved heterogeneous data protection architectures, systems and methods for supporting multiple tiers of data types having different availability, retention and protection requirements (Wu, paragraph 5). A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification because Saad already teaches tiering and thus it would only entail applying tiering to nodes as well as cloud storage.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saad et al. (US 20210385275 A1) (‘Saad’) in view of Ross (US 2017/0078323 A1).
With respect to claim 20, Saad teaches a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having embodied thereon instructions, which when executed by at least one processor, perform steps of a method, the method comprising:
storing, to a remote storage, a data snapshot of the plurality of nodes of a cluster (paragraphs 16 and 18);
determining, by the cluster, that a piece of data stored on a first node of the cluster (i.e. computing device B, C or D) should be copied to a second node (i.e. computing device A) of the cluster (paragraph 40);
comparing the piece of data stored on the first node to a copy of the piece of data stored on the data snapshot in the remote storage (paragraphs 41-42);
in response to the comparison, causing copying of the piece of data directly from the first node to the second node (i.e. retrieving copy of file from peer device) (paragraphs 36, 41, 52-55).
Although Saad teaches comparing the piece of data stored on the first node to a copy of the piece of data stored on the data snapshot in the remote storage, Saad does not explicitly teach that the comparison comprises determining whether the piece of data is byte-by-byte identical to a copy of the piece of data; in response to determining that the piece of data is not byte-by-byte identical, determining, using a semantic comparison, that the piece of data differs semantically from the copy of the piece of data.
Ross teaches determining whether the piece of data is byte-by-byte identical to a copy of the piece of data; in response to determining that the piece of data is not byte-by-byte identical, determining, using a semantic comparison, that the piece of data differs semantically from the copy of the piece of data (Fig. 5, paragraph 36).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have modified Saad to determine differences using byte-by-byte and semantic differences as taught by Ross to ensure that the best copy of the data is being recovered, thus supporting the goals of Saad to intelligently distribute retrieval of recovery data amongst peer-based and cloud-based storage resources (Saad, paragraph 57). Further, byte-by-byte comparison allows for an exact determination of what needs to be updated, replaces or augmented with copied data and semantic comparison allows for determination of semantically similar data.
Claims 21 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saad et al. (US 20210385275 A1) (‘Saad’) in view of Ross (US 2017/0078323 A1), and further in view of VanBenschoten et al. (US 2023/0021150 A1) (hereinafter ‘Van’).
With respect to claim 21, Saad in view of Ross teaches determining that the copy of the piece of data needs to be stored on the second node of the cluster.
Saad in view of Ross does not explicitly teach identifying the second node as a newly added node to the cluster and responsive to identifying the second node as the newly added node to the cluster, determining that the copy of the piece of data should be stored on the second node of the cluster.
Van teaches identifying the second node as a newly added node to the cluster and responsive to identifying the second node as the newly added node to the cluster, determining that the copy of the piece of data should be stored on the second node of the cluster (Based on nodes being added to the cluster, the added node(s) may communicate identifying information to the existing nodes of the cluster. The identifying information may include an indication that the added node(s) have available storage capacity. The cluster may rebalance replicas stored by the existing nodes to the added node(s)) (paragraph 101).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have further modified Saad to determine to copy data responsive to a newly added node as taught by Van to enable rebalancing of nodes based on changes members of a cluster, thereby enabling optimal survivability and performance (Van, paragraph 101).
With respect to claim 23, Saad in view of Ross teaches determining that the copy of the piece of data needs to be stored on the second node of the cluster.
Saad in view of Ross does not explicitly teach identifying a newly removed third node from the cluster stored a copy of the piece of data and responsive to identifying that the newly removed third node from the cluster stored the copy of the piece of data, determining that the copy of the piece of data should be stored on the second node of the cluster.
Van teaches identifying a newly removed third node from the cluster stored a copy of the piece of data and responsive to identifying that the newly removed third node from the cluster stored the copy of the piece of data, determining that the copy of the piece of data should be stored on the second node of the cluster (Based on nodes being removed from the cluster (e.g., due to a lack of a response to the Raft group), nodes of the cluster may rebalance data stored by the removed node(s) to the remaining nodes of the cluster) (paragraph 101).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have further modified Saad to determine to copy data responsive to a removed node as taught by Van to enable rebalancing of nodes based on changes members of a cluster, thereby enabling optimal survivability and performance (Van, paragraph 101).
Claims 22 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saad et al. (US 20210385275 A1) (‘Saad’) in view of Ross and VanBenschoten, as applied to claims 21 and 23 above, and further in view of Wu et al. (US 2019/0235978 A1) (‘Wu’).
With respect to claim 22, Saad in view of Ross and Van teaches first and second nodes and a plurality of cloud storage tiers (Saad, paragraph 19) and determining that newly added nodes belong to a same Raft group and storage layer, and responsive to determining that the newly added node belongs to the same group/storage layer, determining that the copy of the piece of data needs to be stored on the second node of the cluster (Van, paragraphs 101-103).
Saad in view of Ross Van does not explicitly teach wherein the newly added node belongs to a same tier of a plurality of tiers in the cluster as the first node. (Although a storage layer may be interpreted as a tier, the examiner introduces another reference to explicitly teach a tier.)
Wu teaches wherein newly added node belongs to a same tier of a plurality of tiers in the cluster as the first node (Fig. 1, paragraphs 17-18).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have modified the nodes of Saad to be stored in the same tier as taught by Wu to enable new and improved heterogeneous data protection architectures, systems and methods for supporting multiple tiers of data types having different availability, retention and protection requirements (Wu, paragraph 5). A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification because Saad already teaches tiering and thus it would only entail applying tiering to nodes as well as cloud storage.
With respect to claim 24, Saad in view of Ross and Van teaches first and second nodes and a plurality of cloud storage tiers (Saad, paragraph 19) and removing nodes (Van, paragraph 101).
Saad in view of Ross and Van does not explicitly teach wherein the newly removed third node belonged to a same tier of a plurality of tiers in the cluster as the second node.
Wu teaches wherein the newly removed third node belonged to a same tier of a plurality of tiers in the cluster as the second node (Fig. 1, paragraphs 17-18).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the invention to have modified the nodes of Saad to be stored in the same tier as taught by Wu to enable new and improved heterogeneous data protection architectures, systems and methods for supporting multiple tiers of data types having different availability, retention and protection requirements (Wu, paragraph 5). A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification because Saad already teaches tiering and thus it would only entail applying tiering to nodes as well as cloud storage.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 3-5, 8, 10-11, 13-15, 18, 20-24 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
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 ALICIA M WILLOUGHBY whose telephone number is (571)272-5599. The examiner can normally be reached 9-5:30, EST, M-F.
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/ALICIA M WILLOUGHBY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2156 August 12, 2026
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