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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-2, 5, 12, 18 and 21-24 are currently pending and have been examined.
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.
Claim 1-2, 5, 12, 18 and 21-24 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, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
The following claim languages are not clearly understood and indefinite:
As per claim 1, lines 14-15, recite “the computation power of the digital certificate processing apparatus” However, it is unclear to which computation power of which digital certificate processing apparatuses it is being referred to (e.g. is it the computation power of each digital certificate processing apparatus [in lines 14] or different apparatus?). Further, lines 16-17 recite “a theoretical difficulty level of a first digital certificate processing task” However, it is unclear whether the first digital certificate processing task is related to or corresponds to one of the “divided tasks” [line 14] or different digital certificate processing task.
As per claims 12 and 24, they have similar issues as claim 1 above, and therefore are rejected for the same reason as applied to claim 1 above.
Claims 2, 5, 18, 21-23, they are rejected as being dependent on rejected claims 1 and 12.
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 of this title, 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, 12 and 22-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al. (CN102571568 A) in view of Nadalin et al. (U.S. Pub. 20050278534 A1), further in view of Lewis et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20190012212 A1), further in view of Klein et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20070156879 A1), and further in view of Salapaka et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20050198499 A1).
Yang and Nadalin were cited in a previous office action.
As per claim 1, Yang teaches the invention substantially as claimed including a method for relaying a … processing task implemented by a relay apparatus for relaying the … processing task, comprising:
relay apparatus … (Fig. 1 and par. 0006 describe a distributed message queue system comprising a Gearman Server which corresponds to the message forwarding component);
establishing, by the relay apparatus, a first connection with a .. processing apparatus and establishing, by the relay apparatus, a second connection with a mining pool [message publishing component] (par. 0129 monitoring and management are all done through connection pools established in each component, which sequentially place all network connections in the current component into the connection pool; par. 0060 For example, when a message publishing component receives a task message … it selects an available network connection between the message publishing component [mining pool] and the message forwarding component [apparatus for relaying] from the connection pool, and then publishes the task message to the message forwarding component through the network connection. Alternatively, the message publishing component [mining pool] selects an effective network connection from the connection pool from the message publishing component to the message forwarding component [apparatus for relaying] and then to the message processing component [processing apparatus]));
obtaining, by the relay apparatus, a … processing task from the mining pool through the second connection (par. 0056 the message publishing component publishes the task to the message forwarding component through the network connection between the message publishing component and the message forwarding component);
assigning, by the relay apparatus, the divided tasks of the … processing task to the … processing apparatus through the first connection (par. 0056 … after the message forwarding component receives the task, it sends the task to the message processing component with which it has a network connection after scheduling).
Yang does not expressly describe: a digital certificate processing task; obtaining the digital certificate processing task; digital certificate processing apparatus.
However, Nadalin teaches: digital certificate processing task; obtaining the digital certificate processing task; and digital certificate processing apparatus (par. 0055 obtaining a digital certificate (step 502). For example, the digital certificate may be received at an e-commerce server from a remote party; par. 0011 A certificate validation service [equiv. to digital certificate processing apparatus] receives a certificate validation request [digital certificate processing task] for a target certificate from a client).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify/combine the teaching of Yang by incorporating the technique of processing certificate validation requests as set forth by Nadalin. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to make this combination because it would have been a simple substitution. Yang generally describes method distributing processing tasks via message forwarding component to a processing component, except the tasks are not digital certificate processing tasks to be processed on digital certificate processing apparatus. However, processing digital certificate processing tasks using digital certificate processing apparatus was known in the art. Nadalin for example describes using a certificate validation service for processing certificate validation requests. One of ordinary skill would have substituted data processing tasks with digital certificate processing tasks to arrive to a method distributing/assigning digital certificate processing tasks (e.g. validating tasks) to be processed by digital certificate proceeding apparatuses, with predictable results.
Yang and Nadalin do not expressly teach: dividing the digital certificate processing task according to a difficulty level of the digital certificate processing task and computation power of each digital certificate processing apparatus, to obtain divided tasks, the computation power of the digital certificate processing apparatus being determined according to a theoretical difficulty level of a first digital certificate processing task assigned to the digital certificate processing apparatus and a time interval for receiving an answer to the first digital certificate processing task, the difficulty level of the digital certificate processing task being determined by computation power required for performing the digital certificate processing task, and the theoretical difficulty level of the first digital certificate processing task being determined according to rated computation power of the digital certificate processing apparatus; assigning, by the relay apparatus, the divided tasks of the digital certificate processing task to the digital certificate processing apparatus through the first connection.
However, Lewis teaches: dividing the … processing task according to a difficulty level of the … processing task and computation power of each … processing apparatus, to obtain divided tasks, the computation power of the … processing apparatus being determined according to a theoretical difficulty level of a first … processing task assigned to the … processing apparatus …, the difficulty level of the digital certificate processing task being determined by computation power required for performing the … processing task, and the theoretical difficulty level of the first … processing task being determined according to rated computation power of the … processing apparatus (par. 0079 Method 400 … might further comprise receiving, with the at least one second control node, a computing task from the first control node … Method 400, at block 415, might further comprise determining, with the at least one second control node, an amount of computing power necessary to process the computing task [difficulty level of task]. At block 420, method 400 might comprise designating, with the at least one second control node, one or more additional network nodes to process one or more portions of the computing task, based at least in part on the determined amount of computing power. The at least one second control node may then divide the computing task into one or more portions based at least in part on the determined processing power of each network node [the theoretical difficulty of each divided task is according to the processing power of each network node]; par. 0040 Computing node(s) 105 may all be identical with similar processing power [rated computation power]; par. 0047 each intermediary control node, based on a determination that more processing power is required to complete the computing task, might divide the one or more received computing tasks into one or more portions of a computing task and send the one or more portions to additional computing nodes); assigning, by the relay apparatus, the divided tasks of the … processing task to the … processing apparatus through the first connection (par. 0083 sending, with the at least one second control node, the one or more portions of the computing task to the one or more additional network nodes for processing).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of dividing a computing task into one or more portions based at least in part on the determined processing power of each network node of Lewis with the system and method of Yang and Nadalin resulting in a system and method which provides for dividing difficulty level of a digital certificate processing task into one or more portions/tasks based at least in part on a determined processing power of each network node as in Lewis. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of effectively and efficiently completing a computation problem/task (par. 0020).
Yang, Nadalin and Lewis do not expressly teach: in response to time for the digital certificate processing apparatus to compute the digital certificate processing task increasing, adjusting the difficulty level of a subsequent assigned digital certificate processing task accordingly for the digital certificate processing apparatus; a time interval for receiving an answer to the first digital certificate processing task.
However, Klein teaches: in response to time for the … processing apparatus to compute the … processing task increasing, adjusting the difficulty level of a subsequent assigned … processing task accordingly for the … processing apparatus; a time interval for receiving an answer to the first … processing task (par. 0026 … If (at block 156) the response time for the completed task is not less than a maximum response time and if (at block 160) the maximum outstanding tasks 54 [difficulty level] for the end point [processing apparatus] to which the task was sent is greater than the initial value …, then the I/O manager 10a, 10b decreases [adjusts] (at block 162) the maximum outstanding tasks 54 [difficulty level] for the end point [apparatus] to which the completed task was sent).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of adjusting the maximum number of outstanding tasks for an endpoint in response to a response time of a completed task at a endpoint being not less than a maximum time of Klein with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin and Lewis resulting in a system which provides for adjusting a difficulty a difficulty level of digital certificate processing task in response to determination of a response time of a completed task [has increased] or exceeds a maximum response time. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of providing and improved techniques for improving task response time in a network environment (par. 0007).
Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein do not expressly teach: deploying the relay apparatus to an internal network of a site hosting a plurality of digital certificate processing apparatuses.
However, Salapaka teaches: deploying the relay apparatus to an internal network of a site hosting a plurality of digital certificate processing apparatuses (par. 0019 A third variation exists where two media-relay servers are deployed in a corporation, one in the DMZ and one in the internal network; par. 0046 a private interface which is used by the media-relay server to access resources in the network 200, also referred to as the internal network).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of deploying a media-relay server in an internal network to access internal resources [servers] in the network of Salapaka with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein resulting in a system and method which provides for deploying a relay server in an internal network as in Salapaka. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of prevent the need to open up a variable number of UDP ports between a external network and an internal network (par. 0065). Further, deploying a relay server in an internal network site would improve security, speeds up traffic with local caching, balances workloads to prevent crashes.
As per claim 12, it is an apparatus having similar limitations as claim 1. Thus, claim 12 is rejected for the same rationale as applied to claim 1. Nadalin further teaches: a processor; and a memory communicatively connected to the at least one processor (par. 0024 Data processing system 120 contains one or more central processing units (CPUs) 122 connected to internal system bus 123, which interconnects random access memory (RAM) 124, read-only memory 126).
As per claim 22, Nadalin further teaches: wherein the apparatus includes comprising one of a digital certificate processing analog apparatus and a … server (par. 0047 certificate validation service 406 may be implemented such that it is located anywhere within a distributed data processing environment, including computing device 400 … Alternatively, components that invoke certificate validation service 406 may execute on the same physical device as certificate validation service 406, e.g., on the same server or on the same trusted computing platform). Yang further teaches: a cloud server (par. 0159 cloud computing platform).
As per claim 23, Nadalin further teaches: wherein the relay apparatus is a digital certificate processing analog apparatus (par. 0047 certificate validation service 406 may be implemented such that it is located anywhere within a distributed data processing environment, including computing device 400 … Alternatively, components that invoke certificate validation service 406 may execute on the same physical device as certificate validation service 406, e.g., on the same server or on the same trusted computing platform).
Claims 2, 18 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Nadalin, Lewis and Klein, as applied to claims 1 and 12 above, and further in view of Goto et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20170012828 A1).
As per claim 2, Yang further teaches: establishing a plurality of first connections with a plurality of … processing apparatuses, respectively, and establishing second connections with mining pools … (par. 0091 This embodiment, based on the embodiment shown in FIG. 3, sets a load balancing algorithm on each component and adds a load balancing function to load balance network connections or task messages. In addition, the connection pools in various components of the distributed message queue are respectively encapsulated as network connection circular queues; par. 0071 Similarly, the connection pool of the message forwarding component includes information about the network connections between all message forwarding components and message publishing components, and between message forwarding components and message processing components; and the connection pool of the message processing component includes information about the network connections between all message processing components and message forwarding components).
Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein do not expressly describe: a number of the second connections being smaller than a number of the first connections.
However, Goto teaches: a number of the second connections being smaller than a number of the first connections (par. 0020 FIG. 1 … The relay apparatus 1 is connected to a plurality of storage drives [first connections]… Further, the relay apparatus 1 is connected to a plurality of servers 3 through the communication line 4 … the relay apparatus 1 is connected to eight drives 20 and three servers 3; par. 0027 In the present embodiment, each server 3 establishes a logical connection [second connections] with the relay apparatus 1, and the relay apparatus 1 establishes a logical connection [first connections] with each drive 20. It is noted that the number of connections between the relay apparatus and the servers is smaller than the connections between the relay apparatus and the drives).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of establishing connections between devices and a relay apparatus of Goto with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein resulting a system and method which provides for establishing first connections between digital certificate processing servers and a relay apparatus and second connections between the relay apparatus and mining pool, the second connections being smaller than the first connections as in Goto. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose reducing number of connections connected (par. 0027) to each server. Further, this would have resulted in reduced network overhead, lower latency.
As per claim 18, it is an apparatus having similar limitations as claim 2. Thus, claim 18 is rejected for the same rationale as applied to claim 2.
As per claim 24, Yang teaches the invention substantially as claimed including a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions, the instructions, when being executed by a processor of a relay apparatus for relaying a … processing task, causing the processor to perform:
establishing a plurality of first connections with a plurality of digital certificate processing apparatuses, respectively …; establishing at least one second connection with at least one mining pool [message publishing component] … (par. 0129 monitoring and management are all done through connection pools established in each component, which sequentially place all network connections in the current component into the connection pool; par. 0060 For example, when a message publishing component receives a task message … it selects an available network connection between the message publishing component [mining pool] and the message forwarding component [apparatus for relaying] from the connection pool, and then publishes the task message to the message forwarding component through the network connection. Alternatively, the message publishing component [mining pool] selects an effective network connection from the connection pool from the message publishing component to the message forwarding component [apparatus for relaying] and then to the message processing component [processing apparatus]);
obtaining a … processing task from the mining pool through the second connection (par. 0056 the message publishing component publishes the task to the message forwarding component through the network connection between the message publishing component and the message forwarding component);
assigning the divided tasks of the … processing task to the … processing apparatus through the first connection (par. 0056 … after the message forwarding component receives the task, it sends the task to the message processing component with which it has a network connection after scheduling).
Yang does not expressly describe: a digital certificate processing task; obtaining the digital certificate processing task; digital certificate processing apparatus.
However, Nadalin teaches: digital certificate processing task; obtaining the digital certificate processing task; and digital certificate processing apparatus (par. 0055 obtaining a digital certificate (step 502). For example, the digital certificate may be received at an e-commerce server from a remote party; par. 0011 A certificate validation service [equiv. to digital certificate processing apparatus] receives a certificate validation request [digital certificate processing task] for a target certificate from a client).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify/combine the teaching of Yang by incorporating the technique of processing certificate validation requests as set forth by Nadalin. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to make this combination because it would have been a simple substitution. Yang generally describes method distributing processing tasks via message forwarding component to a processing component, except the tasks are not digital certificate processing tasks to be processed on digital certificate processing apparatus. However, processing digital certificate processing tasks using digital certificate processing apparatus was known in the art. Nadalin for example describes using a certificate validation service for processing certificate validation requests. One of ordinary skill would have substituted data processing tasks with digital certificate processing tasks to arrive to a method distributing/assigning digital certificate processing tasks (e.g. validating tasks) to be processed by digital certificate proceeding apparatuses, with predictable results.
Yang and Nadalin do not expressly teach: dividing the digital certificate processing task according to a difficulty level of the digital certificate processing task and computation power of each digital certificate processing apparatus, to obtain divided tasks, the computation power of a digital certificate processing apparatus being determined according to a theoretical difficulty level of a first digital certificate processing task assigned to the digital certificate processing apparatus and a time interval for receiving an answer to the first digital certificate processing task, the difficulty level of the digital certificate processing task being determined by computation power required for performing the digital certificate processing task, and the theoretical difficulty level of the first digital certificate processing task being determined according to rated computation power of the digital certificate processing apparatus; assigning the divided tasks of the digital certificate processing task to the plurality of digital certificate processing apparatuses through the first connections.
However, Lewis teaches: dividing the … processing task according to a difficulty level of the … processing task and computation power of each … processing apparatus, to obtain divided tasks, the computation power of the … processing apparatus being determined according to a theoretical difficulty level of a first … processing task assigned to the … processing apparatus …, the difficulty level of the digital certificate processing task being determined by computation power required for performing the … processing task, and the theoretical difficulty level of the first … processing task being determined according to rated computation power of the … processing apparatus (par. 0079 Method 400 … might further comprise receiving, with the at least one second control node, a computing task from the first control node … Method 400, at block 415, might further comprise determining, with the at least one second control node, an amount of computing power necessary to process the computing task [difficulty level of task]. At block 420, method 400 might comprise designating, with the at least one second control node, one or more additional network nodes to process one or more portions of the computing task, based at least in part on the determined amount of computing power. The at least one second control node may then divide the computing task into one or more portions based at least in part on the determined processing power of each network node [the theoretical difficulty of each divided task is according to the processing power of each network node]; par. 0040 Computing node(s) 105 may all be identical with similar processing power [rated computation power]; par. 0047 each intermediary control node, based on a determination that more processing power is required to complete the computing task, might divide the one or more received computing tasks into one or more portions of a computing task and send the one or more portions to additional computing nodes); assigning, by the relay apparatus, the divided tasks of the … processing task to the … processing apparatus through the first connection (par. 0083 sending, with the at least one second control node, the one or more portions of the computing task to the one or more additional network nodes for processing).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of dividing a computing task into one or more portions based at least in part on the determined processing power of each network node of Lewis with the system and method of Yang and Nadalin resulting in a system and method which provides for dividing difficulty level of a digital certificate processing task into one or more portions/tasks based at least in part on a determined processing power of each network node as in Lewis. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of effectively and efficiently completing a computation problem/task (par. 0020).
Yang, Nadalin and Lewis do not expressly teach: in response to time for the digital certificate processing apparatus to compute the digital certificate processing task increasing, adjusting the difficulty level of a subsequent assigned digital certificate processing task accordingly for the digital certificate processing apparatus; a time interval for receiving an answer to the first digital certificate processing task.
However, Klein teaches: in response to time for the … processing apparatus to compute the … processing task increasing, adjusting the difficulty level of a subsequent assigned … processing task accordingly for the … processing apparatus; a time interval for receiving an answer to the first … processing task (par. 0026 … If (at block 156) the response time for the completed task is not less than a maximum response time and if (at block 160) the maximum outstanding tasks 54 [difficulty level] for the end point [processing apparatus] to which the task was sent is greater than the initial value …, then the I/O manager 10a, 10b decreases [adjusts] (at block 162) the maximum outstanding tasks 54 [difficulty level] for the end point [apparatus] to which the completed task was sent).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of adjusting the maximum number of outstanding tasks for an endpoint in response to a response time of a completed task at a endpoint being not less than a maximum time with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin and Lewis resulting in a system which provides for adjusting a difficulty a difficulty level of digital certificate processing task in response to determination of a response time of a completed task [has increased] or exceeds a maximum response time. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of providing and improved techniques for improving task response time in a network environment (par. 0007).
Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein do not expressly describe: a number of the second connections being smaller than a number of the first connections.
However, Goto teaches: a number of the second connections being smaller than a number of the first connections (par. 0020 FIG. 1 … The relay apparatus 1 is connected to a plurality of storage drives [first connections] … Further, the relay apparatus 1 is connected to a plurality of servers 3 through the communication line 4 … the relay apparatus 1 is connected to eight drives 20 and three servers 3; par. 0027 In the present embodiment, each server 3 establishes a logical connection [second connections] with the relay apparatus 1, and the relay apparatus 1 establishes a logical connection [first connections] with each drive 20. It is noted that the number of connections between the relay apparats and the servers is smaller than the connections between the relay apparatus and the drives).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of establishing connections between devices and a relay apparatus of Goto with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein resulting a system and method which provides for establishing first connections between digital certificate processing servers and a relay apparatus and second connections between the relay apparatus and mining pool, the second connections being smaller than the first connections as in Goto. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose reducing number of connections connected (par. 0027) to each server. Further, this would have resulted in reduced network overhead, lower latency.
Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein do not expressly teach: wherein the relay apparatus is deployed to an internal network of a site hosting the plurality of digital certificate processing apparatuses.
However, Salapaka teaches: wherein the relay apparatus is deployed to an internal network of a site hosting the plurality of digital certificate processing apparatuses (par. 0019 A third variation exists where two media-relay servers are deployed in a corporation, one in the DMZ and one in the internal network; par. 0046 a private interface which is used by the media-relay server to access resources in the network 200, also referred to as the internal network).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of deploying a media-relay server in an internal network to access internal resources [servers] in the network of Salapaka with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein resulting in a system and method which provides for deploying a relay server in an internal network as in Salapaka. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of prevent the need to open up a variable number of UDP ports between a external network and an internal network (par. 0065). Further, deploying a relay server in an internal network site would improve security, speeds up traffic with local caching, balances workloads to prevent crashes.
Claims 5 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Nadalin, Lewis and Klein, as applied to claims 1 and 12 above, and further in view of Hong et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20210176647 A1).
Hong was cited in a previous office action.
As per claim 5, Yang further teaches: establishing the first connection with one … processing apparatus and establishing second connections with a plurality of mining pools according to the computation capability of the … processing apparatus (par. 0091 This embodiment, based on the embodiment shown in FIG. 3, sets a load balancing algorithm on each component and adds a load balancing function to load balance network connections or task messages. In addition, the connection pools in various components of the distributed message queue are respectively encapsulated as network connection circular queues; par. 0071 Similarly, the connection pool of the message forwarding component includes information about the network connections between all message forwarding components and message publishing components, and between message forwarding components and message processing components; and the connection pool of the message processing component includes information about the network connections between all message processing components and message forwarding components).
Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein do not expressly disclose: wherein a number of the second connections being greater than a number of the first connection.
However, Hong discloses: a number of the second connections being greater than a number of the first connection (pa. 0056 determining that the first number is less than or equal to the second number).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the technique of determining that the first number is less than or equal to the second number of Hong with the system and method of Yang, Nadalin, Lewis and Klein resulting in a system and method which provides for establishing a number of the second connections being greater than a number of the first connection. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination for the purpose of satisfying requirement of connections, and thereby improving the quality of service (par. 0181).
As per claim 21, it is an apparatus having similar limitations as claim 5. Thus, claim 21 is rejected for the same rationale as applied to claim 5.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1, 12 and 24 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Willy W. Huaracha whose telephone number is (571) 270-5510. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:30-5:00pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bradley Teets can be reached on (571) 272-3338. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WH/
Examiner, Art Unit 2195
/BRADLEY A TEETS/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2197
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