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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 11/17/2025 has been entered.
This action is responsive to the Applicant’s amendments filed on 11/17/2025. Claims 1-20 remain pending in the application. Claims 1, 3, 11, and 16 have been amended. Any examiner’s note, objection, and rejection not repeated is withdrawn due to Applicant’s amendment.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/18/2022 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Examiner’s Note
The Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures, and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may also apply. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the Applicant fully consider the references in its entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
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 1, 4, 7-11, 12-16, and 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi et al. (US 20170235588 A1) hereafter Qi in view of Suter et al. (US 20180131764 A1) hereafter Suter, further in view of Doshi et al. (US 20210117249 A1) hereafter Doshi, further in view of Youseff et al. (US 9280375 B1) hereafter Youseff.
Regarding claim 1, Qi teaches:
An intelligent routing method, comprising:
processing, by a first instance of an application, a plurality of tasks at a high security level (Paragraphs 33, 37; “a VMM (or a scheduler of the VMM) may be able to provision customer-requested VMs in a way that satisfies customer security requirements and computational requirements” and “The scheduler may also determine whether the security levels and/or computational requirements of the VMs currently executing on that working server can all be met if the customer-requested VM is added to the working server”. VMs are currently executing on working servers and associated with security levels. The disclosure that the scheduler evaluates whether the security levels of VMs currently executing on a working server can be met teaches processing a plurality of tasks at a security level. “high” security is one particular embodiment within such security levels.);
receiving a new task from a user (Paragraph 33; “a customer launch request to launch a VM instance” corresponds to receiving a new task from a user.);
determining that the first instance cannot process the new task (Paragraph 54; “VMM or scheduler may determine whether the customer-requested VM can be executed”);
in response to determining that the first instance cannot process the new task (Paragraph 54; “If not, the VMM or scheduler may launch a new server and provision the customer-requested VM on the new server”):
determining an associated confidentiality level (Paragraph 61; “The scheduler may be configured to receive a request to provision a virtual machine associated with a security requirement”).
creating a second instance of the application to process the new task (Paragraph 61; “The processor block may be configured to provision the virtual machine on the working server or cause the virtual machine to be provisioned on a new server.”);
dynamically routing tasks to instances of the application (Paragraph 54; “the VMM or scheduler may determine whether the customer-requested VM can be executed on an already-working server while satisfying the determined maximum co-run probability and the computing resource capacity of the VM”, where identifying a server and provisioning the requested VM on the selected server constitutes routing the task, a VM request, to a selected execution instance. Paragraph 37 confirms this is performed dynamically, “After testing all working servers...”, where the evaluation of the state of executing VMs and server capacity constitutes dynamic routing decisions.);
a second instance receiving the task (Paragraph 61; “The processor block may be configured to provision the virtual machine on the working server or cause the virtual machine to be provisioned on a new server.”);
and processing the new task using the second instance (Paragraph 61; “The processor block may be configured to provision the virtual machine on the working server or cause the virtual machine to be provisioned on a new server.”);
lower security level (Paragraphs 36 and 52; the disclosure of different security level requirements includes relative levels such as higher and lower security levels. Co-run probability being inversely proportional to the security requirement establishes a comparative relationship between some VMs which have stricter, thereby being higher, security requirements and others with lower security requirements. A lower security requirement corresponds to a lower security level.);
based on determined confidentiality level and security configuration of the instance (Paragraphs 36-37; “receiving a customer request to provision a particular VM having a particular security level requirement” and “determining whether the security levels... can all be met if the VM is added” evaluates and determines whether security levels are satisfied during scheduling. Determining whether a VM satisfies a required security level constitutes determining, i.e. calculating, a confidentiality level associated with the task. Paragraph 37 further discloses “determine whether the security levels and/or computational requirements of the VMs currently executing on that working server can all be met”, which implies that servers/instances have security characteristics and the scheduler evaluates those characteristics before placement.).
Qi does not teach analyzing the new task.
However, Suter teaches:
analyzing the new task (Paragraph 67; “Moreover, by making the determinations based on actual conditions, the determinations of likely to be more accurate and result in more efficient processing. Additionally, since which components are local and which are microservices is automatically determined during the runtime, the additional potential costs of having to take down and change a running application to refactor the components and microservices are avoided.”);
Qi and Suter are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of methods for data processing and management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Qi to incorporate the teachings of Suter and perform an analysis of the new task. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized task analysis to be a known method in the art, yielding the predictable result of being able to properly perform actions on the tasks based on the results of the analysis.
Qi in view of Suter does not teach routing the new task to the second instance through a service mesh control plane based on determined confidentiality level and security configuration of the instance.
However, Doshi teaches:
routing the new task to the second instance through a service mesh control plane (Paragraph 188; “Offloading network operations for Global Hierarchical Control Plane to IPU can occur to create configuration, new services, and management changes, (e.g. network) defined by software, on the fly.”, “IPU implementing control plane operations”, “Various embodiments of IPU's SDN 2006 can implement service management such as Service Mesh load balancing policies”. An IPU can implement control plane operations and can implement service management including service mesh load balancing policies. Routing and load balancing via this service mesh thus directs tasks or service request to appropriate instances and the control plane manages this routing based on policies.).
Qi, Suter, and Doshi are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of methods for data processing and management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Qi in view of Suter to incorporate the teachings of Doshi and route a new task to a second instance through a service mesh control plane that dynamically directs tasks to applications based on the confidentiality level and security configuration of Qi. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the policy-based routing mechanism as a known method in the art, and the implementation of which would yield the predictable result of enforcing security-based placement of tasks on appropriate resources.
Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi does not teach responsive to a current number of users and tasks falling below a predetermined minimum threshold, removing one or more instances of the application.
However, Youseff teaches:
responsive to a current number of users and tasks falling below a predetermined minimum threshold, removing one or more instances of the application (Col. 12, lines 25-34; “The number of application threads 320 may decrease when fewer users are using the application 310, less data is being received by the application 310 or when the application 310 is performing a relatively simple task. As the number of application threads 320 decreases, the load on each virtual processor 212 decreases. When the load on the virtual processors 212 decreases below a minimum load threshold, then the virtual machine manager 214 may remove one or more virtual processors 212 from the virtual machine 210.”).
Qi, Suter, Doshi, and Youseff are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of methods for data processing and management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Qi in view of Suter further in view of Doshi to incorporate the teachings of Youseff and remove instances of an application tied to the lower security levels of Qi in response to a number of users and tasks falling below a predetermined minimum threshold. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize this as a known method of load balancing whose implementation would yield the predictable result of removing unnecessary resources from the ready environment when load is low, achieving better cost efficiency.
Claim 11 recites similar limitations as those of claim 1, additionally reciting a computer program product and computer readable storage medium. Qi teaches:
A computer program product for intelligent routing (Paragraph 57; “Thus, for example, the program product 600 may be conveyed to one or more modules of the processor 404 by an RF signal bearing medium, where the signal bearing media 602 is conveyed by the wireless communications media 610 (e.g., a wireless communications medium conforming with the IEEE 802.11 standard).”), the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith (Paragraph 57; “In some implementations, the signal bearing media 602 depicted in FIG. 6 may encompass computer-readable media 606”).
Claim 11 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 1.
Claim 16 recites similar limitations as those of claim 1, additionally reciting one or more processors; and a memory communicatively coupled to the one or more processors. Qi teaches:
one or more processors; and a memory communicatively coupled to the one or more processors (Paragraph 41; “In an example basic configuration 402, the computing device 400 may include one or more processors 404 and a system memory 406. A memory bus 408 may be used to communicate between the processor 404 and the system memory 406.”).
Claim 16 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 1.
Regarding claim 4, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 1. Qi teaches:
wherein the first instance of the application processes tasks using a higher level of network security than the second instance of the application (Paragraphs 36-37, 51-52; different virtual machines may have different security requirements. Co-run probability is inversely proportional to the security requirement, establishing relative security levels. VMs are actively executing with associated security levels, thereby corresponding to a first security instance that may process tasks under a higher security requirement than a second instance processing tasks under a lower security requirement. Paragraph 19 confirms the networked environment, “a consumer may communicate with those applications of the retail service through a client application such as a browser over one or more networks”).
Regarding claim 7, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 1. Youseff teaches:
wherein determining that the first instance can process the new task comprises determining that a variable exceeds a threshold (Col. 6, lines 14-21; “the virtual machine manager 214 may instantiate the additional remote virtual processors 212R when a current load of the existing virtual processors 212 exceeds a maximum load threshold. Additionally or alternatively, the virtual machine manager 214 may instantiate the additional remote virtual processors 212R when the number of application threads 320 exceeds a threshold number of application threads”. Col 6, lines 51-53 confirms that this may encompass a new task; “The number of application threads may increase for a variety of reasons, for example, more users may start using the application 310”, where the additional application thread corresponds to the new task, the virtual processors correspond to the first instance, and the current load corresponds to the variable being measured against the threshold.).
Suter teaches:
a threshold number of users (Paragraph 73; “when the number of users that use the particular component exceeds a threshold, e.g., 1000 users, the technique determines to migrate the component.”).
Claim 12 recites similar limitations as those of claim 7. Claim 12 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 7.
Claim 17 recites similar limitations as those of claim 7. Claim 17 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 7.
Regarding claim 8, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 7. Qi teaches:
changing task routing to move at least some of a plurality of users to instances having different security levels (Paragraph 36; “receiving a customer request to provision a particular VM having a particular security level requirement” implies multiple different security levels exist. Paragraph 37 further discloses “the scheduler may test each working server [and] determine whether the security levels... can all be met if the customer-requested VM is added”. Paragraph 33 discloses “migrate VMs between servers”, corresponding to changing task routing. Because each VM is provisioned in response to a customer request, migrating the VM between servers necessarily changes the server instance that processes tasks for the users on the VM. Thus, at least some of the users are moved to different instances.).
lower security levels (Paragraphs 36 and 52; the disclosure of different security level requirements includes relative levels such as higher and lower security levels. Co-run probability being inversely proportional to the security requirement establishes a comparative relationship between some VMs which have stricter, thereby being higher, security requirements and others with lower security requirements. A lower security requirement corresponds to a lower security level.).
A person of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to migrate users to instances having lower security levels in order to conserve higher security level resources, consistent with preservation of co-run probability as disclosed in Paragraphs 31 and 33 of Qi.
Claim 13 recites similar limitations as those of claim 8. Claim 13 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 8.
Claim 18 recites similar limitations as those of claim 8. Claim 18 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 8.
Regarding claim 9, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 8.
Suter teaches:
creating a user profile for each of the plurality of users (Paragraph 38; “based on payment details of the user, a user operational profile 122 is generated by an entitlement engine”, the engine may perform the profile creation for a plurality of users);
Qi teaches:
calculating (Paragraph 37; “scheduler may use a linear regression algorithm, a machine learning algorithm, and/or sliding window algorithm to perform the estimation.”);
confidentiality levels (Paragraph 31; “system model parameters may include computing power and security level. Computing power may be defined as the PCU processing power allocated to a particular VM or vCPU. For example, for a server that is configured with m PCUs and n vCPUs, each vCPU may have a computing power of m/n PCUs. Security level is inversely proportional to the maximum co-run probability of a particular VM with any other VM. Accordingly, the higher the security level desired for a VM to be executed on a particular server, the lower the allowable maximum co-run probability of any two VMs on that server.”).
Doshi teaches:
periodically monitoring (Paragraph 315; “data planes can provide runtime dynamic Telemetry Monitoring and Logging. Telemetry provides management and retention for telemetry such as logging policies, sampling times, event filtering and generation. This can be an active process managing resource events or periodically checking and gathering status and events”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to tie the calculating step to the confidentiality levels and associate calculating confidentiality levels and periodic monitoring to the user profiles. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated by the need to periodically monitor users to evaluate whether the security level being used is proper for the tasks the user is carrying out.
Claim 14 recites similar limitations as those of claim 9. Claim 14 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 9.
Claim 19 recites similar limitations as those of claim 9. Claim 19 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 9.
Regarding claim 10, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 9, the computer program product of claim 14, and the system of claim 19. Suter teaches:
monitoring a number of active users for each instance of the application (Paragraph 56; “The component usage detector 208 monitors use of the components 206a-206n and identifies circumstances in which it is advantageous to migrate one or more of the components 206a-n”, where the components correspond to instances of the application. Paragraph 73 discloses another aspect in which “the technique determines when to convert a component from a local component to a micro service based on a number of users using the component”.);
and responsive to the number of active users of a current instance being less than a predefined minimum number of profiles (Paragraph 73; in another example, the technique determines when to convert a component from a local component to a micro service based on a number of users using the component”):
and removing the current instance (Paragraph 85 discloses “the component can be, but need not be, removed from the local library on the computing device.”).
Qi teaches:
moving all users of the current instance to a different security instance (Paragraph 36; “receiving a customer request to provision a particular VM having a particular security level requirement” implies multiple different security levels exist. Paragraph 37 further discloses “the scheduler may test each working server [and] determine whether the security levels... can all be met if the customer-requested VM is added”. Paragraph 33 discloses “migrate VMs between servers”, corresponding to changing task routing. Because each VM is provisioned in response to a customer request, migrating the VM between servers necessarily changes the server instance that processes tasks for the users on the VM. Thus, at least some of the users are moved to different instances.);
higher security instances (Paragraphs 36 and 52; the disclosure of different security level requirements includes relative levels such as higher and lower security levels. Co-run probability being inversely proportional to the security requirement establishes a comparative relationship between some VMs which have stricter, thereby being higher, security requirements and others with lower security requirements. A higher security requirement corresponds to a higher security level).
Claim 15 recites similar limitations as those of claim 10. Claim 15 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 10.
Claim 20 recites similar limitations as those of claim 10. Claim 20 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 10.
Claims 2-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wentz et al. (US 20200201679 A1) hereafter Wentz, further in view of Bennett et al. (US 20190251417 A1) hereafter Bennett.
Regarding claim 2, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 1. Suter teaches:
analyzing the new task (Paragraph 67; “Moreover, by making the determinations based on actual conditions, the determinations of likely to be more accurate and result in more efficient processing. Additionally, since which components are local and which are microservices is automatically determined during the runtime, the additional potential costs of having to take down and change a running application to refactor the components and microservices are avoided.”).
Qi teaches:
associated confidentiality level for the new task (Paragraph 36; “In some embodiments, upon receiving a customer request to provision a particular VM having a particular security level requirement”, security level corresponds to confidentiality level for a particular task).
Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff does not teach using a machine learning model; or being based on a historical knowledge corpus.
However, Wentz teaches:
using a machine learning model (Paragraph 16; “Devices may perform machine learning data storage tasks redundantly or distinctly as a function of trusted confidence levels.”).
Qi, Suter, Doshi, Youseff, and Wentz are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of methods for data processing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff to incorporate the teachings of Wentz and utilize a machine leaning model. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the use of ML models to be a known method in the art whose implementation would yield the predictable result of statistically accurate predictions.
Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wentz does not teach being based on a historical knowledge corpus.
However, Bennett teaches:
based on a historical knowledge corpus (Paragraph 58; “At block 710, corpus items are received for training the machine classifier. In an exemplary embodiment, corpus items may correspond to historical or reference user input containing content that may be used to train the machine classifier to predict task intent” explicitly teaches storing past input or reference data as a corpus used to train a ML model. These corpus items function as historical knowledge that informs future classification or decision-making by the system).
Qi, Suter, Doshi, Youseff, Wentz, and Bennett are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of methods for task processing and management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wentz to incorporate the teachings of Bennett and utilize a historical knowledge corpus to inform such routing and scheduling decisions. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the use of a historical knowledge corpus would improve task routing and scheduling policies based on past system behavior and performance patterns.
Regarding claim 3, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wentz, further in view of Bennett teach the method of claim 2. Qi teaches:
receiving a plurality of additional tasks from a plurality of users (Paragraphs 37, 51; the VMM receives a customer request to launch a VM instance and multiple VMs may be currently executing and that additional customer-requested VMs may be added. The reference contemplates a data center environment serving customer requested VMs which involves receiving multiple requests from multiple customers. The plurality of users is further confirmed in Paragraph 21; “The virtual machines 104 and/or the virtual datacenter 112 may be configured to provide cloud-related data/computing services such as various applications, data storage, data processing, or comparable ones to a group of customers 108, such as individual users or enterprise customers, via a cloud 106.”);
routing the plurality of additional tasks to the first instance or the second instance based on their associated confidentiality levels (Paragraphs 36-37, 54; “receiving a customer request to provision a particular VM having a particular security level requirement”, “scheduler may test each working server to determine... security levels... can all be met if the customer-requested VM is added”, and “identify a server on which the virtual machine can be provisioned... if not, the VMM or scheduler may launch a new server and provision the customer-requested VM on the new server”, which discloses routing VM creation, corresponding to tasks, to one server instance or another based on security level requirements.).
Wentz teaches:
predicting using a machine learning model (Paragraph 16; “Devices may perform machine learning data storage tasks redundantly or distinctly as a function of trusted confidence levels.”);
and segmenting the plurality of additional tasks based on the associated confidentiality levels to different instances of the application (Paragraph 145; “Selection device may, without limitation, divide computational task in to at least a high-security sub-task and a low-security sub-task; for instance, and as described above, data storage may be delegated to and/or assigned to a remote device 112 of at least a first remote device 112 that has a relatively low confidence level, for instance where the data to be stored is encrypted, stored redundantly, or the like, whereas storage of unencrypted data and/or processing of data that requires attested computing and/or access to unencrypted data may be assigned to a remote device 112 of at least a remote device 112 having a relatively high confidence level associated therewith.”, where the sub-tasks correspond to the plurality of additional tasks, the high/low security identifiers correspond to associated confidentiality levels, and remote devices with different associated confidence levels correspond to different instances of the application, the division across different devices corresponding to segmenting the additional tasks.).
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wang et al. (US 20200067800 A1) hereafter Wang.
Regarding claim 5, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff teach the method of claim 1. Qi teaches:
multiple users (Paragraph 21; “The virtual machines 104 and/or the virtual datacenter 112 may be configured to provide cloud-related data/computing services such as various applications, data storage, data processing, or comparable ones to a group of customers 108, such as individual users or enterprise customers, via a cloud 106.”, where the group of customers correspond to a plurality of users.).
Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff does not teach the first instance of the application and the second instance of the application each comprise respective first and second chains of microservices.
However, Wang teaches:
the first instance of the application and the second instance of the application each comprise respective first and second chains of microservices that are connectable by users (Paragraph 224; service function changing where network functions are chained in a proper order and enabling parallel instances of microservices on a per-microservice basis and instantiating multiple microservice instances to handle dynamic loads. Each instantiated set of interworking microservices comprises an application instance which is a chain of microservices. The system provisions user-specified services in scalable multi-cloud environments, thereby corresponding to chains of microservices connectable by multiple users.).
Qi, Suter, Doshi, Youseff, and Wang are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of data management. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff to include the teachings of Wang and have each instance of an application comprise chains of microservices. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize chains of microservices to be a known method in the art whose implementation would yield the predictable result of allowing independent development and deployment of individual services, improving fault isolation and system robustness, and facilitating horizontal scaling of components.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wang, further in view of Bahl et al. (US 20210019194 A1) hereafter Bahl.
Regarding claim 6, Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wang teach the method of claim 5. Qi teaches:
identifying a level of confidentiality (Paragraphs 36 and 52; the disclosure of different security level requirements includes relative levels such as higher and lower security levels. Co-run probability being inversely proportional to the security requirement establishes a comparative relationship between some VMs which have stricter, thereby being higher, security requirements and others with lower security requirements, corresponding to a confidentiality level. Paragraph 61 further confirms “The scheduler may be configured to receive a request to provision a virtual machine associated with a security requirement”, in which the security requirement, corresponding to the confidentiality level, must be identified before provisioning.)
Wang teaches:
wherein creating a second instance of the application with the associated confidentiality comprises identifying each microservice in the second chain of microservices (Paragraph 224; instantiating multiple interworking microservices corresponds to creating a second instance of the application and having identified the microservices being deployed thereto.).
Qi in view of Suter, further in view of Doshi, further in view of Youseff, further in view of Wang does not teach replicating the chains of microservices based on determined confidentiality levels, wherein the replicated chains of microservices comprises different sets of network policies.
However, Bahl teaches:
replicating the chains of microservices based on determined confidentiality levels, wherein the replicated chains of microservices comprises different sets of network policies (Paragraph 67; "each participating cloud deploying a full service mesh control plane installation and each service mesh control plane managing its own endpoints. A single logical service mesh can be configured and replicating shared services and namespaces in all participating clouds" demonstrates that service chains can be replicated across multiple environments. Further, "participating clouds can operate under shared administrative control for policy enforcement and security" discloses that each cloud enforces its own policies, showing that replicated microservices may have distinct network or security policies per instance).
Qi, Suter, Doshi, Youseff, Wang, and Bahl are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of data management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Qi in view of Suter further in view of Doshi further in view of Youseff further in view of Wang to incorporate the teachings of Bahl and utilize the chains of microservices on the VMs of Qi and replicate them across multiple service mesh control planes, thus assigning different network and security policies to each replicated instance. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated by the need to manage workloads and enforce desired security constraints across multiple environments.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/17/2025 have been fully considered but are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments have been summarized below:
The amended portion of claim 1 is not taught or suggested by the prior art of record.
Col. 5, lines 37-54 of Scott does not teach “routing the new task to the second instance through a service mesh control plane that dynamically routes tasks to instances of the application based on a determined confidentiality level and security configuration of the instance.”
The amended claim language of “responsive to a current number of users and tasks falling below a predetermined minimum threshold, removing one or more lower security instances of the application” is not taught or suggested by the prior art of record.
Dependent claims are submitted as allowable for at least the above reasons.
Examiner’s response:
The Examiner agrees that the amended portion of claim 1 is not taught or suggested by the prior art of record. Therefore, the previous rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. 103 has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Qi, Suter, Doshi, and Youseff under 35 U.S.C. 103.
Upon review, the Examiner maintains that Scott does teach or at least suggest the limitation. However, in view of the amendments to claim 1, the Examiner has remapped the limitation to Doshi in the amended rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. 103. This remapping is made solely for clarity and does not concede that Scott fails to teach the limitation.
The Examiner agrees that the amended portion of claim 1 is not taught or suggested by the prior art of record. Therefore, the previous rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. 103 has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Qi, Suter, Doshi, and Youseff under 35 U.S.C. 103.
Independent claims 1, 11, and 16 remain rejected for the reasons stated above. Therefore, contrary to Applicant's arguments, because the dependent claims depend from an unpatentable claim and does not add limitations that overcome the rejection, it likewise remains rejected.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Meduri et al. (US 11055273 B1) discloses state changes to software containers in response to event data. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNETH P TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-6926. The examiner can normally be reached M-TH 4:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. PT, F 4:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. PT, or at Kenneth.Tran@uspto.gov.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, April Blair can be reached at (571) 270-1014. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KENNETH P TRAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196