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 .
This action is responsive to the Applicant’s amendments filed on 12/03/2025. Claims 1, 3-4, 6-11, 13-14, and 16-20 remain pending in the application. Claims 1 and 11 have been amended. Claims 2, 5, 12, and 15 have been canceled. Any examiner’s note, objection, and rejection not repeated is withdrawn due to Applicant’s amendment.
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 Objections
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 5 has been canceled but the claim set dated 12/03/2025 still contains claim text under claim 5 in the claim listing. Applicant may overcome this objection by removing the claim text such that claim 5 is properly presented as canceled.
Appropriate correction is required.
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, 3-4, 6, 11, 13-14, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shankar et al. (US 20220327003 A1) hereafter Shankar in view of Kim et al. (US 20230038620 A1) hereafter Kim, further in view of Cannon et al. (US 20130055092 A1) hereafter Cannon.
Regarding claim 1, Shankar teaches:
An edge server management method, comprising:
creating a host folder from a server manager running on a virtualization platform user interface (UI) (Paragraph 95; “provisions the selected physical computing device as a virtual edge device”, where provisioning a device as a virtualized edge system corresponds to creating a host server. Further, “executing a hypervisor on top of the OS” where installing an OS and hypervisor corresponds to establishing a host platform capable of supporting virtualized workloads. Further, “a user interface... [to] control and/or otherwise manage the virtual edge device” discloses a UI used to control and manage the provisioned device, corresponding to the applicant’s server manager running on a virtualization platform UI.);
adding one or more edge servers to the host folder (Paragraph 108; “FIG. 13 illustrates another user interface utilizable for provisioning a virtual edge device, according to some embodiments. The user interface 1301 may correspond to a next stage of the provisioning process, in this case, enabling a user to add one or more workloads (e.g., similar to as described in reference to FIG. 9). Note that, in this case, the user interfaces of FIGS. 12 and 13 enable a user to both provision (e.g., image) a new virtual edge device and provision one or more workloads (e.g., via containerization) within the same setup process (e.g., to initiate the performance of the processes 900 and 1000 of FIGS. 9 and 10)”, where provisioning a new virtual edge device to the user interface corresponds to adding a new edge server to the host folder);
and managing the one or more edge servers with an edge server management system (Paragraph 69; “In some embodiments, the workflow thread may be communicatively coupled to a cluster manager (not depicted). Cluster manager may be configured to manage any suitable number of computing clusters. In some embodiments, the cluster manager may be configured to manage any suitable type of computing cluster (e.g., a Kubernetes cluster, a set of computing nodes used to execute containerized applications, etc.)”, where the cluster manager managing computing clusters corresponds to the applicant’s management system managing one or more edge servers). Shankar does not teach associating the host folder with an element manager, adding edge servers to a host folder, or an edge server management system running in the element manager instance.
However, Kim teaches:
associating the host folder with an element manager via a UI of the element manager integrated into the server management UI (Paragraph 63; “the user may use the user interface provided by the UI/UX management unit and register an edge node in a virtual network, and, based on this, the orchestrator may establish a virtual network”, which teaches an association of managed entities, corresponding to the host folder, with a management unit, corresponding to the element manager. The claimed host folder is an element being managed or associated with the element manager, interpreted as a logical unit of data or resources under management. The edge node in Kim is a logical entity that the system orchestrator associates with a management unit, thus analogous to a host folder in that it is a resource that is registered, tracked, and associated with a management system via a UI.);
and a management system running in the element manager instance (Paragraph 81; “The inner IP header may include information on a virtual IP set by a user through a user interface and may be assigned from a controller as an edge node is connected”, where the controller corresponds to the applicant’s management system).
Shankar and Kim are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of network orchestration and virtualization. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Shankar and Kim to associate the host folder with an element manager and have a management system running in the element manager instance. Doing so would enable centralized control of the edge nodes in the host folder and facilitate scalable operations of the services contained within. It would constitute a natural design choice to reduce manual overhead and enforce configuration consistency across all edges.
Shankar in view of Kim does not teach a plug in.
However, Cannon teaches:
a plug in (Paragraph 37; “More specifically, applications 306.sub.1-306.sub.N (shown in FIG. 3) may "plug into," or integrate with, application infrastructure 401 using one or more extensions (not shown) to monitor and/or manage nodes 302 (shown in FIG. 3) of system 300”).
Shankar, Kim, and Cannon are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of network management in virtual computing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Shankar in view of Kim with Cannon to have the UI be a plug in UI. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the known method of plug-in usage in which implementation would yield the predictable result of new features being able to be added through the UI without modifying the core system, allowing tailoring of the system to different environments or customers by enabling or disabling only relevant components. Independency from the main system allows for effective isolation practices.
Claim 11 contains similar limitations as claim 1, additionally reciting a central processing unit, a system memory, accessible to the central processing unit, including processor-executable instructions, directed towards an information handling system. Shankar teaches:
a central processing unit (CPU); a system memory, accessible to the CPU, including processor-executable instructions (Paragraph 114; “Process 1800 is respectively illustrated as a logical flow diagram, each operation of which represents a sequence of operations that can be implemented in hardware, computer instructions, or a combination thereof. In the context of computer instructions, the operations represent computer-executable instructions stored on one or more computer-readable storage media that, when executed by one or more processors, perform the recited operations”, where computer readable storage media containing computer executable instructions corresponds to the applicant’s processor executable instructions on memory).
Claim 11 is rejected for reasons similar to those of claim 1.
Regarding claim 3, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon teaches the method of claim 1. Shankar teaches:
wherein creating the host folder comprises creating the host folder from a user interface (UI) (Paragraph 95; “In some embodiments, as described further in reference to FIGS. 15-17, the computer system 907 may provide a user interface to the user device 903 upon successfully provisioning the virtual edge device(s) 921. For example, the user interface may confirm the virtual device name, the status of one or more resources of the device, provide metrics information, enable a customer to control and/or otherwise manage the virtual edge device, etc”, where the user interface managing virtual edge resources of the device corresponds to the applicant’s user interface).
Kim teaches:
the user interface is an element manager (Paragraph 81; “The inner IP header may include information on a virtual IP set by a user through a user interface and may be assigned from a controller as an edge node is connected”, where the edge node controller corresponds to the applicant’s element manager).
Claim 13 contains the same limitations as claim 3, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 13 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 3.
Regarding claim 4, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon teaches the method of claim 1. Shankar teaches:
wherein the adding of the edge server to a host folder comprises adding the edge server via the user interface (UI) (Paragraph 108; “FIG. 13 illustrates another user interface utilizable for provisioning a virtual edge device, according to some embodiments. The user interface 1301 may correspond to a next stage of the provisioning process, in this case, enabling a user to add one or more workloads (e.g., similar to as described in reference to FIG. 9). Note that, in this case, the user interfaces of FIGS. 12 and 13 enable a user to both provision (e.g., image) a new virtual edge device and provision one or more workloads (e.g., via containerization) within the same setup process (e.g., to initiate the performance of the processes 900 and 1000 of FIGS. 9 and 10)”, where the user interface for setting up and provisioning an edge device via a user interface corresponds to the applicant’s adding an edge server to a host folder via a user interface).
Kim teaches:
the user interface is an element manager (Paragraph 81; “The inner IP header may include information on a virtual IP set by a user through a user interface and may be assigned from a controller as an edge node is connected”, where the edge node controller corresponds to the applicant’s element manager).
Claim 14 contains the same limitations as claim 4, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 14 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 4.
Regarding claim 6, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon teaches the method of claim 1. Shankar teaches:
managing the one or more edge servers (Paragraph 108; “FIG. 13 illustrates another user interface utilizable for provisioning a virtual edge device, according to some embodiments. The user interface 1301 may correspond to a next stage of the provisioning process, in this case, enabling a user to add one or more workloads (e.g., similar to as described in reference to FIG. 9). Note that, in this case, the user interfaces of FIGS. 12 and 13 enable a user to both provision (e.g., image) a new virtual edge device and provision one or more workloads (e.g., via containerization) within the same setup process (e.g., to initiate the performance of the processes 900 and 1000 of FIGS. 9 and 10)”, where the user interface controlling the virtual edge devices corresponds to the applicant’s managing the one or more edge servers). Shankar in view of Kim does not teach performing health monitoring.
However, Cannon teaches:
performing health monitoring (Paragraph 63; “Monitor tab 804 may include application-specific views 524 that are displayed in, for example, an issues tab 902 for displaying issues affecting or associated with node 302. Monitor tab 804 may also include a performance tab 904 for displaying performance data related to a past activity of node 302, resource consumption data (i.e., how node 302 is using the resources allocated to node 302, if applicable), and/or profile performance data (e.g., how node 302 is performing relative to the profiles and health status set for node 302)”, where the monitor tab having health status information corresponds to the applicant’s performing health monitoring).
Shankar, Kim, and Cannon are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of network management in virtual computing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Shankar in view of Kim with Cannon to perform health monitoring on the edge servers. As edge servers often run latency-sensitive applications near end users and devices, a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that health monitoring would be required to detect issues before they lead to service degradation and/or failure.
Claim 16 contains the same limitations as claim 6, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 16 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 6.
Claims 7-9 and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh et al. (US 20210004270 A1) hereafter referred to as Singh.
Regarding claim 7, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon teach the method of claim 6. Shankar teaches:
wherein performing the health monitoring includes deploying an edge server agent to: receive change events published by the edge server (Paragraph 95; “For example, the user interface may confirm the virtual device name, the status of one or more resources of the device, provide metrics information, enable a customer to control and/or otherwise manage the virtual edge device, etc”, where the function of the user interface corresponds to the applicant’s edge server agent that receives and provides metrics information from its managed edge devices corresponding to the applicant’s receiving change events published by the edge server).
Shankar in view of Kim further in view of Cannon does not teach redirecting the change events to an element manager system.
However, Singh teaches:
redirect the change events to an element manager system (Paragraph 54; “The storage I/O requests may be provided from the user VMs 230(1)-(N) to a virtual switch within a hypervisor of the hypervisors 210(1)-(N) to be routed to the correct destination”, where routing requests to the correct destination corresponds to the applicant’s redirecting change events to an element manager system).
Shankar, Kim, Cannon, and Singh are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of network management in virtual computing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined the teachings of Shankar in view of Kim further in view of Cannon with Singh to redirect the change events to an element manager system. This would allow for centralized tracking and would simplify system oversight, improving response coordination.
Claim 17 contains the same limitations as claim 7, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 17 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 7.
Regarding claim 8, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh teach the method of claim 7. Cannon teaches:
deploying the edge server agent (Paragraph 38; “In an embodiment, application infrastructure 401 and user interface 402 (and associated node information and views) are implemented and/or executed by one or more computing devices 100”, where execution and implementation correspond to the applicant’s deployment, and the user interface corresponds to the applicant’s edge server agent).
Kim teaches:
receiving change events published by a baseboard management controller of the edge server (Paragraph 64; “In addition, the orchestrator may include a controller which performs a “NAT/Traversal” function in connection with an edge node and distributes information on other edge nodes in the virtual network”, where the distribution of information on other edge nodes corresponds to the applicant’s change events published by the orchestrator, corresponding to the applicant’s baseboard management controller. Based on Page 12, lines 16-20 of the instant specification, “The edge servers 221 illustrated in FIG. 2 deploy an agent, identified in FIG. 2 as edge server agent 222, to receive (223) event messages from BMC 221 and redirect (225) those messages to an event monitoring module”, which implies operational readiness, as the agent must be deployed and functional to receive and redirect messages).
Claim 18 contains the same limitations as claim 8, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 18 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 8.
Regarding claim 9, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon teach the method of claim 1. Shankar teaches:
managing one or more edge servers (Paragraph 108; “FIG. 13 illustrates another user interface utilizable for provisioning a virtual edge device, according to some embodiments. The user interface 1301 may correspond to a next stage of the provisioning process, in this case, enabling a user to add one or more workloads (e.g., similar to as described in reference to FIG. 9). Note that, in this case, the user interfaces of FIGS. 12 and 13 enable a user to both provision (e.g., image) a new virtual edge device and provision one or more workloads (e.g., via containerization) within the same setup process (e.g., to initiate the performance of the processes 900 and 1000 of FIGS. 9 and 10)”, where the user interface performing the provisioning corresponds to the applicant’s managing, and virtual edge devices correspond to the applicant’s edge servers).
Shankar in view of Kim further in view of Cannon does not teach an element manager including performing life cycle management and monitoring version information to report information including which edge servers are upgrade eligible.
However, Singh teaches:
performing life cycle management (Paragraph 65; “The IoT system 300 may allow the user to define applications, such as via Kubernetes YAML specifications and control the deployment scope and lifecycle of such applications”, where controlling the lifecycle of applications corresponds to the applicant’s lifecycle management);
monitoring version information (Paragraph 106; “The method 800 may further determine a delta change between the new version and the current version of the application at operation 820”, which may be continuously monitored as disclosed in Paragraph 69, “In some embodiments, a monitoring entity (e.g., the workflow thread, a thread launched by the workflow thread) may be communicatively coupled to DP resource(s) 116 and configured to monitor the health of DP resource(s)”);
report information including: which servers are upgrade eligible (Paragraph 107; “Upon establishing the communication channel between the IoT manager and the edge system, the method 800 may provide the delta change between the new version and the current version of the application to the edge system at operation”, where providing the change between the new and current version corresponds to the applicant’s reporting information including which servers are upgrade eligible);
and which versions can be applied to upgrade eligible servers (Paragraph 27; “For each identified edge system, the centralized IoT manager 142 may generate a respective version of the application or data pipeline based on respective hardware configuration information for the edge system”, where the respective version of the application based on the edge system corresponds to the most possible up to date version for the system, corresponding to the applicant’s versions that can be applied to upgrade eligible servers).
Shankar, Kim, Cannon, and Singh are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of network management in virtual computing. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to perform life cycle management, monitor version information, report which servers are upgrade eligible, and which versions can be applied to upgrade eligible servers. Doing so would ensure that outdated software components are identified and upgraded in a timely manner. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that lifecycle management enables software systems to automate patch rollouts and schedule updates during maintenance windows to prevent version drift across infrastructure. Automation of these services would also reduce human error and administrative overhead of manual version checks, incompatible updates, or missed patches.
Claim 19 contains the same limitations as claim 9, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 19 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 9.
Claims 10 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh, further in view of Guda et al. (US 20190171437 A1) hereafter referred to as Guda, further in view of Liu et al. (US 20130276019 A1) hereafter referred to as Liu, further in view of Kauppinen et al. (US 20210373880 A1) hereafter referred to as Kauppinen.
Regarding claim 10, Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh teach the method of claim 9. Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh does not teach providing a user with version upgrade options including direct upgrading and scheduled upgrading.
However, Guda teaches:
providing a user with version upgrade options (Paragraph 57, Fig. 5; “in some embodiments, the user can be shown a set of selections for various software versions with selection options, buttons, and/or other user interface elements to make the selection”).
Shankar, Kim, Cannon, Singh, and Guda are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of edge node management in virtual computing systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh, with Guda to provide a user with version upgrade options. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that providing options to a user through a user interface would be a common UX design decision.
Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh, further in view of Guda does not teach direct upgrading or scheduled upgrading.
However, Liu teaches:
direct upgrading wherein version upgrading commences when an upgrading bundle transfer completes (Paragraphs 73-76; “Step 306: The application server sends the update data to a broadcast television network. Step 307: The set-top box receives the update data from the broadcast television network. Step 308: The set-top box updates the encryption algorithm and a software version according to the update data.”, where after receiving the update data, the box performs the update, corresponding to the applicant’s direct upgrading).
Shankar, Kim, Cannon, Singh, Guda, and Liu are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource management across networks. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have performed direct upgrading. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that this would avoid interruptions caused by network delays or failures during the transfer, improving reliability and reducing downtime. It would also allow the system to immediately transition to the update step without requiring manual intervention. Shankar in view of Kim, further in view of Cannon, further in view of Singh, further in view of Guda, further in view of Liu does not teach scheduled upgrading.
However, Kauppinen teaches:
scheduled upgrading wherein version upgrading commences during a future maintenance window (Paragraph 41; “The updating means is configured to schedule a software update of an elevator component upon verification of the integrity of the downloaded update software, such that all segments/blocks have been downloaded”).
Shankar, Kim, Cannon, Singh, Guda, Liu, and Kauppinen are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource management across networks. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have performed scheduled upgrading. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that this would avoid interruptions caused by system reboots or temporary unavailability from performing the update. They would also recognize that it would allow scheduling of updates with predefined maintenance windows governed by service license agreements, enabling compliance with operational constraints.
Claim 20 contains the same limitations as claim 10, directed towards an information handling system. Claim 20 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 10.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/03/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant’s arguments are summarized below:
Amended independent claims 1 and 11 are submitted as allowable because the combined teachings of Shankar and Kim do not teach or suggest the combination of limitations recited.
Shankar does not disclose the use of a virtualization platform’s native host-folder construct, nor an association of that native host folder with a data center element manager instance via a plug-in UI.
Dependent claims are submitted as allowable for at least the above reasons.
The Examiner respectfully disagrees with B and C.
The Examiner agrees that the limitations of amended independent claims 1 and 11 are not fully disclosed by the combination of Shankar and Kim. Therefore, the previous rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 is withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Shankar, Kim, and Cannon, under 35 U.S.C. 103.
Applicant argues that Shankar does not disclose the use of a virtualization platform native host folder construct, nor an association of that native host folder with a data center element manager via a plug-in UI. The specification, however, does not limit the “host folder” to a particular vendor implementation. “In at least one implementation, capabilities of a widely distributed data center element manager, such as the VxRail Manager from Dell Technologies, which may be referred herein as VxRail cluster manager, are employed to manage edge compute servers by leveraging host folder features of a server manager running on a virtualization platform, e.g., a vCenter server manager running on a vSphere virtualization platform” and “The first operational sequence 101 illustrated in FIG. 1 begins by creating (operation 102) a host folder from a user interface (UI) of a vCenter instance. Operational sequence 101 further includes selecting (operation 104) a host folder from a VxRail Manager UI resource and associating (operation 106) the host folder with a VxRail Manager instance”. The example appears to illustrate one possible embodiment but does not necessarily limit the claim. The specification does not explicitly state that the claimed host folder is limited solely to VxRail constructs, nor that the claimed association requires the Vx-Rail specific UI or instance. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the host folder may comprise any such logical resource container in a virtualization platform and that association with a management instance via a plug-in UI is not tied to a specific vendor. Shankar in view of Kim (Paragraph 63) as applied with respect to the amended limitation discloses an orchestrator UI/UX management unit that allows management of resources such as edge nodes within a virtual network, functionally corresponding to the claimed host folder. Cannon teaches the plug-in integration for management functionality. In combination, a person of ordinary skill in the art would predictably associate a managed folder, a host folder or equivalent, with a management instance via a plug-in UI, consistent with the claimed limitation. Therefore, contrary to Applicant’s arguments, although the use of a virtualization platform’s native host-folder construct is not explicitly disclosed, neither the claims nor the specification limit the host folder solely to specific vendors having native host-folder constructs.
Independent claims 1 and 11 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. Zeng (US 20230231903 A1) discloses a VM management system and lead edge node that manage user devices, treated as edges, operatively linked to the lead edge node, and continuously update the management system with system updates regarding the health of each edge node.
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 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