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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 3/18/2026 has been entered.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination. Claims 1, 5-6, 8 and 15 have been amended.
Applicant’s amendments to the claims have overcome claim objections and some 112 rejections previously set forth in the Final Office Action mailed 12/31/2025.
Examiner Notes
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 apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirely 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 § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Regarding to Claim 1, the amended limitation “a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the respective weight” at lines 17-18 lacks support from the specification. The whole related limitation is: “wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of the receptive weight of the one or more resources by selecting, from among provisionally allocated resources, a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the receptive weight”. At page 9 of the Remarks submitted by 3/18/2026, Applicant indicated that “Figure 4, Figure 6, and Figure 7B and in paragraphs [0064], and [0070]-[0075] of the specification” can be used as support for the amended limitations (see 3rd paragraph of page 9 from the Remarks). However, examiner did not find out any description or explanation on such movement or movement cost among these descriptions. Fig. 4 does not show anything related to weight or cost or movement. Fig. 6 only shows certain factor information to calculate weights of resources without discussing move (or movement) or cost or minimizing weight or cost. Fig. 7B does not show anything related to weight or cost or movement. [0064] only discusses provisionally allocate/schedule and topological constraints without anything related to weight or cost or movement. [0070] only discusses re-allocating resources to minimize a summation of weights of resources. [0071]-[0073] only discuss re-allocating resources based on topological constraints (note: [0073] does discuss certain cost, but the cost from [0073] is based or related to topological constraints instead of weights or movement as the amended limitations above require). [0074] only discusses certain factor information to calculate weights. [0075] only discusses a particular example for indication or meaning of weight values of resources (particularly, different weight values are able to indicate resource states of (1) a resource is available for allocation, (2) a resource is provisionally allocated OR (3) a resource is already allocated; a resource having lower weight value is less likely to be re-allocated than a resource having higher weight value). None of these descriptions can be used as support for claimed “re-allocating minimizes a summation … minimizes total movement cost based on the respective weight”. The closest concept/feature that one with ordinary skill in the art can relate to the amended movement cost is the feature of weight value change when the allocation state of a resource is changing in view of [0075]. Such as, before the claimed re-allocating, a resource has a weight value of 0 to indicate such resource is available for allocation, and then the same resource is changed to a weight value of 0.5 to indicate such resource is provisionally allocated after the claimed re-allocating, in this way the changing from 0 to 0.5 is movement cost. However, nothing from the specification can be used to link between minimizing summation of weights and minimizing summation of weight changes, i.e., even if the total movement cost or weight changes is minimized, the corresponding summation of weights is not necessarily minimized.
Note: in addition, if considering such weight changes during the re-allocating to minimizes the summation of weights, then there will be new weight generated, then it would cause a discussion on whether the intended meaning for the claimed “a summation of the respective weight of the one or more resources” should be the summation of old weights before changing or the summation of new weights after changing.
In this way, the amended limitations “a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the respective weight” is lacks support from the specification.
Claims 2-7 are rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency.
Regarding to Claim 8, Claim 8 is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Claims 9-14 are rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency.
Regarding to Claim 15, Claim 15 is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Claims 16-20 are rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency.
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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, 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.
Regarding to Claim 1, the meaning of amended limitation “in a non-binding reservation state” at line 8 is not clear. The related limitation as a whole is: provisionally allocating, in a non-binding reservation state, the one or more resources to each of the one or more virtual units. Such limitation requires provisionally allocating the resources to virtual units in a non-binding reservation state. However, examiner did not find out any description or explanation on amended “non-binding reservation state” from the specification. During a phone call discussion at 3/23/2026 with Applicant, Applicant indicated that “Computing resources may be provisionally allocated to the virtual units (i.e., allocations may be “penciled-in”) according to the topological constraints” from [0064] of the specification can be used as support for this limitation, especially the language of “penciled-in”.
The plain meaning of “penciled-in” is just temporality scheduling something that may be changed later. According to such plain meaning, the related limitation requires allocating the resources to virtual units in a state that the resources can be re-allocated to another components. However, such feature is already described by the existing limitations “provisionally allocating the one or more resources to each of the one or more virtual units” and “provisionally re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first group request to one or more virtual units of the second group request” without the amended language of “in a non-binding reservation state”. Actually, the limitations or language of “provisionally allocating” and “provisionally re-allocating” described above before this amendment requires allocating the resources in a binding reservations state instead of a non-binding reservation state. The provisionally re-allocating step/action requires to break or change the binding state or relationship between the resources and virtual units (note1: if there is no such binding state or relationship, then there is no need to perform a re-allocating step/action later; note2: a binding state or relationship does not require such binding state or relationship cannot be changed or broken later). In this way, the amended language of “in a non-binding reservation state” does not provide any patentable weight or further requirement in view of the limitations before this amendment as a whole.
For the purpose of examination, the Examiner interprets amended language of “in a non-binding reservation state” as: in a changeable state.
In addition, the meaning of amended limitations “by selecting, from among provisionally allocated resources, a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the respective weight” is not clear. First of all, based on the corresponding 112(a) rejection explained above, Applicant’s specification does not provide a direct or clear description or explanation on such amended limitations. The closest feature from Applicant’s specification that one with ordinary skill in the art can consider is “A resource having an assigned respective weight of zero (0) indicates that the resource is available for allocation. A resource having an assigned respective weight between zero (0) and one (1) indicates that the resource is provisionally allocated. A resource having an assigned respective weight of one (1) indicates that the resource is already allocated” discussed at [0075]. However, according to the descriptions on [0075], particularly, “A resource having an assigned respective weight between zero (0) and one (1) indicates that the resource is provisionally allocated”, the claimed “each of the resource or more resource” was assigned with a weight value between zero (0) and one (1) since the limitation “scheduling comprise provisionally allocating … the one or more resource to each of the one or more virtual units” before the claimed re-allocating. During or after the claimed re-allocating, the claimed “each of the resource or more resources” is still assigned with a weight value between zero (0) and one (1) since each resource is provisionally allocated to either one of claimed first group request or second group request. There may not be any weight change or movement cost at all for the claimed resources before and after the re-allocating. In addition, the specification and the current claims do not provide more specific on how to assign a specific weight value to a resource in provisionally allocated state to generate a weight change or movement cost before and after the re-allocating. For example, a resource that is provisionally allocated to first group request may be assigned with a weight value of 0.5, then it is not clear that what is the new weight value if provisionally re-allocating such resource to the second group request, will it still be 0.5 (and what is the movement cost under this situation) OR a different value between 0 and 1 (and what is the movement cost under this situation). Furthermore, the claimed limitation “total movement cost based on the respective weight” in view of [0075] from the specification would also introduce a new question or issue on whether it should be new weight value or old weight value for the limitation of “the re-allocating minimizes a summation of the respective weight of the new or more resources”. Such as, if the respective weight of a resource before the claimed re-allocating is 0 (to indicate the resource is available for allocation according to [0075]), and such resource after the claimed re-allocating is 0.5 (to indicate the resource is provisionally allocated to the second group request according to [0075]), then it is not clear that the weight value for this resource to be applied to limitation “a summation of the respective weight of the new or more resources” should be 0 or 0.5 for the claimed invention (if the weight value should be 0, then there is no relationship between the claimed “summation of the respective weight” and “total movement cost”; if the weight value should be 0.5, then it cannot be described as claimed “summation of the respective weight of the one or more resources”).
For the purpose of examination, examiner interprets the limitation mentioned above as: and the re-allocating is based on policy of a first resource of the one or more resources having a greater assigned respective weight than a second resource of the one or more resources indicates that the first resource has a lower priority for re-allocation that the second resource.
Note: such interpretation is based on [0075]. In addition, claim 7 actually includes same feature.
Claims 2-7 are rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency. In additional,
for claim 2, the meaning of limitation “allocating to the virtual unit the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the virtual unit” is not clear. According to the current requirement of claim 1 (claim 2 depends on claim 1), “at least one resource” “that was provisionally allocated to the first group request”, i.e., one of the claimed “the one or more resources”, is now/currently provisionally re-allocated to the second group request. In this way, whether allocating the one or more resources from claim 2 includes allocating such claimed “at least one resource” to the first group request? If Applicant considers the re-allocating from claim 1 is about re-allocating some of resources from one or more resources after completion of the first group request, then such re-allocating is re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are allocated to first group request instead of at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first group request as required by current claim 1.
For the purpose of examination, examiner interprets this allocating is performed at alternative embodiment or result of the claimed “provisionally re-allocating” resources for the claimed second group request that it does not re-allocating any resources that are already provisionally allocated to the first group request to the second group request (note: such interpretation is supported by Applicant’s Fig. 7A-7E, i.e., there is embodiment of new group requests are serviced via provisionally allocating non-provisionally allocated resources).
Regarding to Claim 8, Claim 8 is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Claims 9-14 are rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency. In addition, claim 9 is additionally rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of claim 2 above. Claim 10 is additionally rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency.
Regarding to Claim 15, Claim 15 is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Claims 16-20 are rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency. In addition, claim 16 is additionally rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of claim 2 above. Claim 17 is additionally rejected for failing to cure the deficiency from their respective parent claim by dependency.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 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, 6-8, 13-15 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1) and Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee).
Note: Yazir, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee were recorded at PTO-892 mailed by 7/1/2025.
Regarding to claim 1, Yazier discloses: A computer-implemented method for provisionally scheduling one or more resources in a cloud computing environment (see [0016]; “System, methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable media are provided for enabling multi-component service placement in a resource pool using distributed techniques … one or more data centers serving as a part or entirety of a computing cloud” and “Accordingly, the root agent 104 can send instructions to reserve resources for the service based upon the received one or more solution encodings”), comprising:
obtaining a first group request to host an application, wherein the first group request comprises one or more virtual units, and wherein each of the one or more virtual units comprise one or more topological constraints (see [0004], [0016]-[0017] and [0060]; “the workload of the cloud comes from various services ranging from delay-sensitive services such as gaming, video-conferencing, and multi-tier web services, to delay-tolerant batch services such as high performance computing and map-reduce types of applications. Such services usually operate through the use of one or more software components”, “a virtual infrastructure request can be submitted to a resource pool of one or more data centers serving as a part or entirety of a computing cloud, computing grid, computing cluster, etc. In some embodiments, service requests specifying resource requirements for multi-component services are received by a root agent 104”, “possible placements of some or all of the components of a service request description of the service request” and “service requests specifying resource requirements for multiple components of the service—and possibly location or affinity constraints for the service and/or for particular components”. Note: resource requirements for multiple components of the service are also considered as part of the claimed topological constraints. Also see [0074]-[0076] for similar descriptions);
scheduling the one or more resources for each of the one or more virtual units, wherein the scheduling comprises provisionally allocating the one or more resources to each of the one or more virtual units according to the one or more topological constraints, and wherein the one or more topological constraints are utilized to determine which resources meet a predetermined requirement set (see [0016]; “determine whether the particular corresponding service request may or may not be fulfilled, can identify a complete set of possible placements for the service that satisfies the stated resource requirements and satisfies any constraints placed upon the service or individual components. Accordingly, the root agent 104 can send instructions to reserve resources for the service based upon the received one or more solution encodings”. Also see [0076] for the description of affinity constraint and [0115] for the description of a geographic constraint to be mapped to amended limitation of “topological constraints are utilized to determine which resources meet a predetermined requirement set”); and
responsive to obtaining a second group request, provisionally re-allocating resources to one or more virtual units of the second group request according to one or more topological constraints of the second group request (see [0033], [0042]; “to receive service requests from clients indicating resource requirements for services to be deployed including pluralities of components” and “one or more of the service requests received by the root agent 104”. Also see [0004], [0016]-[0017], [0060] and the rejections of the claimed obtaining and claimed scheduling limitations for claimed first group request above. It is understood that the whole method or system described by Yazier at one of the reasonable embodiments would receive another or different service request and handle such another or different service request as similar as the received first service request as explained at the obtaining and scheduling limitations above (note: it is unreasonable that the method or system of Yazier is only able to perform same handling mechanism once))
Yazier does not disclose:
provisionally allocating, in a non-binding reservation state, the one or more resources to each of the one or more virtual units;
wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a respective weight;
the provisionally re-allocating resources for the second group request is provisionally re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first group request to one or more virtual units of the second group request according to the respective weight of each of the one or more resources, wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of the respective weight of the one or more resources by selecting, from among provisionally allocated resources, a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the respective weights, and wherein at least one resource provisionally re-allocated to the second group request is a particular resource that was provisionally allocated to the first group request;
assigning a new respective weight to each of the one or more resources.
However, Jreij discloses: a computer-implemented method for provisionally scheduling one or more resources, comprising:
scheduling the one or more resources for first request, wherein the scheduling comprises provisionally allocating, in a non-binding reservation state, the one or more resources to the first request (see [0186]; “the free computing resources (or a portion necessary to satisfy the computing resource needs of the workload) are reserved to obtain reserved resources”. Also see [0196]; “modifying information included in a reserved resources management repository (e.g., 416, FIG. 4) to indicate that the resources previously reserved for other workload(s) are now reserved for the workload associated with the workload request”. The resources that were reserved to other workload can be modified or re-reserved to another workload, and thus the reserved resource is in a changeable state), and wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a availability state (see [0186], [0194]-[0197]; “whether the reserved processing resources can be freed” and “a composed information handling system may be composed to service the workload request of step 500 using the reserved resources obtained in step 512”. Each of resources can be classified as free state, reserved state and actually allocated state);
responsive to obtaining a second [group] request, provisionally re-allocating at least one resource from the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first [group] request to the second [group] request according to the one or more constraints of the second [group] request and the receptive availability status of each of the one or more resources, wherein the re-allocating is based on policy of a first resource of the one or more resources having an provisionally allocation state has a lower priority for re-allocation than a second resource of the one or more resource having an available for allocation state and wherein at least one resource provisionally re-allocated to the second [group] request is a particular resource that was provisionally allocated to the first [group] request; and assigning a new respective availability status to each of the one or more resources (see [0186] and [0194]-[0197]; “the free computing resources (or a portion necessary to satisfy the computing resource needs of the workload) are reserved to obtain reserved resources”, “if free resources are not available to meet the future resource needs”, “the reserved resources are freed and then reserved to obtain reserved resources for the workload. The resources may be freed and then reserved by, for example, modifying information included in a reserved resources management repository (e.g., 416, FIG. 4) to indicate that the resources previously reserved for other workload(s) are now reserved for the workload associated with the workload request”, emphasis added. Performing another round of resource allocation/reservation, such another round of resource allocation/reservation may re-reserve or re-allocate at least one resource that was already reserved to other workload/request to another workload/request, the result of such another round of resource allocation/reservation would change or update resource availability status of resources at the system. Re-reserving or re-allocating a resource that was in a reserved state is performed in a condition of there is no free resource is available for allocation, and thus the resource that is in a reserved or provisionally allocation state has a lower priority for re-allocation than another resource that is an available for allocation state).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the usage of reserved resources from Yazier by including it is possible to re-reserve reserved resources from one workload to another workload from Jreij, since it would provide a mechanism of not only being able to reserve resources for requested service but also being able to preempt reserved resources for higher priority service (see [0163]-[0164], [0172] and [0193] from Jreij; “reservations of hardware devices may be limited based on multi-dimensional criteria (e.g., limited both by type of workload and priority of workload) having any number of dimensions” and “If the comparison indicates that the workload should be prioritized over the other workloads, then the determination may be made that the reserved resources can be freed to meet the future resource needs”).
In addition, Cambou discloses: wherein each of the one or more resources comprises a respective weight (see [0070]; “values of a physical parameter for various memory cells in an array and an assignment of the memory cells as having 0, 1, and X (ternary) state values” and “identifying three types of cells in the memory being analyzed: the ones that are solidly a “0” far away from the transition point between the first and second threshold value, the ones that are solidly a “1” also far away from the transition point, with remaining ones between the first and second threshold values being given a ternary state value “X””).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the indications of three different resource states from the combination of Yazier and Jreij by including numeric-value indication of three different resource states from Cambou, since it is understood that numeric-value indication is easier to be understood by computing system.
Furthermore, Banerjee discloses: wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of amount of the one or more resources (see [0042]-[0047]; “the objective function may be to minimize the total cost to deploy all of the application subject to various constraints”, “The amount of processor capacity on a server to be reserved … ensure that each deployed application on a server may get a minimum amount of processor resources”, “The amount of memory capacity on a server to be reserved … it may be desirable that each deployed application on a server may get a minimum amount of memory resources”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the resource reservation operations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij and Cambou by including reserving or allocating minimum amount of required resources from Banerjee, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee would disclose the missing limitations from Yazier (note: based on the feature combined from Banerjee, i.e., allocating minimum amount of resources to service a workload/task/request, the total weight of the resources is also minimized, and thus the new combination of reference does teach the limitation of “wherein the re-allocating minimizes a summation of each respective weight of the one or more resources”), since it would provide a mechanism of effective resource consumption via allocating minimum requested amount of resources for operations (see [0042]-[0047] from Banerjee).
Regarding to Claim 6, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee discloses: wherein a respective weight is calculated based upon heuristics and at least one of the following: uniformity of resources requested by an application, nature of tasks performed by an application, application user type, application user group, application priority, application resource consumption, application duration of execution, application execution constraints, application complexity, time of day of application execution geography in which application is executed, adherence to application service level agreements (SLAs) and incentives, phase of application execution, and application resource consumption elasticity (see [0186], [0194]-[0197] from Jreij; “whether the reserved processing resources can be freed” and “a composed information handling system may be composed to service the workload request of step 500 using the reserved resources obtained in step 512”. Each of resources can be classified as free state, reserved state and actually allocated state. Under BRI, the three different resource allocation states of being available for allocation, being reserved or provisionally allocated and being actually allocated are reasonable to be considered as phase of application execution, i.e., application execution phase of no resources allocated for execution, application execution phase of resource being reserved for execution and application execution phase of resource being allocated for execution, thereby, the resource allocation states are determined based on heuristics and phase of application execution. Also see [0070] from Cambou; “values of a physical parameter for various memory cells in an array and an assignment of the memory cells as having 0, 1, and X (ternary) state values” and “identifying three types of cells in the memory being analyzed: the ones that are solidly a “0” far away from the transition point between the first and second threshold value, the ones that are solidly a “1” also far away from the transition point, with remaining ones between the first and second threshold values being given a ternary state value “X””).
Regarding to Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 6 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee discloses: wherein a resource of the one or more resources having an assigned respective weight of zero (0) indicates that the resource is available for allocation, wherein a resource of the one or more resources having an assigned respective weight between zero (0) and one (1) indicates that the resource is provisionally allocated, wherein a resource of the one or more resources having an assigned respective weight of one (1) indicates that the resource is already allocated, and wherein a first resource of the one or more resources having a greater assigned respective weight than a second resource of the one or more resources indicates that the first resource has a lower priority for re-allocation than the second resource (see [0186], [0194]-[0197] from Jreij and [0070] from Cambou; “whether the reserved processing resources can be freed”, “a composed information handling system may be composed to service the workload request of step 500 using the reserved resources obtained in step 512”, and “values of a physical parameter for various memory cells in an array and an assignment of the memory cells as having 0, 1, and X (ternary) state values”. At the combination system, it is understood that after applying the feature of using numeric-value to indicates three different resource states from Cambou, the resource being available for allocation can be indicated by value “0”, the resource being actually allocated can be indicated by value “1” and the resource being reserved or provisionally allocated can be indicated by value between “0” and “1”. In addition, the resources being reserved are re-allocated or re-reserved when free resources are not sufficient to meet the requirement of new workload/request, and thus resource having a greater assigned respective weight has a lower priority for re-allocation).
Regarding to Claim 8, Claim 8 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above (note: also see Fig. 10, [0173]-[0176] from Yazir for the claimed limitation of: a memory medium … causes the system to; “The data processing system 1000 includes memory 1010, which is coupled to the microprocessor(s) 1005. The memory 1010 may be used for storing data, metadata, and programs for execution by the microprocessor(s) 1005. For example, the depicted memory 1010 may store computer instructions 1030 that, when executed by the microprocessor(s) 1005, causes the data processing system 1000 to perform the operations described herein” and “It will be appreciated that one or more buses may be used to interconnect the various components shown in FIG. 10”).
Regarding to Claim 13, Claim 13 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Regarding to Claim 14, Claim 14 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 7 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7 above.
Regarding to Claim 15, Claim 15 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above (note: also see [0178] from Yazir for the claimed limitation of: a computer program product … a computer readable hardware storage device, and program instructions stored on the computer readable hardware storage device; “the computer-implemented methods may be carried out in a computer system or other data processing system in response to its processor or processing system executing sequences of instructions contained in a memory, such as memory 1010 or other non-transitory machine-readable storage medium” ).
Regarding to Claim 19, Claim 19 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Regarding to Claim 20, Claim 20 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 7 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7 above.
Claims 2, 9 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1) and Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee) and further in view of Yu et al. (CN 105103507 B -English translation provided by Google Patents, hereafter Yu).
Note: Yazir, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu were recorded at PTO-892 mailed by 7/1/2025.
Regarding to Claim 2, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee discloses: allocating to the virtual unit the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the virtual unit (see [0188] from Jreij; “a composed information handling system is composed using the reserved resources to service the workload request. The composed information handling system may be composed by (i) instantiating a new composed information handling system using the reserved computing resources”).
The combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee does not disclose: the allocating is performed via responsive to obtaining an invocation request for a virtual unit.
However, Yu discloses: responsive to obtaining an invocation request for a virtual unit, allocating to the virtual unit the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the virtual unit (see [0181]-[0184] from Yu; “receiving local resource reserves successful information, NFVO is sent to VNFM by request is instantiated … NFVO receives the instantiation result that VNFM is sent”. After the reservation or provisionally allocation of resources to the requested service is completed, the combination system would issue an instantiation request to actually instantiate the virtual components or units of the requested service, and thus the resources reserved or provisionally allocated to the corresponding virtual components or units would be actually allocated to for the instantiation operations).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the virtual unit execution operation from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee by including an instantiation request of individual virtual unit from Yu, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee, since it would provide a mechanism to proactively instantiating virtual unit via an instantiation request (see [0181]-[0184] from Yu).
Regarding to Claim 9, Claim 9 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Regarding to Claim 16, Claim 16 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Claims 3, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1), Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee) and Yu et al. (CN 105103507 B -English translation provided by Google Patents, hereafter Yu) and further in view of Babic (US 20110296473 A1).
Note: Yazir, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, Yu and Babic were recorded at PTO-892 mailed by 7/1/2025.
Regarding to Claim 3, the rejection of Claim 2 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu discloses: wherein the one or more topological constraints of the first group request and the second group request are met (see [0016] from Yazier; “one or more solution encodings indicating possible placements of some or all of the components of a service request description of the service request that the one or more computing devices can locally provide while satisfying the resource requirements of the some or all of the components … identify a complete set of possible placements for the service that satisfies the stated resource requirements and satisfies any constraints placed upon the service or individual components”).
The combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu does not disclose: responsive to a placement failure of the first group request, re-allocating the one or more resources that are allocated to the one or more virtual units of the first group request.
In addition, Babic discloses: responsive to a placement failure of the service, re-allocating the one or more resources that are allocated to the service (see [0057], [0092]-[0093]; “the VWAP 130 automatically verifies that the raw video is routed properly, and, if not, automatically repeats the process until properly routed. The VWAP 130 can retry the same resource, and after a specified number of attempts, the VWAP 130 can provision one or more failover resources that are not currently being used” and “automatically select one of the publishing resources not currently being used … confirms whether the publishing point is provisioned (block 234). If at block 234, the publishing point is not properly provisioned, the VWAP 130 retries” and “the VWAP 130 can be configured to retry a specified number of times, and if still unsuccessful, post that the retries have failed to the VWAP database 132 to indicate that the resources cannot be provisioned”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the resource allocation for requested service from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu by including retrying allocating same resource for operation in response failure of service via the allocated resource from Babic, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, Yu and Babic would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Yu, since it would provide a simple fault handling mechanism to be performed in response to failure (see [0092]-[0093] from Babic; “the VWAP 130 can be configured to retry a specified number of times, and if still unsuccessful, post that the retries have failed to the VWAP database 132 to indicate that the resources cannot be provisioned”).
Regarding to Claim 10, Claim 10 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 3 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 3 above.
Regarding to Claim 17, Claim 17 is a product claim corresponds to method Claim 3 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 3 above.
Claims 4-5, 11-12 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazir et al. (US 20170078409 A1, hereafter Yazir) in view of Jreij et al. (US 20220179700 A1, hereafter Jreij), Cambou (US 20170046129 A1) and Banerjee et al. (US 20130007279 A1, hereafter Banerjee) and further in view of further in view of Jain et al. (US 20120195209 A1, hereafter Jain).
Note: Yazir, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Jain were recorded at PTO-892 mailed by 7/1/2025.
Regarding to Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee discloses: provisionally re-allocating one or more resources that are allocated to an uninvoked first virtual unit to a second virtual unit (see [0186] and [0194]-[0197] from Jreij; “the free computing resources (or a portion necessary to satisfy the computing resource needs of the workload) are reserved to obtain reserved resources”, “if free resources are not available to meet the future resource needs”, “the reserved resources are freed and then reserved to obtain reserved resources for the workload. The resources may be freed and then reserved by, for example, modifying information included in a reserved resources management repository (e.g., 416, FIG. 4) to indicate that the resources previously reserved for other workload(s) are now reserved for the workload associated with the workload request”, emphasis added), wherein the one or more topological constraints of the first group request and the second group request are met (see [0016] from Yazier; “one or more solution encodings indicating possible placements of some or all of the components of a service request description of the service request that the one or more computing devices can locally provide while satisfying the resource requirements of the some or all of the components … identify a complete set of possible placements for the service that satisfies the stated resource requirements and satisfies any constraints placed upon the service or individual components”).
The combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee does not disclose: wherein the re-allocating is performed periodically.
However, Jain discloses: re-allocating one or more resources that are allocated to a first object to a second object is performed periodically (see [0028]; “distribute the bandwidth limits on the order of every 5 seconds. In other examples, this exchange of information may occur at other regular or preset intervals, such as every 1-15 seconds, every 1-15 minutes, or upon a predetermined condition, which may be a network triggered event. The distribution is desirably work-conserving, in that any bandwidth not used by a task should be redistributed to other tasks. The job shapers 206 also periodically report job level bandwidth usage to the site brokers 204, via transmission 216”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the resource allocation or re-allocation from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou and Banerjee by including a mechanism of redistributing unused resources from one job to another job from Jain, and thus the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Jain would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee, since it would provide mechanism of utilizing resource effectively via redistributing unused resources to different jobs (see [0028] from Jain).
Regarding to Claim 5, the rejection of Claim 4 is incorporated and further the combination of Yazier, Jreij, Cambou, Banerjee and Jain disclose:
wherein the one or more topological constraints comprise: resource location, resource cost, resource availability, resource power consumption, resource network bandwidth, resource latency, and resource storage quota (see [0004], [0008], [0076] from Yazier; “delay-sensitive services … Each component can have certain requirements ranging from the physical characteristics of the host platform—such as an availability of certain hardware accelerators, resources in terms of CPU, memory, storage, and network—to placement and affinity requirements defined via location and colocation constraints”, “a cloud utility cost model (e.g., Service-Level Agreement (SLA) revenue, energy consumption, electricity cost) is optimized is optimized without compromising delay requirements of the workload”, “the service request 120 can include requirements about allowed or prohibited geographical locations for some or all of the components to be deployed, and in some embodiments can include affinity constraints for the components. An affinity constraint can specify particular components of the service that must be placed together on one set of computing resources, and/or particular components that are not to be placed together”. [0004], [0008] and [0076] from Yazier above show the topological constrains comprises resource location (i.e., affinity requirement, allowed or prohibited geographical locations), resource cost and resource availability (i.e., resource requirements and availability in terms of hardware accelerator, CPU), resource power consumption (i.e., energy consumption, electricity cost), resource latency (i.e., delay requirement), resource storage quota (i.e., requirement and availability of resource in terms of memory and storage). For claimed resource network bandwidth, see “bandwidth intensive applications” from [0035] of Banerjee or “Network transmissions might be designated as unenforced when they fall below a predetermined bandwidth threshold” from [0022] of Jain).
Regarding to Claim 11, Claim 11 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 4 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 4 above.
Regarding to Claim 12, Claim 12 is a system claim corresponds to method Claim 5 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 5 above.
Regarding to Claim 18, Claim 18 is a product claim corresponds to method Claims 4 and 5 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claims 4 and 5 above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 3/18/2026, with respect to rejections of claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) have been full considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments at pages 10-11 are summarized as the following:
“Without conceding the propriety of this rejection, Applicant has amended claims 1, 8, and 15 in order to more clearly define the features thereof in satisfaction of 35 USC §112” (see 1st paragraph of page 11 from the Remarks).
The examiner respectively disagrees.
Applicant amended claims 1, 8 and 15. However, claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 were and are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for a different reason from the 112 rejections made for claims 1, 8 and 15. Applicant did not make any amendment or response to the 112(b) rejections/issues made for claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17.
Therefore, claims 2-3, 9-10 and 16-17 are rejected.
Applicant’s arguments, filed 3/18/2026, with respect to rejections of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been full considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments at pages 12-15 are summarized as the following:
The reference alone or in combination fails to disclose the newly added limitations “in a non-binding reservations state” and “selecting, from among provisionally allocated resources, a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the receptive weight” from the independent claims (see last 2nd paragraph of page 12, pages 14-15 from the Remarks)
The examiner respectively disagrees.
Both of newly added limitations, i.e., “in a non-binding reservations state” and “selecting, from among provisionally allocated resources, a re-allocation pattern that minimizes total movement cost based on the receptive weight” as argued, are rejected under 112(b) rejections explained above (in addition, the new limitation related to movement cost is further rejected under 112(a) rejection explained above), and thus both of them are interpreted as different from the corresponding plain meaning of the language amended. Such as, for the newly added limitation “in a non-binding reservations state”, it is interpreted as in a changeable state explained above. Such interpretation makes amended “in a non-binding reservations state” has same meaning as the existing limitation of “provisionally re-allocating … the one or more resources that are provisionally allocated to the first group request to one or more virtual units of the second group request” that was already rejected. In this way, the newly added limitation “in a non-binding reservations state” is rejected under the combination of the references as explained at the prior art rejection of claim 1 above.
Therefore, Claims 1-20 are rejected.
Conclusion
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/Zhi Chen/
Patent Examiner, AU2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196