DETAILED ACTION
This is in response to the reply filed on 12/10/2025. Claims 1-20 are pending in this Action.
Remark
In the response filed 12/10/2025, claims 1-20 have been amended, no claim has been cancelled, and no new claim has been added.
The Applicant’s Interview Summary is acknowledged and it is OK.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 06/25/2025 with respect to amended claims 1, 9, and 17 that the prior art of the record does not teach the amended limitation of storing metadata that identifies…a set of offsets for the at least one repeating pattern have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection over the new reference, Anglin et al., US 2012/0005171. The new combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses all the limitations of amended claims 1, 9, and 17. See below for details.
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 1-5, 7, 9-13, 15, and 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being
unpatentable over Serita et al., US 2014/0229452 (Serita, hereafter) in view of Hsia
et al., US 2013/0054926 (Hsia, hereafter) and further in view of Anglin et al., US 2012/0005171 (Anglin, hereafter).
Note that the Examiner interprets the subject matter of “non-pattern data” as unique and non-duplicate data that does not have any duplicate or identical data already stored in the storage. The Examiner further interprets the subject matter of “pattern data” as duplicate data that a duplicate or identical data has already been stored in the storage. In addition, The Examiner interprets the claimed subject matter of “metadata” as any data that identifies the repeating pattern, such as identifier, pointer, storage location, address, etc.
Regarding claim 1,
Serita discloses a system comprising:
a storage device; and a storage operatively controller coupled to the storage device, configured to (See Serita: at least Fig. 1-2 and associated text):
detect that write data of a received write request has at least one repeating pattern (See Serita: at least para 51-52, 60, 70, 74, and 86-92 and Fig. 9-10, receiving storing/writing request to store data, wherein the data includes at least one or more instances of duplicate (i.e., repeating pattern) data chunks that repeated and instances of non-duplicate (i.e., non-pattern) data chunks), and is configured to store metadata in the storage medium corresponding to the write request that identifies the at least one repeating pattern (See Serita: at least Fig. 3A-B, Fig. 9-10, para 60, 70-71, and 86-95, storing identifiers for chunks and/or storage location which is metadata identifying at least a duplicate/pattern chunk data without storing the duplicate/pattern chunk indicated in the write request and storing only non-duplicate or
non-pattern data that has not already been stored);
upon receiving a request to read the data, access, in the storage device, stored non-pattern data associated with the request to read the data and metadata identifying the at least one repeating pattern; and construct, based on the stored non-pattern data and the metadata, the data (See Serita: at least Fig. 3A-B, Fig. 11, para 17, 59-60, 70, and 98, accessing the storage/table for the deduplicated chunks and chunk IDs (i.e., metadata) to restore the file or data. “Original data can be restored from the deduplicated data and the metadata.” [See para 60]).
Although, Serita discloses pattern data and “byte pattern data” (See Serita: at least Fig. 3A and paragraph 76). However, Serita does not expressly teach repeating pattern that meets a threshold number of contiguous instances of bit pattern.
On the other hand, Hsia discloses a repeating pattern with a certain or “minimum number of consecutive instances of predetermined bit pattern” (See Hsia: at least para 54-55 and Fig. 5). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to modify the teachings of Serita with Hsia’s teaching in order to implement above function. The motivation for doing so would have been to improve efficiency of saving memory space by identifying larger contiguous bit patterns.
The combination of Serita and Hsia discloses the limitation as stated above including repeating pattens. However, it does not explicitly teach storing metadata that identifies a set of offsets for the at least one repeating pattern.
On the other hand, Anglin discloses storing deduplication metadata in a table that includes the offset or position of at least a repeating pattern (See Anglin: at least Fig. 4A-C and para 16, 22, and 43). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to modify the teachings of the combination of Serita and Hsia with Anglin’s teaching in order to implement above function. The motivation for doing so would have been to accurately identify the positions of repeating or non-unique data during the deduplication process.
Regarding claim 2,
the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses wherein the storage controller is further configured to store fewer than the threshold number of contiguous instances of the bit pattern in the storage device (See Serita: at least Fig. 6A-B, Fig. 10, para 60, 70-71, and 90-95 and Hsia: at least para 54-55 and Fig. 5).
Regarding claim 3,
the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses wherein a size of a single instance of the bit pattern does not exceed a programmable size threshold (See Hsia: at least para 54-55 and Fig. 5).
Regarding claim 4,
the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses determine respective
offsets for the one or more instances of the patterned data; and store the respective offsets for the at least one repeating pattern in the metadata (See Serita: at least Fig. 6A-B and paragraph 71 and Hsia: at least para 54-55 and Fig. 5, and Anglin: at least Fig. 4A-C and para 22).
Regarding claim 5,
the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses determine respective offsets for the non-patterned data; and store the respective offsets for the non-patterned data in the metadata See Anglin: at least Fig. 4A-C and para 16, 22, and 43).
Regarding claim 7,
the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses response to receiving a read request, the storage controller is further configured to: read the metadata to construct the data requested by the read request (See Serita: at least Fig. 6A-B and paragraphs 17, 59, 60, and 98).
Regarding claims 9-13 and 15,
the scopes of the claims are substantially the same as claims 1-5 and 7, respectively, and are rejected on the same basis as set forth for the rejections of claims 1-5 and 7, respectively.
Regarding claims 17-20,
the scopes of the claims are substantially the same as claims 1-3 and 7,
respectively, and are rejected on the same basis as set forth for the rejections of claims
1-3 and 7, respectively.
Claims 6 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Serita et al., US 2014/0229452 in view of Hsia et al., US 2013/0054926 further in view of Anglin et al., US 2012/0005171 and further in view of Mattson et al, US 2008/0141279 (Mattson, hereafter).
Regarding claim 6,
The combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin as stated above discloses determining offsets for one or more instances of the patterned data and the non-patterned data; and storing offsets in the information describing the patterned data and one or more locations of the patterned data within the data (See Serita: at least Fig. 6A-B and para 71 and Anglin: at least Fig. 4A-C and para 16, 22, and 43). However, it does not expressly teach a stride of offsets for one or more instances of the patterned data and the non-patterned data.
On the other hand, Matson discloses determining the stride of offset of data groups (See Matson: at least Fig. 13, Fig. 14B-C, para 89-90). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to modify the teachings of the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin with Matson’s teaching in order to determine a stride of offsets for one or more instances of the patterned data and the non-patterned data; and storing the stride of offsets in the information describing the patterned data and one or more locations of the patterned data within the data. The motivation for doing so would have been to efficiently and accurately describe the patterned and non-patterned data by specifying a stride of offset in the group of data which specifies the step from group to group within a given sub block.
Regarding claim 14,
the scope of the claim is substantially the same as claim 6 and rejected on the
same basis as set forth for the rejection of claim 6.
Claims 8 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Serita et al., US 2014/0229452 in view of Hsia et al., US 2013/0054926 further in view of Anglin et al., US 2012/0005171 and further in view of Gold, US 2012/0117029.
Regarding claim 8,
the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin discloses the limitations as stated above including storing the non-pattern data in data spaces with no storage for the at least one repeating pattern data in the received write request (See Serita: at least Fig. 10 and para 60 and 98, storing non-duplicate or deduplicated chunks in the memory device in which only non-pattern chunks are stored).
However, it does not expressly teach storing the non-pattern data in contiguous data spaces. On the other hand, Gold discloses storing non-duplicated data in contiguous storage blocks (See Gold: at least para 10). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to modify the teachings of the combination of Serita, Hsia, and Anglin with Gold’s teaching in order to store the non-pattern data in contiguous spaces with no storage for the at least one repeating pattern data in the received write request. The motivation for doing so would have been to make the restoration time faster.
Regarding claim 16,
the scope of the claim is substantially the same as claim 8 and rejected on the same basis as set forth for the rejection of claim 8.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
Points of Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HARES JAMI whose telephone number is (571)270-1291. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00a-5:00p.
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/Hares Jami/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2164
01/30/2026