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 .
Response to Amendment
This office action is responsive to amendment received on 1/20/2026. Clams
1, 8 and 15 are amended. Claims 1-20 are pending examination.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claims 1-20 are directed to the abstract idea of managing and allocating data partitions service instances, including assigning, locking and rebalancing to coordinate workload distribution, which is a fundamental economic practice and a metho of organizing human activity.
Step 2A-Prong One: the claims describe assigning, locking and rebalancing data partitions among service instances, which is an abstract idea that involves organizing and distributing data processing tasks among multiple service instances which is an allocation concept rather than a specific technical improvement to how a computer functions.
Step 2A -Prong Two: the claims use broad, result oriented actions such as: assign, rebalance, and process without explaining how these steps are carried out technically. The elements like processors, services, are leases are generic computer functions used in their normal way. Nothing in the claim changes how the computer operates or provides specific algorithm, structure or technical improvement.
Step 2B: the additional features such as partition balancing, lease leadership, and rebalancing when counts change, are well known, routine and conventional techniques in distributed systems. Using these features on ordinary computer hardware does not add anything significantly more than the abstract idea itself. As a result, the claims lack an inventive concept that would make them patent eligible.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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 and 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Paramasivam et al. U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2018/0063,055 (referred to herein after as Param, further in view of Craft et al. U.S. Patent Pub. No. 2015/0348177 referred to hereinafter as Craft).
As to claim 1, Param teaches a method, comprising:
in response to a data pull for data to be consumed by one or more instances of a service (see Param, paragraphs 0018, 0024-0036, discloses consumer instances obtaining or consuming messages from topic partitions and automatically subscribe to new partitions- i.e. a pull/consume model),
assigning, by the one or more instances of the service, a plurality of data partitions of the data to the one or more instances of the service in view of:
a number of data partitions in the plurality of data partitions; and
a number of instances of the service in the one or more instances of the service (see Param at least paragraphs 0024-0028, 0031-0033, partitions are divided across brokers/consumers and after repartitioning, consumers are subscribed to partitions in ordinal position so partitions are distributed across the number of consumer instances, it also teaches considering the count of partitions and the count of consumers when assigning and subscribing),
wherein assigning a data partition in the plurality of data partitions to an instance of the service in the one or more instances of the service acts as a lock on the data partition such that the instance of the service is able to process the data partition and such that remaining instances of the service in the one or more instances of the service are prevented from processing the data partition (see Craft at least paragraphs, 0001-0007, 0022-0024 and 0027-0028, teaches that grant exclusive access to shared resource to a selected node/instance during a lease interval, i.e. a lock preventing other instances from processing that resource.:
rebalancing, by the one or more instances of the service, the plurality of assigned data partitions in response to a change in the number of data partitions in the plurality of data partitions or a change in a number of the one or more instances of the service (see Param at least paragraphs 0011-0015, 0026-0036, and fig. 4, teaches repartitioning a topic (i.e. increasing the number of partitions) and automatically re-subscribing consumers to new partitions i.e. rebalancing when the number of partitions changes); and consuming , by the one or more instances of the service, the rebalanced plurality of assigned data partitions (see Param at least paragraphs 0027-0036, after repartitioning and re-subscription, consumers continue obtaining /processing messages from the (now) rebalanced set of partitions example, consumers subscribed to new partitions at the same ordinal position).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have known to combine the teachings of Param with those of Craft to enhance system performance by combining the rebalancing and dynamic assignment of Param with the lease based exclusive ownership model of Craft to a achieve a coordinated, conflict free and fault tolerance data partitioning and thereby improving performance and reliability.
As to claim 2, Param-Craft teaches the method of claim 1, wherein assigning the plurality of data partitions to the one or more instances of the service comprises:
identifying the number of data partitions of the plurality of data partitions; identifying the number of instances of the service in the one or more instances of the service; and assigning a subset of the number of data partitions in the plurality of data partitions to each of the one or more instances of the service to balance the plurality of data partitions across the number of instances of the service (see Param teaches controller determines partitions and active consumers when mapping partitions, partition reassignment occurs based on the number of consumer and partitions).
As to claim 3, Param-Craft teaches the method of claim 2, wherein assigning the plurality of data partitions to the one or more instances of the service further comprises:
separating, by a processing device executing a first instance of the service, the number of data partitions in the plurality of data partitions into a first set of data partitions and a second set of data partitions in view of the number of instances of the service; determining, by the first instance of the service, a target number of data partitions from the first set of data partitions to be assigned to each of the one or more instances of the service (see Param at least paragraphs 0027-0036, controller determines mapping functions so each consumer receives approximately equal count of partitions, and possibly differing by one- ordinal position) ; and
assigning the target number of data partitions from the first set of data partitions and up to one data partition from the second set of data partitions to each of the one or more instances of the service (see Param at least paragraphs 0032-0034, consumers are subscribed to partitions at ordinal positions).
As to claim 4, Param-Craft teaches the method of claim 3, wherein rebalancing the plurality of assigned data partitions comprises:
determining that at least one of the number of instances of the service is assigned more or fewer than the target number of data partitions from the first set of data partitions in view of an updated number of data partitions or an updated number of instances of the service (see Parm at least paragraphs 0026-0028, controller monitors partitions/consumers counts and triggers rebalance when mismatch occur); and
updating the assignment of data partitions such that each of the one or more instances of the service is assigned the target number of data partitions from the first set of data partitions (see Param at least paragraphs 0028-0036, controller reassigns partitions until even distribution- target count each).
As to claim 5, Param-Craft teaches the method of claim 1, wherein assigning the plurality of data partitions comprises:
claiming, by each instance of the service, a subset of the plurality of data partitions (see Param at least paragraphs 0024-0028, consumer instances subscribe/claim partitions they own for processing).
As to claim 6, Param-Craft teaches the method of claim 5, wherein each data partition of a first number of the subset of the plurality of data partitions is associated with a lease (see Craft at least paragraphs 0022-0024, each shared resource (partition) has an associated lease record, node claiming the lease obtains control)
and wherein claiming a first data partition of the subset of the plurality of data partitions comprises: claiming the lease associated with the data partition (see Craft at least paragraphs 0025-0028, selecting a leaseholder foe the shared leased resource… notifying the leaseholder … others wait for expiration).
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Param-Craft, and further in view of Aranya et al. U.S. Patent No. 10,298,648 9referred to hereinafter as Aranya).
As to claim 7, Param-Craft does not teach but Aranya teaches wherein data partitions of the plurality of data partitions are identified from a data source to be processed, and wherein the one or more instances of the service comprise instances of the service that are available to process the data partitions from the data source to be processed (see Aranya at least col. 1 line 50- col. 2 line 10 and col.6 line 43- col.8 line 15, system identifies data streams-publisher data- and divides them into partitions in a data store; workers process data items in their assigned partitions)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have known to incorporate the worker partition load balancing structure of Aranya into the rebalance and leased based coordination farmwork of Param-Craft to improve scalability and fault tolerance while maintaining exclusive ownership without requiring any inventive concept.
Claims 8-20 do not teach anything above and beyond the limitations of claims 1-7 and rejected for similar reasons.
Response to Arguments
The applicant argues that the cited references Param and craft do not teach or suggest, rebalancing, by the one or more instances of the service, the plurality of assigned data partitions.
Response. Param teaches repartitioning and redistribution of partitions among consumers in response to system changes. This redistribution causes rebalancing at the instance level would have been obvious choice. Craft further supports distributed coordination among nodes, reinforcing the obviousness of performing such rebalancing by service instances. Therefore, the combination of Param and craft teaches or at least renders obvious the claims limitation as currently presented.
The applicant argues that amending claim 1 overcomes the current Alice 101 rejection.
Response. The applicant relies solely on minor wording changes and has not presented substantive arguments addressing the examiner’s prior 101 analysis. A mere change in terminology, without corresponding change in claimed functionality or technical implementation is not sufficient to overcome a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101. The amendments replacing “used” and ‘processing” with “consuming” are not enough changes to alter the scope of the claim in a meaningful way. The claim continues to be directed the abstract idea of organizing and distributing data processing tasks among multiple service instances. The claim does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and does not recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Therefore, the rejection under 35 U.S.C 101 is maintained.
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.
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/SARGON N NANO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443