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 1/16/2026. Claims 1, 3-4, 6, 8, 10, 12-13, 15, 18, and 21-30 remain pending in the application. Claims 1, 3-4, 10, and 18 have been amended. Claims 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16-17, and 19-20 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 Any examiner’s note, objection, and rejection not repeated is withdrawn due to Applicant’s amendment.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 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, 8, 10, 18, 21, and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rogers et al. (US 20230266972 A1) hereafter Rogers in view of Toy (US 20200249972 A1), further in view of Roy (US 20190377886 A1), further in view of Madanapalli et al. (US 20160246586 A1) hereafter Madanapalli.
Regarding claim 1, Rogers teaches:
A computer-implemented method performed by a computer system comprising a memory (Fig. 2, RPU core (SIMT+OOO), right side) and at least one hardware processor (Paragraph 40; “The RPU hardware may include a chip which includes one or more RPU cores 202, and a one or more CPU cores 204”.), the computer-implemented method comprising:
obtaining, by a pipeline service of a microservices architecture, information of the microservices architecture, the microservices architecture including the pipeline service (Paragraph 40; “The role of the CPU cores is to run OS process, the SIMR server, and RPU driver while the RPU cores run the microservices requests’ workload.”, explicitly disclosing a microservice architecture. Paragraph 60 further discloses “SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.”, where the server processes and routes requests among microservices and coordinates execution, corresponding to a pipeline service. Paragraph 63 further discloses “First, we group requests based on API or RPC calls. Some microservices may provide more than one API, for example, memcached has set and get APls, post provides newPost and getPostByUser calls. Therefore, we batch requests that call the same procedure to ensure they will execute the same source code”, where grouping requests by API/ROC calls requires the server to utilize information regarding which APIs correspond to which microservices, thereby obtaining information of the microservice architecture.);
a microservice architecture (Paragraph 38; “The SIMR-aware server 104 may include a server which identifies HTTP requests, RPC request, and/or requests of other communications protocols which are configured for microservices (or other hosted endpoints)”);
and a network, the pipeline service being configured to communicate via the network (Paragraph 60; “send a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver” implies a communication medium over a network between the pipeline and distributed components over a network.);
determining, by the pipeline service, that the bulk mode conditions are satisfied (Paragraph 63; “batch requests that call the same procedure” and “group requests that have similar argument/query length”, discloses a service that evaluates request attributes and uses those attributes to determine how requests are grouped, corresponding to a service that determines, based on input conditions, whether conditions for batching behavior are satisfied.);
identifying, by the pipeline service, a plurality of workers running in parallel (Paragraph 60; “assign a new software thread to each incoming request”, “send a service launch command for the batch... with pointers to the thread contexts”, in which Paragraph 62 discloses that this execution is performed using “SIMT execution”. The discussion of SIMT execution and batched threads executing the same control flow indicates that the threads execute concurrently in a parallel execution model. Providing pointers to the thread contexts in the batch requires the system to determine and reference multiple threads participating in execution, corresponding to identifying a plurality of workers running in parallel, performed by the pipeline service.);
sending, by the pipeline service, a bulk request based on the determining that the conditions satisfy the one or more bulk mode conditions (Paragraph 60; “SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.”, similarity and argument size corresponding to bulk mode conditions are met, therefore the SIMR server, within the pipeline service, groups them into a batch request for simultaneous processing, corresponding to the bulk request, and sends the request.);
the bulk request comprising a corresponding request body portion for each requestor (Paragraph 60; “The role of our HTTP server (D) is to assign a new software thread to each incoming request. The SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.” Pointers to thread contexts are within the payload of the batch, corresponding to the bulk request, which are contained within the request body corresponding to each of the workers.);
determining, by the pipeline service, that the one or more bulk mode conditions are not satisfied (Paragraph 63; “batch requests that call the same procedure” and “group requests that have similar argument/query length”, discloses a service that evaluates request attributes and uses those attributes to determine how requests are grouped, corresponding to a service that determines, based on input conditions, whether conditions for batching behavior are satisfied. Similarly, if the conditions are not met, such as requests that have dissimilar argument/query length, the conditions for batching, corresponding to bulk mode conditions, are not satisfied.);
sending, by the pipeline service, a corresponding request based on the determining that the conditions does not satisfy the one or more bulk mode conditions (Paragraph 60; “SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.”, where the grouping of similar requests into batches, corresponding to a bulk mode, is made for execution efficiency. Requests that are not grouped into a batch are processed as individual requests, such that each request corresponds to an execution thread context and is handled outside the batch processing mechanism.);
the bulk request comprising a request for each worker in the plurality of workers (Paragraph 60; “The role of our HTTP server (D) is to assign a new software thread to each incoming request. The SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.” Pointers to thread contexts are within the payload of the batch, corresponding to the bulk request, which are contained within the request body and correspond to each of the worker threads, corresponding to workers.).
Rogers teaches grouping similar requests into batches, corresponding to the applicant’s bulk request. It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to handle the complementary condition where batching conditions are not satisfied, and to send corresponding individual requests instead, as systems that conditionally batch requests typically have alternative processing for requests that do not meet the criteria. Implementing the known method of complementary logic would yield the predictable result of ensuring correct system operation for any such inputs.
Rogers does not teach a replication management service (RMS), the first set of one or more metrics comprising a network latency metric of the network and a packet loss metric of the network; a plurality of RMS workers, each one of the plurality of RMS workers being configured to execute a data replication task and comprising an RMS agent
However, Toy teaches:
the first set of one or more metrics comprising a network latency metric of the network and a packet loss metric of the network (Paragraph 30; “threshold values pertaining to usage of hardware (e.g., dedicated hardware, common hardware), performance and/or quality of service metric values (e.g., latency, bitrates, packet loss, throughput, etc.)”, explicitly disclosing latency and packet loss, of which latency corresponds to network latency and packet loss is a network metric indicating packet loss during transmission over a network, collectively corresponding to the claimed set of one or more metrics.);
conditions comprising the network latency metric being greater than a threshold latency value and the packet loss metric being greater than a threshold packet loss value (Paragraph 30; “threshold values pertaining to usage of hardware (e.g., dedicated hardware, common hardware), performance and/or quality of service metric values (e.g., latency, bitrates, packet loss, throughput, etc.)”, explicitly disclosing latency and packet loss, of which latency corresponds to network latency and packet loss is a network metric indicating packet loss during transmission over a network, collectively corresponding to a threshold applied to the claimed set of metrics as conditions);
determining that the first set of one or more metrics satisfies the one or more conditions (Paragraph 30; “elastic resource allocator 202 may select the resource used based on the type of container 207 (e.g., a category of the application service provided, such as real-time, mission critical, machine-type communications (MTC), delay-tolerant, and/or other types of nomenclatures or criteria pertaining to application type), the health of the container, threshold values pertaining to usage of hardware (e.g., dedicated hardware, common hardware), performance and/or quality of service metric values (e.g., latency, bitrates, packet loss, throughput, etc.)” discloses the use of threshold values in connection with the metrics. Selecting a configuration based on QoS metrics requires determining whether the metrics meet applicable conditions, such as the thresholds, which corresponds to determining that a set of metrics satisfies one or more conditions.);
obtaining, by the pipeline service, a second set of the one or more metrics (Paragraph 30; “threshold values pertaining to usage of hardware (e.g., dedicated hardware, common hardware), performance and/or quality of service metric values (e.g., latency, bitrates, packet loss, throughput, etc.)”, explicitly disclosing latency and packet loss, of which latency corresponds to network latency and packet loss is a network metric indicating packet loss during transmission over a network, collectively corresponding to the claimed set of one or more metrics. Such evaluation occurs during system operation and may be repeatedly performed as conditions change during execution. Obtaining metrics at different times corresponds to obtaining a first set of metrics and subsequently obtaining a second and further set of metrics.);
Rogers and Toy are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers to incorporate the teachings of Toy and set the threshold conditions of the latency and packet loss to be greater than their respective values, compare the metrics against thresholds, and obtain a second set of metrics. Applying threshold comparisons to latency and packet loss, determining when such metrics exceed their respective thresholds, and reevaluation would have been a straightforward implementation of the Toy’s evaluation of QoS metrics using thresholds, motivated by the need to control system behavior and perform continuous monitoring.
Rogers in view of Toy does not teach a replication management service (RMS); a plurality of RMS workers, each one of the plurality of RMS workers being configured to execute a data replication task.
However, Roy teaches:
a replication management service (RMS) being configured to communicate via the network (Paragraphs 48-49; “system managers 520.1-520.4 may implement one or more rule systems to generate and initiate system tasks, such a data object replication” which teaches a component responsible for controlling replication. “system manager... may generate or receive an object replication work item”, in which the component creates and handles structured replication tasks. The system that generates, initiates, and coordinates replication tasks based on system conditions corresponds to a replication management service.);
a plurality of RMS workers, each one of the plurality of RMS workers being configured to execute a data replication task (Paragraph 57; “a plurality of replication engines running in parallel to complete data replication with improved efficiency. Each replication engine may be capable of receiving replication tasks from authenticators 522.1-522.3 and/or encrypt/decrypt engines 524.1-524.3 and performing those replication tasks in accordance with the command syntax and communication protocols of storage nodes 30” discloses a system in which replication work items are provided to workers, corresponding to the RMS workers existing within the replication service, for processing by replication engines in parallel. In order to provide work items to the execution entities, the system must determine the set of recipient components, corresponding to identifying a plurality of RMS workers.);
Rogers, Toy, and Roy are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy to incorporate the teachings of Roy and have an RMS and a plurality of RMS workers each configured to execute a data replication task. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the use of parallel execution models such as SIMT with multiple workers performing replication tasks is a known method yielding the predictable result of improving hardware utilization and maximizing concurrency in workload processing.
Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy does not teach an agent that sends requests to get work orders and posts work order statuses after work orders are processed;
However, Madanapalli teaches:
an agent that sends requests to get work orders and posts work order statuses after work orders are processed (Paragraph 35; “agent 130 pulls the version control task from the corresponding target queue 126. The example agent 130 then executes the version control task, and sends the version control response to the message broker 106”);
Rogers, Toy, Roy, and Madanapalli are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy to incorporate the teachings of Madanapalli and have an agent that sends requests to get work orders and posts work order statuses after work orders are processed. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the pull-push based task distribution and completion reporting pattern to be a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of avoiding bottlenecking at a central scheduler.
Claim 10 recites similar limitations as those of claim 1, additionally reciting a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable instructions. Toy teaches:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable instructions (Paragraph 96; “embodiments described herein may be implemented as a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores data and/or information, such as instructions”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have stored the instructions of the claimed system on a non-transitory computer-readable medium as this is a known method for executing software-based methods, yielding the predictable result of enabling persistence, deployment, and execution of described functionality.
Claim 10 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 1.
Claim 18 recites similar limitations as those of claim 1, additionally reciting a non-transitory computer-readable medium tangibly embodying a set of instructions. Toy teaches:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium tangibly embodying a set of instructions (Paragraph 96; “embodiments described herein may be implemented as a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores data and/or information, such as instructions... A non-transitory storage medium includes one or more of the storage mediums described in relation to memory/storage 615.”, Paragraph 71; “Memory/storage 615 may include a hard disk (e.g., a magnetic disk, an optical disk, a magneto-optic disk, a solid state disk, etc.), a Micro-Electromechanical System (MEMS)-based storage medium, and/or a nanotechnology-based storage medium. Memory/storage 615 may include drives for reading from and writing to the storage medium.”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have stored the instructions of the claimed system on a non-transitory computer-readable medium as this is a known method for executing software-based methods, yielding the predictable result of enabling persistence, deployment, and execution of described functionality.
Claim 18 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 1.
Regarding claim 8, Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Balko teach the method of claim 1. Rogers teaches:
a bulk request (Paragraph 60; “The SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.”, where the batch request corresponds to the bulk request.).
Roy teaches:
wherein the request comprises a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request (Paragraph 14; “object storage agent may be configured for sending hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) calls conforming to a simple storage services application protocol interface”).
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 Rogers’ bulk requests with Roy’s HTTP calls corresponding to a request. A person of ordinary skill ion the art would have recognized the use of HTTP requests to be a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of interoperable communication in distributed and microservice-based architectures.
Claim 21 recites similar limitations as those of claim 8. Claim 21 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 8.
Claim 25 recites similar limitations as those of claim 8. Claim 25 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 8.
Claims 3, 6, 12, 15, 22, and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli, further in view of Balko et al. (US 20150067019 A1) hereafter Balko.
Regarding claim 3, Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli teach the method of claim 1. Rogers teaches:
bulk mode conditions (Paragraph 63; “batch requests that call the same procedure” and “group requests that have similar argument/query length”, discloses a service that evaluates request attributes and uses those attributes to determine how requests are grouped, corresponding to a service that determines, based on input conditions, whether conditions for batching behavior, corresponding to bulk mode conditions, are satisfied.).
Roy teaches:
RMS workers in the plurality of RMS workers (Paragraph 57; “a plurality of replication engines running in parallel to complete data replication with improved efficiency. Each replication engine may be capable of receiving replication tasks from authenticators 522.1-522.3 and/or encrypt/decrypt engines 524.1-524.3 and performing those replication tasks in accordance with the command syntax and communication protocols of storage nodes 30” discloses a system in which replication work items are provided to workers, corresponding to the RMS workers existing within the replication service, for processing by replication engines in parallel. In order to provide work items to the execution entities, the system must determine the set of recipient components, corresponding to a plurality of RMS workers.).
Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli does not teach the conditions comprise the total number of workers being greater than a threshold number.
However, Balko teaches:
the conditions comprise the total number of workers being greater than a threshold number (Paragraph 105; “For instance, the total number of connected worker clients may be compared against the task replication requirements as part of a possible quality of service requirement.” QoS requirements are commonly implemented as minimum acceptable levels such that satisfying the requirement corresponds to the metric being greater than a threshold number.).
Rogers, Toy, Roy, Madanapalli, and Balko are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli to incorporate the teachings of Balko and have the conditions comprise a total number of workers being greater than a threshold number. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the use of thresholds to determine whether a total number of workers is sufficient to meet QoS requirements is a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of ensuring stable process execution.
Claim 12 recites similar limitations as those of claim 3. Claim 12 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 3.
Claim 22 recites similar limitations as those of claim 3. Claim 22 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 3.
Regarding claim 6, Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli teach the method of claim 1. Rogers teaches:
bulk mode conditions (Paragraph 63; “batch requests that call the same procedure” and “group requests that have similar argument/query length”, discloses a service that evaluates request attributes and uses those attributes to determine how requests are grouped, corresponding to a service that determines, based on input conditions, whether conditions for batching behavior, corresponding to bulk mode conditions, are satisfied.).
Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli does not teach the conditions comprise the bandwidth metric being less than a threshold bandwidth value.
However, Balko teaches:
conditions comprise the bandwidth metric being less than a threshold bandwidth value (Paragraph 105; “broker system 201 (cf. also FIG. 1) may compare the network bandwidth and the cost of sending or receiving data over this communication coupling”, in which it “may be compared against the task replication requirements as part of a possible quality of service requirement”, which discloses the use of threshold-based comparisons e.g. a cost threshold, indicating that system requirements may be expressed as thresholds, in which the comparison of bandwidth to requirements corresponds to evaluating bandwidth relative to a threshold.).
Rogers, Toy, Roy, Madanapalli, and Balko are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli to incorporate the teachings of Balko and incorporate a bandwidth condition threshold into the bulk mode conditions. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the use of threshold-based comparisons as a known technique for evaluating resource constraints and selecting a “less than” condition for the bandwidth would be a predictable variation depending on whether the requirement defines a maximum allowable bandwidth or constraint condition.
Claim 15 recites similar limitations as those of claim 6. Claim 15 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 6.
Claim 24 recites similar limitations as those of claim 6. Claim 24 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 6.
Claims 4, 13, and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli, further in view of Chen et al. (US 20230297414 A1) hereafter Chen.
Regarding claim 4, Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli teach the method of claim 1. Rogers teaches:
bulk mode conditions (Paragraph 63; “batch requests that call the same procedure” and “group requests that have similar argument/query length”, discloses a service that evaluates request attributes and uses those attributes to determine how requests are grouped, corresponding to a service that determines, based on input conditions, whether conditions for batching behavior, corresponding to bulk mode conditions, are satisfied.).
Roy teaches:
the RMS (Paragraphs 48-49; “system managers 520.1-520.4 may implement one or more rule systems to generate and initiate system tasks, such a data object replication” which teaches a component responsible for controlling replication. “system manager... may generate or receive an object replication work item”, in which the component creates and handles structured replication tasks. The system that generates, initiates, and coordinates replication tasks based on system conditions corresponds to a replication management service.).
Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli does not teach the conditions comprise the CPU usage value being greater than a threshold usage value.
However, Chen teaches:
conditions comprise the CPU usage value being greater than a threshold usage value (Paragraph 345; “When the processor usage is greater than a specified threshold, or the memory usage is greater than a specified threshold, the second electronic device 20 may send a background task request to the first electronic device”).
Rogers, Toy, Roy, Madanapalli, and Chen are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource scheduling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli to incorporate the teachings of Chen and have the conditions comprise the CPU usage being greater than a threshold usage value. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the use of threshold-based comparisons as a known technique for evaluating resource constraints and selecting a “greater than” condition would be a predictable variation of a maximum allowable CPU usage condition.
Claim 13 recites similar limitations as those of claim 4. Claim 13 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 4.
Claim 23 recites similar limitations as those of claim 4. Claim 23 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 4.
Claims 26, 28, and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli, further in view of Eldar et al. (US 20090006594 A1) hereafter Eldar.
Regarding claim 26, Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli teach the method of claim 1. Rogers teaches:
the pipeline service (Paragraph 60; “SIMR-aware server groups requests in a batch based on each request’s Application Program Interface (API) similarity and argument size (see Section I-B1), then sends a service launch command for the batch to the RPU driver with pointers to the thread contexts of these requests.” The disclosure of a service that controls request handling and execution dispatch is consistent with a pipeline service.).
Roy teaches:
the RMS (Paragraphs 48-49; “system managers 520.1-520.4 may implement one or more rule systems to generate and initiate system tasks, such a data object replication” which teaches a component responsible for controlling replication. “system manager... may generate or receive an object replication work item”, in which the component creates and handles structured replication tasks. The system that generates, initiates, and coordinates replication tasks based on system conditions corresponds to a replication management service.).
Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli does not teach using a central connection management service to connect and communicate with the services, the central connection management service providing a central directory for connection information and credentials.
However, Eldar teaches:
using a central connection management service to connect and communicate with the services, the central connection management service providing a central directory for connection information and credentials (Paragraph 15; “internal network 101 may include a number of servers and devices, such as but not limited to, Central Authentication (CA) server 121, directory services 124, support center 122 and a plurality of personal computers 123, which may be connected via internal network connection 117, e.g., intranet connection, to one or more management server, e.g., management servers 118 and 119.”, teaches an internal network including management servers, central authentication server, and directory services that facilitate communication and maintain structured information regarding network resources and authentication, collectively corresponding to the central connection management service that provides a central directory for connection information and credentials used to establish communication with services in the system.).
Rogers, Toy, Roy, Madanapalli, and Eldar are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli to incorporate the teachings of Eldar and use a central connection management service to connect and communicate with the services, the central connection management service providing a central directory for connection information and credentials. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the use of a central connection management service to be a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of facilitating secure communication in distributed networks to manage device discovery and access control.
Claim 28 recites similar limitations as those of claim 26. Claim 28 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 26.
Claim 30 recites similar limitations as those of claim 26. Claim 30 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 26.
Claims 27 and 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli, further in view of Kuan et al. (US 20200167151 A1) hereafter Kuan.
Regarding claim 27, Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli teaches the method of claim 1. Roy teaches:
wherein at least one work order received from the RMS defines metadata for replication of data from a source system to a target system, the metadata comprising connection information for the source system, and connection information for the target systems (Paragraphs 48-49 and 55; “system managers 520.1-520.4 may implement one or more rule systems to generate and initiate system tasks, such as data object replication”, in which “Object storage agents 526.1-526.4 may include resources for processing object storage operations, such as GET, PUT, DELETE, and similar commands in compliance with a selected object storage standard, such as S3. In some embodiments, object storage agents 526.1-526.4 may receive an object replication work item. This work item may include source object URL, source bucket read user credentials, destination URL, and destination bucket write user credentials.”. Object replication work item corresponds to a worker order which includes metadata defining a source location and destination location. Paragraph 49 confirms that this is received from the RMS, “system managers 520.1-520.4 may generate or receive an object replication work item for processing by their respective controller nodes 20.1-20.4 and associate a replication user type with the resulting object storage operation.”).
Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli does not teach a schema.
However, Kuan teaches:
a schema (Paragraph 87; “metadata 252 may represent anything relating to the output dataset 250, for example one or more of the build identifier, the destination address, the origin address, the requesting user or customer, the type of task performed, the application employed, the language employed, the timing of the task, the size of the output dataset, the one or more input datasets used, the ontology or schema of the input or output datasets”).
Rogers, Toy, Roy, Madanapalli, and Kuan are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of resource management. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Rogers in view of Toy, further in view of Roy, further in view of Madanapalli to incorporate the teachings of Kuan and incorporate a schema to the work order. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the use of a schema to be a known method in the art yielding the predictable result of providing a standardized structure for data exchange between distributed components, and enabling consistent interpretation of information between the systems.
Claim 29 recites similar limitations as those of claim 27. Claim 29 is rejected for similar reasons as those of claim 27.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 1/16/2026 have been fully considered. Applicant’s arguments are summarized below:
The cited portions of Hampton do not discuss the newly amended claimed “pipeline service”, “RMS”, or the relationships between the “RMS workers”, “pipeline service”, “RMS agent” and the “RMS”.
Examiner’s response:
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection applied in light of the amendments does not rely on Hampton, as applied in the prior rejection of record, for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Côté et al. (US 20180248771 A1) discusses a microservice monitoring system that publishes metrics from a plurality of services and analyzes the metrics to determine insights and actions to take based on those insights, then pushing those actions to services for implementation.
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.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
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.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KENNETH P TRAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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