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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in response to the amendment filed on December 23, 2025.
Claims 1-6 and 9-10 are pending.
Claims 1-6 and 9-10 have been amended.
Claims 7-8 have been canceled.
The 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) and 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) of claims 1-8 are withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendments to the claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments have been considered but are moot in view of new ground(s) of rejection. In these arguments applicant relies on the amended claims and not the original ones. See below rejections under 35 USC § 103 for response to arguments.
Allowable Subject Matter
Based on extensive searches of various databases, Examiner respectfully submits that claims 5 and 10 are allowable over the prior art of record.
Claim 2 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claims 3-4 are considered allowable by virtue of their dependence on the rewritten allowable independent claims 2.
Claim 6 is considered allowable by virtue of its dependence on the allowable base claim 5.
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 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 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 11,275,573 (hereinafter "Javadekar”) in view of US 2022/0353134 (hereinafter “Lee”).
In the following claim analysis, bold text denotes claim language; bold text with underlines and strikethroughs indicates claim amendments; underlining in Examiner’s claim mappings is used for emphasis; and the Examiner’s detailed interpretations are provided in square brackets.
As to claim 1, Javadekar discloses An update control apparatus (Javadekar, Fig. 1, col. 2, ln. 64-66, an example system 100 for performing intelligent rolling updates on a cluster 116 of containers 102 within a container orchestration tool) comprising:
at least one memory storing instructions (Javadekar, claim 14); and
at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to perform a process (Javadekar, claim 14) comprising:
acquiring the number of communication terminals in a first cell (Javadekar, Fig. 1, col. 3, ln. 16-34, server device 104 [It is noted that the server device corresponds to the claimed first cell, as it represents a defined service domain within which services are provided to client devices] may include update manager 110. Update manager 110 may be configured to perform intelligent rolling updates of a cluster 116 of containers 102 … Update manager 110 may also be configured to receive a computed order from order computation module 112, specifying the order in which the brokers should be updated [Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art would readily comprehend that the number of communication terminals is acquired]; col. 5, ln. 34-36, the brokers may operate within a distributed streaming platform [Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art would readily comprehend that each broker provides services to client devices as communication terminals] );
among a plurality of execution environments (Javadekar, col. 3, ln. 35-48, containers 102 may include brokers 114a, . . . , 114n (114 generally), where containers 102 may support the functionality of software applications, and brokers 114 may possess metadata 118a, . . . , 118n (118 generally). A container packages an entire application in an isolated environment, including all of its dependencies, libraries, and configuration files. This allows the application to run on any computing environment [Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art would readily comprehend that containers 102 executing brokers within computing environment are a plurality of execution environments]), execute a process to provide a service for one or more communication terminals in the first cell (Javadekar, Fig. 1, col. 3, ln. 16-34, server device 104 may include update manager 110. Update manager 110 may be configured to perform intelligent rolling updates [as a update service to the brokers for providing streaming service to client devices] of a cluster 116 of containers 102 … Update manager 110 may also be configured to receive a computed order from order computation module 112, specifying the order in which the brokers should be updated);
determining, on the basis of the number of communication terminals in the first cell, the number of execution environments to be stopped at one time (Javadekar, col. 2, ln. 55-63, an algorithm may consider the order specified by the StatefulSet and the identity of the controller to determine a rolling update order such that the controller is terminated last [Thus, one of ordinary skill in the art would readily comprehend that the number of brokers to be stopped is determined according to the rolling update order]; Fig. 2B, col. 4, ln. 16-19, after broker 202a has been terminated and restarted, and thus updated) while maintaining provision of the service to the one or more communication terminals in the first cell (Javadekar, col. 6, ln. 8-21, performing the rolling update may include terminating the broker that is specified as first in the computed order, updating the broker, restarting the broker, and repeating these steps for the remainder of the brokers within the cluster according to the computed order …. update manager 110 may terminate the brokers by sending a signal to the respective containers to shut down the software being run);
transmitting an instruction to update [one or more brokers] (Javadekar, col. 3, ln. 25-28, Update manager 110 may also be configured to receive [as transmitted] a computed order from order computation module 112, specifying the order in which the brokers should be updated) executed in a subset of the plurality of execution environments, the subset having the determined number of execution environments to be stopped at one time (Javadekar, col. 6, ln. 8-21, performing the rolling update may include terminating the broker that is specified as first in the computed order, updating the broker, restarting the broker, and repeating these steps for the remainder of the brokers within the cluster according to the computed order; col. 6, ln. 4-5, a rolling update to the brokers of the cluster is performed according to the computed order).
Javadekar does not appear to explicitly disclose a plurality of execution environments including one or more target virtual network functions that are to be updated and transmitting an instruction to update one or more target virtual network functions.
However, in an analogous art to the claimed invention in the field of function update, Lee teaches a plurality of execution environments including one or more target virtual network functions that are to be updated (Lee, Fig. 4B, ¶ 73, FIG. 6B, illustrated is an example operational procedure for upgrading a virtualized network function (VNF) implemented in a virtualized computing environment … the virtualized network function implemented by a plurality of VNF components (VNFCs) executing in a plurality of virtual machines) and transmitting an instruction to update one or more target virtual network functions (Lee, Fig. 6B, ¶ 73, an example operational procedure for upgrading a virtualized network function (VNF) … the updating performed by an upgrade component configured to execute as a virtual resource in the virtualized computing environment, execute a series of operations in the virtualized computing environment that coordinate an upgrade of the VNFCs implementing the VNF, and interact with the VIM and the virtual machines to effect the upgrade. Such an operational procedure can be provided [transmitted] by one or more components illustrated in FIGS. 1 through 5).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the teaching of Javadekar with the teaching taught by Lee. The modification would be obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to execute a series of operations that coordinate an upgrade of the VNFCs implementing the VNF and interact with the VIM and the virtual machines to effect the upgrade (Lee, Abstract).
Claim 9 is essentially the same as claim 1 except is set forth the claimed invention as an update control method and is rejected with the same reasoning as applied hereinabove.
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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAXIN WU whose telephone number is (571) 270-7721. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F (7 am - 11:30 am; 1:30- 5 pm).
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner' s supervisor, Wei Mui can be reached at (571) 272-3708. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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Wu, Daxin
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2191
/DAXIN WU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2191