DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-45 are pending.
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 Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 04/07/2026, have been fully considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-16, 18-21, 25-26, and 29-45 are allowed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 17 and 27-28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Frank et al., US Patent No. 6,832,120 (hereinafter Frank).
Regarding claims 17 and 27-28, Frank discloses all the claimed limitations, as outlined below.
Claims 17 and 27-28 - - A method of performing process control in an industrial process plant producing a physical product, the method comprising: instantiating in a compute fabric (C4 L20-37 and Fig 1 - -wherein a compute fabric is considered as the overall network of components. Components operated on-premise and remotely via the Web/Internet/Intranet. See Fig1 below:
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It can be noted that a distributed network comprises on-premises and remote components);
a plurality of micro-encapsulated execution environments (MEEEs) (C4 L63-67 - - using Java-based objects);
each MEEE of the plurality of MEEEs executing a respective at least a portion of a control module that receives data from one or more transmitters measuring or sensing physical parameters in the industrial process plant and that transmits to one or more physical control elements in the industrial process plant, respective setpoints to cause the one or more physical control elements to control a process in the industrial process plant to at least one of transform a physical material; wherein a first portion of the compute fabric is located within the industrial process plant and a second portion of the compute fabric is located remotely from the industrial process plant; and wherein the compute fabric is located remotely from the industrial process plant (C8 L65-67, C9 L3-8 - - the object-oriented system 100 automates industrial facilities that include transmitters, sensors, and control elements. It can be noted that phrase “at least one of manufacture, refine, transform, generate, or produce a physical material or a physical product” is in alternative form. The alternative recite in Frank is “the transformation of physical material. Furthermore, regarding “remotely located” feature of the “compute fabric”, it can be noted that the Internet/Intranet control network provides for distributed and remote control features).
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, 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 22-24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Frank et al., US Patent No. 6,832,120 (hereinafter Frank) in view of Curcio et al., US Patent No. 8,997,206 (hereinafter Curcio).
Regarding claim 22, Frank discloses all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Frank further teaches wherein each of the plurality of MEEEs is communicatively coupled to at least one other of the plurality of MEEEs by a secured connection (C8 L65-67, C9 L3-8 - - the object-oriented system 100 automates industrial facilities that include transmitters, sensors, and control elements).
Frank fails to clearly specify secured point-to-point (PTP) or peer-to-peer (P2P) connection.
However, Curcio teaches secured point-to-point (PTP) or peer-to-peer (P2P) connection (see C3).
The applied prior art is considered analogous art to the claimed invention because they relate to same field of endeavor. They relate to network topologies for secure communication utilizing diverse protocols.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the above object-oriented compute fabric, as taught by Frank, and incorporating the concept of communication utilizing decentralized time-based connections, as taught by Curcio.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do this modification in order to provide autonomous connections and increase the independence of the connections, as suggested by Curcio (see C3 L6-41).
Regarding claim 23, Frank discloses all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Frank fails to clearly specify wherein the secured PTP or P2P connection includes a virtual private network (VPN) and/or a virtual network (VNet).
However, Curcio teaches wherein a secured PTP or P2P connection includes a virtual private network (VPN) and/or a virtual network (VNet) (see C3).
The applied prior art is considered analogous art to the claimed invention because they relate to same field of endeavor. They relate to network topologies for secure communication utilizing diverse protocols.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the above object-oriented compute fabric, as taught by Frank, and incorporating the concept of communication utilizing decentralized time-based connections, as taught by Curcio.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do this modification in order to provide autonomous connections and increase the independence of the connections, as suggested by Curcio (see C3 L6-41).
Regarding claims 24, Frank discloses all the limitations of the base claims as outlined above.
Frank further teaches wherein: each MEEE, each transmitter, and each physical control element comprises an endpoint, and each pair of communicatively coupled endpoints is communicatively coupled by a respective secured connection (C8 L65-67, C9 L3-8 - - the object-oriented system 100 automates industrial facilities that include transmitters, sensors, and control elements).
Frank fails to clearly specify an endpoint of at least one secured PTP or P2P connection; wherein the secured connection is a secured PTP or P2P connection.
However, Curcio teaches an endpoint of at least one secured PTP or P2P connection; wherein the secured connection is a secured PTP or P2P connection (see C3).
The applied prior art is considered analogous art to the claimed invention because they relate to same field of endeavor. They relate to network topologies for secure communication utilizing diverse protocols.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the above object-oriented compute fabric, as taught by Frank, and incorporating the concept of communication utilizing decentralized time-based connections, as taught by Curcio.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do this modification in order to provide autonomous connections and increase the independence of the connections, as suggested by Curcio (see C3 L6-41).
Citation of Pertinent Prior Art
The following prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Kumar et al., US Patent No. 10,129,078- relates to an orchestration engine.
Wu et al., US Patent No. 10,156,841 – relates to cloud services.
Malladi et al., US Patent No. 10,379,842 – relates to edge computing.
Moeller, US Patent Application Publication No. 2021/0216306 – relates to secure deployment of software on industrial control systems.
Cruz, Tiago, Paulo Simões, and Edmundo Monteiro. "Virtualizing programmable logic controllers: Toward a convergent approach." IEEE Embedded Systems Letters 8.4 (2016): 69-72.
Goldschmidt, Thomas, and Stefan Hauck-Stattelmann. "Software containers for industrial control." 2016 42th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA). IEEE, 2016.
Rufino, Joao, et al. "Orchestration of containerized microservices for IIoT using Docker." 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT). IEEE, 2017.
Peltonen, Mikael. "Plc virtualization and software defined architectures in industrial control systems." (2017).
Pereira, Joaquim André Sena Martins. Enabling IoT in Manufacturing: from device to the cloud. MS thesis. Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal), 2017.
Stanciu, Alexandru. "Blockchain based distributed control system for edge computing." 2017 21st international conference on control systems and computer science (CSCS). IEEE, 2017.
Tasci, Timur, Jan Melcher, and Alexander Verl. "A container-based architecture for real-time control applications." 2018 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation (ICE/ITMC). IEEE, 2018.
Dobaj, Jürgen, et al. "A microservice architecture for the industrial Internet-of-Things." Proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs. 2018.
Ismail, Ahmed. Service oriented manufacturing infrastructure. Diss. Technische Universität Wien, 2018.
Preuveneers, Davy, Wouter Joosen, and Elisabeth Ilie-Zudor. "Robust digital twin compositions for industry 4.0 smart manufacturing systems." 2018 IEEE 22nd International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop (EDOCW). IEEE, 2018.
Zhou, Xiang, et al. "Delta debugging microservice systems with parallel optimization." IEEE Transactions on Services Computing 15.1 (2019): 16-29.
Dai, Wenbin, et al. "Semantic integration of plug-and-play software components for industrial edges based on microservices." IEEE Access 7 (2019): 125882-125892.
Riku, A. "Sensor data transmission from a physical twin to a digital twin." Espoo (Finland): Aalto University (2019).
Sundholm, Kaj. "HARDENING INDUSTRIAL NETWORK USING ISOLATED SEGMENTS." (2019).
Jo, Guejong, Su-Hwan Jang, and Jongpil Jeong. "Design and implementation of cpps and edge computing architecture based on opc ua server." Procedia Computer Science 155 (2019): 97-104.
Pontarolli, Ricardo P., et al. "Microservice orchestration for process control in industry 4.0." 2020 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Industry 4.0 & IoT. Ieee, 2020.
Marie-Magdelaine, Nicolas, and Toufik Ahmed. "Proactive autoscaling for cloud-native applications using machine learning." GLOBECOM 2020-2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference. IEEE, 2020.
Nordman, Johan. "Google Cloud and solution for industrial automation systems." University of Turku (2020).
Redeker, Magnus, et al. "Towards a digital twin platform for industrie 4.0." 2021 4th IEEE international conference on industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPS). IEEE, 2021.
Warner, David. "Process Manufacturing Digital Twin-Open Architecture Testbed Framework." (2021).
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CARLOS R ORTIZ RODRIGUEZ whose telephone number is (571)272-3766. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri 10:00 am- 6:30 pm.
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/CARLOS R ORTIZ RODRIGUEZ/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2119
