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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 4/21/26 has been entered.
Remarks
This action is in response to the request for continuation received on 5/20/26. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application. Applicants' arguments have been carefully and respectfully considered.
Claim(s) 1-9 and 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thakur et al. (US 2022/0067194) and further in view of J. Arai, H. Shiokawa, T. Yamamuro, M. Onizuka and S. Iwamura, "Rabbit Order: Just-in-Time Parallel Reordering for Fast Graph Analysis," 2016 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Chicago, IL, USA, 2016, pp. 22-31.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thakur in view of Arai, and further in view of Stetson et al. (US 2017/0221240).
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.
Claim(s) 1-9 and 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thakur et al. (US 2022/0067194) and further in view of J. Arai, H. Shiokawa, T. Yamamuro, M. Onizuka and S. Iwamura, "Rabbit Order: Just-in-Time Parallel Reordering for Fast Graph Analysis," 2016 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), Chicago, IL, USA, 2016, pp. 22-31.
With respect to claim 1, Thakur teaches a system comprising:
receive a graph having vertices corresponding to a plurality of graph objects to be interacted with by one or more users, the vertices associated with access control metadata (Thakur, Fig. 5, subgraph 501 & pa 0040, Operation 600 describes the creation of an initial subgraph, subgraph 501 in this case, for combination with other subgraphs to create privilege graph 400. In operation 600, graphing service 101 uses the identity information and the privilege information to identify employee 521 and to determine attributes of employee 521. The attributes of employee 521 indicate that employee 521 is in group 411, has role 423, and has privileges 432, which allow employee 521 to access feature 444. Graphing service 101 creates subgraph 501 from the attributes identified for employee 521.);
output an updated graph by merging of a first vertex and a second vertex into a merged vertex of a group of vertices based on the first vertex and the second vertex being associated with first access control metadata common to the first vertex and the second vertex, the first access control metadata being a subset of the access control metadata (Thakur, pa 0042, Operation 700 is an example of how subgraph 501 and subgraph 502 are combined into subgraph 800. In operation 700, graphing service 101 determines that both subgraph 501 and subgraph 502 include role 423, privileges 432, and feature 444 (701). Graphing service 101 then identifies the nodes for role 423, privileges 432, and feature 444 in subgraph 502 as being the common nodes for combination (702). & Fig. 8 & pa 0043, Subgraph 800 is a resulting subgraph after operation 700 has been performed on subgraphs 500.);
a storage to store a single copy of the first access control metadata, the single copy of the first access control metadata indicating that a plurality of users has a same plurality of access permissions to two distinct graph objects corresponding to the first vertex and the second vertex respectively (Thakur, pa 0023, Privilege graph 131 may be stored local to graphing service 101 or may be accessible to graphing service 101 from an external data repository, which may itself be managed by one of data environments 102. & pa 0038, The node for privileges 432 then connects to show what access is granted by privileges 432. In this case, privileges 432 only have one connection to feature 444 of applications 452. Other privileges enable access to multiple ones of features/data 441-446 (e.g., privileges 431 enable access to data 442, data 443, and feature 445). Examiner note: The example shown in Fig. 5-8 do not reference privileges that apply to two distinct objects, but Fig. 4 shows that privileges associated with two distinct graph objects exist and could be used instead of privileges 432).
Thakur doesn't expressly discuss a reordering controller to: receive a graph having vertices, output an updated graph based on a merging of the first vertex and the second vertex into a merged vertex of a group of vertices, and renumber the first vertex and the second vertex in the graph to be sequential based on the updated graph.
Arai teaches a reordering controller to: receive a graph having vertices (Arai, pg. 3, B. Problem statement, Given graph G = (V = [0; n);E⫃ V x V);
output an updated graph based on a merging of the first vertex and the second vertex into a merged vertex of a group of vertices (Arai, pg. 4 section B part 1, Figure 4(b) shows the dendrogram constructed by the incremental aggregation shown in Figure 4(a). Merged destination vertices form a tree by aggregating the inner communities.) based on the first vertex and the second vertex being associated with [data] common to the first vertex and the second vertex (Arai, pg. 1 second column, Reordering is a technique that optimizes both the computation order and the data layouts by modifying the vertex ordering. Figure 1(b) shows an example of a reordered graph. In this graph, neighboring vertices have close ID numbers, and so they will be computed consecutively and co-located in memory); and
renumber the first vertex and the second vertex in the graph to be sequential based on the updated graph (Arai, pg. 6, section C, After the community detection, Rabbit Order generates an ordering by following hierarchical community-based ordering. Here, we present a sequential algorithm for generating an ordering and its parallel equivalent. 1) Sequential Algorithm: The ORDERINGGENERATION function in Algorithm 2 generates new orderings.).
It would have been obvious at the effective filing date of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to have modified Thakur with the teachings of Arai because it optimizes the computation order and the data layouts such that data is co-located in memory (Arai, pg. 1 3rd pa).
The references do not specify “access control metadata indicating access permissions of the one or more users to the plurality of graph objects”, however, it would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to have modified Thakur in view of Arai to have used “access control metadata indicating access permissions of the one or more users to the plurality of graph objects” because merging of common data for saving storage space would apply regardless of the type of data.
With respect to claim 2, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 1, wherein: the output of the updated graph is further based on the reordering controller being configured to merge a third vertex and a fourth vertex of the vertices into a second merged vertex of a second group based on the third vertex and the fourth vertex being associated with second access control metadata common to the third vertex and the fourth vertex and based on the third vertex and the fourth vertex satisfying a reordering technique (Arai, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time. … (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves); and the storage is to store a single copy of the second access control metadata for the third vertex and the fourth vertex (Tishbi, pa 0064, the uber node is generated based on a determination that the first entity from the first source and the second entity from the second source are a single entity on which data is received from both the first source and the second source … a match is performed between a predefined data field, a plurality of predefined data fields, and the like, to determine, for example by generating a comparison, if a value of a data field of the first entity matches a value of a corresponding data field of the second entity (e.g., same IP address, same MAC address, same unique identifier, etc.). Examiner note: the access control metadata is represented by the data fields of the first and second entity, resulting in storage of an uber node for the entity).
With respect to claim 3, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 2, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: prevent the merged vertex from being merged with the second merged vertex based on the merged vertex and the second merged vertex failing to satisfy the reordering technique (Arai, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time. … (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 4, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 2,
wherein generation of the updated graph is based on the reordering controller being configured to: number vertices in the group of vertices sequentially; and number vertices in the second group sequentially continuing from a last vertex numbered in the group of vertices (Arai, pg. 3, section III, ORDERINGGENERATION function, converts the dendrogram into a new ordering such that, for every community hierarchy, vertices in the same community are co-located. & pg. 6 section C, After the community detection, Rabbit Order generates an ordering by following hierarchical community-based ordering. Here, we present a sequential algorithm for generating an ordering and its parallel equivalent. 1) Sequential Algorithm: The ORDERINGGENERATION function in Algorithm 2 generates new orderings. To recursively co-locate vertices in each hierarchical community, the algorithm performs depth-first search (DFS) from each top-level vertex on the dendrogram and returns the visit order).
With respect to claim 5, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 2, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: merge a fifth vertex of the vertices with the merged vertex of the group of vertices based the access control metadata being common to the fifth vertex and the merged vertex and based on the fifth vertex and the merged vertex satisfying the reordering technique (Arai, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time… (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 6, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 5, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: detect updated metadata that is an update to the access control metadata; and maintain the first vertex and the second vertex in the group of vertices based on the first vertex and the second vertex sharing the updated metadata (Arai, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time… (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 7, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 6, wherein the reordering controller is further configured to: discard the fifth vertex from the group of vertices based on the updated metadata not applying to the fifth vertex (Arai, pg. 4, Fig. 4a, section B, comparing graphs (i) and (ii) in Figure 4(a), we can see that source vertex 0 has been merged into destination vertex 2. By repeatedly merging vertices, our approach extracts hierarchical communities while constructing a dendrogram at the same time… (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves).
With respect to claim 8, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 7, wherein the storage is further configured to: store a single copy of the updated metadata for the first vertex and the second vertex based on the first vertex and the second vertex sharing the updated metadata (Thakur, pa 0042, there is a connection between the node for role 423 and the node for privileges 432 in both subgraph 501 and subgraph 502. Graphing service 101 deduplicates those replicated connections (704). In some examples, graphing service 101 deduplicates the connections by removing replicated connections after the migration.).
With respect to claim 9, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 5, wherein: the first vertex is adjacent to the second vertex, the third vertex is adjacent to the fourth vertex, and the fifth vertex is adjacent to the merged vertex (Arai, pg. 4).
With respect to claim 11, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the reordering technique comprises satisfying a merging quality threshold that indicates a partition quality that maximizes denser inner-group edges and sparser intra-group edges for each group of vertices (Arai, pg. 4 section B, Modularity [18] is Q a quality measure that provides a higher value when a graph is partitioned better, namely, each community has denser inner-community edges and sparser intra-community edges … The COMMUNITYDETECTION function in Algorithm 2 is the specific procedure of our approach. It consists of three steps: (i) picking a source vertex (line 4), (ii) finding the best destination vertex in terms of modularity improvement (line 5), and (iii) merging the source vertex and the destination vertex if the modularity improves (lines 6–7).).
With respect to claims 12-16, the limitations are essentially the same as claims 1-5, and are rejected for the same reasons.
With respect to claims 17-20, the limitations are essentially the same as claims 1-5, and are rejected for the same reasons.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Thakur in view of Arai, and further in view of Stetson et al. (US 2017/0221240).
With respect to claim 10, Thakur in view of Arai teaches the system of claim 2, as discussed above. Thakur in view of Arai doesn't expressly discuss wherein the access control metadata indicates read write permissions in relation to one or more vertices of the group of vertices.
Stetson teaches wherein the access control metadata indicates read write permissions in relation to one or more vertices of the group of vertices (Stetson, pa 0099, The permission metadata can include a security mechanism (e.g. a password, a security token, a handshake protocol, and/or a message) for accessing some or all of the data associated with a node).
It would have been obvious at the effective filing date of the invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to have modified Thakur in view of Arai to have included the teachings of Stetson because it allows a graph database to be visualized and explored while maintaining permission rules (Stetson, pa 0099 & 0102).
Response to Arguments
Rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103
Applicant seems to argue a newly amended limitation. Applicant’s amendment has rendered the previous rejection moot. Upon further consideration of the amendment, a new grounds of rejection is made in view of Thakur et al. (US 2022/0067194).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Bremer et al. (US 2022/0391365) teaches duplicate determination in a graph by comparing subgraphs and resolution through deduplication.
Tomaszuk D, Pąk K (2018) Reducing vertices in property graphs. PLOS ONE 13(2): e0191917 teaches managing graph databases by eliminating repetitive data.
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/BRITTANY N ALLEN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2169
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