DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA ).
Response and Claim Status
The instant Office action is responsive to the interview conducted February 16, 2026 (the Interview) and the response received February 19, 2026 (the Response).
In response to the Response, the previous (1) rejection of claims 1–14 under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b); and (3) rejections of claims 1–4, 6–11, 13–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
are WITHDRAWN.
Claims 1–20 are currently pending.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 5 is objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claim 1 and intervening claim 4, but would be allowable if rewritten to include all of the limitations of base claim 1 and intervening claim 4.
Claim 12 is objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claim 8 and intervening claim 11, but would be allowable if rewritten to include all of the limitations of base claim 8 and intervening claim 11.
Claim Rejections – 35 U.S.C. § 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.
O’Riordan, Porter, and Mulchandani
Applicants’ arguments with respect to the rejection of claims 1, 6, 8, and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan et al. (US 8,683,400 B1; filed Nov. 21, 2012) in view of Porter et al. (US 2020/0301721 A1; filed Mar. 22, 2019), and in further view of Mulchandani (EP 3,289,512 B1; filed Apr. 29, 2016) (see Response 7–9) have been considered but are now moot.
O’Riordan, Porter, Mulchandani, and Murray
Applicants’ arguments with respect to the rejection of claims 7, 14, and 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Mulchandani, and in further view of Murray et al. (US 2006/0235968 A1; filed June 19, 2006)(see Response 11–13) have been considered but are now moot.
O’Riordan, Porter, and Ilvas
Claims 1, 6, 8, and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, and in further view of Ilvas et al. (US 2010/0069015 A1; filed Sept. 16, 2009).
Regarding claim 1, while O’Riordan teaches a network device (fig. 1, item 100) comprising:
one or more processing units (fig. 1, item 112); and
one or more non-transitory computer-readable media (fig. 1, items 113, 120) storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processing units, cause the one or more processing units to:
receive a control plane packet (fig. 7, item 701; “At 701, a user provides a fault free circuit design with desired test points and faults for simulation, similarly to what is shown in FIG. 2 and FIG. 4.” at 7:3–6; 3:21–34);
parse a failure type (3:21–34 teaches the fault free circuit design including “The test points may include faults, time intervals in the circuit simulation for injecting faults, circuit nodes, and circuit load inputs. The time intervals may be specific windows of time during the simulation where analysis of a fault occurs . . . . The circuit load inputs may include voltages, currents, load operating frequencies, etc.”; “each fault expected to be simulated for that interval.” at 7:11–12) from the control plane packet;
configure an environment (fig. 7, item 700) dedicated to a child process (fig. 7, item 700 is dedicated to item 703 in the sense item 700 creates the child process at item 703, pauses the child process at 7:11–12; starts the child process at item 706, and terminates the child process at item 708) based on the parsed failure type to include injected faults (“child clone processes for each fault expected to be simulated” at 7:11–12; “child processes insert faults into the analog portion of the circuit design and conduct a full mixed-signal simulation of the faulty circuits for the fault interval” at 7:23–26);
create the child process (fig. 7, item 703; 7:8–14) by executing, in the environment (fig. 7, item 700) dedicated to the child process, a copy of a parent process (“the parent process” at 7:13–23; “a child process, which can be achieved via a call to an OS function such as a fork( ).” at 7:9–10) impacted by the parsed failure type; and
inter-process communication (IPC) signal (fig. 7, item 705; “At 705, the parent process stops its simulation and communicates information to the child process through inter process communication.” at 7:16–18) to the child process, triggering a function (“The information may include . . . a signal to start the child processes.” at 7:18–21) being executed in the environment dedicated to the child process,
O’Riordan does not teach (A) the control plane packet being transmitted over a network connection; (B) the environment being a runtime environment; and (C) the injected faults to be less than sufficient processing power or less than sufficient memory storage space to run the child process.
(A), (B)
Porter teaches transmitting information over a network connection (“host computer system 110 may communicate with one or more user devices 102, such as 102A and 102B, and a network storage component 106 via a network 104” at ¶ 29); and
a runtime environment (fig. 3; “after execution of an individual program is completed within the dedicated runtime environment, at block 310, the generic runtime environment process 206 keeps that runtime environment active/alive. As shown in FIG. 3, the generic runtime environment process 206 may return to block 304 to await next program execution command 204, 212” at ¶ 65).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s control plane packet to be transmitted over a network connection and for O’Riordan’s environment to be a runtime environment as taught by Porter to “provide[[s]] an improved technique for servicing various computer programs without unduly degrading execution performance.” Porter ¶ 66.
(C)
Ilvas teaches less than sufficient processing power or less than sufficient memory storage space to run a process (“lack sufficient processing power to perform the shape-detection process” at ¶ 56).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s injected faults to be less than sufficient processing power or less than sufficient memory storage space to run O’Riordan’s child process as taught by Ilvas to test a processor’s resilience, reliability, and ability to recover from unexpected conditions, thereby make the processor more dependable and secure in real-world use.1
Regarding claim 6, O’Riordan teaches wherein creating the child process comprises causing the one or more processing units to:
initialize a new process (fig. 7, items 704, 705; 7:14–23), the new process configuring the one or more processing units to run computer-executable instructions of the parent process; and
freeze other processes (“The child processes are paused and wait for a signal from the parent process to move forward.” at 7:12-14; the child processes start at fig. 7, item 706 after items 704, 705) running on the network device at substantially a same time as initializing the new process.
Regarding claim 8, O’Riordan teaches a method to perform operations according to claim 1. Thus, references/arguments equivalent to those present for claim 1 are equally applicable to claim 8.
Regarding claim 13, claim 6 recites substantially similar features. Thus, references/arguments equivalent to those present for claim 6 are equally applicable to claim 13.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, and Czyszczewski
Claims 2 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, and in further view of Czyszczewski et al. (US 2006/0261948 A1; filed May 23, 2005).
Regarding claim 2, O’Riordan does not teach wherein the network connection is established according to at least one of a network management protocol and a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol.
Czyszczewski teaches a network connection is established according to at least one of a network management protocol (“the asset device 106 may establish a network connection such as an SNMP connection over network 104” at ¶ 39) and a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for the O’Riordan/Porter combination’s network connection to be established according to at least one of a network management protocol and a remote procedure call (RPC) protocol as taught by Czyszczewski to provide “an effective and efficient system to manage asset devices.” Czyszczewski ¶ 6.
Regarding claim 9, claim 2 recites substantially similar features. Thus, references/arguments equivalent to those present for claim 2 are equally applicable to claim 9.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, and Sotomayor
Claims 3 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, and in further view of Sotomayor (US 2020/0082442 A1; filed Sept. 21, 2018).
Regarding claim 3, while O’Riordan teaches wherein the failure type (3:21–34 teaches the fault free circuit design including “The test points may include faults, time intervals in the circuit simulation for injecting faults, circuit nodes, and circuit load inputs. The time intervals may be specific windows of time during the simulation where analysis of a fault occurs . . . . The circuit load inputs may include voltages, currents, load operating frequencies, etc.”) is embedded in the control plane packet (fig. 7, item 701; “At 701, a user provides a fault free circuit design with desired test points and faults for simulation, similarly to what is shown in FIG. 2 and FIG. 4.” at 7:3–6; 3:21–34),
O’Riordan does not teach the embedding being in-situ.
Sotomayor teaches embedding video content in-situ (“the pre-determined or curated advertising video content may be shown to the user before the commencement of the non-advertising video content (pre-roll cue points), as embedded in-situ within the overall video stream at various cue points (mid-roll cue points)” at ¶ 119).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s embedding of the failure type in the control plane packet to be in-situ as taught by Sotomayor “to deliver user-specified advertising content to the mobile device of those users . . . in a manner that adequately preserves the privacy of the user’s mobile device data.” Sotomayor ¶ 11.
Regarding claim 10, claim 3 recites substantially similar features. Thus, references/arguments equivalent to those present for claim 3 are equally applicable to claim 10.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, and Argade
Claims 4 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, and in further view of Argade (US 2006/0206873 A1; filed Mar. 13, 2006).
Regarding claim 4, while O’Riordan teaches wherein creating the child process comprises performing a fork system call (“At 703 FSA 700 creates a child process, which can be achieved via a call to an OS function such as a fork( ).” at 7:8–11),
O’Riordan does not teach the fork system call being on a parent control plane process.
Argade teaches performing a fork system call on a parent process (“a ‘fork’ system call creates a child process which is an identical copy of the parent process that executed the fork” at ¶ 41).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for the O’Riordan’s fork system call to be on a parent control plane process as taught by Argade to “increase the efficiency of conducting multiple simulation runs.” Argade ¶ 12.
Regarding claim 11, claim 4 recites substantially similar features. Thus, references/arguments equivalent to those present for claim 4 are equally applicable to claim 11.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, and Murray
Claims 7, 14, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, and in further view of Murray.
Regarding claim 7, O’Riordan does not teach wherein the instructions further cause the one or more processing units to receive, over a remote command session, a command-line interface (CLI) command, and to execute the CLI command in the runtime environment of the child process.
Murray teaches receiving, over a remote command session (¶ 87; fig. 5, item 542), a command-line interface (CLI) command, and to execute the CLI command (“executes 512 each CLI command in the receive CLI command sequence” at ¶ 87; fig. 5, item 512).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s runtime environment of the child process to receive, over a command session, a command-line interface (CLI) command, and to execute the CLI command as taught by Murray for “greatly improving the development and maintenance of the network management and service provisioning solution.” Murray ¶ 27.
Regarding claim 14, claim 7 recites substantially similar features. Thus, references/arguments equivalent to those present for claim 7 are equally applicable to claim 14.
Regarding claim 15, while O’Riordan teaches a mixed signal fault sensitivity analysis (FSA) (fig. 7, item 700) comprising:
transmit a control plane packet (fig. 7, item 701; “At 701, a user provides a fault free circuit design with desired test points and faults for simulation, similarly to what is shown in FIG. 2 and FIG. 4.” at 7:3–6; 3:21–34) to a network device (fig. 1, item 100), the control plane packet having a failure type embedded (3:21–34 teaches the fault free circuit design including “The test points may include faults, time intervals in the circuit simulation for injecting faults, circuit nodes, and circuit load inputs. The time intervals may be specific windows of time during the simulation where analysis of a fault occurs . . . . The circuit load inputs may include voltages, currents, load operating frequencies, etc.”); and
transmit a command (fig. 7, item 703 is a command that creates a child process; item 706 is a command the starts the child process; item 708 is a command that terminates the child process) over a command session (fig. 7, items 703–708) established with the network device, the command targeting a child process (“child process” at 6:65–7:42) running in a dedicated environment (fig. 7, item 700),
wherein the dedicated environment (fig. 7, item 700) is configured to include injected faults (“child clone processes for each fault expected to be simulated” at 7:11–12; “child processes insert faults into the analog portion of the circuit design and conduct a full mixed-signal simulation of the faulty circuits for the fault interval” at 7:23–26),
O’Riordan does not teach (A) the transmitting of the control plane packet to the network device being over a network connection; (B) the command being a CLI command; (C) the command session being a remote command session; (D) the dedicated environment being a dedicated runtime environment; and (E) the injected faults to be less than sufficient processing power or less than sufficient memory storage space to run the child process.
(A), (D)
Porter teaches transmitting information over a network connection (“host computer system 110 may communicate with one or more user devices 102, such as 102A and 102B, and a network storage component 106 via a network 104” at ¶ 29); and
a dedicated runtime environment (fig. 3; “after execution of an individual program is completed within the dedicated runtime environment, at block 310, the generic runtime environment process 206 keeps that runtime environment active/alive. As shown in FIG. 3, the generic runtime environment process 206 may return to block 304 to await next program execution command 204, 212” at ¶ 65).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s control plane packet to be transmitted over a network connection and for O’Riordan’s dedicated environment to be a dedicated runtime environment as taught by Porter to “provide[[s]] an improved technique for servicing various computer programs without unduly degrading execution performance.” Porter ¶ 66.
(B), (C)
Murray teaches a CLI command (“executes 512 each CLI command in the receive CLI command sequence” at ¶ 87; fig. 5, item 512); and
a remote command session (¶ 87; fig. 5, item 542).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s command to be a CLI command and for O’Riordan’s command session to be a remote command session as taught by Murray for “greatly improving the development and maintenance of the network management and service provisioning solution.” Murray ¶ 27.
(E)
Ilvas teaches less than sufficient processing power or less than sufficient memory storage space to run a process (“lack sufficient processing power to perform the shape-detection process” at ¶ 56).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s injected faults to be less than sufficient processing power or less than sufficient memory storage space to run O’Riordan’s child process as taught by Ilvas to test a processor’s resilience, reliability, and ability to recover from unexpected conditions, thereby make the processor more dependable and secure in real-world use.2
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, Murray, and Herzog
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, in further view of Murray, and in further view of Herzog et al. (US 2013/0103739 A1; filed Oct. 21, 2011).
Regarding claim 16, O’Riordan does not teach wherein the control plane packet is an out-of-band (“OOB”) packet.
Herzog teaches an OOB packet (“OOB KA packets” at ¶¶ 25, 41).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s control plane packet to be an OOB packet as taught by Herzog “for keeping alive a connection.” Salgueiro ¶ 23.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, Murray, and Khan
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, in further view of Murray, and in further view of Khan et al. (US 2014/0281715 A1; filed Mar. 12, 2013).
Regarding claim 17, while O’Riordan teaches wherein the CLI command (fig. 7, item 703 is a command that creates a child process; item 706 is a command the starts the child process; item 708 is a command that terminates the child process) causes a function to execute in the runtime environment (fig. 7, item 700),
O’Riordan does not teach the function being one of an interface shutdown function, a process shutdown function, and a control plane process function.
Khan teaches an interface shutdown function (“The ‘service network restart’ command will cause all network interfaces to be shutdown” at ¶ 47).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s function to be an interface shutdown function as taught by Khan for “reducing the network simulator’s requirements for physical space, power, cost, and maintenance.” Khan ¶ 15.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, Murray, and Dar
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, in further view of Murray, and in further view of Dar et al. (US 2003/0154236 A1; filed Jan. 22, 2002).
Regarding claim 18, while O’Riordan teaches wherein the CLI command (fig. 7, item 703 is a command that creates a child process; item 706 is a command the starts the child process; item 708 is a command that terminates the child process) causes a function to execute in the runtime environment (fig. 7, item 700),
O’Riordan does not teach the function being one of an access control list (ACL) deletion function, a routing table deletion function, and an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) table deletion function.
Dar teaches a routing table deletion function (“a series of change instructions (e.g. routing table deletions and insertions)” at ¶ 159).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s function to be routing table deletion function as taught by Dar “to simplify the management of a group of database servers, provide high utilization of system resources, provide high availability of data to applications, provide scalability on demand and provide security, in a shared and heterogeneous application environment.” Dar ¶ 36.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, Murray, and Zhao
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, in further view of Murray, and in further view of Zhao et al. (US 2019/0333245 A1; filed Apr. 27, 2018).
Regarding claim 19, while O’Riordan teaches wherein the CLI command (fig. 7, item 703 is a command that creates a child process; item 706 is a command the starts the child process; item 708 is a command that terminates the child process) causes a function to be performed on the runtime environment (fig. 7, item 700),
O’Riordan does not teach the function being a runtime environment configuration.
Zhao teaches a runtime environment configuration (¶¶ 15, 55, 56, 60).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for O’Riordan’s function to be a runtime environment configuration as taught by Zhao “to track the locations of objects and associate them among one another. The ability to accurately track the locations of objects, as well as to associate objects with one another based on their proximity, can have wide-ranging applications in a variety of scenarios, such as tracking inventory in warehouses, tracking parts in factories, tracking animals in agriculture, associating merchandise items with correct shoppers at checkout, and/or associating medications with correct patients at hospitals.” Zhao ¶ 10.
O’Riordan, Porter, Ilvas, Murray, and Follis
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over O’Riordan in view of Porter, in further view of Ilvas, in further view of Murray, and in further view of Follis et al. (US 2015/0213568 A1; filed Jan. 29, 2014).
Regarding claim 20, while O’Riordan teaches establishing the remote command session (fig. 7, items 703–708) in response to receiving a fault free circuit design (fig. 7, item 701; “At 701, a user provides a fault free circuit design with desired test points and faults for simulation” at 7:3–6) and creating a child process (fig. 7, item 703),
O’Riordan does not teach the fault free circuit design being an acknowledgement message sent from the network device after creating the child process.
Follis teaches an acknowledgement message (“acknowledgement message” at ¶ 123) sent from a network device (“signer’s computing device” at ¶ 123).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for the O’Riordan’s fault free circuit design to be an acknowledgement message sent from the network device as taught by Follis for “indicating successful delivery of the message.” Follis ¶ 123.
Moreover, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the invention for the sending of the acknowledgement message to occur after creating the child process since “selection of any order of performing process steps is prima facie obvious in the absence of new or unexpected results.” MPEP § 2144.04(IV)(C)(describing In re Burhans, 154 F.2d 690 (CCPA 1946)).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicants’ disclosure: US-20210303268-A1; US-20220038795-A1; US-20230087837-A1; and US-6978367-B1.
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 C.F.R. § 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 § 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 DAVID P. ZARKA whose telephone number is (703) 756-5746. The Examiner can normally be reached Monday–Friday from 9:30AM–6PM ET.
If attempts to reach the Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner’s supervisor, Vivek Srivastava, can be reached at (571) 272-7304. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8300.
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/DAVID P ZARKA/PATENT EXAMINER, Art Unit 2449
1 “The court also rejected the notion that ‘an express written motivation to combine must appear in prior art references . . . .’” MPEP § 2143.01 (quoting Ruiz v. A.B. Chance Co., 357 F.3d 1270, 69 (Fed. Cir. 2004)).
2 See n. 1 supra.