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 communication filed 3/2/2026. Claims 1-20 are currently pending and claims 1, 8, and 15 are the independent claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
As per independent claim 1, it recites “A method for autonomous configuration-based release orchestration that supports staggered feature releases across a plurality of container clusters, wherein an application in application (app) containers in the plurality of container clusters include features that each have a state that may be changed, the method comprising: obtaining a representation of a release seeking goal for a staggered feature release that includes a plurality of staggers, an order for the staggers, and which subset of one or more of the plurality of container clusters is in each stagger, wherein the release seeking goal is a condition that if not met requires a release level rollback of the staggered feature release; selecting, according to the order, an unprocessed one of the plurality of staggers as a current stagger; processing the current stagger, wherein the processing comprises: attempting to cause a deployment of the feature release to the subset of the container clusters in the current stagger; receiving an indication of success or failure of the attempted deployment of the feature release to the current stagger; determining whether to roll back the current stagger based on the indication; determining whether the release seeking goal can still be met; and determining to perform one of a plurality of actions, wherein the plurality of actions includes i) terminating and causing the release level rollback of the staggered feature release if the condition of the release seeking goal can no longer be met, wherein the release level rollback causes the state of the features in the plurality of container clusters to be in the state they were in prior to the staggered feature release, and ii) repeating, based on the current stagger having been processed, the selecting, the processing, and the determining.”
The limitations “selecting, according to the order, an unprocessed one of the plurality of staggers as a current stagger”, “processing the current stagger, wherein the processing comprises…determining whether to roll back the current stagger based on the indication”, “determining whether the release seeking goal can still be met”, and “determining to perform one of a plurality of actions, wherein the plurality of actions includes i) terminating and causing the release level rollback of the staggered feature release if the condition of the release seeking goal can no longer be met, wherein the release level rollback causes the state of the features in the plurality of container clusters to be in the state they were in prior to the staggered feature release, and ii) repeating, based on the current stagger having been processed, the selecting, the processing, and the determining” as drafted, is a function that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, recite the abstract idea of a mental process. The limitation encompasses a human mind carrying out the function through observation, evaluation, judgment, and/or opinion, or even with the aid of pen and paper. For example, a human may mentally/with pen and paper judge/decide/identify/select/etc. a stagger, judge/decide/determine/etc. whether to roll back a stagger, judge/decide/determine/etc. whether a goal can be met, and judge/decide/determine/etc. to perform an action. Thus, with broadest reasonable interpretation, the limitations recite and fall within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “A method for autonomous configuration-based release orchestration that supports staggered feature releases across a plurality of container clusters, wherein an application in application (app) containers in the plurality of container clusters include features that each have a state that may be changed, the method comprising”, “obtaining a representation of a release seeking goal for a staggered feature release that includes a plurality of staggers, an order for the staggers, and which subset of one or more of the plurality of container clusters is in each stagger, wherein the release seeking goal is a condition that if not met requires a release level rollback of the staggered feature release”, “attempting to cause a deployment of the feature release to the subset of the container clusters in the current stagger”, and “receiving an indication of success or failure of the attempted deployment of the feature release to the current stagger”. The additional elements/limitations “A method for autonomous configuration-based release orchestration that supports staggered feature releases across a plurality of container clusters, wherein an application in application (app) containers in the plurality of container clusters include features that each have a state that may be changed, the method comprising” recite that high level/generic computer/computer components are used to implement/perform the abstract idea/mental process, and as such amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer and/or mere computer components, which does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The additional elements/limitations “obtaining a representation of a release seeking goal for a staggered feature release that includes a plurality of staggers, an order for the staggers, and which subset of one or more of the plurality of container clusters is in each stagger, wherein the release seeking goal is a condition that if not met requires a release level rollback of the staggered feature release”, “attempting to cause a deployment of the feature release to the subset of the container clusters in the current stagger” and “receiving an indication of success or failure of the attempted deployment of the feature release to the current stagger” do nothing more than add insignificant extra solution activities to the judicial exception of merely gathering data/obtaining a representation/etc., transmitting data/deploying feature/etc., and gathering data/receiving an indication/etc. which do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity (see MPEP 2106.05(d)). Accordingly, the additional elements do not integrate the recited judicial exception into a practical application and the claim is therefore directed to the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(f), 2106.05(g), etc..
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer and/or mere computer components, which is not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process, and insignificant extra solution activities to the judicial exception of merely transmitting data and gathering data, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity, thus do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(d). As such, the additional elements do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception/abstract idea/mental process, and the claims are not patent eligible under 35 USC 101.
As per claim 2, it incorporates the deficiencies of claim 1, upon which it depends, and further recites “…wherein the obtaining the representation of the release seeking goal comprises: obtaining a config-based release artifact, the config-based release artifact generated by a build system based on a committed application config file for the app” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, provides further clarification as to the insignificant extra solution activities of gathering/obtaining/etc. data/obtaining a representation/artifact/etc., which do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity, thus do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(d). Therefore, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application and are not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, claim 2 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claim 3, it incorporates the deficiencies of claim 1, upon which it depends, and further recites “…wherein causing the release level rollback comprises: causing any of the container clusters on which the feature release was successfully deployed to be rolled back” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, further recites an insignificant extra solution activities of updating/changing/modifying/etc. data/performing rollback/rolling back/etc., which does not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity, thus do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(d). Therefore, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application and are not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, claim 3 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claim 4, it incorporates the deficiencies of claim 1, upon which it depends, and further recites “…wherein the condition specifies a threshold number or percentage of container clusters that the release is to be successfully deployed to irrespective of which of the container clusters are in which of the staggers” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, provides further clarification as to the data/information used to perform the abstract idea which is gathered/obtained by performing the insignificant extra solution activities of gathering/obtaining/etc. data, which do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity, thus do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(d). Therefore, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application and are not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, claim 4 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claim 5, it incorporates the deficiencies of claim 1, upon which it depends, and further recites “…wherein the condition specifies a threshold percentage of staggers that the release is to be successfully deployed to” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, provides further clarification as to the data/information used to perform the abstract idea which is gathered/obtained by performing the insignificant extra solution activities of gathering/obtaining/etc. data, which do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity, thus do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(d). Therefore, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application and are not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, claim 5 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claim 6, it incorporates the deficiencies of claim 1, upon which it depends, and further recites “…wherein the condition specifies a set of one or more specific container cluster(s) that the release must be successfully deployed to irrespective of which of the staggers those container clusters are in” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, provides further clarification as to the data/information used to perform the abstract idea which is gathered/obtained by performing the insignificant extra solution activities of gathering/obtaining/etc. data, which do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application, and the courts have identified functions such as gathering, displaying, updating, transmitting and storing data as well-understood, routine, conventional activity, thus do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.05(d). Therefore, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application and are not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, claim 6 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claim 7, it incorporates the deficiencies of claim 1, upon which it depends, and further recites “…wherein the specific set of one or more container cluster(s) are chosen based on one or more of volume of traffic handled by the specific set and environment type of the specific set” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, provides further clarification as to the performance of the abstract idea/mental process/the judging/selecting/choosing/etc. of clusters, which does not integrate the abstract idea/mental process into a practical application and is not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, claim 7 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per independent claim 8, it recites an article of manufacture having similar limitations as the method of claim 1, and therefore has the same deficiencies as claim 1 and is rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above. Claim 8 recites the further additional elements “An article of manufacture comprising: a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, if executed by a set of one or more processors, are configurable to cause the set of processors to perform operations…” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, recites that high level/generic computer/computer components are used to implement/perform the abstract idea/mental process, and as such amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer and/or mere computer components, which does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and is not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, the additional elements recited in claim 8 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claims 9-14, they recite articles of manufacture performing operations having similar limitations to the methods of claims 2-7, respectively, and are therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claims 2-7, respectively, above.
As per independent claim 15, it recites an apparatus having similar limitations as the method of claim 1, and therefore has the same deficiencies as claim 1 and is rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above. Claim 15 recites the further additional elements “An apparatus comprising: a set of one or more processors; and a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, if executed by the set of one or more processors, are configurable to cause the apparatus to perform operations…” which, conceptually, with broadest reasonable interpretation, recites that high level/generic computer/computer components are used to implement/perform the abstract idea/mental process, and as such amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer and/or mere computer components, which does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and is not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, the additional elements recited in claim 15 fails to correct the deficiencies of claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claim 1, above.
As per claims 16-20, they recite apparatus’ performing operations having similar limitations to the methods of claims 2-6, respectively, and are therefore rejected for similar reasoning as claims 2-6, respectively, above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 3/2/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
As per the 101 arguments on pg. 7 par. 4 -pg. 15 par. 1 of the remarks that the independent claims are allowable under 35 USC 101 because at most the claims merely involve an abstract idea/judicial exception as the claim limitations asserted to be an abstract idea are sub-elements under “by a first engine” which is under the preamble “autonomous configuration-based release orchestration” and these are terms of art referring to operations performed by a computer, and as such the claim explicitly requires the claim elements/abstract idea/etc. no be performed by a human mentally/with pen and paper/etc.; and further that the claimed invention provides an improvement in the functioning of a computer as the claimed invention recites a configuration based release where features are already in deployed applications and deploying features includes changing a state of feature already in the code rather than an application based release where deploying features includes adding/replacing code to deployed applications, which also allows for greater granularity of the release by allowing for the change/release to be applied to only a subset of entities/specific containers/specific applications/etc. so that the release may be staggered and applied to subsets/stages/etc. of application instances, rather than all instances, and then the release may proceed to a next subset/stage/stagger of application instances if the release is successfully deployed to a first subset/stagger/stage and rolled back from the first subset/stagger/stage if the release is not successfully deployed/does not meet release goals/etc., and as such the claimed invention allows for stagger level rollback, release level rollback, etc. based on how the release goes/whether release goals are being met/etc., which saves resources/CPU cycles/memory/etc. that may be spent in pursuit of a release that is not working/desired/meeting goals/etc., which are improvements to computer technology, and as such the amended independent claims integrate any abstract idea into a practical application/are significantly more than any abstract idea/etc. and are allowable under 35 USC 101, the examiner, respectfully, disagrees.
The examiner would first like to point out that while independent claims 1 and 15 were amended to recite “terminating and causing the release level rollback of the staggered feature release if the condition of the release seeking goal can no longer be met, wherein the release level rollback causes the state of the features in the plurality of container clusters to be in the state they were in prior to the staggered feature release” independent claim 8 was not amended to include the “terminating” and “wherein the release level rollback causes…” language. Examiner would also like to point out that while there is a practical application to a feature release/deployment/etc. that includes the actions/operations of performing a termination and release level rollback of the staggered feature release if release goals can not be met and continuing/repeating/etc. a staggered release/selecting a next stagger and releasing/deploying features to the next stagger when the release goals can still be met, the actual wording/phrasing of the amended independent claims does not actually recite/require these actions to occur. The actual wording/phrasing of the independent claims (claim 1) is “…determining to perform one of a plurality of actions, wherein the plurality of actions includes: i) terminating and causing the release level rollback of the staggered feature release if the condition of the release seeking goal can no longer be mete wherein the release level rollback causes the state of the features in the plurality of container clusters to be in the state they were in prior to the staggered feature release, and ii) repeating, based on the current stagger having been processed, the selecting, the processing, and the determining.” As such, with broadest reasonable interpretation, the claim is not actually reciting that the terminating and causing the release level rollback action and the repeating the selecting, processing, and determining action are being performed, but rather that a judgement/decision/determination/etc. is being made as to which of those actions may be/should/is to be/etc. performed. As such, with broadest reasonable interpretation, the actual wording/phrasing of the independent claims does not recite the actions/elements/etc. that provide the improvement to computers disclosed in the specification/the practical application/integrate the abstract idea into a practical application/etc., but rather recite a judgement/decision/etc. as to whether those actions/elements/etc. are to occur/be performed/etc. at all. If applicant intended for these actions to actually be performed/be required by/etc. the independent claims, the examiner would suggest clarification that they are actually occurring rather than only reciting a judgement/decision/determination as to whether they are to be performed. Examiner would also like to point out that while the claims may recite that the abstract idea is performed by computer components, the mere recitation of high level/generic computer components to implement/perform an abstract idea/merely using a computer to implement/perform an abstract idea/etc. does not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application and is not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. As such, merely saying that the claims are for an “autonomous configuration-based release orchestration” and reciting that the claim elements/limitations/operations are performed by a computer does not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application and is not significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process. Therefore, with broadest reasonable interpretation, the claims do recite an abstract idea/mental process and do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea/mental process, as seen in the rejection of claim 1 under 35 USC 101, above.
Therefore, the examiner finds these arguments unpersuasive and maintains that the rejection under 35 USC 101 is proper.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Matthew et al. US PG Pub. 2022/0413845 A1 teaches releasing software in a sequential manner where a software version release is propagated to a first set of instances and based on performance of the release meeting an acceptable threshold propagating the release to a second set of instances, or rolling back the software to a previous version when the release does not meet expected performance.
Liljeback et al. US PG Pub. 2022/0050674 A1 teaches determining groups of systems to deploy updates to and staggering the deployment of the updates such that the updates are deployed to a first group and a determination as to whether the update deployment is successful/has failed/etc. is made, and if the deployment has failed not deploying/implementing the updates on another group.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
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/DOUGLAS M SLACHTA/Examiner, Art Unit 2193
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