Prosecution Insights
Last updated: October 02, 2026
Application No. 18/457,979

INTERACTIVE ANALYTICS SERVICE FOR ALLOCATION FAILURE DIAGNOSIS IN CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Aug 29, 2023
Examiner
BRUCKART, BENJAMIN R
Art Unit
2424
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
OA Round
5 (Non-Final)
53%
Grant Probability
Moderate
5-6
OA Rounds
1y 7m
Est. Remaining
86%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 53% of resolved cases
53%
Career Allowance Rate
89 granted / 168 resolved
-5.0% vs TC avg
Strong +33% interview lift
Without
With
+32.8%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
4y 8m
Avg Prosecution
13 currently pending
Career history
184
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
9.8%
-30.2% vs TC avg
§103
57.1%
+17.1% vs TC avg
§102
13.9%
-26.1% vs TC avg
§112
10.5%
-29.5% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 168 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
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 Claims 1-20 are pending in this Office Action. Claims 1, 8-9 and 16-17, and 20 are amended. Claims 1, 9 and 17 are in independent form. Response to Arguments Applicant’s arguments filed in the amendment filed 9/16/25, have been fully considered but are moot in view of new grounds of rejection. The reasons set forth below. Applicant’s invention as claimed: The 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection has been withdrawn in light of the discussion in the interview on 5/21/26. 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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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. The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows: 1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art. 2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue. 3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. 4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness. Claims 1-7, 9-15, 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 20220147409 by Linck et al in view of 10630566 by Nguyen. The Linck reference teaches: 1. (Currently Amended) A system, comprising: a processor; and a memory device that stores program code structured to cause the processor to: receive a request for a resource allocation (Linck: page 3, para 44), track an incident of resource allocation failure for the request, the incident comprising a first allocation failure occurring at a first time period (Linck: page 4, para 52-54), subsequent to detecting the first allocation failure, determine a cause of the incident by: extracting, activity information for the first allocation failure to identify a second allocation failure associated with the incident, the second allocation failure occurring at a second time period prior to the first time period (Linck: page 5, para 61-62), retrieving resource information of clusters related to first allocation failure and the second allocation failure (Linck: page 7, para 73-76), and evaluating, based on the retrieved resource information, whether the clusters are eligible for deployment to determine the cause of the incident, and cause mitigation of the incident based on the cause of the incident (Linck: page 6, para 69-71). The Linck reference fails to teach regions associated with failures. However, in analogous art, the Nguyen reference teaches determining a region associated with the first allocation failure and extracting data based on that region (Nguyen: col. 7-8, lines 62-21), determining resources in the region that are related to the allocation (Nguyen; col. 16, lines 14-38; col. 18, line 46- col. 19, 26; col. 24, lines 8-36), retrieving resources comprising the resources in the region related to failures, the resources in the region impacted by a first constraint based on the region (Nguyen; col. 18, line 46- col. 19, 26; col. 24, lines 8-36; SLA constraints) in order to provide provisioning, administering and management of computing resources at scale (Nguyen: col. 1, line 6- col. 2, line 11). It would have been obvious before the effective filing date to one of ordinary skill in the art to include the regional data of failures with the resource allocation and management of Linck in order to provide provisioning, administering and management of computing resources at scale (Nguyen: col. 1, line 6- col. 2, line 11). 2. (Previously Presented) The system of claim 1, wherein to cause mitigation of the incident, the program code further causes the processor to: cause a recommended action to mitigate failure risks to be presented in a user interface that provides interactive visual analysis for users to understand and implement mitigation to enable improved allocation success rates (Linck: page 6, para 69-71; par 80; administrator is notified). 3. (Previously Presented) The system of claim 1, to cause mitigation of the incident, the program code further causes the processor to: cause information indicating a successful allocation scenario to be presented in a user interface (Linck: page 8, par 80-81). 4. (Previously Presented) The system of claim 1, the program code further causing the processor to: collect incident information; and determine the cause of the incident based at least on the incident information (Linck: page 7, para 69-76). 5. (Previously Presented) The system of claim 1, wherein the program code is further structured to cause the processor to trigger determination of the cause of the incident responsive to detecting the first allocation failure (Linck: pages 6-7, para 69-76). 6. (Previously Presented) The system of claim 1, wherein the program code is further structured to cause the processor to determine the cause of the incident by applying resource allocation rules for a resource allocation platform of the system (Linck: page 7, para 69-76; rules can be general mappings and risk assessments of services). 7. (Previously Presented) The system of claim 6, wherein the resource allocation rules comprise resource allocation platform domain knowledge that simulates a resource allocation process of the resource allocation platform (Linck: page 7, para 75-76). Claims 9-15 and claims 17-19 are rejected as being substantially similar to claims 1-7 above. Allowable Subject Matter Claims 8, 16 and 20 are 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. Prior Art The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure: WO 2020/206699 by Zhou, see para 69 US Patent Publication 20140310457 by Chambliss et al see para 99 US Patent Publication 20230028934 by Shetty US Patent Publication 20220058073 by Poghosyan et al. US Patent Publication 20210303431 by Grigoryan et al US Patent 9720732 by Klein et al, see col 15, lines 1-29, col. 25, lines 27-43 US Patent Publication 20230004440 by Hanel see para 35 US Patent Publication 20210174281 by Bhaskara et al see para 37 Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BENJAMIN R BRUCKART whose telephone number is (571)272-3982. The examiner can normally be reached M-TH: 7-6p. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. BENJAMIN R. BRUCKART Supervisory Patent Examiner Art Unit 2424 /BENJAMIN R BRUCKART/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2424
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Show 6 earlier events
May 08, 2025
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103
Sep 16, 2025
Response Filed
Apr 10, 2026
Final Rejection mailed — §103
May 21, 2026
Applicant Interview (Telephonic)
Jun 23, 2026
Request for Continued Examination
Jun 27, 2026
Examiner Interview Summary
Jun 28, 2026
Response after Non-Final Action
Aug 19, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103 (current)

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

5-6
Expected OA Rounds
53%
Grant Probability
86%
With Interview (+32.8%)
4y 8m (~1y 7m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
High
PTA Risk
Based on 168 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allowance rate.

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