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 .
This Office Action is in response to application filed on September 20, 2023.
Claims 1-30 are pending.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-10, 15, 17, 25 and 27 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 appears to contain a typographical error. It contains a period “.” after “application package” in line 4 which should be a semicolon “;”.
Claims 2-10 depend on the objected to claim and do not resolve the deficiencies and thus, are objected to for at least the same reasons as above.
Claims 5, 15 and 25 state “wherein the upgrading of the application package comprises…” in lines 1-2. In the interest consistency, it is recommended that this limitation be amended to “wherein the upgrading of the application instance comprises…”.
Claims 7, 17 and 27 state “wherein upgrading the application package to a new version of the application package comprises…” in lines 1-2. In the interest of consistency, it is recommended that this limitation be amended to “wherein the upgrading the application instance to a new version of the application package comprises…”.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1, 4-5, 7-11, 14-15, 17-21, 24-25 and 27-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nelson et al. (US 2014/0007067) in view of Kirmse (US 2023/0102769).
With respect to Claim 1, Nelson et al. disclose:
upgrading, by one or more processors, [software] to a new version of an application package; (The system firmware operates to apply the updates (upgrading) in response to distribution of the update packages (new version of an application package), Paragraph 70; application update packages, Paragraph 56)
detecting, by the one or more processors, an issue with the upgrading of the [software]; (In the case of failed installs and errors, a mechanism may be implemented to recover from the failure/error. Generally speaking, in response to errors the firmware update system may selectively manage the update process, Paragraph 73)
modifying, by the one or more processors, a directive to refer to a previous version of the application package associated with the [software]; (see Table 1; modifying the resource data structure (directive) to specify a value for the lowest supported firmware version field (last-known good firmware version), Paragraphs 34 and 74)
and rolling back, by the one or more processors, the [software] to the previous version of the application package using the modified directive. (If a decision is made to abort the installation, the system may automatically rollback the firmware to a last-known good firmware version (modified directive). This may involve locating and executing an install package corresponding to the last-known good firmware version (previous version of the application package), Paragraph 73)
Nelson et al. do not explicitly disclose:
[software] is an application instance
However, Kirmse discloses:
[software] is an application instance (see Figure 3; implementing an upgrade to an application instance, Paragraphs 70-71)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Kirmse into the teaching of Nelson et al. to include that the [software] is an application instance in order to keep application instances up-to-date with the latest version of software.
With respect to Claim 4, all the limitations of Claim 1 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. further disclose:
wherein the application package comprises a versioned schema. (the firmware manager may recognize the current version of firmware that is installed for a particular resource (versioned schema), Paragraph 59)
With respect to Claim 5, all the limitations of Claim 4 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. further disclose:
wherein the upgrading of the application package comprises upgrading application artifacts of the versioned schema. (system firmware updates may encompass multiple individual resources that are updated in combination (upgrading application artifacts). It is also possible to designate each updateable resource as part of the system firmware, such that a firmware update for the platform occurs monolithically via a single system firmware update package, Paragraph 62)
With respect to Claim 7, all the limitations of Claim 4 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. further disclose:
wherein upgrading the application package to the new version of the application package comprises deleting a previous versioned schema of the application package. (successful installation of a new version of firmware means the previous/older version has been deleted/removed/updated, Paragraph 71)
With respect to Claim 8, all the limitations of Claim 4 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. further disclose:
further comprising:
removing the previous version of the application package from a set of active versions of the application package (see Table 1; The resource data structure may also be modified to reflect newly installed version information for firmware updates (set of active versions of the application package) that were successful if such information is not already added as part of the installation process which means the previous version has been removed, Paragraphs 34 and 71) and adding the previous version of the application package to a set of prior versions of the application package. (see Table 1; modifying the resource data structure to specify a value for the lowest supported firmware version field (set of prior versions of the application package), Paragraphs 34 and 74)
With respect to Claim 9, all the limitations of Claim 8 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. further disclose:
wherein modifying the directive to refer to the previous version of an application package associated with the application instance is based on the set of prior versions of the application package. (see Table 1; modifying the resource data structure to specify a value for the lowest supported firmware version field (set of prior versions of the application package), Paragraphs 34 and 74)
With respect to Claim 10, all the limitations of Claim 1 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. further disclose:
wherein the upgrading comprises patching the application package. (installation of the firmware update which can involve copying files to a persistent storage location, flashing non-volatile memory, executing firmware native code and/or adjusting the system power state (patching the application package), Paragraph 70)
Claims 11, 14-15 and 17-20 are data platform/system claims corresponding to the method claims above (Claims 1, 4-5 and 7-10) and, therefore, are rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of Claims 1, 4-5 and 7-10.
Claims 21, 24-25 and 27-30 are machine-storage medium claims corresponding to the method claims above (Claims 1, 4-5 and 7-10) and, therefore, are rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of Claims 1, 4-5 and 7-10.
Claims 6, 16 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nelson et al. (US 2014/0007067) in view of Kirmse (US 2023/0102769) in view of Falcy et al. (US 2015/0317151) and in further view of GeeksforGeeks (“Working with Shared Libraries”, Jun 2017).
With respect to Claim 6, all the limitations of Claim 4 have been addressed above; and Nelson et al. and Kirmse do not disclose:
wherein the application package comprises shared content not part of the versioned schema,
and wherein the shared content is not modified by the upgrading.
However, Falcy et al. disclose:
wherein the application package comprises [content] not part of the versioned schema, (application includes portions (content) that are not represented in the delta/difference file, Paragraph 71)
and wherein the [content] is not modified by the upgrading. (installing delta/difference file (upgrading) only includes updated portions of the component which means the non-updated portions of the component are not updated/modified, Paragraph 71)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Falcy et al. into the teaching of Nelson et al. and Kirmse to include wherein the application package comprises content not part of the versioned schema and wherein the content is not modified by the upgrading in order to preserve internet bandwidth by only needing to download a delta or difference file representing the updated portions of a component. (Falcy et al., Paragraph 14)
Nelson et al., Kirmse and Falcy et al. do not disclose:
[content] is shared content
However, GeeksforGeeks discloses:
[content] is shared content (using shared libraries across a plurality of applications (shared content), Page 1, lines 2-4)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of GeeksforGeeks into the teaching of Nelson et al., Kirmse and Falcy et al. to include shared content in order to share code across a plurality of applications which can improve efficiency, enhance collaboration and reduce costs by eliminating duplicate content.
Claim 16 is a data platform/system claim corresponding to the method claim above (Claim 6) and, therefore, is rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of Claim 6.
Claim 26 is a machine-storage medium claim corresponding to the method claim above (Claim 6) and, therefore, is rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejections of Claim 6.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-3, 12-13 and 22-23 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Dolan et al. (US 12,075,107) discloses performing secure updates with rollback features.
Singer et al. (US 2020/0372157) discloses automatic firmware rollback.
Jiang et al. (US 2023/0058477) discloses managing and distributing patches for multi-tenant applications.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LANNY N UNG whose telephone number is (571)270-7708. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Thurs 6am-4pm.
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.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bradley Teets can be reached at 571-272-3338. 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.
/LANNY N UNG/ Examiner, Art Unit 2197