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 action is responsive to Applicant’s Amendment filed on 4/30/2026.
Claims 1-2, 4, 6-11, 13-17 and 19-20 are presented for examination. Claims 1, 2, 4, 6-11, 13-17 and 19-20 have been amended. Claims 3, 5, 12 and 18 have been cancelled.
Applicant’s amendments to the specification and claims have overcome drawing objections, specification objections and claim objections set forth in the non-Final Office Action mailed 2/9/2026.
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular columns, paragraphs, figures and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirely as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 4 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Regarding to Claim 4, the whole meaning of claim 4 is not clear. Current claim 4 depends on canceled claim 3. For the purpose of examination, examiner interprets claim 4 depends on independent claim 1.
Regarding to Claim 19, the whole meaning of claim 19 is not clear. Current claim 19 depends on canceled claim 18. For the purpose of examination, examiner interprets claim 19 depends on independent claim 16.
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 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 of this title, 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, 6-7, 9, 13-14, 16 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse), Haggart et al. (US 20210203547 A1, hereafter Haggart) and Edtanous et al. (title: D-Bus configurable sensor scanning applications-NPL from github.com captured by web.archive.org at 7/14/2022, hereafter Edtanous).
Regarding to claim 1, Bhatia discloses: An Information Handling System (IHS) (see Fig. 1, [0003], [0059] and [0066]; “The system 100 is capable of providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks, with one subset of the BMC functionalities including time critical functions, and the other subset of the BMC functionalities including the rest of the non-critical functions” and “The first management device 120 is the management device that includes one subset of the BMC functionalities to control time critical functionalities”) comprising:
a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) that is configured to execute a plurality of BMC service objects for managing the operation of the IHS (see Fig. 1, [0003], [0066]; “The system 100 is capable of providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks, with one subset of the BMC functionalities including time critical functions, and the other subset of the BMC functionalities including the rest of the non-critical functions” and “The first management device 120 is the management device that includes one subset of the BMC functionalities to control time critical functionalities”);
at least one processor; and at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory having program instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by the at least one processor, cause the IHS to (see Fig. 1, [0066]-[0067]; “the first management device 120 has a processor 122, a memory 124, a non-volatile memory 126”):
execute a first subset of the plurality of BMC service objects on the BMC (see [0059] and [0066]; “providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks, with one subset of the BMC functionalities including time critical functions” and “The first management device 120 is the management device that includes one subset of the BMC functionalities to control time critical functionalities”. Also see [0058]; “the D-IPMI system may include multiple management devices (such as multiple computer chips), in which one management devices maintains a certain subset of the BMC functionalities, and a different subset of the BMC functionalities may be offloaded to another management device”); and
execute a second subset of the plurality of BMC service objects on an external computing environment in communication with the BMC (see [0059] and [0072]; “providing BMC functionalities in a plurality of split BMC stacks … and the other subset of the BMC functionalities including the rest of the non-critical functions” and “The second management device 130 is the management device that includes the other subset of the BMC functionalities to control non-critical functionalities”. Also see [0058]; “the D-IPMI system may include multiple management devices (such as multiple computer chips), in which one management devices maintains a certain subset of the BMC functionalities, and a different subset of the BMC functionalities may be offloaded to another management device”. Furthermore, see [0078] and [0080]; “the firmware 138 may perform the internal communication with the first management device 120 through the stack interface 160 to request the required system information of the computing device 110 from the first management device 120 … the firmware 128 of the first management device 120 performs the time-critical functions to request the system information of the computing device 110”);
Bhatia does not disclose:
the plurality of BMC service objects is a plurality of Desktop Bus (D-Bus) objects;
execute a second subset of the plurality of D-Bus objects on a cloud computing environment;
determine, for each D-Bus object, whether to execute the D-Bus object on the cloud environment or the BMC according to a processing load level incurred by the D-Bus object; and
cause the D-Bus object to be executed on either of the cloud computing environment or the BMC according to the determination.
However, Faasse discloses: execute offloaded BMC service objects on a cloud computing environment (see [0038]-[0040]; “The Net-SCM 102 is a device that replaces a BMC and associated circuitry or a DC-SCM, but offloads BMC functionality to another server 136 so that changes to accommodate new or different functionality of a BMC/DC-SCM are able to be implemented through software changes”. Also see [0047]; “the management application 134 and server 136 are in a cloud computing environment”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the processes of offloading BMC service objects from a local device to a remote device of same distributed system from Bhatia by including the process of offloading BMC service objects from a local device to a remote device of a cloud environment from Faasse, since cloud computing environment is well-known and understood type of scalable and elastic pool of resources.
In addition, Haggart discloses: determine, for each service object, whether to execute the service object on the cloud environment or the local environment according to a processing load level incurred by the service object; and cause the service object to be executed on either of the cloud computing environment or the local environment according to the determination (see [0107], [0113] and [0197]-[0198]; “The workload profiling includes CPU, memory, IO, and network utilization for all on-premises workloads that have been targeted for migration to the cloud” and “cloud migration objectives may include one or more choices of CSP or … a required level of performance for some or all applications or workloads that need to be migrated to the cloud infrastructure” and “generates utilization levels matching, as much as possible, the on-premises utilization levels. The on-premise utilization levels of synthetic workloads are the reference that is compared to the representative synthetic workload utilization levels in the cloud … which workloads of the enterprise network to migrate to a CSP, and which CSP may be best suited for the customer's needs. The customer may utilize this information to determine which CSP to migrate their on-premises infrastructure to and which CSP to choose”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the policy of offloading a subset of BMC functions to cloud computing environment from the combination of Bhatia and Faasse by including policy of migrating certain workloads to cloud environment based on resource utilization level of the workloads from Haggart, since it would provide a mechanism to ensure execution performance of the workloads (see [0107] and [0113] from Haggart).
In addition, Edtanous discloses: a plulriaty of Desktop Bus (D-Bus) objects is well-known and understood BMC service objects executed at BMC environment (see dbus-sensors, key features and dbus interfaces sections at page 2; “dbus-sensors is a collection of sensor applications that provide the xyz.openbmc_project.Sensor collection of interfaces” and “A typical dbus-sensors object support the following dbus interfaces”. Note: OpenBMC is A Linux Foundation Project open-source Baseboard Management Controllers (BMC) Firmware Stack).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the generic BMC service objects to be executed on cloud environment or local BMC environment from the combination of Bhatia, Faasse and Haggart by including D-Bus objects executed at OpenBMC environment from Edtanous, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous would disclose the missing limitations from Bhatia, since it is well-known and understood to running certain particular type of service object at a same computing environment that is used to run generic type of service object.
Regarding to Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to update one of the plurality of D-Bus objects on the cloud computing environment while the BMC remains operational (see [0040] and [0063] from Faasse; “The Net-SCM 102 … offloads BMC functionality to another server 136 so that changes to accommodate new or different functionality of a BMC/DC-SCM are able to be implemented through software changes” and “Having the BIOS and BMC images on or accessible to the management application 134 allows for simple updates by just accessing a different image, overwriting an image, etc”. . Also see dbus-sensors, key features and dbus interfaces sections at page 2 from Edtanous; “dbus-sensors is a collection of sensor applications that provide the xyz.openbmc_project.Sensor collection of interfaces”. Note: at the combination system, the BMC service objects determined to offload to cloud or not can include plurality of D-Bus service objects).
Regarding to Claim 6, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each D-Bus object, whether to execute the D-Bus object on the cloud computing environment or the BMC according to a security sensitivity level required by the D-Bus object (see [0113] and [0192]-[0194] from Haggart; “cloud migration objectives may include one or more choices of CSP or a required level of security for some or all of the applications or workloads that need to be migrated to a cloud infrastructure”. Also see dbus-sensors, key features and dbus interfaces sections at page 2 from Edtanous; “dbus-sensors is a collection of sensor applications that provide the xyz.openbmc_project.Sensor collection of interfaces”. Note: at the combination system, the BMC service objects determined to offload to cloud or not can include plurality of D-Bus service objects).
Regarding to Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to determine, for each D-Bus object, whether to execute the D-Bus object on the cloud computing environment or the BMC according to how critical the D-Bus object is to the operation of the IHS (see [0018]-[0022] from Bhatia; “performing, by the first IPMI related computer executable code executed at the first processor of the first management device, a plurality of time critical functions related to the computing device” and “performing, by the second IPMI related computer executable code executed at the second processor of the at least one second management device, a plurality of non-critical functions related to the computing device”. Also see dbus-sensors, key features and dbus interfaces sections at page 2 from Edtanous; “dbus-sensors is a collection of sensor applications that provide the xyz.openbmc_project.Sensor collection of interfaces”. Note: at the combination system, the BMC service objects determined to offload to cloud or not can include plurality of D-Bus service objects).
Regarding to Claim 9, Claim 9 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Regarding to Claim 13, Claim 13 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 6 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 6 above.
Regarding to Claim 14, Claim 14 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 7 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 7 above.
Regarding to Claim 16, Claim 16 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 1 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 1 above.
Regarding to Claim 19, Claim 19 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 4 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 4 above.
Claims 2, 10-11 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse), Haggart et al. (US 20210203547 A1, hereafter Haggart) and Edtanous et al. (title: D-Bus configurable sensor scanning applications-NPL from github.com captured by web.archive.org at 7/14/2022, hereafter Edtanous) and further in view of Zhang et al. (US 20250227160 A1, hereafter Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 2, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the plurality of D-Bus objects executed on the cloud computing environment to communicate with the BMC using a communication interface (see [0078], [0080] from Bhatia and [0067] from Faasse; “the firmware 138 may perform the internal communication with the first management device 120 through the stack interface 160 to request the required system information of the computing device 110 from the first management device 120 … the firmware 128 of the first management device 120 performs the time-critical functions to request the system information of the computing device 110” and “the Net-SCM 102 transmits the management signals 312 to the management application 134 using a security protocol, such as encryption, tunneling, or other security mechanism that ensures security of the transmitted management signals 312”. Note: at the combination system, the external device to execute the offloaded subset of BMC services is an external device at cloud environment. Also see dbus-sensors, key features and dbus interfaces sections at page 2 from Edtanous; “dbus-sensors is a collection of sensor applications that provide the xyz.openbmc_project.Sensor collection of interfaces”. Note: at the combination system, the BMC service objects determined to offload to cloud or not can include plurality of D-Bus service objects).
The combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous does not disclose: the communication interface is a Secure Shell (SHH) tunnel.
However, Zhang discloses: the service objects executed on the cloud service to communicate with the BMC using a Secure Shell (SHH) tunnel (see [0032] and [0049]; “the edge server 106 to establish a tunnel connection 134 with the cloud server 124 where the tunnel connection uses a Secure Shell (“SSH”) protocol. SSH is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. In the system 100 of FIG. 1A, the tunnel connection 134 is depicted with an SSH 114 in the BMC 104 and an SSH 132 in the cloud server 124. SSH tunnel connection 134 and tunnel connection 134 are used interchangeably herein”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the tunneling communication interface between external device on the cloud and BMC of the local device from the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous by including SSH communication protocol between cloud and BMC from Zhang, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart, Edtanous and Zhang would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous, since “SSH is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network”, i.e., SSH is a well-known and understood type of security protocol (see [0049] from Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 10, Claim 10 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Regarding to Claim 11, the rejection of Claim 10 is incorporated and further the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart, Edtanous and Zhang discloses: updating one of the plurality of D-Bus object on the cloud computing environment while the BMC remains operational (see [0040] and [0063] from Faasse; “The Net-SCM 102 … offloads BMC functionality to another server 136 so that changes to accommodate new or different functionality of a BMC/DC-SCM are able to be implemented through software changes” and “Having the BIOS and BMC images on or accessible to the management application 134 allows for simple updates by just accessing a different image, overwriting an image, etc”. Also see dbus-sensors, key features and dbus interfaces sections at page 2 from Edtanous; “dbus-sensors is a collection of sensor applications that provide the xyz.openbmc_project.Sensor collection of interfaces”. Note: at the combination system, the BMC service objects determined to offload to cloud or not can include plurality of D-Bus service objects).
Regarding to Claim 17, Claim 17 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 2 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 2 above.
Claims 8, 15 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhatia et al. (US 20160321197 A1, hereafter Bhatia) in view of Faasse et al. (US 20240061964 A1, hereafter Faasse), Haggart et al. (US 20210203547 A1, hereafter Haggart) and Edtanous et al. (title: D-Bus configurable sensor scanning applications-NPL from github.com captured by web.archive.org at 7/14/2022, hereafter Edtanous) and further in view of Zhang et al. (US 11868793 B2, hereafter Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 8, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous does not disclose: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to receive user input for determining whether the plurality of D-Bus objects are executed in the cloud computing environment or the BMC.
However, Zhang discloses: wherein the instructions, upon execution, cause the IHS to receive user input for determining whether the plurality of service objects are executed in the cloud computing environment or the IHS (see claim 1; “receiving, from a tenant of a first host machine and a second host machine of a cloud computer service, preferences for scheduling a cloud update of at least one of the first host machine or the second host machine, the first host machine and the second host machine each hosting one or more virtual machines of the tenant, the preferences specifying whether the tenant will accept migration of an instance of the one or more virtual machines to a different host machine”).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill, in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention, to modify the policy of offloading a subset of BMC functions to cloud computing environment from the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous by including policy of migrating certain workloads to another device based on user’s preferences from Zhang, and thus the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart, Edtanous and Zhang would disclose the missing limitations from the combination of Bhatia, Faasse, Haggart and Edtanous, since it would provide a mechanism to executing workloads based on tenant or user’s needs (see claim 1 from Zhang).
Regarding to Claim 15, Claim 15 is a method claim corresponds to system Claim 8 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 8 above.
Regarding to Claim 20, Claim 20 is a product claim corresponds to system Claim 8 and is rejected for the same reason set forth in the rejection of Claim 8 above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 4/30/2026, with respect to rejections of claims 1-2, 4, 6-11, 13-17 and 19-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been full considered. New grounds of rejections are made based on the amended limitations from the independent claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Spoczynski et al. (US 20230195536 A1) discloses: a device (e.g., an edge device) configured to offload a workload (e.g., communication protocols, network stacks, etc.) to a remote device configured as a network device (e.g., a cloud device) (see [0011]).
Suzuki (US 20190089654 A1) discloses: As a technique for reducing a communication protocol processing load on a CPU, there is a technique of reducing a load on a CPU by off-loading a part (TCP segment processing) of communication protocol processing to be executed by the CPU (see [0003]).
Hermesh et al. (US 20200068048 A1) discloses: offloading processing intensive tasks in communication protocol specific operations off the device, e.g. to another network node connected to the device via a network (see [0025]).
Faucette et al. (US 20210152672 A1) discloses: a NIC to support segmentation offload for a variety of transmission communication protocols (see [0018]).
Michailidis et al. (US 8589587 B1) discloses: It is now common for network adaptors to implement intelligence for the support of host processing, including to partly or completely offload protocol processing (see lines 5-7 of col. 2, lines 23-25 of col. 3)
Li et al. (title: OpenBMC-NPL from github.com captured by web.archive.org at 6/13/2022) discloses: OpenBMC is A Linux Foundation Project open-source Baseboard Management Controllers (BMC) Firmware Stack (see page 1).
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 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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHI CHEN whose telephone number is (571)272-0805. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F from 9:30AM to 5:30PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, April Y Blair can be reached on 571-270-1014. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Zhi Chen/
Patent Examiner, AU2196
/APRIL Y BLAIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2196
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