DETAILED ACTION
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 in response to claim amendments / remarks filed by Applicant’s representative on August 6, 2026 via the filing of an RCE re-opening prosecution of the application claims. Claims 1-21 are pending.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's RCE submission filed on August 6, 2026 is entered.
Response to Amendments and Remarks
Applicant’s latest filed claim amendments and corresponding remarks dated August 6, 2026 have been fully considered. Applicant’s remarks and/or comments are generally directed to the current claim amendment(s), and accordingly deemed moot in light of the new grounds of rejection provided with this action.
With regards to Applicant’s latest amendments and remarks, Applicant firstly notes and remarks that the independent claim(s), and particularly independent claim 1, has been further amended to now additionally and expressly recite
“A method comprising:
receiving, by a computing device, first data indicative of popularity of a first portion of a content item, wherein the first portion of the content item is caused to be stored at a first cache location for a first amount of time;
determining, based on the first cache location and receipt of second data indicative of a second popularity of the first portion of the content item received more recently than the first data, a second amount of time for which to store the first portion of the content item, wherein the second data is weighted more than the first data in determining the second amount of time; and
causing the first amount of time to be updated to the second amount of time”.
With respect to the above, Applicant notes and remarks that none of the prior art reference(s) of the rejection [Amrhein et al, Wei et al ], either individually or in combination with other prior art disclosures, expressly and properly discloses or suggests the above amended claim feature(s) or limitation(s) as currently recited by amended independent claim 1 above (and similarly in independent claims 8 and 15). In particular, Applicant states or remarks that the prior art of record does not appear to teach at least the now recited amended feature / limitation of “determining, based on the first cache location and receipt of second data indicative of a second popularity of the first portion of the content item received more recently than the first data, a second amount of time for which to store the first portion of the content item, wherein the second data is weighted more than the first data in determining the second amount of time” -- and thus the amended independent claims are distinguishable over the cited prior art [Applicant Remarks: par 3, pg. 7 – par 1, pg. 9].
In support of his position, Applicant particularly notes and remarks that while Amrhein discloses a cache management system that may store requested data for a time period by initially setting a short time-to-live (TTL), and subsequently increase the TTL of the data item stored in the cache if the client scores the data item high, Amrhein system describe adjusting a TTL element based on a ‘client application’ score or vote’ associated with a ‘single data access’, rather than based on a comparison of temporally distinct popularity data in which more recently received data is weighted more than previously received data – and thus Amrhein fails to teach or disclose the said amended claim feature of independent claim 1.
Applicant also notes / remarks that Wei does not remedy the deficiencies of Chae.
However, in response to Applicant’s amended feature(s) and associated remarks, the Office asserts and notes that the newly amended feature(s) above are now expressly taught or disclosed in view of teachings and/or disclosures by at least Vantalon et al, as discussed / cited in a new ground of rejection below with this action.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amrhein et al. (Amrhein, hereinafter) (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2016/0378666 A1) in view of Wei et al. (Wei, hereinafter) (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20140280515 A1) (pub date September 2014) and in further in view of Vantalon et al. (Vantalon, hereinafter), US Patent Publication 10,812,846 B1 (filing date April 2019)
As per claims 1, 8, 15, Amrhein discloses particular recited feature(s) of the invention, such as a method comprising:
receiving, by a computing device (Amrhein: [0015]; Cache Management Service), first data indicative of popularity (Amrhein: [0016]-[0017] & [0024]; if the cached data receives ‘high access request’ or becomes ‘popular’ {the cached content has a ‘high score’}, its TTL is increased), wherein the first portion of the content item is caused to be stored at a first cache location for a first amount of time (Amrhein: ({0016]-[0017] & [0024]; the cache management system may store the requested data for a short time by ‘initially setting’ a short ‘Time-To-Live’ (TTL)); as well as the feature of
causing the first amount of time to be updated to a second amount of time (Amrhein: [0016]-[0017] & [0024]; if it scored ‘high’ (i.e. if the cached data receives high access request or becomes ‘popular’), its TTL is ‘increased’).
But while Amrhein discloses the above claim features, he does not expressly disclose the additional recited feature(s) of the method further comprising wherein the requested data ‘is a first portion of the content item’. Nonetheless, the features are expressly taught or disclosed by Wei in a related endeavor.
In particular, Wei expressly teaches the additional recited feature(s) of the method further comprising wherein the requested data ‘is a first portion of the content item’ (Wei: e.g., The intermediary may store ‘cached copies’ of content and other resources from the server. The cached copies may have been identified and extracted based on prior interactions with the server and/or client. When a client requests for an object such as a web page, the intermediary may return a ‘partial object’ from its cache almost immediately, i.e., while the intermediary is requesting the object from the server…The intermediary may employ client-side pre-fetch which allows the WPO to send a ‘fragment’ or ‘segment’ of an HTML page (e.g., the "head") as quickly as possible in response to a request ) [0059-0060].
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Amrhein with the invention or disclosures of Wei for the motivation of providing a system and method for managing multiple variants of a requested / cached HTTP object by an Intermediary which may generate ‘variants’ {versions} of an HTTP object, and store them in one or more cache ‘locations’ of a Cache system {i.e., local cache, remote Central Storage module, Edge Cache, etc.} [Wei: Abstract, 0004, 0006, 0008; Figs 2A & 2J].
Amrhein in view of Wei discloses substantial features of the invention as above, but do not explicitly disclose the additional recited feature of the method determining, based on the first cache location and receipt of second data indicative of a second popularity of the first portion of the content item received more recently than the first data, a second amount of time for which to store the first portion of the content item, wherein the second data is weighted more than the first data in determining the second amount of time.
However, Vantalon in a related endeavor, discloses the additional recited feature of the method determining, based on the first cache location and receipt of second data indicative of a second popularity of the first portion of the content item received more recently than the first data, a second amount of time for which to store the first portion of the content item, wherein the second data is weighted more than the first data in determining the second amount of time (Vantalon: e.g., expressly discloses and illustrates in one aspect of his invention wherein the ‘recommended cache time’ for a media element {i.e., ‘first 10 minutes of Slice 1’ of the media element} is changed / adjusted from ‘cache for 1 day’ to ‘cache for 2 days’ based on the mined / collected requests {i.e., ‘request profile’ generated and associated with data about ‘requests’ for media elements} for the media element slice collected over a collection / analytic period {i.e., ‘1 week’}, for example) [Fig. 10] (e.g., FIG. 10 shows how a CRE uses data associated with ‘collection intervals’ and one or more methods described herein to generate ‘new caching recommendations’. For example, methods described in conjunction with FIGS. 3, 8, and 9 can be used to generate ‘new caching recommendations’ based on mined data from all ‘collection intervals of the analytic period’ that include ‘requests of media elements’ recorded during the reference collection interval, and the caching recommendations issued during the reference collection intervals for these media elements. Collection interval 1003 in analytic period 1001 is a reference collection interval for collection interval 1007 (in analytic period 1002) when collection interval 1007 was the current collection interval, and collection interval 1005 is a reference collection interval for collection interval 1009 when collection interval 1009 is the current collection interval. In the example shown in FIG. 10, ‘collection intervals’_1003 and 1007 are the first and last (respectively) collection intervals in ‘analytic period 1001’, and ‘collection intervals’_1005 and 1009 are the first and last (respectively) collection intervals in analytic period 1002. The CRE mines data from analytic period 1001 related to media elements recorded during collection interval 1003 and uses the caching recommendation issued during interval 1003 to generate a ‘new caching recommendation’ for collection interval 1007, and an example of this new caching recommendation is shown in FIG. 10 as “2 days for slice 1 of event 1” (which is the first 10 minutes of event 1) and “1 day for slice 1 of event 2” (which is the first 10 minutes of event 2 that is a program or other content that is different than event 1). The CRE mines data from analytic period 1002 related to media elements recorded during collection interval 1005 and uses the caching recommendation issued during interval 1005 to generate a new caching recommendation for collection interval 1009. It can be seen from FIG. 10 that different slices of the same event can have different caching recommendations. Moreover, over time across multiple analytic periods, the same slice of the same event (e.g. the first 10 minutes of an event) can have different caching recommendations as the CRE learns the CDN's behavior and modifies the caching recommendations. Also, ‘different representations’ (i.e., ‘standard definition’ and ‘high definition’) {encoding or ‘bit rates’} of the same event are analyzed separately and can have different caching recommendations as the CRE learns the CDN's behavior for the different representations) [col 11, L36 — col 12, L45; Fig. 10].
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the above combination with Vantalon to provide a method or apparatus for a Caching Recommendation Engine which improves the delivery quality of IP services by performing real-time reinforcement learning of the CDN behavior, and continuously computing caching recommendations by leveraging novel Al techniques to maximize CDN caching efficiency and performance [Vantalon: Abstract, col 4, L15-31].
Claim(s) 8, 15 recite(s) substantially the same limitations as claim 1, is/are distinguishable only by its/their statutory category (device, non-transitory CRM), and accordingly rejected on the same basis.
As per claim(s) 2, 9, 16, Amrhein in view of Wei in view of Vantalon, and Vantalon in particular, discloses the recited feature(s) of the method wherein the second data is indicative of a number of requests for the first portion of the content item received during a defined period of time (Vantalon: e.g., FIG. 10 shows how a CRE uses data associated with ‘collection intervals’ and one or more methods described herein to generate ‘new caching recommendations’. For example, methods described in conjunction with FIGS. 3, 8, and 9 can be used to generate ‘new caching recommendations’ based on mined data from all ‘collection intervals of the analytic period’ that include ‘requests of media elements’ recorded during the reference collection interval, and the caching recommendations issued during the reference collection intervals for these media elements…) [col 11, L36 — col 12, L45; Fig. 10].
As per claim(s) 4, 11, 18, Amrhein in view of Wei discloses substantial features of the method as in claim 1 above, but they do not explicitly disclose the additional recited feature of the method wherein the first portion of the content item includes a manifest file.
However, Vantalon in a related endeavor, discloses the additional recited feature of the method wherein the first portion of the content item includes a manifest file (Vantalon: e.g., Live and on-demand content distribution systems over IP utilize industry standards (such as HLS and DASH) to define media objects that include for each event a media description (i.e. ‘manifests’ or playlist depending on the delivery standards) that references audio and video media elements (i.e. ‘audio / video fragment or segment’ depending on the delivery standards) and their ‘associated metadata’ ) [col 1, L65 — col 2, L20].
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the above combination with Vantalon to provide a method or apparatus for a Caching Recommendation Engine which improves the delivery quality of IP services by performing real-time reinforcement learning of the CDN behavior, and continuously computing caching recommendations by leveraging novel Al techniques to maximize CDN caching efficiency and performance [Vantalon: Abstract, col 4, L15-31].
Regarding claim(s) 7, 14, 21, Amrhein in view of Wei, and Amrhein in particular, teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising wherein causing the first value to be updated with the second value comprises sending, to a cache device at the first cache location, the second amount of time to cause the cache device to update the first amount of time to the second amount of time (Amrhein: {0024] & [0016]-[001 7]; if the client scores it high, the cache management system may increase the TTL of the data item within the cache).
Claim(s) 3, 10, 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amrhein in view of Wei in view of Vantalon and in further view of Enguehard et al (hereinafter Enguehard), US Patent Publication 20200244758 A1 (filing date January 2019).
As per claim(s) 3, 10, 17, while Amrhein in view of Wei in view of Vantalon discloses substantial features of the method, as above, including the recited features of wherein determining the second amount of time is further based on: (Vantalon: e.g., FIG. 2 details a flowchart 200 of the transactions processed by an exemplary embodiment of a CRE 160 connected to a COS 130. A client device 150 issues transaction 201 to request a specific media element for a channel representation ‘seg(n)’_201 from a CDN 140. As ‘request’_201 was never placed to the CDN 140 before, the CDN could not have cached the media element yet, so it issues a subsequent request 202 to origin 130. CRE 160 qualifies the request as Original Request 203 and provides a recommended expiration time (e.g. ttl(n)). COS 130 responds to the CDN 140 with transaction 204 that includes seg(n) and a caching instruction ttl(n). CDN 140 records the media element into its caching storage 141 according to the caching instruction and responds to client 150 with transaction 205. In one embodiment, an event can be a show or program or other content on a channel that has at least a start time on a day of the week. An event can be defined by a channel and a start time and a stop. For example, a show can be defined by its channel (e.g. CBS) and start time (e.g. 7 p.m.) and its stop time (e.g. 7:30 p.m.). An event can be a live event that can be recorded and broadcast concurrently (at substantially the same time), such as “Saturday Night Live”. Moreover, each event can be broadcast concurrently in a plurality of different representations such as different ‘bit rates’ of transmission, different quality or format levels such as standard definition and high definition, etc.) [col 6, L52 – col 7, L10] (e.g., It can be seen from FIG. 10 that different slices of the same event can have different caching recommendations. Moreover, over time across multiple analytic periods, the same slice of the same event (e.g. the first 10 minutes of an event) can have different caching recommendations as the CRE learns the CDN's behavior and modifies the caching recommendations. Also, ‘different representations’ (i.e., ‘standard definition’ and ‘high definition’) {encoding or ‘bit rates’} of the same event are analyzed separately and can have ‘different caching recommendations’ as the CRE learns the CDN's behavior for the different representations) [col 11, L36 — col 12, L45; Fig. 10] -- they do not expressly disclose the wherein the determining the second amount of time is further based on ‘the first cache location’.
However, in a related endeavor, Enguehard discloses the additional recited feature(s) of the method ‘wherein the determining the second amount of time is further based on ‘the first cache location’ (Enguehard: e.g., The forgoing is addressed by embodiments of the present technology directed to system, method and computer-readable medium for video Content Delivery Networks (CDN) that utilizes chunk-level content addressing and multi-tiered content popularity assessment (in deployed networking technologies) to make intelligent decision with regards to optimal processing of content request and content delivery. The optimal processing of content-related traffic, in one regard, is directed to enhancing a hit ratio of a cache system, which in turn reduces latency and network loading associated with servicing of request for contents such as video. As such, some embodiments of the present invention are directed to increasing cache hit rate ‘at the network edge’ while also reducing adverse impacts (i.e., latency and network load) associated with cache misses. To that end, embodiments of the disclosed technology utilize network-layer ‘video chunk’ naming to facilitate ‘popularity-based’ multi-tier classification for the requested contents…..In some embodiments, named-video chunks (content identifier embedded within network address of the request packet header) may be used in the forwarding plane within a system and/or configuration that is deployable in current IP-based networks. Accordingly, each ‘video segment’ may be matched with a ‘unique network identifier’, using, for example, a 64-bit encoding to contain the video identifier, the identifier of the segment within the video, and potentially ‘additional metadata’ such as the segment duration and the ‘requested video bitrate / quality’) [0025-0026].
It would thus be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the invention to modify the combination with the above said additional feature(s), as expressly disclosed by Enguehard, for the motivation of providing a system and method for implementing an in-network caching system, and in particular for steering a content request among a plurality of cache servers based on multi-tier assessment of content popularity {i.e., ‘popular’, ‘semi-popular’, or ‘unpopular’ content} [Enguehard: Abstract, 0001] [Figs. 1, 2 & 8].
Claim(s) 5, 6, 12, 13, 19, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amrhein in view of Wei in view of Vantalon and in further view of Basu et al. (Basu, hereinafter) (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp ?tp=&amumber=833 7092).
Regarding claim 5, 12, 19, the combination of Amrhein in view of Wei in view of Vantalon discloses substantial features of the method as in claim 1 above, but does not explicitly disclose wherein the first amount of time is associated with a first time period, and wherein the second amount of time is associated with at least one of: the first time period or a second time period.
However, Basu in analogous art, discloses wherein the first amount of time is associated with a first time period (Basu: Page 1067, Para 1-2; an original TTLis assigned for the first/cached content); and wherein the second amount of time is associated with at least one of: the first time period or a second time period (Basu: Page 1067, Para. 1-2; the content original TTL is extended or decremented (remained as originally assigned, then decremented) based on the cache hit rate).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to modify the combination with the teachings of Basu to optimize the system performance by adaptively allocating TTLs for different cached contents.
Regarding claim 6, 13, 20, Amrhein in view of Wei in view of Vantalon in view of Basu, and Basu in particular, teaches the method of claim 5, further comprising enforcing the first amount of time at the first cache location during the first time period; or enforcing the second amount of time at the first cache location during the second time period (Basu: e.g., expressly discloses the first time period comprises a first time window during which the first amount of time is enforced by the cache; or the second time period comprises a second time window during which the second amount of time is enforced by the cache [Wingdings font/0xE0] [Page 1067, Para. 1-2]; the content original TTL is extended or decremented (remained as originally assigned, then decremented) based on the cache hit rate).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to modify the combination with the teachings of Basu to optimize the system performance by adaptively allocating TTLs for different cached contents.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GLENFORD J MADAMBA whose telephone number is (571)272-7989. The examiner can normally be reached on Mondays to Fridays from 9am-5pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Christopher Parry, can be reached at telephone number 571-272-8328. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/GLENFORD J MADAMBA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2451
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