DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-22 are currently pending in the application 18/580,236 filed 01/18/2024, which is a National Stage application under 35 U.S.C. 371 of PCT/US2022/039525 having an international filing date of 08/05/2022.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/02/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
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.
Claim(s) 1-2, and 4-22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 11,150,895 B1 to Jonathan Wall (herein Wall ‘895) in view of US 2018/0287903 A1 to Joshi et al. (herein Joshi ‘903).
Claim 1
Wall ‘895 shows a circuit (Wall ‘895: figure 8; 12:60-14:3) comprising:
one or more processors (Wall ‘895: figure 8, 810) to implement an application management platform (Wall ‘895: column 2:30-46; 2:66-3:5; “orchestration system”) to manage versioning of individual infrastructure components (Wall ‘895: 3:33-41), automatically populate an internal artifact repository with the individual infrastructure components (Wall ‘895: 4:29-40; 11:43-46; figure 7, 702), package the individual infrastructure components (Wall ‘895: 5:3-10; 6:26-28, software committed to repository), and create a distributable container based on the internal artifact repository (Wall ‘895: 5:11-32; 6:31-36; deployable code container).
Wall ‘895 does not explicitly state generate an optical disc image comprising the distributed container to provision a remote data center. However, Joshi ‘903 demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to make use of iso images (optical disc images) to provision containers (Joshi ‘903: [0054]) to provision remote data centers (Joshi ‘903: [0028]). Wall ‘895 shows its continuous integration system used for provisioning (Wall ‘895: 10:32-40) using images (Wall ‘895: 4:8-15; 10:27-30). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the provisioning of the continuous integration system of Wall ‘895 with generating and using an iso image (optical disc image) provisioning a remote data center with a container as suggested by the teachings of Joshi ‘903. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: use of iso images allows for the benefit of a well-known format; and the implementation of is an application of a known element/technique yielding a predictable result using an acceptable piece of prior art (both references are directed toward containerization).
Claim 2
Wall ‘895 does not state the circuit of claim 1, wherein the application management platform comprises a deployment manager comprising a control plane and a data plane (Wall ‘895: 3:28-32, Kubernetes provides for control plane and data plane).
Claim 4
Wall ‘895 shows the circuit of claim 1, wherein management of the versioning of individual
infrastructure components comprises:
generating, based at least on an execution of a continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD) pipeline (Wall ‘895: 1:49-58; 2:59-3:5; continuous integration followed by automatic, thus continuous, deployment) for at least one of the individual infrastructure components associated with the application management platform of a data center (Wall ‘895: 2:30-46), a versioned package of the at least one individual infrastructure component (Wall ‘895: 7:59-8:40).
Claim 5
Wall ‘895 shows the circuit of claim 1, wherein automatically populating the internal artifact repository with the individual infrastructure components comprises:
storing a versioned package of at least one of the individual infrastructure components in the internal artifact repository (Wall ‘895: 7:59-63; software release with version, v11), wherein the versioned package of the at least one individual infrastructure component comprises an infrastructure component unique tag (Wall ‘895: 7:46-61, ‘LATEST’ tag).
Claim 6
Wall ‘895 shows the circuit of claim 1, wherein creating the distributable container based at least on the internal artifact repository comprises:
identifying a versioned package of the individual infrastructure components assigned an infrastructure component unique tag from the internal artifact repository (Wall ‘895: 7:59-8:8, finding software ‘Ber’ that is labeled/tagged with ‘LATEST’); and
aggregating the versioned package of the one or more individual infrastructure components associated with the infrastructure component unique tag into the distributable container (Wall ‘895: 7:59-8:8, orchestration compiles and pushes Ber using Kubernetes).
Claim 7
Wall ‘895 shows the circuit of claim 6, wherein aggregating the versioned package of the one or more individual infrastructure components associated with the infrastructure component unique tag into the distributable container comprises:
retrieving using the internal artifact repository, the identified versioned package of the individual infrastructure components associated with the infrastructure component unique tag (Wall ‘895: 7:45-8:8).
Claim 8
Wall ‘895 shows the circuit of claim 1, wherein creating the distributable container based on the internal artifact repository comprises:
assigning a version to the distributable container (Wall ‘895: 12:26-36, distributable artifacts in a versioning repository); and
storing the versioned distributable container in the internal artifact repository (Wall ‘895: figure 7, 702, 706; the logical ‘repository’ made of all repositories not labeled external).
To the extent Wall ‘895 does not explicitly state wherein the versioned distributable container comprises a container unique tag, Wall ‘895 demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention identifying software elements/releases (Wall ‘895: 7:49-8:8; 12:22-25) including with tags (Wall ‘895: 7:49-8:8) and metadata (Wall ‘895: 12:22-25; 12:37-45). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the container of Wall ‘895 with a tag as suggested by the teachings of Wall ‘895. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: the implementation of this technique is applicable to the containers of Wall ‘895 for the same reasons Wall ‘895 uses tags of the software release.
Claim 9
Wall ‘895 shows the circuit of claim 1, wherein the application management platform is further to generate a bootable image comprising an operating system, an automated installer, and the distributable container (Wall ‘895: 10:48-11:16; 12:26-36; a bootable system with an OS using Docker Containers for installing and the deployable artifacts).
Claims 10-15
The limitations of claims 10-15 correspond to the limitations of claims 1-2, 4-9 and as such are rejected in a corresponding manner.
Claims 16-21
The limitations of claims 16-21 correspond to the limitations of claims 1-2, 4-9 and as such are rejected in a corresponding manner.
Claim 22
Wall ‘895 show the system of claim 16, wherein the processing device is comprised in at least one
of: a system for performing simulation operations; a system for performing digital twin operations;
a system for performing light transport simulation; a system for performing collaborative content creation for 3D assets; a system for performing deep learning operations; a system implemented using an edge device; a system implemented using a robot; a system for performing conversational AI operations; a system for generating synthetic data; a system incorporating one or more virtual machines (VMs); a system for performing autonomous driving operations; a system for performing high definition (HD) mapping operations; or a system implemented at least partially using cloud computing resources (Wall ‘895: 2:41-45, cloud provider).
Claims 1-9
Additionally, it is noted that the broadest reasonable interpretation of claim 1 reciting “A circuit comprising: one or more processors to implement …” does not actually implement the remaining limitations of claims 1-9. As such, Wall ‘895 shows a circuit (Wall ‘895: figure 8; 12:60-14:3) comprising:
one or more processors (Wall ‘895: figure 8, 810) as discussed above.
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 11,150,895 B1 to Jonathan Wall (herein Wall ‘895) in view of US 2018/0287903 A1 to Joshi et al. (herein Joshi ‘903) in further view of WO 2021/150291 A1 to Carre et al. (herein Carre ‘291).
Claim 3
Wall ‘895 does not state the circuit of claim 1, wherein the application management platform comprises an update framework comprising a combination of one or more server-side and one or more client-side components to facilitate over-the-air (OTA) updates. Carre ‘291 demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to make servers and clients in wireless network communication, thus facilitating over-the-air updates (Carre ‘291: [0114]-[0119], figure 15) with regard to infrastructure component management (Carre ‘291: abstract). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the orchestration system of Wall ‘895 within a client/server wireless network environment as suggested by the teachings of Carre ‘291. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: both Wall ‘895 and Carre ‘291 are directed to the management of infrastructure components and distributed environments (Wall ‘895: 1:13-33); and the implementation of is an application of one known element and technique yielding a predictable result.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-22 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
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 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.
Correspondence Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WILLIAM H WOOD whose telephone number is (571)272-3736. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7am-3pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alexander Kosowski can be reached at (571)272-3744. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/William H. Wood/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3992