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 .
General Remarks
This communication is considered fully responsive to Applicant’s response filed 08/04/2026.
Application filed: 03/04/2024
Applicant’s PgPUB: 2025/0278348
Claims:
Claims 1, 2, 4-11 and 13-22 are pending.
Claims 1, 10, and 19 are independent.
Claims 1, 4, 10, 13 and 19 are amended.
Claims 3 and 12 are canceled.
IDS:
Previous IDS:
IDS filed 05/30/2024 has been considered.
Previous Office Action:
Rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112 is maintained.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/04/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Examiner Note:
The following arguments (Section 3(b)) address the claims as they were amended on 08/04/2026.
Applicant argues the cited prior does not teach “not storing” log data.
Examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant’s assertion. The central crux of the argument revolves around the concept of “storing” and what is actually meant by storing. Using the BRI standard, storing would consist of long-term or short-term capture or holding of information or data for some purpose. That data may continue to be held or may be discarded. It appears the Applicant has a more narrow definition of “storing”. It is this difference of opinion with the scope of the term “storing” that is the main point disagreement.
Paragraph 0066 of Applicant’s specification states in part, ““Ephemerally receiving log data may include allowing the raw log data pushed (e.g., transmitted) from the plurality of clients 201A-C to persist at the network layer 102 for a short period of time without storing the raw log data. … The volume of logs files included in the log data may increase the throughput of traffic to the computing system 103 over time as additional computing resources will be required to store and process the log data.” This passage teaches that log data is allowed to persist (i.e., be stored) and therefore teaches away what is stated in the claims.
The phrase “without storing the log data” is too broad in nature. And, without further clarifying language, the actions/process described in the claims cannot occur.
This language is too broad on its face. This language, under BRI means, log data can not be held, captured, cached, buffered or stored in any way at any level. Based on the current state of the art, this is not a possibility.
This language is in conflict with the teaching of its own specification based on the language from paragraph 0066. The specification states that the log data persists (i.e., stored) and then states the log data is not stored. Further, paragraph 0066 states that additional computing resources will be needed to store log data when log data volume increases.
As such, given the teachings of the specification and the breadth of the phrase “without storing”, the current interpretation by the Examiner and the rejection of the claims is maintained.
Applicant's supplemental amendments filed 09/04/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant amendment the claims to include “… without storing the log data in the one or more servers …”. This amendment clarifies what the original intent of the phrase “without storing the log data” means. While the Ref Taleck is not longer relevant, the meaning of the claims is still covered by the prior arts of Tofano and Lashgari are still relevant and cover the claim language as it is currently stated.
In particular, Tofano teaches only storing deduplicated data in storage 108 (see Fig. 1 of Tofano). The one or more servers would be consistent with the Tofano’s Fig. 1, Storage 108. Tofano teaches in paragraph 0082, “The incoming duplicate data portions 316 may not be stored in the storage 108”.
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 2, 4-7, 10, 11, 13-16 and 19-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0057752 A1 to Tofano (“Tofano”) in view of U.S. Patent No. 12,204,509 B1 to Lashgari et al. (“Lashgari”).
As to claim 1, Tofano discloses:
a computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving, from one or more client devices (Fig. 1, Client devices, 114), log data comprising a plurality of logs indicative of metrics associated with a computing system, wherein the log data is received by an aggregation layer provided as part of a network layer, the network layer deployed to network infrastructure that is different than the one or more servers (Fig. 1, (service computing devices) Cluster, 106, Service Computing Device, 102, Storage, 108, Storage Controllers, 132, Storage Devices, 144)) (¶0050-¶0058 – Tofano teaches client devices sending data (i.e. log data indicative of metrics) to the cluster for deduplication;
in response to aggregating the log data, generating deduplicated log data without storing the log data in the one or more servers, the deduplicated log data comprising one or more unique logs indicative of unique metrics associated with the computing system (¶0076 – Tofano teaches fter a deduplication data portion has been classified as a unique deduplication data portion, the entire data content is stored in the storage and the data-portion identifier for the unique deduplication data portion is also added to the deduplication index.); and
transmitting the deduplicated log data from the aggregation layer to the one or more servers of the computing system (Fig. 1, Storage Controllers 132; ¶0051-¶0054 – Tofano teaches storage 108 used for storage capacity for the cluster (i.e., aggregation layer))
Lashgari discloses what Tofano does not expressly disclose.
Lashgari discloses:
aggregating the log data at the network layer using the aggregation layer [and without storing the log data,] using one or more aggregation parameters (col. 21 ll. 27-36 – Lashgari teaches aggregating log data for analytics and other uses.; col. 27 ll. 11-21 – Lashgari teaches using a similarity score (i.e., parameter) to determine if deduplication is needed on a log), wherein the one or more aggregation parameters are configurable to increase or decrease a level of deduplication (col. 2 ll. 45-59 – Lashgari teaches modifying a level of similarity (i.e. aggregation parameter) used for identifying duplicates during a deduplication process (i.e., increase/decrease level of deduplication);
Tofano and Lashgari are analogous arts because they are from the same field of endeavor with respect to deduplication.
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate modifying levels of deduplication as discussed in Lashgari with the deduplication network system as discussed in Tofano by adding the functionality of Lashgari to the system/method of Tofano in order to allow the system to adjust to needed levels of deduplication (Lashgari, col. 2 ll. 45-59).
Taleck discloses what Tofano and Lashgari do not expressly discloses.
Taleck discloses:
aggregating the log data at the network layer using the aggregation layer and without storing the log data (¶0074 – Taleck teaches The data cache 117 is a storage area for caching deduplicated chunks. Data of chunks corresponding to a file for which the write request is made from the NAS client 210 is deduplicated and temporarily stored in the data cache 117 and then, incorporated into an object and stored in the cloud storage 240. When the capacity of the data cache 117 is decreased by storing chunks, chunks that are stored in the cloud storage 240 and infrequently accessed from the NAS client 210 are deleted from the data cache 117)
generating deduplicated log data without storing the log data (¶0074 – Taleck teaches The data cache 117 is a storage area for caching deduplicated chunks. Data of chunks corresponding to a file for which the write request is made from the NAS client 210 is deduplicated and temporarily stored in the data cache 117 and then, incorporated into an object and stored in the cloud storage 240. When the capacity of the data cache 117 is decreased by storing chunks, chunks that are stored in the cloud storage 240 and infrequently accessed from the NAS client 210 are deleted from the data cache 117)
Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck are analogous arts because they are from the same field of endeavor with respect to deduplication.
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate temporary storage for processing/deduplicating data as discussed in Taleck with modifying levels of deduplication as discussed in Lashgari with the deduplication network system as discussed in Tofano by adding the functionality of Taleck to the system/method of Tofano and Lashgari in order to compares incoming data with the data already stored, and only stores the portions of the incoming data that do not match data already stored in the data storage system (Taleck, ¶0005).
As to claim 2, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1, and
Tofano discloses:
wherein the log data has at least one of:
(i) a higher throughput than the deduplicated log data or
(ii) a higher cardinality than the deduplicated log data (¶0075 – Tofano teaches classifying data portions as unique or duplicate after deduplication which indicates the log data pre-deduplication would have higher cardinality (i.e., number of elements in a group) than post-deduplication).
As to claim 4, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1, and
Tofano discloses:
wherein the aggregation layer filters the log data at the network layer to avoid storing or processing the log data using the one or more servers (Fig. 1, Service Computing Device; ¶0040 – Tofano teaches deduplicating information which would avoid the processing of the deduplicated information).
As to claim 5, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1, and
Tofano discloses:
further comprising:
accessing the deduplicated log data from the computing system (0034 – Tofano teaches all data that is stored in the cluster storage 108 may be accessed through any of the service computing devices 102 in the cluster 106, regardless of physical storage topology.); and
Lashgari discloses:
computing analytics data based on the deduplicated log data, the analytics data being associated with the log data (col. 21 ll. 27-36 – Lashgari teaches aggregating log data for analytics and other uses.; col. 27 ll. 11-21 – Lashgari teaches using a similarity score (i.e., parameter) to determine if deduplication is needed on a log).
The suggestion/motivation and obviousness rejection is the same as in claim 1.
As to claim 6, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1, and
Tofano discloses:
wherein the one or more aggregation parameters comprises metadata associated with the plurality of logs (¶0043 – Tofano teaches For example, the computer-readable media 120 may store data, metadata, data structures, and/or other information … used by the deduplication components).
As to claim 7, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 6, and
Lashgari discloses:
wherein the metadata comprises at least one of:
(i) a time stamp (col. 20 ll. 43-49 – Lashgari teaches use of timestamps for log data) or
(ii) a log type associated with respective logs of the plurality of logs.
The suggestion/motivation and obviousness rejection is the same as in claim 1.
As to claim 10, similar rejection as to claim 1.
As to claim 11, similar rejection as to claim 2.
As to claim 13, similar rejection as to claim 4.
As to claim 14, similar rejection as to claim 5.
As to claim 15, similar rejection as to claim 6.
As to claim 16, similar rejection as to claim 7.
As to claim 19, similar rejection as to claim 1.
As to claim 20, similar rejection as to claim 2.
As to claim 21, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1, and
Tofano discloses:
further comprising:
storing the deduplicated log data in a storage system of the computing system (Fig. 1, Storage devices 144; ¶0051-¶0054 – Tofano teaches storage used for storage capacity for the cluster (i.e., aggregation layer)).
As to claim 22, similar rejection as to claim 21.
Claims 8, 9, 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0057752 A1 to Tofano (“Tofano”) in view of U.S. Patent No. 12,204,509 B1 to Lashgari et al. (“Lashgari”) in further view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0161723 A1 to Taleck et al. (“Taleck”) in further view of U.S. Patent 10,754,834 B1 to Patil et al. (“Patil”).
As to claim 8, Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 1, and
Patil discloses what Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck do not expressly discloses:
Patil discloses:
further comprising:
determining the aggregation layer is unavailable to receive additional log data (Fig. 2, col. 5 ll. 52-col. 6 ll. 19 – Patil teaches determining if the fingerprint database (i.e, aggregation layer) is available and if not, storing data in the storage data unit in backup storage); and
based on determining the aggregation layer is unavailable to receive the additional log data, transmitting the additional log data to the computing system (Fig. 2, col. 5 ll. 52-col. 6 ll. 19 – Patil teaches determining if the fingerprint database (i.e, aggregation layer) is available and if not, storing data in the storage data unit in backup storage).
Tofano, Lashgari, Taleck and Patil are analogous arts because they are from the same field of endeavor with respect to deduplication.
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate system bypass as discussed in Patil with modifying levels of deduplication as discussed in Lashgari with the deduplication network system as discussed in Tofano by adding the functionality of Patil to the system/method of Tofano, Lashgari and Taleck in order to allow data to be stored regardless of the status of a deduplication process (Patil, col. 2 ll. 52-64).
As to claim 9, Tofano, Lashgari, Taleck and Patil discloses:
computer-implemented method of claim 8, and
Patil discloses:
wherein determining the aggregation layer is unavailable to receive the additional log data comprises determining one or more faults associated with the aggregation layer, wherein the one or more faults are indicative of a fault tolerance (Fig. 2, col. 5 ll. 52-col. 6 ll. 19 – Patil teaches determining if the fingerprint database (i.e, aggregation layer) is available and if not, storing data in the storage data unit in backup storage. Error codes are used to determine the problem with accessing the fingerprint database, so when there is a problem with accessing the fingerprint database, it is bypassed which is indicative of fault tolerance because if the fingerprint database is not accessible, it is bypassed which shows that the fault tolerance of the system is available/unavailable.). The suggestion/motivation and obviousness rejection is the same as in claim 8.
As to claim 17, similar rejection as to claim 8.
As to claim 18, similar rejection as to claim 9.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TAYLOR A ELFERVIG whose telephone number is (571)270-5687. The examiner can normally be reached Monday (10:00 AM CST) - Friday (4:00 PM CST).
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, Oscar Louie can be reached at (571) 270-1684. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TAYLOR A ELFERVIG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2445
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