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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 06/23/2026 and 09/23/2026,IDS Considered. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
This office action is responsive to amendment filed on 08/13/2026. The Examiner has acknowledged amended claims 1, 6, 9 and 14.
Claims 1-14 have been presented for examination and are rejected.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's argument, filed on 08/13/2026 has been entered and carefully considered.
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 (a)(1) have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground of rejection necessitated by Applicant's amendment.
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, 6-12 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shamis et al. (US 20170103039 hereinafter Shamis) in view of Taguchi et al. (GB 2506555 hereinafter Taguchi).
With respect to claims 1, 6, 9 and 14, Shamis teaches a system, comprising:
a first network device, to send over a network a command that specifies a value (Shamis, see paragraph [0080] The RDMA atomic compare and swap (CAS) operation is used to atomically compare a value in the RDMA CAS message(i.e., command) from the client (i.e., equivalent to first network device) to a value of a specified virtual address of the host (i.e., equivalent to second network device). If the compared values are equal, a value specified by the RDMA CAS message will be stored (i.e., the appending value needs to be written to set of value in memory) at the virtual address of the host);
a second network device, to receive the command over the network (Shamis, see paragraphs [0070-0071] In response to receipt of the RDMA message (i.e., command) by the NIC of the host (i.e., equivalent to second network device), applying the NIC of the host to perform the requested read, write, or CAS operation on memory of the host (i.e., perform write operation in respond to the RDMA message write the value of a specified virtual address and being stored in host) via DMA operations between that NIC and the memory on that host. In other words, each server performs local DMA operations (e.g., reads, writes, and CAS operations) in response to RDMA messages received by the NIC from other servers…an application, process, or thread executing on one of the networked clients instructs that client to perform a read or write on the key-value store…).
Shamis fails to explicitly disclose instructs that the value be appended to an end of a set of values in a memory; and
to execute the command by appending the value to the end of the set of values.
However, Taguchi discloses instructs that the value be appended to an end of a set of values in a memory (Taguchi, see para. [0014] storing the data in the buffer in response to a read command and for writing the data stored in the buffer from an appended data end position for data writing of the tape (EOD) in response to an append write command); and
to execute the command by appending the value to the end of the set of values (Taguchi, see para. [0014] …receiving an overwrite command (Over Write) of data in a predetermined position on the tape between the mixed commands in the series of commands wherein the overwrite command causes the end of written data to be in a data end position (FOP) , updating the overwrite data position as an appended data end position (FOP) if the tape position for overwriting the data is earlier (a value smaller) than the appended data end position of the tape (FOP) , and updating the overwrite data position as an appended data end position in the non-volatile memory (FOP in the memory) if the tape position for overwriting the data is later (a value greater) than the appended data end position of the tape (FOD)).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to combine the teaching Shamis with the teaching Taguchi to provide the system for executing a command by appending a value to the end of an existing set of values offers several distinct technical and operational advantages, depending on the context such as data structures, file systems, or command-line scripting.
With respect to claims 2 and 10, Shamis-Taguchi teaches the system, wherein, in response to the command, the second network device is to read a pointer that points to a memory location in which the value is to be appended, and to write the value to the memory location (Shamis, see paragraphs [0026-0027] When traversing the tree for the purpose of reading a particular key-value/pointer pairs, the Key-Value Manager performs separate RDMA reads of each of the node of the key-value store to obtain a sequence of memory references, with each reference pointing to the next node to be read, until the desired node is reached…Further, when any key-value/pointer pair is written to a node, the writing client first reserves that node via an RDMA CAS operation to flip a reservation bit (e.g., hosted in a node equivalent to second network device) corresponding to that node prior to performing an RDMA write to that node).
Claims 3-4, 7-8 and 11-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shamis et al. (US 20170103039 hereinafter Shamis) in view of Taguchi et al. (GB 2506555 hereinafter Taguchi)further in view of Parambil et al. (US 20200341940 hereinafter Parambil).
With respect to claims 3, 7 and 11, Shamis-Taguchi teaches the system, yet fails to explicitly disclose wherein the command is embedded in a transport protocol used by the first and second network devices.
However, Parambil discloses wherein the command is embedded in a transport protocol used by the first and second network devices (Parambil, see paragraph [0011] the networks may include an Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as an IP network using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP), and/or a Remote Direct Memory Access protocol network. Each of the server devices 104a-c may include or be in communication with one or more data storage devices 110a-c. Together the server devices 104a-c provide a distributed file system 108).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to combine the teaching Shamis-Taguchi with the teaching Parambil to provide the system for using a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) transport protocol to have the ability to transfer data between the main memory of two networked computers without involving either system's operating system, CPU, or cache.
With respect to claims 4, 8 and 12, Shamis-Taguchi teaches the system, wherein the transport protocol is a Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) protocol (Parambil, see paragraph [0011] the networks include an Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as an IP network using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP), and/or a Remote Direct Memory Access protocol network (RDMA)).
Claims 5 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shamis et al. (US 20170103039 hereinafter Shamis) in view of Taguchi et al. (GB 2506555 hereinafter Taguchi) further in view of Kagan et al. (US 20020152327 hereinafter Kagan).
With respect to claims 5 and 13, Shamis-Taguchi teaches the system, yet fails to explicitly disclose wherein the second network device is to execute the command atomically
However, Kagan discloses wherein the second network device is to execute the command atomically (Kagan, see paragraph [0005] each message consists of one or more IB packets. Typically, a given HCA will serve simultaneously both as a requester, transmitting requests and receiving responses on behalf of local clients, and as a responder, receiving requests from other channel adapters and returning responses accordingly. Request messages include, inter alia, remote direct memory access (RDMA) write and send requests and atomic (i.e., equivalent to execute the command atomically) read-modify-write operations, all of which cause the responder to write data to a memory address at its own end of the link, and RDMA read requests, which cause the responder to read data from a memory address and return it to the requester).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was effectively filed to combine the teaching Shamis-Taguchi with the teaching Kagan to provide the system for executing a command atomically guarantees executes. When a second network device or secondary controller executes network updates this way, it prevents corrupted configurations, race conditions with other processes, and leaves the network in a provably consistent state.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ELIZABETH KASSA whose telephone number is (571)270-0567. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday -Friday 9 AM -6 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ario Etienne can be reached on 517-272-4001. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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10/07/2026
/ELIZABETH KASSA/Examiner, Art Unit 2457
/ARIO ETIENNE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2457
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