DETAILED ACTION
INFORMATION CONCERNING RESPONSES
Response to Amendment
This Office Action is in response to applicant’s communication filed on November 21, 2025, in response to PTO Office Action mailed on August 21, 2025. The Applicant’s remarks and amendments to the claims and/or the specification were considered with the results that follow.
In response to the last Office Action, claims 1, 8-9, and 16-17 have been amended. As a result, claims 1-20 are now pending in this application.
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 .
Response to Arguments
Due to Applicant’s amendments for claims 1-8 filed on November 21, 2025, the rejection based on 35 USC 101/112 has been withdrawn.
Applicant's arguments filed on November 21, 2025, in response to PTO Office Action mailed on August 21, 2025, have been fully considered and are persuasive. Hence, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further review a new ground of rejection has been made in view of Young (Patent Number US 8,155,518 B2).
REJECTIONS BASED ON PRIOR ART
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) 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, 9-10, and 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over McLean et al. (Publication Number US 2013/0182575 A1) in view of Young (Patent Number US 8,155,518 B2).
As per claim 1, McLean et al. discloses “A method performed an input/output (I/O controller of a computing system, the method comprising: receiving, by the I/O controller, an I/O command targeting a destination target (in the form of a user request; Paragraphs 0026 and 0031-0032).” McLean et al. discloses “selecting, by the I/O controller and from a plurality of paths to the destination target, a path based on power consumption and a command response time associated with the path (response time for file transfer and power consumption of the channels; Paragraph 0030).” McLean et al. discloses “and processing the I/O command on the selected path (selecting one of two channels; Paragraphs 0030).”
However, McLean et al. does not disclose the ranking of a path/channel is based on a connected adaptor as disclosed in the limitation “wherein the power consumption is based on an amount of power consumed by an adapter, of the computing system, associated with the path.”
Young discloses the ranking of a path/channel is based on a connected adaptor as disclosed in the limitation “wherein the power consumption is based on an amount of power consumed by an adapter, of the computing system, associated with the path (where a load balancer may be operable to monitor paths coupled to a host bus adapter and determine the speeds of the ports within the paths [Abstract, lines 2-8; FIG. 3]. Note that the load balancer monitors the ports on a host bus adaptor instead of exclusively the paths).”
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the elements of McLean et al. and Young to maximize throughput through load balancing among processing nodes [Column 2, lines 1-4].
As per claims 2, 10, and 18, McLean et al. discloses “The method of claim 1 (as disclosed by Mclean et al. and Young above), further comprising tracking, for a plurality of I/O commands and at each of the plurality of paths, the power consumption and the command response time (response time for file transfer and power consumption of the channels; [Paragraph 0030]. See also steps 72-86 in [FIG. 4]).”
As per claim 9, McLean et al. discloses “A computing system comprising: a processor (processing device 50; FIG. 3).” McLean et al. discloses “memory (memory 52; FIG. 3).” McLean et al. discloses “and an input/output (I/O) controller for controlling I/O operations from the computing system, the I/O controller configured to: receive an I/O command targeting a destination target (in the form of a user request; Paragraphs 0026 and 0031-0032).” McLean et al. discloses “select, from a plurality of paths to the destination target, a path based on power consumption and a command response time associated with the path (response time for file transfer and power consumption of the channels; Paragraph 0030).” McLean et al. discloses “and process the I/O command on the selected path (selecting one of two channels; Paragraphs 0030).”
However, McLean et al. does not disclose the ranking of a path/channel is based on a connected adaptor as disclosed in the limitation “wherein the power consumption is based on an amount of power consumed by an adapter, of the computing system, associated with the path.”
Young discloses the ranking of a path/channel is based on a connected adaptor as disclosed in the limitation “wherein the power consumption is based on an amount of power consumed by an adapter, of the computing system, associated with the path (where a load balancer may be operable to monitor paths coupled to a host bus adapter and determine the speeds of the ports within the paths [Abstract, lines 2-8; FIG. 3]. Note that the load balancer monitors the ports on a host bus adaptor instead of exclusively the paths).”
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the elements of McLean et al. and Young to maximize throughput through load balancing among processing nodes [Column 2, lines 1-4].
As per claim 17, McLean et al. discloses “A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and computer program instructions stored therein that, when executed, are configured to: receive an input/output (I/O) command targeting a destination target (in the form of a user request; Paragraphs 0026 and 0031-0032).” McLean et al. discloses “select, from a plurality of paths to the destination target, a path based on power consumption and a command response time associated with the path (response time for file transfer and power consumption of the channels; Paragraph 0030).” McLean et al. discloses “and process the I/O command on the selected path (selecting one of two channels; Paragraphs 0030).”
However, McLean et al. does not disclose the ranking of a path/channel is based on a connected adaptor as disclosed in the limitation “wherein the power consumption is based on an amount of power consumed by an adapter, of the computing system, associated with the path.”
Young discloses the ranking of a path/channel is based on a connected adaptor as disclosed in the limitation “wherein the power consumption is based on an amount of power consumed by an adapter, of the computing system, associated with the path (where a load balancer may be operable to monitor paths coupled to a host bus adapter and determine the speeds of the ports within the paths [Abstract, lines 2-8; FIG. 3]. Note that the load balancer monitors the ports on a host bus adaptor instead of exclusively the paths).”
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the elements of McLean et al. and Young to maximize throughput through load balancing among processing nodes [Column 2, lines 1-4].
Claims 3-8, 11-16, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over McLean et al. (Publication Number US 2013/0182575 A1) and Young (Patent Number US 8,155,518 B2) in view of Egner et al. (Publication Number US 2018/0167825 A1).
As per claims 3, 11, and 19, McLean et al. discloses “The method of claim 2 (as disclosed by Mclean et al. and Young above).” However, McLean et al. does not explicitly disclose the ranking as disclosed in the limitation “further comprising ranking each of the plurality of paths based on the tracked power consumption and the tracked command response time associated with each path.”
Egner et al. discloses the ranking as disclosed in the limitation “further comprising ranking each of the plurality of paths based on the tracked power consumption and the tracked command response time associated with each path (list of ranked…links available that meet a minimum sufficient level of criteria QoS and power consumption; Paragraphs 0107 and 0122).”
McLean et al. and Egner et al. are analogous art in that they in the field of path selection and device connections.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the elements of McLean et al. and Young with elements of Egner et al. in order to ensure quality of communications particularly in environments that are subject to high interference and collision [Paragraph 0081].
As per claims 4, 12, and 20, Egner et al. discloses “The method of claim 3 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein selecting the path includes selecting a highest ranked path (Paragraph 0109).”
As per claims 5 and 13, Egner et al. discloses “The method of claim 3 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein a path of the plurality of paths is not ranked if the command response time associated with the path is greater than a threshold (recommendations may be altered when selections exceed the threshold for a link; Paragraph 0103).”
As per claims 6 and 14, Egner et al. discloses “The method of claim 3 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein a ranking of a path is increased based on a utilization rate of the path (link profiles stored here may include end-user profile data measured by the processor during… link usage; Paragraph 0028).”
As per claim 7, McLean et al. discloses “The method of claim 3 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein the ranking is performed periodically (steps 113 to 126; FIG. 5B).”
As per claim 8, McLean et al. discloses “The method of claim 3 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein the ranking is performed for each received I/O command (step 84 to 86 [FIG. 4]. Steps 113 to 126; FIG. 5B).”
Egner et al. discloses “wherein ranking each of the plurality of paths comprises: dynamically adjusting a ranking of the path based on changes to the command response time associated with the path, wherein the changes are based on the path being selected for one or more I/O commands (list of ranked…links available that meet a minimum sufficient level of criteria QoS and power consumption; Paragraphs 0107 and 0122), and wherein selecting the path comprises: selecting the path based on a threshold of usage (list of ranked…links available that meet a minimum sufficient level of criteria QoS and power consumption; Paragraphs 0107 and 0122).
As per claim 15, Egner et al. discloses “The computing system of claim 11 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein the tracked power consumption and the tracked command response time associated with each path are weighted differently during the ranking of each of the plurality of paths (list of ranked…links available that meet a minimum sufficient level of criteria QoS and power consumption; Paragraphs 0107 and 0122).”
As per claim 16, Egner et al. discloses “The computing system of claim 15 (as disclosed by Mclean et al., Young, and Egner et al. above), wherein a weight of the tracked power consumption and a weight of the tracked command response time are each selectable by a user (override option available to a user; Paragraph 0087).”
RELEVENT ART CITED BY THE EXAMINER
The following prior art made of record and relied upon is citied to establish the level of skill in the applicant’s art and those arts considered reasonably pertinent to applicant’s disclosure. See MPEP 707.05(c).
The following references teach data transfer as they pertain to path rankings as it relates to loads:
U.S. PATENT NUMBERS:
5,790,529 – [Column 6, lines 28-45]
8,332,860 B1 – note the use of the word “tier” instead of “ranking” [Abstract; Column 11, lines 58-67 to Column 12, lines 1-2]
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Conclusions
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 Henry Yu whose telephone number is (571)272-9779. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday.
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/H.W.Y/Examiner, Art Unit 2181 February 2, 2026
/IDRISS N ALROBAYE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2181