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 .
Claims 1-30 have been submitted for examination and are pending further prosecution by the United States Patent & Trademark Office.
Allowable Subject Matter
With respect to independent claim 1, the prior art of record does not teach or suggest, either solely or in combination, the limitation "for each consumer user using the application, performing application upgrade operations comprising:" in conjunction with the limitations "executing an upgrade command for each service of the set of services to transition to the new version; monitoring a health status and version status of each service; and confirming the application upgrade after each service of the set of services are verified to be healthy and on the new version." when considered in combination with the other limitations of claim 1.
With respect to independent claim 11, the prior art of record does not teach or suggest, either solely or in combination, the limitation "for each consumer user using the application, performing application upgrade operations comprising:" in conjunction with the limitations "executing an upgrade command for each service of the set of services to transition to the new version; monitoring a health status and version status of each service; and confirming the application upgrade after each service of the set of services are verified to be healthy and on the new version." when considered in combination with the other limitations of claim 11.
With respect to independent claim 21, the prior art of record does not teach or suggest, either solely or in combination, the limitation "for each consumer user using the application, performing application upgrade operations comprising:" in conjunction with the limitations "executing an upgrade command for each service of the set of services to transition to the new version; monitoring a health status and version status of each service; and confirming the application upgrade after each service of the set of services are verified to be healthy and on the new version." when considered in combination with the other limitations of claim 21.
Note, however, that claims 1-30 are rejected under 35 USC § 112 as described below.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to for improper indentation as the determining, executing, monitoring and confirming limitations are not indented under the limitation "for each consumer user using the application, performing application upgrade operations comprising:". It is suggested Applicants indent the forgoing limitations to ensure each application upgrade operation is understood to occur for each consumer user using the application.
Analogous claims 11 and 21 are also objected to for improper indentation.
The following claims are objected to for informalities. It is suggested Applicants amend the claims as follows:
4. The machine-implemented method of claim 1, wherein monitoring the health status of each service comprises:
14. The system of claim 11, wherein monitoring the health status of each service comprises:
24. The machine-storage medium of claim 21, wherein monitoring the health status of each service comprises:
Claims 2-10, 12-20 and 22-30 are additionally objected to due to their dependence on objected parent claim(s).
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 1-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "receiving a new version for an application provided by a provider user;". It's unclear to what the new version pertains to in the limitation. For example, does the new version pertain to a new version of a service received for an application, or is the new version associated with the application itself? In the specification, paragraphs [0016][0137][0203] repeat the same text without shining a light on how the limitation should be interpreted.
Examiner also notes that, in dependent claim 9, the limitation "wherein the application upgrade is performed as part of a release directive issued to begin deploying the new version of the application." associates the new version with the application itself. To reconcile claim 1 with claim 9, it is suggested applicants amend claim 1 to recite --receiving a new version of [[for]] an application provided by a provider user;--.
The same amendment should be applied to analogous claims 11 and 21.
Claims 11 and 21 recite the same limitation and, therefore, are rejected for the forgoing reasons.
Dependent claims 2-10, 12-20 and 22-30 inherit the deficiency of their respective base claims and, therefore, are also rejected.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. US 20200241865 A1 discloses a method for performing pre-release, version specific testing to validate application versions. US 20210255847 A1 discloses a method and system for selectively updating application services based on differences between previous deployment versions and current component versions of the application services. US 20190340059 A1 discloses a method and system for mitigating a fault in an information service comprised of multiple microservices. US 20220206782 A1 discloses a method and system for hot upgrading a sequence of microservices in a cloud computing environment. US 20160162286 A1 discloses a method and system for managing user access to alternative versions of a particular function of a software product from within a current version of the software product. US 9459858 B2 discloses a method and system for selectively hotpatching a selection of processes of a running instance of an application that match a selection criteria. US 9557983 B1 discloses a method for executing groups of commands to automatically upgrade software features. US 20160371071 A1 discloses a method and system for providing an infrastructure for account-based software upgrades in a multi-tenant ecosystem. US 20190227781 A1 discloses a method and system for carrying out live migration of multi-node applications in cloud-computing facilities. WO 2025202992 A1 discloses a method and system for migrating users to new versions of microservices. EP 3502875 A1 discloses a method and system for upgrading a service or microservice and monitoring the actions of updated services. EP 4270179 A1 discloses a method and system for quantifying the risk of releasing specific versions of micro-services to target environments. The NPL document "Middleware for Customizable Multi-staged Dynamic Upgrades of Multi-tenant SaaS Applications" presents a design and implementation of a SaaS middleware that enables run-time adaptation by means of gradual tenant-by-tenant activation of upgrades.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GEOFFREY R ST LEGER whose telephone number is (571)270-7720. The examiner can normally be reached M-F (IFP) ~9:00-5:00 pm.
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/GEOFFREY R ST LEGER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2192