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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on March 30, 2026, has been entered.
Remarks
Examiner acknowledges applicants’ reply dated March 30, 2026, including arguments and amendments.
Claims 1 – 7, 9, and 11 – 20 are currently pending, of which claims 1, 9, and 17 are independent.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 – 4, 6 and 7 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. The prior art does not adequately disclose “read timestamps” as they are used in the instant invention
Claims 9 and 11 – 16 are allowed. The prior art does not adequately disclose: “obtaining, from a cache associated with the key-value store, a read timestamp associated with the key; … determining that the upper bound write attempt timestamp is after the read timestamp; [or] determining, based on the upper bound write attempt timestamp being after the read time stamp, that a cache associated with the key-value store stores a stale value of the key,” as specifically recited in claim 9.
Claims 17 – 20 are allowed. The prior art does not disclose the generation of an upper bound write attempt timestamp as recited in the claims.
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.
Claims 1 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over McConnell et al., U.S. Pat. No. 10,216,631 (hereafter, “McConnell”), in view of Chandrasekaran et al., U.S. PG-Pub. No. 2024/0069913 (hereafter, “Chandrasekaran”).
As to Claim 1, McConnell discloses: a method of reading a value of a key, the method comprising:
receiving, from a client, a read request for the value of the key (col. 4, lines 41 – 47, referring to a user sending a request to query a database);
obtaining, for every key in a key-value store, an upper bound write attempt timestamp (col. 6, lines 26 – 33, referring to the determination of a database threshold, based on the age of the stored data; and Fig. 1, described at col. 3, line 66 through col. 4, line 11, showing environment 100, including database 108, which is described as being a distributed database);
determining, based on the upper bound write attempt timestamp associated with the key, whether a cache associated with the key-value store stores a stale value of the key (col. 5, lines 1 – 10, referring to the system determining whether the cache associated with the query is expired, stale or valid); and
responsive to determining that the cache stores a stale value of the key, retrieving the value of the key from the key-value store (col. 5, lines 24 – 35, referring to reading query data from the database in response to a determination that the cache is expired).
McConnell does not appear to explicitly disclose: the timestamp being generated by a server and indicating a most recent write attempt.
Chandrasekaran discloses: a timestamp being generated by a server and indicating a most recent write attempt ([0065], “The Authorization Failure on Microcode Update Component field 992 may include a bit that indicates whether an authentication failure occurred on some portion of the microcode update after another portion of the microcode update had already been committed and the Revision ID of the microcode had been updated on the most recent attempt to update the microcode (e.g., via a write to the Update Trigger register 116).”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in this art before the effective filing date of the invention, having the teachings of McConnell and Chandrasekaran before them, to have modified the timestamp obtaining step from McConnell with the update detection from Chandrasekaran. Such a modification would have been obvious because such a detection could suggest a failure of the database system, as suggested by McConnell at col. 2, line 61 through col. 3, line 10.
As to Claim 5, McConnell, as modified, discloses: the method of claim 1, further comprising:
receiving, from the client, a write request for a new value of the key and a write attempt timestamp associated with the write request; updating the server with the key and the write attempt timestamp; and updating the key-value store with the key and the new value (McConnell, col. 5, lines 24 – 35, referring to the primary storage database performing updating write operations to save the data received in response to determining that the cache had contained expired data).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection relies on a new combination of references.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NIRAV K KHAKHAR whose telephone number is (571)270-1004. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Tony Mahmoudi can be reached at (571) 272-4078. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NIRAV K KHAKHAR/ Examiner, Art Unit 2163
/TONY MAHMOUDI/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2163
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