Detailed Action
1. This Office Action is responsive to the Amendment filed 01/26/2026. Claims 1, 8-10, 14, 16-17 and 19 have been amended. Claim 7 has been cancelled. Claims 1-6 and 8-20 are presented for examination. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
2. 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.
3. Claims 1, 2, 6, 9, 11-15 and 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over KIM et al. (US 2015/0117258 A1), in view of Ferraro et al. (US 2013/0159863 A1), hereinafter “KIM” and “Ferraro” correspondingly.
4. As to claim 1, KIM teaches a method by a node in a cluster of nodes to support active node selection in the cluster, wherein each node in the cluster is communicatively coupled to a notice board, the method comprising:
publishing, the notice board (i.e., the notice board corresponds, in purpose and function, to the sharing storage), a record associated with the node that indicates a priority of the node and that indicates that the node is in a passive state (i.e., sharing storage may store metadata of the respective nodes) (KIM, Fig. 1 and [0041]);
determining, based on receiving notifications regarding one or more records on the notice board or a lack thereof, that there are no other available nodes in the cluster or that all of the other available nodes in the cluster are in the passive state and the node has a higher priority than all of the other available nodes in the cluster; in response to the determining, changing a state of the node from the passive state to an active state; and modifying the record associated with the node on the notice board to indicate that the node is in the active state (i.e., compare whether the specific node has the highest priority among the nodes … according to a result of the comparison, when the specific node has the highest priority, the SA change unit may change the standby status of the specific node to the active status) (KIM, [0104-0105]).
KIM does not explicitly teach “subscribing to the notice board to receive notifications regarding appearances of new records on the notice board, modifications to existing records on the notice board, and disappearances of records from the notice board”.
In an analogous art, Ferraro teaches “subscribing to the notice board to receive notifications regarding appearances of new records on the notice board, modifications to existing records on the notice board, and disappearances of records from the notice board” ([0233-0234]: notify the particular user with email notifications of all activity relating to an incident report of a particular type, the change to an incident report, and all message board postings or other activity (changes/audits) related to the incident report).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of KIM and Ferraro to achieve the claimed invention to enable the system to notify to the user and follow up on any changes of records, incidents, accidents, and the like.
5. As to claim 2, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: changing the state of the node from the active state to the passive state in response to a determination, based on a record on the notice board, that another node in the cluster is in the active state and has a higher priority than the node; and modifying the record associated with the node on the notice board to indicate that the node is in the passive state (i.e., compare the priorities of the respective collected active nodes and the priority of the specific node … when the specific node has the lowest priority, determine the assist flag information of the specific node to calculate the critical point of the specific node, when the critical point of the specific node is equal to or less than a predetermined minimum critical point, the AS changing unit converts the active status of the specific node to the standby status) (KIM, [0111-0113]).
6. As to claim 6, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the notice board is implemented using an eventually consistent data store (i.e., sharing storage 2 of Fig. 1) (KIM, [0040]).
7. As to claim 9, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the determination that all of the other available nodes in the cluster are in the passive state and the node has a higher priority than all of the other available nodes in the cluster is made based on receiving a notification from the notice board regarding records associated with all other nodes in the cluster without waiting for a predetermined timeout length (i.e., compare whether the specific node has the highest priority among the nodes in the standby status collected by the standby information collecting unit) (KIM [0104-0105]).
8. As to claim 11, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, based on a record on the notice board while the node is in the passive state, that another node in the cluster is in the active state, wherein the another node has a lower priority than the node; and remaining in the passive state despite the another node having a lower priority than the node (i.e., receive from the sharing storage 2 initial priority setting information of the specific node and information on information on the maximum number of nodes of which statuses are changeable to the active status previously set by a manger. For example, the manager intends to set at least 20 nodes among 100 nodes in a standby status and may set 80 or less to the maximum number of nodes of which statuses are changeable to the active status, hence, there might be a node in active state with a lower priority than a node in standby/passive state) (KIM, [0050-0051]).
9. As to claim 12, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, from an operator, a request to change the state of the node from the active state to the passive state; changing the state of the node from the active state to the passive state in response to receiving the request; and modifying the record associated with the node on the notice board to indicate that the node is in the passive state, wherein the record associated with the node on the notice board being modified to indicate that the node in the passive state causes a state of another node in the cluster that has a higher priority than the node to change from the passive state to the active state (i.e., may change the status of the specific node in the active status to the standby/passive status in a specific case which is a request to change the state of the node from an operator) (KIM, [0084]).
10. As to claim 13, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: changing the state of the node from the active state to the passive state in response to a determination, based on a record on the notice board, that another node in the cluster is in the passive state and has a higher priority than the node; and modifying the record associated with the node on the notice board to indicate that the node is in the passive state, wherein the record associated with the node on the notice board being modified to indicate that the node in the passive state causes a state of the another node to change from the passive state to the active state (i.e., compare the priorities of the respective collected active nodes and the priority of the specific node … when the specific node has the lowest priority, determine the assist flag information of the specific node to calculate the critical point of the specific node, when the critical point of the specific node is equal to or less than a predetermined minimum critical point, the AS changing unit converts the active status of the specific node to the standby status) (KIM, [0111-0113]).
11. As to claim 14, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the priority of the node is assigned by an operator (i.e., the manager intends to set at least 20 nodes among 100 nodes in a standby status and may set 80 or less to the maximum number of nodes of which statuses are changeable to the active status) (KIM, [0050-0051]).
12. As to claim 15, KIM teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: determining, based on a record on the notice board while the node is in the active state, that another node in the cluster is in the passive state, wherein the another node has a higher priority than the node; and remaining in the active state despite the another node having a higher priority than the node (i.e., the manager intends to set at least 20 nodes among 100 nodes in a standby status and may set 80 or less to the maximum number of nodes of which statuses are changeable to the active status, hence, there might be a node in passive state with a higher priority than a node in active state) (KIM, 0050-0051]).
13. As to claims 17-20, claims 17-20 are corresponding non-transitory machine-readable storage medium and computing device claims that recite similar limitations as method claims 1-2, and do not contain any additional limitations with respect to novelty and/or inventive steps; therefore, they are rejected under the same rationale.
14. Claims 3, 5 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over KIM-Ferraro, in view of MIYATA (US 2007/0286217 A1).
15. As to claim 3, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose “generating the priority of the node using a random number generator”.
In an analogous art, MIYATA teaches “generating the priority of the node using a random number generator” (i.e., a random priority level generated by a random number generator may be assigned to each of the GWs forming the redundant group) (MIYATA, [0083]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed invention to incorporate the feature of “generating the priority of the node using a random number generator”, as disclosed by MIYATA, into the teachings of KIM to allow the system to set the initial priority information of the node in the network.
16. As to claim 5, KIM-Ferraro-MIYATA teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the priority of the node also functions as an identifier of the node (i.e., since the random priority level generated by a random number generator is a unique number, hence, it can function as an assigned identifier of the node) (MIYATA, [0083]). The same motivation as of claim 3 is applied here.
17. As to claim 16, KIM-Ferraro-MIYATA teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the priority of the node is generated randomly (i.e., a random priority level generated by a random number generator may be assigned to each of the GWs forming the redundant group) (MIYATA, [0083]). The same motivation as of claim 3 is applied here.
18. Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over KIM-Ferraro, in view of Anderson et al. (US 20017/0220384 A1), hereinafter “Anderson”.
19. As to claim 4, KIM-Ferraro teaches the method of claim 1, but does not explicitly disclose “storing the priority of the node in a non-volatile memory of the node; and retrieving the priority of the node from the non-volatile memory of the node after a reboot of the node”.
In an analogous art, Anderson teaches “storing the priority of the node in a non-volatile memory of the node; and retrieving the priority of the node from the non-volatile memory of the node after a reboot of the node” (i.e., in response to determining that the computing device is in a cold boot, the processor may retrieve from the non-volatile memory previously stored priorities for the selected inactive processor cores) (Anderson, [0105]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed invention to incorporate the feature of “storing the priority of the node in a non-volatile memory of the node; and retrieving the priority of the node from the non-volatile memory of the node after a reboot of the node”, as disclosed by Anderson, into the teachings of KIM-Ferraro to allow the system to retrieve the previously stored priority assigned to the nodes in the network (Anderson, [0105]).
Allowable Subject Matter
20. Claims 8 and 10 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.
Response to Arguments
21. Applicant’s arguments as well as request for reconsideration filed on 01/26/2026 have been fully considered but they are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
22. Applicant's amendment (changing scope of the claims) 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.
23. Further references of interest are cited on Form PTO-892, which is an attachment to this Office Action.
24. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to QUANG N NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571) 272-3886. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s SPE, KAMAL B. DIVECHA, can be reached at (571) 272-5863. The fax phone number for the organization is (571) 273-8300.
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/QUANG N NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2441