DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The term “the lean network stack comprising a set of network communication components, the set of network communication components being just sufficient to establish and maintain a communication session” in claims 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, and 15 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “just sufficient” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. The claim does not identify which network communication components are required to establish and maintain the communication session, nor does it identify a boundary distinguishing a stack that is “just sufficient” from a stack containing additional components. The specification does not appear to provide an objective standard by which one of ordinary skill in the art could determine whether a particular set of network communication components satisfies the “just sufficient” limitation. Accordingly, the claims are indefinite.
All claims that are not specifically addressed are rejected due to a dependency.
Claims 3-5, 9-11, and 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which they depend, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which they depend.
Regarding Claims 3, 9, and 15, the claims state “the lean network communications stack comprises a plurality of network communication components, the plurality of network communication components being just sufficient to establish and maintain a communication session with the remote network accessible storage location.” However, the claims from which these claims depend (i.e., Claims 1, 7, and 13) state “the lean network stack comprising a set of network communication components, the set of network communication components being just sufficient to establish and maintain a communication session with the remote network accessible storage location” (i.e., replacing the phrase “a plurality” with “a set”). Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
All claims that are not specifically addressed are rejected due to a dependency.
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 1-3, 6-9, 12-15, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Spottswood et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2014/0372560), Jones et al. (U.S. Patent Number 9,182,808), and Li et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2019/0235853).
Regarding Claims 1, 7, and 13, Spottswood discloses a computer-implementable method (and a system including a processor [Figure 1, item 102], data bus [Figure 1, item 101], and non-transitory computer-readable medium [Figure 1, item 108] embodying computer program code, the non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus, the computer program code interacting with a plurality of computer operations and comprising instructions executable by the processor [paragraph 0026]) for performing a firmware management operation, comprising:
providing an information handling system (Figure 1, item 100) with a distributed basic input output system (BIOS) (Figure 1, item 114, paragraphs 0001 and 0013), the distributed BIOS including a plurality of BIOS components (Figure 1, items 122 and 116, paragraph 0013), first BIOS components of the plurality of BIOS components being stored within a flash memory (Figure 1, item 114, paragraph 0013; i.e., first BIOS components 122 [program elements that make up the boot/flash] may be stored in a portion of non-volatile memory 114, which may be a flash memory), second BIOS components of the plurality of BIOS components being stored within a non-volatile memory (Figure 1, item 114, paragraph 0013; i.e., second BIOS components 116 [program elements that make up the image] are stored within another portion of the non-volatile memory 114), the distributed BIOS being implemented to function with any of a plurality of processor environments, each of the plurality of processing environments implementing a respective processor architecture (paragraph 0011; i.e., the CPU 102 can include any type of microprocessor known in the art; every CPU inherently contains a processing architecture and therefore the distributed BIOS 114 can be implemented to function with any of a plurality of processor environments);
retrieving firmware components (Figure 3, item 308) from a remote network accessible storage location (Figure 3, item 304) using a network communication stack (paragraphs 0012 and 0016), the retrieved firmware components including the second BIOS components (paragraphs 0013-0017; i.e., the updated image is retrieved from the remote storage system and subsequently loaded into the image 116 located in memory 114), the network stack comprising a set of network communication components (paragraphs 0016-0017; i.e., the TCP/IP stack together with the distributed file system protocol being equivalent to the claimed “set of network communication components”; in addition, a TCP/IP networking stack contains four layers [the application layer, transport layer, internet layer, and network access/link layer]; these four layers can also be considered equivalent to the claimed “set of network communication components”), the set of network communication components being just sufficient (i.e., as explained in the § 112(b) rejection above, it is unclear as to what makes something “just sufficient” to establish and maintain a connection) to establish and maintain a communication session (Figure 4, item 402, paragraph 0020) with the remote network accessible storage location to locate and retrieve the firmware components from the remote network accessible storage location for restoration to a particular firmware storage location of the information handling system (Figure 4, item 408, paragraph 0021; i.e. the computer system 101 locates an updated firmware image 308 [see Figure 3] and subsequently retrieves that image so that is can be loaded [“restored”] into its system firmware 114 at firmware storage location 116 [Figure 1]);
storing the retrieved firmware components within the distributed BIOS (paragraphs 0017 and 0021; i.e., the firmware components 308 are stored and updated within the memory 114 which contains the BIOS); and
initializing the information handling system using the firmware components retrieved via the network communications stack (paragraphs 0001 and 0021; i.e., the computer 100 boots using the new firmware components 308).
Spottswood does not expressly disclose a lean network communication stack;
wherein the firmware components are stored within a boot partition of the distributed BIOS; and
the boot partition comprising a boot loader stored within a primary memory partition, the boot partition being implemented to receive, store, manage and provide access to the BIOS component of the distributed BIOS.
In the same field of endeavor (e.g., network communications), Jones teaches a lean network communication stack (Figure 2, item 216, Column 6, lines 7-43; i.e., a reduced-feature-set network stack).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined Jones’ teachings of network communications with the teachings of Spottswood, for the purpose of saving power by using only the minimum amount of resources needed to maintain and network connection.
Also in the same field of endeavor (e.g., computer booting techniques), Li teaches wherein the retrieved firmware components are stored within a boot partition (Figure 4, item 120d, paragraph 0032; i.e., the entirety of the memory shown in the figure is considered equivalent to the claimed “boot partition”) of the distributed BIOS (Figure 1, item 120, paragraphs 0030-0032; i.e., an system firmware update can be received/retrieved from an external host and stored within the boot partition 120d); and
the boot partition comprising a boot loader stored within a primary memory partition (Figure 4, item PTN0, paragraph 0021; i.e., it is the first/primary partition in the memory), the boot partition being implemented to receive, store, manage and provide access to the BIOS component (i.e., the received system firmware update) of the distributed BIOS (paragraphs 0021, 0027, 0030, and 0032; i.e., the boot partition receives the system firmware update, stores it within the partition PTN1-2, manages it by storing it a specific region of memory 120, and provides access to it by allowing the electronic device 100 to load it for booting).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined Li’s teachings of computer booting techniques with the teachings of Spottswood, for the purpose of flexibly using different blocks in each of the memory partitions without updating a bootloader of a boot partition, so as to achieve higher memory usage efficiency (see Li, paragraph 0007).
Regarding Claims 2, 8, and 14, Spottswood discloses wherein the firmware components are retrieved using a common internet file system recovery protocol (paragraph 0017).
Regarding Claims 3, 9, and 15, Spottswood and Jones teach wherein the lean (Jones, Figure 2, item 216, Column 6, lines 7-43; i.e., a reduced-feature-set network stack) network communications stack comprises a plurality of network communication components (Spottswood, paragraphs 0016-0017; i.e., the TCP/IP stack together with the distributed file system protocol being equivalent to the claimed “set of network communication components”; in addition, a TCP/IP networking stack contains four layers [the application layer, transport layer, internet layer, and network access/link layer]; these four layers can also be considered equivalent to the claimed “set of network communication components”), the plurality of network communication components being just sufficient (i.e., as explained in the § 112(b) rejection above, it is unclear as to what makes something “just sufficient” to establish and maintain a connection) to establish and maintain a communication session with the remote network accessible storage location (Spottswood, Figure 4, item 402, paragraph 0020).
Regarding Claims 6, 12, and 18, Spottswood discloses wherein the retrieving is performed via a firmware recovery operation, the firmware recovery operation securely locating, retrieving, and restoring the firmware components stored in the remote, network-accessible storage location to the boot partition (BP) of the distributed BIOS, the BP being located in an associated storage device (Figure 1, item 114, paragraph 0013) of the information handling system (paragraphs 0012-0013; i.e., the system securely locates, retrieves, and restores the firmware 308 into the boot partition 116, which is located within the storage device 114 [Figure 1]).
Spottswood does not expressly disclose wherein the associated storage device 114 is a Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) storage device (however does state that it is a non-volatile memory). The examiner takes Official Notice that NVMe storage devices were well known in the art and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have used them for the purpose of providing faster speed and lower latency. This is evidenced by the following references that each teach a Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) storage device that comprises a boot partition: Ganesan et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2018/0285126 (Figure 1), Grobelny et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2022/0350615) (Figure 1), and Sasidharan et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2019/0339888) (Figure 1).
Regarding Claim 19, Spottswood discloses wherein the computer executable instructions are deployable to a client system from a server system at a remote location (paragraph 0017; i.e., a client-server relationship is described; the computer executable instructions would therefore be “deployable” to the client [computer 100 in this context]).
Regarding Claim 20, Spottswood discloses wherein the computer executable instructions are provided by a service provider to a user on an on-demand basis (paragraph 0024; i.e., a user may be operating the computer 100 on demand by a service provider [the provider of the computer and network]).
Claims 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Spottswood, Jones, and Li as applied to claim 3 above, and further in view of Righi et al. (U.S. Patent Number 10,754,661).
Regarding Claims 4, 10, and 16, Spottswood, Jones, and Li do not expressly disclose wherein the plurality of network communication components includes an optimized Telecommunications Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network protocol stack, a lean secure network protocol (SNP) driver and a lean universal network driver interface (UNDI) network device driver.
In the same field of endeavor (e.g., network communications), Righi teaches wherein the plurality of network communication components includes an optimized Telecommunications Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network protocol stack (Figure 1, item 108), a lean secure network protocol (SNP) driver (Figure 1, item 120), and a lean universal network driver interface (UNDI) network device driver (Figure 1, item 118, Column 3, line 55 - Column 4, line 17).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have combined Righi’s teachings of network communications with the teachings of Spottswood, Jones, and Li, for the purpose of ensuring the device is capable of communicating with a wider variety of network devices.
Regarding Claims 5, 11, and 17, Spottswood discloses a common internet file system (CIFS) recovery module (paragraph 0017).
Spottswood, Jones, and Li do not expressly disclose wherein the plurality of network communication components includes a managed network protocol (MNP) driver.
In the same field of endeavor, Righi teaches wherein the plurality of network communication components includes a managed network protocol (MNP) driver (Figure 1, item 122, Column 3, line 55 - Column 4, line 17).
The motivation discussed above with regards to Claim 4 applies equally as well to Claims 5, 11, and 17.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure because each reference discloses a method for retrieving firmware components from a remote network accessible storage.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 5/11/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding Claims 1, 7, and 13, Applicant argues “nowhere within Spottswood, taken alone or in combination is there any disclosure or suggestion of providing an information handling system with a distributed basic input output system (BIOS), the distributed BIOS including a plurality of BIOS components, first BIOS components of the plurality of BIOS components being stored within a flash memory, second BIOS components of the plurality of BIOS components being stored within a non-volatile memory, the distributed BIOS being implemented to function with any of a plurality of processor environments, each of the plurality of processing environments implementing a respective processor architecture, as required by claims 1, 7 and 13.” Response, page 8. The examiner disagrees. Contrary to Applicant’s argument, Spottswood discloses providing an information handling system (Figure 1, item 100) with a distributed basic input output system (BIOS) (Figure 1, item 114, paragraphs 0001 and 0013), the distributed BIOS including a plurality of BIOS components (Figure 1, items 122 and 116, paragraph 0013), first BIOS components of the plurality of BIOS components being stored within a flash memory (Figure 1, item 114, paragraph 0013; i.e., first BIOS components 122 [program elements that make up the boot/flash] may be stored in a portion of non-volatile memory 114, which may be a flash memory), second BIOS components of the plurality of BIOS components being stored within a non-volatile memory (Figure 1, item 114, paragraph 0013; i.e., second BIOS components 116 [program elements that make up the image] are stored within another portion of the non-volatile memory 114), the distributed BIOS being implemented to function with any of a plurality of processor environments, each of the plurality of processing environments implementing a respective processor architecture (paragraph 0011; i.e., the CPU 102 can include any type of microprocessor known in the art; every CPU inherently contains a processing architecture and therefore the distributed BIOS 114 can be implemented to function with any of a plurality of processor environments). Accordingly, Applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
Regarding Claims 1, 7, and 13, Applicant argues “nowhere within Li, taken alone or in combination is there any disclosure or suggestion of retrieving firmware components from a remote network accessible storage location using a lean network communication stack, the retrieved firmware components including the second BIOS components, the lean network stack comprising a set of network communication components, the set of network communication components being just sufficient to establish and maintain a communication session with the remote network accessible storage location to locate and retrieve the firmware components from the remote network accessible storage location for restoration to a particular firmware storage location of the information handling system, as required by claims 1, 7 and 13.” Response, page 9. However, the combination of Spottswood with Jones teaches the argued features (Li was not used in the § 103 rejection to teach the argued features). Specifically, Spottswood discloses retrieving firmware components (Figure 3, item 308) from a remote network accessible storage location (Figure 3, item 304) using a network communication stack (paragraphs 0012 and 0016), the retrieved firmware components including the second BIOS components (paragraphs 0013-0017; i.e., the updated image is retrieved from the remote storage system and subsequently loaded into the image 116 located in memory 114), the network stack comprising a set of network communication components (paragraphs 0016-0017; i.e., the TCP/IP stack together with the distributed file system protocol being equivalent to the claimed “set of network communication components”; in addition, a TCP/IP networking stack contains four layers [the application layer, transport layer, internet layer, and network access/link layer]; these four layers can also be considered equivalent to the claimed “set of network communication components”), the set of network communication components being just sufficient (i.e., as explained in the § 112(b) rejection above, it is unclear as to what makes something “just sufficient” to establish and maintain a connection) to establish and maintain a communication session (Figure 4, item 402, paragraph 0020) with the remote network accessible storage location to locate and retrieve the firmware components from the remote network accessible storage location for restoration to a particular firmware storage location of the information handling system (Figure 4, item 408, paragraph 0021; i.e. the computer system 101 locates an updated firmware image 308 [see Figure 3] and subsequently retrieves that image so that is can be loaded [“restored”] into its system firmware 114 at firmware storage location 116 [Figure 1]). Jones teaches a lean network communication stack (Figure 2, item 216, Column 6, lines 7-43). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have combined the two references for the reasons given in the previous Office action. Accordingly, Applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
Regarding Claims 6, 12, and 18, Applicant argues “it is respectfully requested that the Examiner cite a reference or provide an affidavit in support of the position that a firmware recovery operation securely locating, retrieving, and restoring the firmware components stored in the remote, network-accessible storage location to a boot partition (BP) located in an associated Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) storage device of the information handling system is well known in accordance with M.P.E.P. § 2144.03 and 37 C.F.F. 1.104(d)(2).” Response, pages 9-10. This argument has already been addressed in the Final Office action dated 3/11/26 (see page 8). Accordingly, Applicant is referred to that discussion.
Therefore, the claims stand as previously rejected.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to FAISAL M ZAMAN, ESQ. whose telephone number is (571)272-6495. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8 am - 5 pm, alternate Fridays.
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/FAISAL M ZAMAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2175
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