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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the communication filed on 07/31/2024.
Claims 1-20 are under examination.
The Information Disclosure Statements filed on 10/16/2024, 08/27/2025 and 10/31/2025 have been entered and considered.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to because drawings filed on 07/31/2024 are low quality blurry images. Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the claims at issue are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP §§ 706.02(l)(1) - 706.02(l)(3) for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/forms/. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
Claims 1-7 and 19-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 5-9 of copending Application No. 18770123. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the subject matter claimed in the instant application is fully disclosed in the copending Application and is covered by the copending Application since the patent and the application are claiming common subject matter, as follows: One or more non-transitory computer readable media comprising instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of operations for implementing a cloud environment, comprising: implementing a first set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the first set of tenancies are between a cloud provider and the cloud provider itself; implementing a second set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the second set of tenancies are between a cloud reseller and the cloud provider; and implementing a third set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the third set of tenancies are between a respective end customer and the cloud reseller.
Claims 8-18 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 5-9 of copending Application No. 18770123 in view of Kuzkin et al. (US 2018/0232786 A1). Claims 8-18 recites addition limitations which are disclosed by Kuzkin et al. (US 2018/0232786 A1) and before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of copending Application No. 18770123 with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter because the claim(s) 1-20 as a whole, considering all claim elements both individually and in combination, do not amount to significantly more than an abstract idea. The claim(s) 1-20 is/are directed to the abstract idea of the management of usage data of services. The claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more than the judicial exception itself. Claims 1-20 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1:
Regarding Step 1 of the Subject Matter Eligibility Test for Products and Processes (from the January 2019 §101 Examination Guidelines), claims 1-18 are directed to a computer readable media, claim 19 is directed to a system, and claim 20 is directed to a method. And all the claims recite a series of steps and, therefore the claims are viewed as falling in statutory categories
Step 2A Prong 1:
The claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) a human activities/business process. Specifically, the independent claims 1,19, and 20 recite the limitation of implementing tenancies between provider, customer and reseller. Under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the human activities/business relations (organizing business relation information) but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting a processor, nothing in the claim precludes the implementing steps from practically being performed in the basic human activities/business relations. Therefore, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A Prong 2:
Independent claims 1, 19 and 20 recite the following additional elements: “cloud environment”, “cloud provider”, “cloud reseller”, “system”, “hardware processor” and “non-transitory computer readable medium”. The additional elements are recited as plurality of computer components. Therefore, these claims are directed to an abstract idea and the judicial exception does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Claims 1-20 recite the additional element “subscription”, “tenancy”, “billing service”, “cost information”, “pricing information”, “pricing adjustments”. The addition elements either common business activity element or can be implemented as a generic computer performing functions of processing and receiving data.
The dependent claims recite elements that narrow the metes and bounds of the abstract idea but do not provide “something more”. The dependent claims do not remedy these deficiencies.
Therefore, based on the above analysis as conducted based on the Guidance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office the claims are viewed as a court recognized abstract idea, are viewed as a judicial exception, does not integrate the claims into a practical application, and does not provide an inventive concept, therefore the claims are ineligible.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 of this title, 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 ** are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Srivastava et al. (US 10,496,306 B1), Agarwal et al. (US 2023/0328003 A1) and Kuzkin et al. (US 2018/0232786 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Srivastava et al. discloses One or more non-transitory computer readable media comprising instructions which, when executed by one or more hardware processors, cause performance of operations for implementing a cloud environment, comprising: implementing a first set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the first set of tenancies are between a cloud provider and the cloud provider itself [col. 3, lines 29-32, “Cloud services include various hardware and software resources that are hosted by a provider of these resources for use by others (referred to as “customers,” “subscribers,” or “tenants”)”, col. 5, line 60-col. 6, line 4, “the data center operator may be a cloud services provider, and may be leasing hardware and/or software resources to customers or tenants. In some examples, a customer or tenant can itself be a cloud services provider… the operator of the data center 104 may use the resources of the data center 104 partially or entirely for the operator's own uses”].
Srivastava et al. doe not explicitly disclose implementing a second set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the second set of tenancies are between a cloud reseller and the cloud provider;
However, Agarwal et al. teaches implementing a second set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the second set of tenancies are between a cloud reseller and the cloud provider [par. 0001, Cloud service providers are important entities to a variety of different customers, wherein the customers may use the cloud service providers to provide Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs), networking services and subscriptions, par. 0012, “Seller of record 130 may be a distributor associated with cloud service provider 120, a reseller associated with cloud service provider 120, or may comprise a branch of cloud service provider 120 itself” (customer, reseller and cloud service provider)].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Agarwal et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. with the motivation to provide centralized management for a customer organization to select desired sellers of record for services across cloud service providers as taught by Agarwal et al. [Agarwal et al.: par. 0003].
They do not explicitly disclose implementing a third set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the third set of tenancies are between a respective end customer and the cloud reseller.
However, Kuzkin et al. teaches implementing a third set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the third set of tenancies are between a respective end customer and the cloud reseller [par. 0072, “the third reseller 110 may include a tenant subscribing to services from the marketplace broker 128, wherein the tenant operates to use the services. It will be further appreciated that the end customer 112 may be an end user of the tenant (e.g. an employee end user of a company tenant that has subscribed to the services), or an end user of a reseller type entity (e.g. a direct consumer of integrated software services provided by reseller 110)”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 2, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses implementing a fourth set of one or more tenancies, wherein subscriptions of the fourth set of tenancies are between a cloud reseller and the cloud reseller itself [par. 0072, “It will be appreciated that the second reseller 108 may include a sub-reseller, wherein the sub-reseller operates to further resell the services from first reseller 106”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 3, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Srivastava et al. further teaches wherein parties to subscriptions are determined based at least in part on a subscription metadata field within an accounts service [col. 4, lines 3-7, “a cloud services provider allocates to a tenant a set of resources, for which the tenant subscribes for a pre-determined period of time. From the point of view of the tenant, the resources can be organized into functional entities, such as user accounts”, col. 9, lines 23-27, “ a contract can define the fee, the subscription period, the use to which Tenant-0 102 can put the storage allocation 110, and/or the services to be provided by the data center 104 in exchange for the fee, among other things”].
Regarding claim 4, the rejection of claim 3 is incorporated.
Srivastava et al. further teaches the operations further comprise: enforcing permissions to resources within the first set of tenancies, or the second set of tenancies, or the third set of tenancies, based at least in part on the value of the subscription metadata field within the accounts service [col. 1, lines 50-52, “where the data center enables users associated with the tenant to use the set of computing resources during a subscription period”, col. 9, lines 23-27, “a contract can define the fee, the subscription period, the use to which Tenant-0 102 can put the storage allocation 110, and/or the services to be provided by the data center 104 in exchange for the fee, among other things”].
Regarding claim 5, the rejection of claim 4 is incorporated.
Agarwal et al. further teaches the subscription between the cloud reseller and the cloud provider indicates that resource usage associated with the second set of tenancies is billed from the cloud provider to the cloud reseller [par. 0012, “Seller of record 130 may be a distributor associated with cloud service provider 120, a reseller associated with cloud service provider 120, or may comprise a branch of cloud service provider 120 itself”, par. 0017, “Seller of record 132 can then be responsible for providing any billing information to the intermediary seller of record between cloud service provider 121 and seller of record 132”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Agarwal et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. with the motivation to provide centralized management for a customer organization to select desired sellers of record for services across cloud service providers as taught by Agarwal et al. [Agarwal et al.: par. 0003].
Regarding claim 6, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the operations further comprise: receiving, at a subscription service associated with the cloud provider, a request to create a tenancy associated with a particular end customer; creating a particular tenancy associated with the particular end customer [par. 0072, “the third reseller 110 may include a tenant subscribing to services from the marketplace broker 128, wherein the tenant operates to use the services. It will be further appreciated that the end customer 112 may be an end user of the tenant (e.g. an employee end user of a company tenant that has subscribed to the services), or an end user of a reseller type entity (e.g. a direct consumer of integrated software services provided by reseller 110)”]; and storing subscription metadata that indicates a subscription relationship between the cloud reseller and the particular end customer [par. 0018, “maintaining records of the contracts and subscriptions for each service vendor”, par. 0021, “reporting attributes of a provisioning operation to the transaction mediator, storing the data in the service usage database, requesting the service usage report for reconciliation with the service vendor…”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 7, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Agarwal et al. further teaches the operations further comprise: executing a tenancy creation workflow to create a tenancy of the second set of tenancies as part of a region build process; and creating a subscription associated with the tenancy [par. 0012, “Seller of record 130 may be a distributor associated with cloud service provider 120, a reseller associated with cloud service provider 120, or may comprise a branch of cloud service provider 120 itself”, par. 0044, “generate a list of one or more suggested sellers of record for a customer organization. The list of one or more sellers of record can be selected from a set of seller or record based on a variety of factors. The factors may include the advertised costs associated with the sellers of record, the locations or geographic regions supported by sellers of record or the associated cloud service providers”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Agarwal et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. with the motivation to provide centralized management for a customer organization to select desired sellers of record for services across cloud service providers as taught by Agarwal et al. [Agarwal et al.: par. 0003].
Regarding claim 8, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses creating the subscription comprises: storing subscription metadata that indicates a subscription relationship between the cloud reseller and the cloud provider; and storing billing metadata that references pricing information associated with the subscription [par. 0018, “maintaining records of the contracts and subscriptions for each service vendor”, par. 0021, “reporting attributes of a provisioning operation to the transaction mediator, storing the data in the service usage database, requesting the service usage report for reconciliation with the service vendor…”, par. 0072, “the third reseller 110 may include a tenant subscribing to services from the marketplace broker 128, wherein the tenant operates to use the services. It will be further appreciated that the end customer 112 may be an end user of the tenant (e.g. an employee end user of a company tenant that has subscribed to the services), or an end user of a reseller type entity (e.g. a direct consumer of integrated software services provided by reseller 110)”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 9, the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the subscription is associated with one or more of: a) a product; b) commits; c) billing model; and d) subscription state [par. 0018, “the ISV contract catalog device 800 and hierarchical partner contract catalogue 126 may be combined as a product catalogue (not shown). In at least one embodiment of the present disclosure, the product catalogue may include at least one database with products including vendors' services with prices”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 10, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the operations further comprise receiving, at a billing service, usage information and cost information; and based at least in part on the usage information and the cost information, calculating charges associated with the subscription for a period of time associated with the usage information. [par. 0068, “the cloud broker 104 is configured to enable a partner to capture and bill usage of subscriber (e.g. end customers 112), while marketplace broker 128 may operate to bill the partner for usage of the connector 138”, par. 0078, “a billing period costs 220 is calculated at the end of each billing period, based on the summation of the plurality of costs incurred by the subscriber”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 11, the rejection of claim 10 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the operations further comprise receiving, at a billing service, usage information and cost information; and based at least in part on the usage information and the cost information, calculating charges associated with the subscription for a period of time associated with the usage information [par. 0068, “the subscriber's costs may include, the subscriber costs 210a, the subscriber costs 212a, the subscriber costs 214a, subscriber costs 216a (including the transition to a downgrade). It will be appreciated that the billing period 220a's costs is a summation of all the individual services costs incurred by the subscriber” (costs for different services)].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 12, the rejection of claim 11 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the billing service is associated with the cloud provider and the cost information is received from a subscription pricing service associated with the cloud provider, and the operations further comprise: prior to receiving the cost information at the billing service, providing the cost information to the subscription pricing service by a user or service associated with the cloud reseller [par. 0049, “the service vendor(s) 102 may transmit billing rules to other entities in the system”, par. 0052, “he resellers is configured to use their own billing and pricing schemes, such that each of the end customers 112 may receive different pricing and billing terms even if they subscribe to the same services from the service vendor(s) 102”, par. 0061, billing service, par. 0073, “a billing period costs 220 is calculated at the end of each billing period, based on the summation of the plurality of costs incurred by the subscriber”, par. 0092, invoicing based on billing rules/pricing model and usage data].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 13, the rejection of claim 12 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the cost information is accessible to the billing service and the subscription pricing service, wherein the cost information is inaccessible to users associated with the cloud provider [par. 0020, “costs are calculated for the each of the service vendor, the cloud broker, the resellers, and a consolidated invoice is generated for end customer(s)” (cost information of reseller is inaccessible to end user), par. 0056, contract between different entities].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 14, the rejection of claim 10 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the usage information comprises resource usage metrics related to a particular subscription [par. 0020, “service vendor(s) 102a (Office 365®) may be configured to monitor the compute resource usage caused by a subscriber's use of the service vendor(s) 102a's service. It will be appreciated that the compute resources can include at least one metered metric selected from a group consisting of one or more compute resources used on a per time basis…”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 15, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses receiving, at a subscription pricing service controlled by the cloud provider, a request to manage reseller pricing information associated with services offered by reseller to end customers [par. 0052, “each of the resellers is configured to use their own billing and pricing schemes, such that each of the end customers 112 may receive different pricing and billing terms even if they subscribe to the same services from the service vendor(s) 102”]; wherein users associated with the cloud provider are unable to access the reseller pricing information, and users associated with the cloud reseller can access the reseller pricing information; and creating, for a tenancy of the third set of tenancies, a subscription between the cloud reseller and a particular end customer, wherein the subscription is associated with the reseller pricing information [par. 0020, “costs are calculated for the each of the service vendor, the cloud broker, the resellers, and a consolidated invoice is generated for end customer(s)” (cost information of reseller is inaccessible to end user), par. 0056, contract between different entities].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 16, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses storing a set of one or more pricing rules associated with the reseller pricing information, wherein the pricing rules comprise: a mapping between one or more products and one or more eligibility criteria [par. 0100, “ISV contract catalogue device 800 inherits the service provider billing rules and service plans database 124. In at least one embodiment of the present disclosure the ISV contract catalog device 800 and hierarchical partner contract catalogue 126 may be combined as a product catalogue (not shown). In at least one embodiment of the present disclosure, the product catalogue may include at least one database with products including vendors' services with prices (set by vendor, set for partner, resellers etc.)”]; and one or more pricing adjustment identifiers that identify one or more pricing adjustments to be applied to a subscription if the one or more eligibility criteria are met; and monitoring events to determine whether the one or more eligibility criteria have been met [par. 0114, “there are several types of discounts: volume discount (with respect to subscriptions by units and where volume is a number of units; and with respect to pay-as-you-go subscriptions, volume is directly defined as a volume of purchased resource such as, memory, network bandwidth, and other computer resources to name a few non-liming examples). It will also be appreciated that discounts can be implemented based on the period of subscription renewal”, par. 0115, “if a subscriber during a year period purchases the amount of resource subscriptions above some threshold, a special discount can be implemented”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 17, the rejection of claim 16 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses the one or more pricing adjustments are associated with one or more of the following product attributes: a) discount group; b) product category; and c) product identifier [par. 0114, “there are several types of discounts: volume discount (with respect to subscriptions by units and where volume is a number of units; and with respect to pay-as-you-go subscriptions, volume is directly defined as a volume of purchased resource such as, memory, network bandwidth, and other computer resources to name a few non-liming examples). It will also be appreciated that discounts can be implemented based on the period of subscription renewal”, par. 0115, “if a subscriber during a year period purchases the amount of resource subscriptions above some threshold, a special discount can be implemented”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 18, the rejection of claim 16 is incorporated.
Kuzkin et al. further discloses determining that the one or more eligibility criteria have been met for a pricing adjustment to be applied to the tenancy; and applying the pricing adjustment to the subscription between the cloud reseller and the end customer for the tenancy [par. 0114, “there are several types of discounts: volume discount (with respect to subscriptions by units and where volume is a number of units; and with respect to pay-as-you-go subscriptions, volume is directly defined as a volume of purchased resource such as, memory, network bandwidth, and other computer resources to name a few non-liming examples). It will also be appreciated that discounts can be implemented based on the period of subscription renewal”, par. 0115, “if a subscriber during a year period purchases the amount of resource subscriptions above some threshold, a special discount can be implemented”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Kuzkin et al. into the teaching of Srivastava et al. and Agarwal et al. with the motivation for matching revenue streams in a cloud service broker platform includes service vendors, a cloud broker, resellers at different hierarchical levels as taught by Kuzkin et al. [Kuzkin et al.: par. 0008].
Regarding claim 19, it recites limitations like claim 1. The reason for the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 20, it recites limitations like claim 1. The reason for the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicant’s disclosure:
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/JASON CHIANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2431