Detailed Action
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . This is the initial office action based on the application filed on August 9th, 2024, which claim 1-20 have been presented for examination.
Status of Claims
2. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application, of which claims 1, 11 and 17 are in independent form and these claims (1-20) are subject to following rejection(s) and/or objection(s) set forth in the following Office Action below.
3. (A). Information Disclosure Statement (IDS): The information disclosure statements filed on 08/09/2024 comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98. They have been placed in the application file and the information referred to therein has been considered as to the merits.
(B). Priority: Effective filing date considered for the following office action is August 9th, 2024.
ALLOWABLE DEPENDENT CLAIMS
4. Claims 2, 12 and 18 are objected to as being dependent upon respective rejected base claims, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claims and any intervening claim(s).
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.
5. Claims 1, 3-4, 11, 13-14 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mackenzie Sweeney (US Patent Application Publication No. 2023/0195607 A1 herein after Sweeney) in view of Varnavas et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0156154 A1 herein after Varnavas).
Per claim 1:
Sweeney discloses:
A method (At least see [0004] Systems, apparatuses, and methods are described for an experimentation platform that selects a metric and/or a methodology for testing a digital and/or physical product) comprising:
receiving a request to generate a performance test associated with an application (At least see [0038] - receive a request to test and/or optimize a performance of a product), wherein the request specifies a performance characteristic associated with the application (At least see [0038] - one or more performance metrics based on the one or more parameters set forth in the request);
generating, based on the performance characteristic, the performance test (At least see [0038] - performance metric may be received in the request to test and/or optimize the performance of the product);
directing execution of the performance test to the application (At least see [0027] - A product 240 may comprise one or more applications such as a web-site, a call center application, a mobile application, an email application and/or a short-message-service application, and/or a model development environment; also see [0038] as indicated above [emphasis added]).
Sweeney sufficiently discloses the method as set forth above, but Sweeney does not explicitly disclose: generating, based on execution of the performance test, a performance metric indicative of the performance characteristic; and compiling the performance metric with one or more additional performance metrics associated with the application.
However, Varnavas disclose:
generating, based on execution of the performance test, a performance metric indicative of the performance characteristic (At least see [0101] - performance metrics detected by client devices … monitoring server may receive performance characteristics from client devices 508 and format the characteristics into data sets such as data sets with rows that correspond to performance characteristics of client devices); and
compiling the performance metric with one or more additional performance metrics associated with the application (At least see [0101] - s, data pre-processor 516 may receive data sets compiled by a monitoring server (not shown) from performance characteristics (e.g., performance metrics detected by client devices 508 as they access or connect to application 505 in remote experiences)).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Varnavas into Sweeney because Varnavas teaching would provide a dedicated one or more servers may be employed to perform performance monitoring, wherein performance monitoring may be performed using data collection, aggregation, analysis, management and reporting, for example by software, hardware; thus, performance monitoring may include one or more agents for performing monitoring, measurement and data collection activities on clients, servers (please see [0046]).
Per claim 3:
Varnavas also disclose:
generating a notification based on the performance metric (At least see [0096] - identify the component causing the issue, may log the identification (e.g. in a log, database, or other data structure), may transmit a notification to another device or provide an error notification to a user); and
providing the notification via a user interface (At least see [0154] - an anomaly was detected for the first time window and cause a user interface to be generated at a display of the client device indicating the detected anomaly).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Varnavas into Sweeney because Varnavas teaching would provide a dedicated one or more servers may be employed to perform performance monitoring, wherein performance monitoring may be performed using data collection, aggregation, analysis, management and reporting, for example by software, hardware; thus, performance monitoring may include one or more agents for performing monitoring, measurement and data collection activities on clients, servers (please see [0046]).
Per claim 4:
Sweeney discloses:
generating the notification, via the user interface, during generation of the performance test associated with the application (At least see [0035] - performance data may be visualized by and interacted with (e.g., via a GUI interface of a management module 210) by the experimenter).
Per claim 11:
Sweeney discloses:
A system (At least see [0004] Systems, apparatuses, and methods are described for an experimentation platform that selects a metric and/or a methodology for testing a digital and/or physical product), comprising:
processing circuitry (At least see [0023] -computing device 101 may include a processor); and
memory, accessible by the processing circuitry, the memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processing circuitry (At least see [0023] -[0023] As seen in FIG. 1, computing device 101 may include a processor 111, RAM 113, ROM 115, network interface 117, input/output interfaces 119 (e.g., keyboard, mouse, display, printer, etc.), and memory 121. Processor 111 may include one or more computer processing units (CPUs), graphical processing units (GPUs), and/or other processing units such as a processor adapted to perform computations required by one or more applications stored on the computing device), cause the processing circuitry to perform operations comprising:
remaining limitations in this independent claim are as similar as claim 1 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
Per claim 13:
Limitation rendered in this claim is as similar as claim 3 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
Per claim 14:
Limitation rendered in this claim is as similar as claim 4 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
Per claim 17:
Sweeney discloses:
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, comprising processor-executable routines that, when executed by a processor (At least see [0025] One or more aspects discussed herein may be embodied in computer-usable or readable data and/or computer-executable instructions, such as in one or more program modules, executed by one or more computers or other devices), cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
remaining limitations in this independent claim are as similar as claim 1 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
6. Claims 5-6, 7-10, 15-16 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mackenzie Sweeney (US Patent Application Publication No. 2023/0195607 A1 herein after Sweeney) in view of Varnavas et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0156154 A1 herein after Varnavas), and further in view of De Sousa Bispo et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. 2021/0311859 A1 herein after De Sousa Bispo).
Per claim 5:
Sweeney modified by Varnavas sufficiently discloses the method as set forth above, but Sweeney modified by Varnavas does not explicitly disclose: accessing a continuous integration (CI) /continuous deployment (CD) pipeline.
However, De Sousa Bispo discloses:
accessing a continuous integration (CI) /continuous deployment (CD) pipeline (At least see [0040] - performance testing automation may support continuous integration pipelines).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate De Sousa Bispo into Sweeney modified by Varnavas because local test environment may be used to debug the software application and/or identify performance bottlenecks, and the non-local environment may be used to ensure application compatibility in different environments; as such, executing the performance test in multiple test environments may ensure the reliability and compatibility of the software application in multiple environments, thereby improving system performance (please see [0015]).
Per claim 6:
De Sousa Bispo also discloses
CI/CD pipeline is configured to automatically generate requests based on a status of the application (At least see [0063] - orchestration server 405 may launch the performance test. In some examples, the orchestration server 405 may start a job (e.g., a continuous integration job, a job associated with an automation server, etc.) to launch the performance test. The performance platform 415 may execute the performance test, and the performance platform 415 may receive or collect results associated with the performance test).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate De Sousa Bispo into Sweeney modified by Varnavas because local test environment may be used to debug the software application and/or identify performance bottlenecks, and the non-local environment may be used to ensure application compatibility in different environments; as such, executing the performance test in multiple test environments may ensure the reliability and compatibility of the software application in multiple environments, thereby improving system performance (please see [0015]).
Per claim 7:
Sweeney modified by Varnavas sufficiently discloses the method as set forth above, but Sweeney modified by Varnavas does not explicitly disclose: updating the application based on the performance metric.
However, De Sousa Bispo discloses:
updating the application based on the performance metric (At least see [0028] - a software application is updated to include a new feature, the performance of the software application may be tested to identify performance bottlenecks).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate De Sousa Bispo into Sweeney modified by Varnavas because local test environment may be used to debug the software application and/or identify performance bottlenecks, and the non-local environment may be used to ensure application compatibility in different environments; as such, executing the performance test in multiple test environments may ensure the reliability and compatibility of the software application in multiple environments, thereby improving system performance (please see [0015]).
Per claim 8:
Sweeney modified by Varnavas sufficiently discloses the method as set forth above, but Sweeney modified by Varnavas does not explicitly disclose: receiving a request to run a live performance testing session of the application; identifying a specific performance characteristic to test during the live performance testing session; initiating the live performance testing session; and monitoring one or more performance metrics indicative of the specific performance characteristic.
However, De Sousa Bispo discloses:
receiving a request to run a live performance testing session of the application (At least see [0088] - input component 740 may identify a configuration file, where the test environment is determined for running the performance test at execution time based on the configuration file);
identifying a specific performance characteristic to test during the live performance testing session (At least see [0089] - local testing component 745 may support the testing of the software application at a user device to identify performance bottlenecks and/or software bugs);
initiating the live performance testing session (At least see [0086] - session component 750 may create a session for running the performance test and may spin up a set of machines for the session, where the set of machines includes at least the first test artifact and the second test artifact); and
monitoring one or more performance metrics indicative of the specific performance characteristic (At least see [0036] - orchestration server 205 may generate performance metrics based on the request information. In some cases, the performance metrics may include a number of errors, a number of successful requests, a measure of latency, an average response time, or the like).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate De Sousa Bispo into Sweeney modified by Varnavas because local test environment may be used to debug the software application and/or identify performance bottlenecks, and the non-local environment may be used to ensure application compatibility in different environments; as such, executing the performance test in multiple test environments may ensure the reliability and compatibility of the software application in multiple environments, thereby improving system performance (please see [0015]).
Per claim 9:
De Sousa Bispo also discloses
wherein the live performance testing session provides near-real time updates of the performance metrics (At least see [0062] - orchestration server 405 may retrieve the software application from a code repository and deploy the software application to the data store associated with performance tests. In some cases, the orchestration server 405 may determine, in real-time or pseudo real-time).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate De Sousa Bispo into Sweeney modified by Varnavas because local test environment may be used to debug the software application and/or identify performance bottlenecks, and the non-local environment may be used to ensure application compatibility in different environments; as such, executing the performance test in multiple test environments may ensure the reliability and compatibility of the software application in multiple environments, thereby improving system performance (please see [0015]).
Per claim 10:
Sweeney modified by Varnavas sufficiently discloses the method as set forth above, but Sweeney modified by Varnavas does not explicitly disclose: compiling the performance metric with one or more additional performance metrics associated with the application comprises generating a performance report.
However, De Sousa Bispo discloses:
compiling the performance metric with one or more additional performance metrics associated with the application comprises generating a performance report (At least see [0014] - performance test and orchestrate across different artifacts and/or environments to obtain a result set, where the result set may indicate one or more performance metrics associated with the performance test. In some cases, a performance metric may identify a performance bottleneck, alerting users to the bottleneck and thereby supporting the resolution of such performance bottleneck).
It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate De Sousa Bispo into Sweeney modified by Varnavas because local test environment may be used to debug the software application and/or identify performance bottlenecks, and the non-local environment may be used to ensure application compatibility in different environments; as such, executing the performance test in multiple test environments may ensure the reliability and compatibility of the software application in multiple environments, thereby improving system performance (please see [0015]).
Per claim 15:
Limitation rendered in this claim is as similar as claim 5 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
Per claim 16:
Limitation rendered in this claim is as similar as claim 6 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
Per claim 19:
Limitation rendered in this claim is as similar as claim 2 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
Per claim 20:
Limitation rendered in this claim is as similar as claim 2 above; and therefore, rejected based on same rational.
CONCLUSION
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZIAUL A. CHOWDHURY whose telephone number is (571)270-7750. The examiner can normally be reached on 9:30PM 6:30PM Monday -Friday.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Hyung S. Sough can be reached on 571-272-6799. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Status information for published applications may be obtained from Patent Public Search tool (for all users) – A link to the Patent Public Search Tool is available at www. Uspto.gov/PatentPublicSearch. To find a U.S. patent or U.S. patent application publication, open the Patent Public Search tool by selecting “Start search”. Type the U.S. patent or U.S. patent application publication number in the “Search” panel without any punctuation and followed by an”.pn.”.
Should you have questions on access to the system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/ZIAUL A CHOWDHURY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2192
01/27/2026
