DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the enablement requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and/or use the invention without undue experimentation. Claim 10 recites notifying the host of the performance degradation within less than 100 microseconds. The breadth of the claim encompasses the time value “0” which would mean that the exact moment performance degradation is detected, the host is notified (with no delay). With respect to the breadth of a claim, the relevant concern is whether the scope of enablement provided to one skilled in the art by the disclosure is commensurate with the scope of protection sought by the claims. The Federal Circuit, citing McRO, provided guidance on the application of enablement to genus claims, holding that "[a]lthough a specification does not need to describe how to make and use every possible variant of the claimed invention, when a range is claimed, there must be reasonable enablement of the scope of the range." Sanofi-Aventisub, 987 F.3d at 1085 (internal quotations omitted). AK Steel Corp. v. Sollac, 344 F.3d 1234, 1244, 68 USPQ2d 1280, 1287 (Fed. Cir. 2003);In re Moore, 439 F.2d 1232, 1236, 169 USPQ 236, 239 (CCPA 1971). See also Plant Genetic Sys., N.V. v. DeKalb Genetics Corp., 315 F.3d 1335, 1339, 65 USPQ2d 1452, 1455 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (alleged "pioneer status" of invention irrelevant to enablement determination).
The nature of the invention is to notify a host of the performance degradation as quickly as possible, within tens of microseconds but less than 100 microseconds. Thus the specification is limiting the scope to under 100 microseconds, but greater than 0 as the notification is done within tens of microseconds. In the prior art, notification of potential issues are sent as quickly as possible upon the detection of an issue. A person of ordinary skill in the art would realize that sending a notification immediately upon detection of a performance issue is beneficial to the system such that the problem can be remedied quickly. A person of skill in the art would not understand how a notification is sent at the exact moment (i.e. without delay) when performance degradation is detected. This would require undue experimentation to see how close to 0 seconds (or 0 seconds itself) the system could get as the laws of physics dictate there is always some delay between the events occurring.
Appropriate correction required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-3, 6, 7, 11-14, 17, 18, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Ruan et al. “Ruan” US 2020/0406910.
Regarding claims 1 and 12, Ruan teaches a method and a network device (Switch 32 of Figure 1) for use in an automotive network, the network device comprising:
a semiconductor die and network-device circuitry, disposed on the die and configured to transfer traffic of the automotive network (the automotive network switch is on a system-on-chip; Paragraph 31, see Figure 1. The invention aims to monitor the exchange of communication packets to identify anomalies; Paragraph 15, see also paragraphs 41 and 54 with respect to the network switch performing monitoring of packets); and
an on-chip traffic monitor, disposed on the die and configured to monitor the traffic traversing the network-device circuitry from one or more sources in the automotive network to one or more destinations in the automotive network, and to detect a performance degradation in the network-device circuitry by analyzing the monitored traffic (The invention aims to monitor the exchange of communication packets to identify anomalies; Paragraph 15. Paragraphs 41-42 further teaches monitoring the packets to detect anomalies (i.e. performance degradation). Paragraph 29 teaches the switch (32 of Figure 1) includes various components which monitor packets from a source to a destination. Thus one can see the switch (32) monitors traffic between a source and destination for performance degradation issues).
Regarding claims 2 and 13, Ruan teaches the on-chip monitor selects a traffic flow from within the traffic and detects the performance degradation in the selected traffic flow (The switch can determine a fault based on a certain packet stream of one or more relevant packet streams; Paragraphs 51 and 54. Thus a traffic flow from within the traffic is selected/analyzed).
Regarding claims 3 and 14, Ruan teaches multiple port circuits on the die and configured to transmit and receive packets over the automotive network (Paragraph 5 (48 of Figure 1) teaches ports for sending/receiving packets);
A switch fabric, on the die and configured to forward packets between port circuits (switch core 52 connects ports 48 (see Figure 1)); and
Interconnection circuitry on the die and configured to connect the switch fabric to a host via a peripheral bus (the switch is connected to the vehicle sub-systems (28) i.e. host),
Wherein the on-chip traffic monitor is coupled to the interconnection circuitry (everything in the system is coupled to everything else (See Figure 1), thus the switch (32) which monitors the traffic is coupled to the circuitry which is connected to the host as claimed).
Regarding claims 6 and 17, Ruan teaches identifying a traffic flow associated with a port circuit among port circuits (The switch can determine a fault based on a certain packet stream of one or more relevant packet streams; Paragraphs 51 and 54. Paragraph 5 (48 of Figure 1) teaches ports for sending/receiving packets. Thus one can see there are a plurality of ports with respect to traffic flows); and
Detecting the performance degradation by analyzing the traffic flow separately from one or more other traffic flows (The switch can determine a fault based on a certain packet stream of one or more relevant packet streams; Paragraphs 51 and 54. Thus a traffic flow from within the traffic is selected/analyzed).
Regarding claims 7 and 18, Ruan teaches one or more hardware counters, wherein the on-chip monitor assigns a hardware counter among the hardware counters for measuring a traffic throughput of a selected traffic flow within the traffic (counters are used to count packets so events can be determined on a per port basis; Paragraphs 44-49 (see Figure 2). As the counters are associated with a given port, they would be associated with different traffic flows. Throughput is a metric determined based on packets; Paragraph 43. Thus one can see that counters measure traffic for a flow. Further, the claims only require there to be one counter, Thus the selection step doesn’t have any weight when there is one counter since there are not a plurality of counters to choose from).
Regarding claims 11 and 20, Ruan teaches detecting performance degradation by analyzing latencies, intra-packet spacing, dropped packets, corruption or throughput (latency (paragraphs 38 and 43), dropped packets (paragraphs 36-37 and 43)).
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.
Claim(s) 4 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruan in view of Kim et al. “Kim” US 2023/0180005.
Regarding claims 4 and 15, while Ruan teaches identifying traffic flows and detecting performance degradation of traffic flows separately (The switch can determine a fault based on a certain packet stream of one or more relevant packet streams; Paragraphs 51 and 54. Thus a traffic flow from within the traffic is selected/analyze), Ruan does not teach identifying traffic associated with a given bus function of the peripheral bus. Kim teaches packet monitoring interfacing with a first encryption module which monitors packets and analyzes the results for determining network performance indications to detect abnormal situations; Paragraph 260. Further, the first encryption module includes virtual machines (i.e. bus functions) sharing a single PCI interface (i.e. peripheral bus) with respect to a host device; Paragraph 259. The teachings of Kim can be implemented in the automotive sector; Paragraph 110).
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the teachings of Ruan to include monitoring traffic associated with a given bus function as taught by Kim.
One would be motivated to make the modification such that the system can monitor/calculate packets for performance metrics and detect abnormal conditions as taught by Kim; Paragraph 260.
Claim(s) 5 and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruan in view of Takeda US 2019/0031202.
Regarding claims 5 and 16, while Ruan teaches identifying traffic flows and detecting performance degradation of traffic flows separately (The switch can determine a fault based on a certain packet stream of one or more relevant packet streams; Paragraphs 51 and 54. Thus a traffic flow from within the traffic is selected/analyze), Ruan does not teach monitoring traffic associated with a given DMA engine of a plurality of DMA engines. Takeda teaches monitoring data with respect to a first DMA controller (153 of Figure 15). One can see there are a plurality of DMA controllers in Figure 15 (see also 155). The monitoring of data is for detecting abnormalities; Paragraph 141. The functions are with respect to a vehicle; Paragraph 49, see also Figures 1 and 2).
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the teachings of Ruan to include monitoring traffic associated with a given DMA engine as taught by Takeda.
One would be motivated to make the modification such that the system can monitor/calculate packets to determine abnormalities as taught by Takeda; Paragraph 141.
Claim(s) 8 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruan in view of Raman et al. “Raman” US 2022/0091754.
Regarding claims 8 and 19, while Ruan teaches counting packets for throughput (See paragraph 45), Ruan does not disclose measuring the throughput by counting, using the counter, a traffic volume of the traffic flow over a defined measurement period. Raman teaches counters counting packets and calculating throughput with respect to time intervals; Paragraph 96.
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the teachings of Ruan to include determining throughput by counting traffic over a period of time as taught by Raman.
One would be motivated to make the modification such that throughput can be determined among other metrics as taught by Raman; Paragraph 96.
Claim(s) 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruan in view of Ferguson et al. “Ferguson” US 2022/0141237.
Regarding claim 9, Ruan does not expressly disclose notifying a host in response to detecting the performance degradation; however, Ferguson teaches that upon detecting an abnormal event in the data stream (i.e. performance degradation) the monitor notifies the host; Paragraph 17. This system can be implemented on vehicles as well.
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the teachings of Ruan to include notifying a host upon detection of performance degradation as taught by Ferguson.
One would be motivated to make the modification such that further inspection/analysis can be performed on the abnormal event as taught by Ferguson; Paragraph 17.
Claim(s) 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ruan in view of Ferguson and further in view of Khan et al. “Khan” US 2023/0068739.
Regarding claim 10, the prior art does not teach sending a notification within 100 microseconds of the performance degradation; however, Khan teaches near real-time monitoring of data and sending alerts based on the monitoring. The near-real time monitoring means within a few milliseconds (i.e. less than 100 microseconds).
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the teachings of the prior art to include sending a notification within 100 microseconds as taught by Khan.
One would be motivated to make the modification such that the system can provide near real-time monitoring as taught by Khan; Paragraph 34.
Conclusion\
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRANDON M RENNER whose telephone number is (571)270-3621. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7am-5pm EST.
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/BRANDON M RENNER/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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