DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 21-60 are pending.
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 1-28, 30-39, 41-48, and 50-59 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-21 of US Patent No. 9,843,624 (‘624 Patent); claims 1-12 of US Patent No. 10,686,871 (‘871 Patent); claims 1-18 of US Patent No. 10,893,095 (‘095 Patent); claims 1-19 of US Patent No. 11,695,823 (‘823 Patent); claims 1-20 of US Patent No. 12,113,850 (‘850 Patent); claims 1-24 of US Patent No. 12,113,851 (‘851 Patent); claims 1-20 of US Patent No. 12,126,673 (‘673 Patent); and claims 1-20 of US Patent No. 12,126,674 (‘674 Patent). Although the claims at issue are not identical to that of the above-mentioned US Patents, as illustrated in the charts below they are not patentably distinct.
Current Application
‘624 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. A system … the system comprising: a programmable network device adapted configured to host a plurality of first network applications …; a programmable cloud device adapted configured to host a plurality of second network applications…; wherein at least one of the plurality of first network applications in the programmable network device and at least one of the plurality of second network applications in the programmable cloud device are in secure communication with each other to form a distributed application
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘624 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung (US 5,710,929) (“Fung”) col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
6. The system of claim 1, wherein the programmable network device and programmable cloud device further comprise: a virtual fabric which provides a secure communication layer for the at least one of the plurality of first network applications and the at least one of the plurality of second network applications.
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
9. The system of claim 8, wherein the plurality of resources include at least one of a group consisting of: a firewall…
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘624 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart et al. (US 2012/0278454)(“Stewart”) teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘624 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. (New) The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
11. The system of claim 8, wherein the programmable network device and programmable cloud device further comprise: a distributed resource service which is capable of providing at least one service from a group consisting of: exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications…
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘624 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams et al. (US 2012/0222123)(“Williams”) teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
1 … and an application management portal coupled to the programmable network device, the programmable cloud device and the application repository, wherein the application management portal presents a user interface to manage provisioning, usage and de-provisioning of the distributed applications on the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device.
As per claim 28, the 624’ Patent claims do not expressly teach: the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein et al. (US 2002/0129356)(“Hellerstein”), ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
8. The system of claim 1, wherein the programmable network device and programmable cloud device further comprise: a distributed resource service (DRS) which controls access to a plurality of resources by the plurality of first network applications and the plurality of the second network applications upon receiving instructions from the application management portal.
As per claim 30,
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly described, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although the combination of the ‘624 Patent claims in view of Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo et al. (US 2013/0166083)(“Guo”) teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘624 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
10. The system of claim 8, wherein the DRS further includes a load controller; and wherein the load controller is adapted to monitor loads on at least one of the plurality of first network applications and at least one of the plurality of second network applications and effect change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly described, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the 624’ Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy (US 2012/0185586)(“Olshanksy”), see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the 624’ Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze et al. (US 2013/0054776)(“Kunze”), teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the 624’ Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki et al. (US 8,281,363)(“Hernacki”) teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘624 patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-21 of the ‘624 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘871 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. A system for processing data packets in a network, the system comprising: a programmable network device hosting a plurality of first network applications; a programmable cloud device hosting a plurality of second network applications, wherein at least one of the plurality of first network applications in the programmable network device and at least one of the plurality of second network applications in the programmable cloud device are in secure communication with each other through a virtual fabric to form a distributed application;
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘871 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
1. … wherein at least one of the plurality of first network applications in the programmable network device and at least one of the plurality of second network applications in the programmable cloud device are in secure communication with each other through a virtual fabric to form a distributed application
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘871 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams et al. (US 8,693,344)(“Adams”) teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘871 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘871 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘871 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. (New) The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
Although not taught by the ‘871 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches comprising:
a distributed resource management system having a system level application programming interfaces (APIs) (see ¶0112 and ¶0013, i.e., “using internal and external APIs”, read as system level APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device (see ¶0112, where the API(s) are used for communications between the gateway and the cloud storage/server).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure accessible internal/system level APIs in the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for programming efficiency purposes.
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘871 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
1 … an application management portal coupled to the programmable network device and programmable cloud device and capable of managing upgrades of the first and second network applications with substantially no interruption to operation of the programmable network device and programmable cloud device; wherein the application management portal verifies authenticity of the upgrades to the plurality of first network applications and the plurality of second network applications and wherein the verification is based on unique security keys associated with each of the plurality of first and second network applications; an application repository coupled to the application management portal and capable of storing distributed applications for installation in the programmable network device and programmable cloud device; and wherein the application management portal further manages usage of the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device.
As per claim 28, the 871’ Patent claims do not expressly teach: the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the ‘871 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: programming security policies in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access to the programmable network device (e.g., gateway) and the programmable cloud device (e.g., cloud server) and controlling communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0227, e.g., “dictate how applications, devices, and/or third parties (e.g., communicating with gateway device over the Internet) are able to communicate”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the ‘871 Patent with the teachings of Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
However, Stewart does not expressly teach a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access/controlling communication.
Nevertheless, in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches the use of a DRS or software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) for managing security policies including network access/communication for applications running in virtualized environments (e.g., VMs, see col. 6, line 60 – col. 7, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to enforce security policies using similar software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to provide added security against the “propagation of malicious code such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware” (see Hernacki, col. 7, lines 8-11).
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly described, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘871 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a load controller adapted to monitor loads on the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and affect change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly described, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the 624’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the 871’ Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the 871’ Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the 871’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the 871’ Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the 871’ Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the 871’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the 871’ Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the 871’ Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘871 patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-12 of the ‘871 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘095 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1… a programmable network device hosting a plurality of first network applications; a programmable cloud device hosting a plurality of second network applications; wherein at least one of the plurality of first network applications in the programmable network device and at least one of the plurality of second network applications in the programmable cloud device are in secure communication with each other to form a distributed application;
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘095 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
6. The system of claim 1, wherein the programmable network device and programmable cloud device further comprise: a virtual fabric which provides a secure communication layer for at the least one of the plurality of first network applications and the at least one of the plurality of second network applications.
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘095 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘095 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘095 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘095 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. (New) The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
10. The system of claim 1, wherein the programmable network device and programmable cloud device further comprise: a distributed resource service (DRS) which is capable of providing at least one service from a group consisting of: exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications; configuring and managing platform resources; policy enforcement and authorization of applications access to platform resource and other application's APIs; and policy conflict resolution.
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘095 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
1 … an application management portal coupled to the programmable network device, programmable cloud device and the application repository, wherein the application management portal manages provisioning, usage and de-provisioning of the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device.
As per claim 28, the 095’ Patent claims do not expressly teach: the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
8. The system of claim 1, wherein the programmable network device and programmable cloud device further comprise: a distributed resource service (DRS) which controls access to a plurality of resources by the plurality of first network applications and the plurality of the second network applications upon receiving instructions from the application management portal.
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘095 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘095 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
13. The system of claim 10, wherein the DRS further includes a load controller; and wherein the load controller is adapted to monitor loads on at least one of the plurality of first network applications and at least one of the plurality of second network applications and effect change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘095 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the 095’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the 871’ Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the 095’ Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the 095’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the 095’ Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the 095’ Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the 095’ Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the 095’ Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the 095’ Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘095 patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-18 of the ‘095 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘823 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. A system comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications are in secure communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud applications device form unified capabilities enabling a plurality of upper layer application programming interfaces (APIs) to program the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud applications independent of network device hardware and cloud device hardware.
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
12. The system of claim 1, further comprising: a virtual fabric which provides a secure communication layer for said at least one of the plurality of network device applications and said at least one of the plurality of cloud applications.
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘823 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘823 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
14. The system of claim 1, further comprising: a distributed resource service which is capable of providing at least one service from a group consisting of: exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications;
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
3. The system of claim 1 further comprising: an application management portal capable of managing life cycles of the distributed applications; and an infrastructure application marketplace in communication with the application management portal, said infrastructure marketplace capable of providing tested and certified distributed applications to the application management portal.
4. The system of claim 3, wherein the application management portal is capable of at least one of the group consisting of: receiving new applications from the infrastructure application marketplace; testing said distributed applications prior to deployment; provisioning said distributed applications; and deprovisioning said distributed applications.
As per claim 28, the 823’ Patent claims do not expressly teach: the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
5. The system of claim 3, further comprising: a distributed resource service (DRS) which controls access to a plurality of resources upon receiving instructions from the application management portal.
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘871 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
7. The system of claim 5, wherein the DRS further includes a load controller adapted to monitor loads on at least one of the plurality of network device applications and at least one of the plurality of cloud applications and effect change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘823 Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the ‘823 Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘823 Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the ‘823 Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘823 patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-19 of the ‘823 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘850 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. A method for processing data packets in a network comprising: hosting a plurality of first network applications by a programmable network device; hosting a plurality of second network applications by a programmable cloud device, wherein the first network applications and the second network applications are in secure communication with each other through a virtual fabric to form distributed applications;
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
1… wherein the first network applications and the second network applications are in secure communication with each other through a virtual fabric to form distributed applications;
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘850 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘850 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches comprising:
a distributed resource management system having a system level application programming interfaces (APIs) (see ¶0112 and ¶0013, i.e., “using internal and external APIs”, read as system level APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device (see ¶0112, where the API(s) are used for communications between the gateway and the cloud storage/server).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure accessible internal/system level APIs in the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for programming efficiency purposes.
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
1… managing usage of the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device by the application management portal;
As per claim 28, the ‘850 Patent claims do not expressly teach: the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: programming security policies in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access to the programmable network device (e.g., gateway) and the programmable cloud device (e.g., cloud server) and controlling communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0227, e.g., “dictate how applications, devices, and/or third parties (e.g., communicating with gateway device over the Internet) are able to communicate”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the ‘850 Patent with the teachings of Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
However, Stewart does not expressly teach a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access/controlling communication.
Nevertheless, in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches the use of a DRS or software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) for managing security policies including network access/communication for applications running in virtualized environments (e.g., VMs, see col. 6, line 60 – col. 7, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to enforce security policies using similar software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to provide added security against the “propagation of malicious code such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware” (see Hernacki, col. 7, lines 8-11).
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘850 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
13. The method of claim 8, further comprising monitoring loads on the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device by a load controller; and effecting change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal by the load controller.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘850 Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the ‘850 Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘850 Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the ‘850 Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘850 patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of the ‘850 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘851 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. … a plurality of cloud applications capable of communicating with a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; and wherein the plurality of cloud applications and the plurality of network device applications form unified capabilities enabling a plurality of upper layer application programming interfaces (APIs) to program the plurality of cloud applications and the plurality of network device applications independent of network device hardware and cloud device hardware.
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
10. The programmable cloud device of claim 1, further capable of connecting to a virtual fabric which provides a secure communication layer for least one of the plurality of cloud applications and at least one of the plurality of network device applications.
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘850 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘851 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
11. The programmable cloud device of claim 1, further comprising: a distributed resource service which is capable of providing at least one service from a group consisting of: exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications;
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
3. The programmable cloud device of claim 1, further capable of receiving signals from an application management portal capable to manage life cycles of the distributed applications.
4. The programmable cloud device of claim 3, further comprising: a distributed resource service (DRS) which controls access to a plurality of resources upon receiving instructions from the application management portal.
The ’851 Patent claims do not expressly teach the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: programming security policies in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access to the programmable network device (e.g., gateway) and the programmable cloud device (e.g., cloud server) and controlling communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0227, e.g., “dictate how applications, devices, and/or third parties (e.g., communicating with gateway device over the Internet) are able to communicate”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the ‘851 Patent with the teachings of Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
However, Stewart does not expressly teach a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access/controlling communication.
Nevertheless, in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches the use of a DRS or software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) for managing security policies including network access/communication for applications running in virtualized environments (e.g., VMs, see col. 6, line 60 – col. 7, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to enforce security policies using similar software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to provide added security against the “propagation of malicious code such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware” (see Hernacki, col. 7, lines 8-11).
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘851 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
6. The programmable cloud device of claim 4, wherein the DRS further includes a load controller adapted to monitor loads on at least one of the plurality of cloud applications and effect change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘851 Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the ‘851 Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘851 Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the ‘851 Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘851 patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-24 of the ‘851 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘673 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. A method comprising: hosting a plurality of network device applications by a programmable network device; hosting a plurality of cloud applications by a programmable cloud device, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications are in secure communication with each other to form distributed applications; and programming by a plurality of upper layer application programming interfaces (APIs) the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications independent of network device hardware and cloud device hardware to form unified capabilities.
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
12. The method of claim 1, further comprising: providing a secure communication layer for at least one of the plurality of network device applications and at least one of the plurality of cloud applications by a virtual fabric.
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘673 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘673 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
14. The method of claim 1, further comprising at least one service from a group consisting of: exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications;
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
3. The method of claim 1 further comprising: managing life cycles of the distributed applications by an application management portal; and providing tested and certified distributed applications to the application management portal by an infrastructure application marketplace in communication with the application management portal.
4. The method of claim 1 further comprising at least one of the group consisting of: receiving the distributed applications from an infrastructure application marketplace by an application management portal; testing the distributed applications prior to deployment by the application management portal; provisioning the distributed applications by the application management portal; and deprovisioning the distributed applications by the application management portal.
The ’673 Patent claims do not expressly teach the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: programming security policies in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access to the programmable network device (e.g., gateway) and the programmable cloud device (e.g., cloud server) and controlling communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0227, e.g., “dictate how applications, devices, and/or third parties (e.g., communicating with gateway device over the Internet) are able to communicate”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the ‘673 Patent with the teachings of Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
However, Stewart does not expressly teach a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access/controlling communication.
Nevertheless, in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches the use of a DRS or software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) for managing security policies including network access/communication for applications running in virtualized environments (e.g., VMs, see col. 6, line 60 – col. 7, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to enforce security policies using similar software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to provide added security against the “propagation of malicious code such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware” (see Hernacki, col. 7, lines 8-11).
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘673 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
7. The method of claim 5, further comprising: monitoring loads on at least one of the plurality of network device applications and at least one of the plurality of cloud applications by a load controller included in the DRS; and effecting change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal by the load controller.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘673 Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the ‘673 Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘673 Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the ‘673 Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘673 Patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of the ‘673 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
Current Application
‘674 Patent claims
21. A network comprising: a programmable network device adapted to host a plurality of network device applications; a programmable cloud device adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications; and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion.
1. A method for processing data packets in a network comprising: hosting a plurality of first network applications by a programmable network device; hosting a plurality of second network applications by a programmable cloud device, wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications are in secure communication with each other to form distributed applications;
22. The network of claim 21 comprising: the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
23. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
6. The method of claim 1, further comprising: communicating securely from at least one of the plurality of network device applications through a virtual fabric with at least one of the plurality of cloud applications.
24. The network of claim 23, wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in the ‘674 Patent claims to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
25. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application installation and deployment, Stewart teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘674 Patent claims with the software development kit in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to allow developers to develop compatible applications for the programmable cloud device and programmable network devices.
26. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
10. The method of claim 1, further comprising: providing from a distributed resource service (DRS) at least one service from a group consisting of: exposing application programming interfaces (APIs) to other applications;
27. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
28. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications; and the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
1 ... managing usage of the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device by an application management portal coupled to the programmable network device, programmable cloud device and the application repository.
The ’674 Patent claims do not expressly teach the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein, ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application management portal to check deployment compatibility for installing the distributed applications on the programmable network device and programmable cloud device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
30. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device which manage access to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and control communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: programming security policies in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access to the programmable network device (e.g., gateway) and the programmable cloud device (e.g., cloud server) and controlling communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0227, e.g., “dictate how applications, devices, and/or third parties (e.g., communicating with gateway device over the Internet) are able to communicate”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the ‘674 Patent with the teachings of Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
However, Stewart does not expressly teach a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access/controlling communication.
Nevertheless, in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches the use of a DRS or software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) for managing security policies including network access/communication for applications running in virtualized environments (e.g., VMs, see col. 6, line 60 – col. 7, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to enforce security policies using similar software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to provide added security against the “propagation of malicious code such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware” (see Hernacki, col. 7, lines 8-11).
31. The network of claim 21, further comprising: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly configure the claimed distributed application to performing energy monitoring. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to monitor energy use at various locations of the plurality of network device applications.
Moreover, although Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘674 Patent claims and Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
32. The network of claim 21, wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
13. The method of claim 10, further comprising monitoring loads on the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device by a load controller in the DRS; and effecting change in accordance with thresholds received from the application management portal by the load controller.
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches:
wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but are capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to configure the plurality of network device applications according to the security policies in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to protect sensitive network device application data.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications.
Although not expressly taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘674 Patent claims and Stewart in claim 33 applies equally well to claim 34.
35. The network of claim 21, wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, setting maximum data rates for access to a communication network was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth.
36. The network of claim 21, wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Stewart further teaches distributed applications capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the distributed application in the ‘673 Patent claims to perform asynchronous communication. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for measurement reporting purposes.
37. The network of claim 21, wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network, number of active users of the distributed applications, quality perceived by users of the distributed applications, and bandwidth consumed.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art of distributed application configuring/monitoring, Kunze teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036), wherein components of the distributed application are capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0036, e.g., “input/ouput (I/O traffic”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly gather at least traffic statistics on the programmable network device. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been for status monitoring or diagnostic purposes.
38. The network of claim 21, further comprising: an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
The same motivation that was utilized for combining the ‘674 Patent claims and Kunze in claim 37 applies equally well to claim 38.
39. The network of claim 21, further comprising: a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Although not taught by the ‘674 Patent claims in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of the ‘674 Patent claims with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 41-48 and 50-59 recite substantially identical subject matter as claims 21-28 and 30-39 and are therefore rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of the ‘674 Patent, for the same reasons as illustrated in the chart above.
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.
Claims 27-29, 39, 47-49, and 59 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
As noted in MPEP §2161.01: “original claims may lack written description when the claims define the invention in functional language specifying a desired result but the specification does not sufficiently describe how the function is performed or the result is achieved. For software, this can occur when the algorithm or steps/procedure for performing the computer function are not explained at all or are not explained in sufficient detail (simply restating the function recited in the claim is not necessarily sufficient). In other words, the algorithm or steps/procedure taken to perform the function must be described with sufficient detail so that one of ordinary skill in the art would understand how the inventor intended the function to be performed.”
As per claims 27 and 47, the limitation “a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk” was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. As opposed to the algorithm or steps/procedure for performing the computer function, ¶0068 of Applicant’s specification at best simply repeats the claimed function (i.e., “the fxSDK may be accompanied with an extensive Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) which verifies all the APIs that are being used by the application and based on its potential danger to the network, it would show the risk analysis and may make specific suggestions to reduce the risk.”)
As per claims 28 and 48, the limitation “deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device” was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
As opposed to the “programmable network device or programmable cloud device” the deployment scope appears to be tied to the distributed application (i.e., “In step 1203, the admin defines the deployment scope that the application would be applied”). Furthermore, assuming “deployment scope” is equivalent to “resource requirements”, at best ¶0076, supports checking compatibility with “the programmable network device” and not the “programmable cloud device” (i.e., “The fxManager 1230 verifies compatibility of the OS version and resource requirements of the application and the fxDevices 1240”).
Claims 29 and 49 are rejected based on their dependency to claims 28 and 48, respectively.
As per claims 39 and 59, the limitation “a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols” was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. The only mention of security libraries appears to be ¶0058 which vaguely recites “Security Manager 428h: allow for access to the security protocol libraries and rewriting some of security algorithms such as the man-in-the-middle detection algorithm”.
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.
Claims 23-25, 28, 29, 31, 33-34, 43-46, 48, 49, 51, and 53-56 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
As per claims 23 and 43, it is not clear what the claim/specification means by “transparent switching messages”.
Claim 24 is rejected based on its dependency to claim 23.
As per claims 25 and 45, the term “flexible” (i.e., “flexible software development kit”) is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “flexible” 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.
As per claims 28 and 48, first, “the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device” lacks antecedent basis in the claim. Moreover, however, as noted above, it is generally not clear what Applicant means by a “deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device”.
As per claims 29 and 49, reference to “each other” is unclear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
determines which application programming interfaces (APIs) can communicate with which [[each]] other APIs.
As per claims 31 and 51, reference to “them” is unclear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“…determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining the location of the plurality of network device applications and the power consumption information to provide a consumption map.”
As per claims 33-34 and 53-54, the limitation “the plurality of network devices” lacks antecedent basis in the claim. Moreover, it is generally not clear what is meant by “corresponding cloud device applications”. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claims to read, e.g.,:
33. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network device[[s]] applications but are capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications.
34. The network of claim 21, wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device[[s]] applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications.
As per claim 44, the step of “…being capable of implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies by the virtual fabric”, is simply not clear. For the purpose of this office action, the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“… implementing firewall rules to enforce security policies by the virtual fabric”.
As per claim 46, the step of “…being accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device by a distributed resource management system having system level application programming interfaces (APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device”, is simply not clear. For the purpose of this office action and consistent with corresponding claim 27, the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“… allowing APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device.
As per claim 51, the step of “being capable of receiving power consumption information …” is unclear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“ receiving power consumption information …”.
As per claim 53, the step of “being capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but being capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications by some of the plurality of network device applications” is not clear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“ not communicating with other of the plurality of network devices but communicating with corresponding cloud device applications by some of the plurality of network device applications”.
As per claim 54, the step of “being capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also capable of communicating with corresponding cloud device applications by some of the plurality of network device applications” is not clear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“ communicating with other of the plurality of network devices and also communicating with corresponding cloud device applications by some of the plurality of network device applications.”
As per claim 55, the step of “being set the maximum data rate in the distributed applications” is unclear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“ setting the maximum data rate in the distributed applications”
As per claim 56, the step of “being capable of asynchronous communication by the distributed applications” is unclear. For the purpose of this office action the Examiner is interpreting the claim to read:
“…communicating asynchronously by the distributed applications”.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(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.
Claims 21, 25-26, 33-34, 36-37, 41, 45-46, 53-54, and 56-57 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Stewart et al. (US 2012/0278454)(“Stewart”).
As per claim 21, Stewart teaches a network comprising:
a programmable network device (i.e., gateway) adapted to host a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0095, i.e., “resident portion of applications…”);
a programmable cloud device (i.e., cloud server, see ¶0010) adapted to host a plurality of cloud device applications (i.e., one or more applications, see ¶0017), wherein the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are in communication with each other to form distributed applications (see ¶0116, i.e., “the applications described above may be executed in a distributed fashion, e.g., among the gateway device, the server, and/or other devices…”);
and wherein the distributed applications are configured to operate in an autonomous fashion (i.e., automatically, see ¶0014).
As per claim 25, Stewart further teaches a flexible software development kit having tools to develop, test, debug and verify the distributed applications (see ¶0105-¶0107).
As per claim 26, Stewart further teaches comprising:
a distributed resource management system having a system level application programming interfaces (APIs) (see ¶0112 and ¶0013, i.e., “using internal and external APIs”, read as system level APIs) with remote accessibility to allow APIs in the programmable network device to be accessed by the plurality of cloud device applications in the programmable cloud device (see ¶0112, where the API(s) are used for communications between the gateway and the cloud storage/server).
As per claim 33, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of not communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications but are capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety of ways, including on a device/application basis, e.g., only allow communication with applications in the cloud but not with applications on the gateway, alternatively, also see ¶0109 which describes the application on the gateway being sand boxed from each other, i.e., prevented from sharing/communicating data with each other).
As per claim 34, Stewart further teaches wherein some of the plurality of network device applications are capable of communicating with other of the plurality of network device applications and also capable of communicating with cloud device applications corresponding to the other of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0227-0228, which anticipates the security policies being set in a variety ways, including on a device/application basis).
As per claim 36, Stewart further teaches wherein the distributed applications are capable of asynchronous communication (see for example, ¶0145, where measurements are reported from the gateway to the server in response to conditions of the premise device, read as an asynchronous communication).
As per claim 37, Stewart further teaches wherein the programmable network device is capable of gathering statistics on at least one of the group consisting of: traffic passing through the network (see ¶0052, i.e., “Internet traffic the computing system is receiving or transmitting”).
Claims 41, 45-46, 53-54, and 56-57 are rejected under the same rationale as claims 21, 25-26, 33-34, and 36-37 since they recite substantially identical subject matter. Any differences between the claims do not result in patentably distinct claims and all of the limitations are taught by the above cited art.
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 22 and 42 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further in view of Fung (US 5,710,929) (“Fung”).
As per claims 22 and 42 Stewart does not expressly teach the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device capable of operating in power save modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend.
Nevertheless, operating computing devices in power saves modes having a plurality of power states including on, off, sleep and suspend was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Fung col. 15, line 40 - col. 17, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to utilize various power states for operating the computing devices in Stewart (e.g., gateway, “programmable network device”, and cloud server, “programmable cloud device”). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to improve power management.
Claims 23 and 43 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further in view of Samovoskiy et al. (US 2010/0115606)(“Samovoskiy”).
As per claims 23 and 43, Stewart does not expressly teach a virtual fabric connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications to enable transparent switching messages between the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications.
Nevertheless, in the same art of computer networking, Samovskiy teaches the use of a virtual fabric/overlay using virtual networks that enables transparent switching/routing of messages between two networks (see for example, ¶0064, where one or potentially more VPN connections can fail yet the customer’s assets will still be visible and accessible, which is evidence of the underlying networking details (e.g., message switching/routing) being transparent to the communicating networks, also see for example ¶0062, where the virtual network 24 operates a network layered on top of the cloud network and can use parameters different from the cloud parameters set by the third-party even when the third party has explicitly disallowed the parameters that is enabled on the virtual network 24, which is further evidence of transparency or hiding away details of the underlying communication network from customers/developers).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to utilize a similar overlay/virtual fabric for connecting the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to take advantage of the redundancy of Samovskiy’s overlay network (see Samovskiy ¶0016), thus enabling fault tolerant communication between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud applications in Stewart.
Claims 24 and 44 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart and Samovoskiy, in further view of Adams et al. (US 8,693,344)(“Adams”).
With respect to claims 24 and 44, although Samovskiy further teaches wherein the virtual fabric is capable of implementing traffic routing rules (see ¶0065).
Stewart in view of Samovskiy fails to teach necessarily teach the routing rules comprising firewall rules to enforce security policies.
Nevertheless, in the same art of network management, Adams teaches firewalling traffic based on customer set network policies (see abstract and col. 8, lines 61-65, also see col. 11, lines 32-34, read as security policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the virtual fabric in Stewart as modified by Samovsky (see claim 23) to further configure firewall rules to enforce security policies. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to maintain network security.
Claims 27 and 47 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further in view of Williams et al. (US 2012/0222123)(“Williams”).
As per claims 27 and 47, although Stewart teaches application programming interfaces (APIs) which are used by the plurality of network device applications and plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0112-0113), Stewart does not expressly teach a Risk Analysis Utility (RAU) capable of verifying the application programming interfaces (APIs) and capable of conducting a risk analysis to show danger to the network and specific suggestions to reduce risk.
Nevertheless, in the same art of software development, Williams teaches a utility for conducting a risk analysis of hosted software, including APIs (i.e., “sink”) (see ¶0030), to show danger to the network (e.g., risks vulnerabilities with respect to secure communications, see ¶0050) and specific suggestions to reduce risk (i.e., a recommendation to the user for remedying the detected vulnerability, see ¶0050).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to similarly use a tool for conducting a similar analysis of the distributed application/hosted software, including APIs, in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to detect and eliminate vulnerabilities as early as possible (see Williams, abstract).
Claims 28 and 48 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further in view of Hellerstein et al. (US 2002/0129356)(“Hellerstein”).
As per claims 28 and 48, Stewart further teaches an application management portal (i.e., application server) connected to the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device and capable of managing the distributed applications (see ¶0013).
As per claims 28 and 48, Stewart, fails to teach the application management portal is further capable of determining whether the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications are compatible with the deployment scope of the programmable network device or programmable cloud device.
Nevertheless, confirming resource requirements (i.e., “deployment scope”) of a target device for installing a software package was well known in in the art of software deployment, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Hellerstein ¶0079).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to configure the application server (see ¶0013 of Stewart) to check deployment compatibility for installing the applications on the target gateway and/or cloud server in Stewart (i.e., “the programmable network device” and/or “programmable cloud device”, respectively). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to prevent installation of applications on incompatible devices.
Claims 30, 39, 50 and 59 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in view of Hernacki et al. (US 8,281,363)(“Hernacki”).
As per claims 30 and 50, although Stewart teaches:
programming security policies in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access to the programmable network device (e.g., gateway) and the programmable cloud device (e.g., cloud server) and controlling communications between the plurality of network device applications and the plurality of cloud device applications (see ¶0227, e.g., “dictate how applications, devices, and/or third parties (e.g., communicating with gateway device over the Internet) are able to communicate”).
Stewart, however, does not expressly teach a distributed resource service (dRS) having software agents located in the programmable network device and the programmable cloud device for managing access/controlling communication.
Nevertheless, in the same art of security/network access controlling, Hernacki teaches the use of a drs or software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) for managing security policies including network access/communication for applications running in virtualized environments (e.g., VMs, see col. 6, line 60 – col. 7, line 16).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to 1) use virtual machines to execute the gateway/network device and cloud server applications and 2) enforce security policies using similar software agents (e.g., network-access-control agent 504) at the gateway and cloud server in Stewart (i.e., “the programmable network device” and/or “programmable cloud device”, respectively). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to two-fold:1) to optimize the use of computer and network resources using virtualization (see Hernacki, col. 1, lines 24-25) and 2) to provide added security against the “propagation of malicious code such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other forms of malware” (see Hernacki, col. 7, lines 8-11).
As per claims 39 and 59, although Stewart describes the use of security policies/protocols (see ¶0227) Stewart does not expressly teach a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols.
Nevertheless, in the same art as noted above, Hernacki teaches a security manager capable of accessing security protocol libraries to rewrite security protocols (see col. 4, lines 51-54, i.e., a network administrator, impliedly using a computer (i.e., security manager), may edit network access control rules or policies).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Stewart with the capabilities to edit security policies (e.g., security protocol libraries). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to customize access control rules for the distributed applications.
Claims 32, 38, 52, and 58 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further view of Kunze et al. (US 2013/0054776)(“Kunze”).
As per claims 32 and 52, Stewart does not expressly teach wherein resources of the programmable cloud device expand and reduce depending on load.
Nevertheless, scaling cloud resources depending on load was well known in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Kunze abstract).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention to scale the cloud device (i.e., expand and reduce depending on load). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable automatic scaling in response to resource needs of the programmable cloud device.
As per claims 38 and 58, Stewart does not expressly teach an application management portal capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent and retransmit rate.
Nevertheless, in the same art as noted above, Kunze further teaches, monitoring a distributed application by an application management portal (i.e., monitoring subsystem, see ¶0036) capable of monitoring the distributed applications for performance including at least one of the group consisting of: number of packets sent (see ¶0036, e.g., “network bytes out”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to further include a similar application management portal/monitoring subsystem to monitor performance such as packets sent (e.g., “network bytes out”). The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to further assist in determining whether to perform automatic scaling in response to resource needs.
Claims 31 and 51 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further view of Guo et al. (US 2013/0166083)(“Guo”).
As per claim 31 and 51, Stewart further teaches: one of the plurality of cloud device applications is capable of receiving power consumption information from a plurality of network device applications (see ¶0059, also see ¶0201, i.e., “Energy Monitor” package installed on 22 sites, which reasonably suggests that the installed network application at various gateways/sites can itself perform energy monitoring) and separately determining location of the plurality of network device applications (see ¶0210).
However, Stewart fails to teach receiving power consumption information from the plurality of network device applications, determining location of the plurality of network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map.
Nevertheless, in the same art of energy management, Guo teaches a similar system for receiving power/energy consumption information from a plurality of network device applications/control units (see Fig. 1 and ¶0051), determining location of the plurality of hubs/network device applications and combining them to provide a consumption map (see ¶0090, and Fig. 5).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the teachings of Stewart with the teachings of Guo for combining energy monitoring information with location information associated with the various network device/gateway applications in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to enable a user to intuitively track energy consumption across various locations (see Guo ¶0090).
Claims 35 and 55 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stewart in further view of Olshanksy (US 2012/0185586)(“Olshanksy”).
As per claims 35 and 55, Stewart fails to teach wherein the maximum data rate in the distributed applications is capable of being set.
Nevertheless, setting maximum data rates for access to communication networks was well known in the art prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention (see for example, Olshanksy, see abstract, also see for example, ¶0048, i.e., “if two or more devices are associated with a group bandwidth policy limited to 2 Mbps”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the earliest effective filing date of the claimed invention, to set maximum data rates for the distributed applications in Stewart. The obvious motivation for doing so would have been to effectively share communication network bandwidth among the distributed applications in Stewart.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 29, 40, 49, and 60 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but for purposes of 35 U.S.C. §102 and §103, would be allowable over the prior art if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is an Examiner's statement of reasons for allowance:
With respect to claims 29 and 49, Draluk et al. (US 2013/0160147)(“Draluk”) is representative of the prior art at the earliest effective filing date of Applicant' s claimed invention. Although Draluk describes the general concept of restricting access to certain APIs (see abstract). Draluk does not teach, in the specific combinations and manner recited within the claims, restricting access based on a (source) API to (destination) API basis, as suggested by claims 29 and 49, i.e., “determines which application programming interfaces (APIs) can communicate with [which other APIs]”.
With respect to claims 40 and 60, the prior art does not teach or render obvious, before the earliest effective filing date of Applicant' s claimed invention, in the specific combinations and manner recited within the claims, the features of:
“…a switch controller in the programmable cloud device capable of taking control of a controller function in the programmable network device to allow for remote control switching during software upgrades.”
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure (see PTO 892).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Brendan Higa whose telephone number is (571)272-5823. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, James Hwang can be reached at (571) 272-4036. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/BRENDAN Y HIGA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2447
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