Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) filed on 12/22/2025 has/have been considered by the Examiner and made of record in the application file.
Response to Arguments
Applicant argues that the references do no teach recovering a block using only other blocks in the same group. The examiner respectfully disagrees. What constitutes a “group” is not defined in the claims and could comprise any of the blocks mentioned in the reference. Further, the current amendments to the claims seem to indicate that readable blocks in any group can be used for recovery. Without further description in the claims, the reference sufficiently teaches this aspect. Applicant also argues that the second reference does not teach a sum. The examiner respectfully disagrees. A sum can simply mean an XOR operation (such as XOR operations of paragraph 0027 of Wei) and Feng shows the benefit of why generated in such a way should be linearly independent. Further it is generally obvious to have checks (sums/XORs) that are linearly independent because, as discussed in Feng, it maximizes reliability. Again, the claims are written very broadly such that the references sufficiently teach these aspects.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The independent claims have been amended in a way that they are still unclear. There now appear to be multiple instances of “any data group” and later references to “the any data group” and there are now multiple “data blocks” and later references to “the data block.” The examiner suggests moving the final wherein clause up to follow the determine step and refer to “any data group” once followed by “the any data group” and then in the “in response to” clause, refer to “a given data group,” or something to that effect for clarification. This issue continues in the dependent claims.
After the amendment, it is also now unclear if only data blocks in the same data group as the target object block are used for recovery or if the data block of any group can be used.
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, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1, 9, and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wei (US 20240354194 A1) in view of Feng (CN 107656832 A -see attached espacenet translation) and Song (US 20230153202 A1).
As to claim 1, Wei teaches a data local recovery method, comprising:
determining multiple data groups comprised in a data set, wherein object blocks in any data group comprise:
a data block, a global parity block and a local parity block (see Fig. 2 and paragraph 0027, disclosing local and global parity and data blocks);
for any target object block in any data group, recovering the target object block according to remaining readable object blocks in the data group (see paragraph 0027 and throughout, disclosing reading other blocks to recover data when there is a failure); wherein in any data group, the global parity block is obtained by encoding data blocks in the data set and the local parity block are obtained by encoding the data block, and the local parity block comprises encoding information of the global parity block (see paragraph 0027 and Fig. 2, disclosing how the parity is calculated).
Wei does not explicitly teach a sum of local parity blocks in the data set is linearly independent of global parity blocks in the data set.
However, Feng teaches linearly independence of global verification checks of group checks (see paragraph 0070-0072).
It would have been obvious, before the effective filing date, to a person of ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to combine Wei with the methods of Feng because it enables the highest possible reliability (see paragraph 0070).
Wei does not explicitly teach the recovery is done in response to a recovery request. However, Song teaches the use of signals/requests/commands to invoke such recovery (see paragraph 0032.
It would have been obvious, before the effective filing date, to a person of ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to combine Wei with commands because some kind of signal would allow the invocation of recovery such as when a failure is detected or as part of a read command from a host. Also, because it enables reduction in degradation of memory (see paragraph 0004).
As to claims 9 and 10, they are rejected on grounds corresponding to above rejected claim 1 because they are substantially equivalent (see Wei paragraph 0011 for processor, memory, etc.).
Claim(s) 2, 11, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wei, Feng, and Song in view of Fetterly (US 20140310571 A1).
As to claim 2, the references teach claim 1 as detailed above. They further teach in response to a recovery request (see recovery request discussion above). They do not explicitly teach a first number of object blocks in the data set, recovering the first number of object blocks according to remaining readable object blocks in the data set; wherein the first number is greater than a number of the global parity blocks in the data set.
However, Fetterly teaches a situation in which 5 global parities can be used to tolerate 6 simultaneous failures (see paragraph 0036 and Fig. 3).
It would have been obvious, before the effective filing date, to a person of ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains to combine the references above with the recovery of Fetterly because it provides additional fault tolerance (see paragraph 0029).
As to claims 11 and 18, they are rejected on grounds corresponding to above rejected claim 2 because they are substantially equivalent.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-8, 12-17, and 19-20 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JASON B BRYAN whose telephone number is (571)270-7091. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri, 8-5 First Friday off.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ashish Thomas can be reached at 5712720631. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JASON B BRYAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2114
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