DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-28 are currently pending in application 18/854,005, from PCT/IL2023/050378 filed 04/05/2023, with a 35 USC 371(c)(1),(2) date of 10/03/2024.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Objections
Claims 11-14 are objected to because of the following informalities: based on context (e.g. following independent claim 10, and mirroring the claim language of claims 25-28), claims 11-14 logically should be dependent in some derivative fashion on claim 10, not in some derivative fashion on independent claim 1. However, without explanation or correction by Applicant, the claims will be treated as they are written.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
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 1-9, 11-14, and 15-23 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 claim language “wherein hybrid on-device and off-device monitoring and maintenance are performed simultaneously for purposes of application monitoring” (see independent claims 1 and 15) is not clearly tied to the other elements of the claim. For example, neither the “set of on-device probes”, nor the “set of off-device probes” perform “monitoring and maintenance”. The two sets instead simply “measure”.
Claims 1-9, 11-14, and 15-23 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. It is not clear how the claimed “a set of on-device probes adapted to measure …” can measure “on-device analytics”. Perhaps grammatically the on-device probe might also perform on-device analytics as well as measure the other elements listed in the claim limitation. The ”a set of off-device probes adapted to measure …” limitation suffers from a lack of clarity.
Claim 11 recites the limitation "said SLA". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because each of independent claims 1 and 10 are “system” claims, but do not recite any elements with a “physical or tangible form” and are directed to a collection of “information (often referred to as ‘data per se’) or a computer program per se (often referred to as ‘software per se’) when claimed as a product without any structural recitations” (see MPEP 2106.03 I.). For example, claim 1 is a system consisting of two sets of probes (software). Any recitation of physical or tangible form is incidental to the claimed set of software (for example, as a label in “on-device” probes, metrics, analytics; or as a target of the software’s activities, as in to measure metrics including hardware layers). In other words, the claims are directed to and claim the software probes, not the hardware.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-3, 7-8, 15-17, and 21-22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2017/0034019 A1 to Nataraj et al. (herein Nataraj) in view of in view of US 2017/0366421 A1 to Dam et al. (herein Dam).
Claim 1
Nataraj discloses a system for distributed application monitoring and maintenance (Nataraj: [0001], [0003]-[0004], metrics gathered for distributed applications, shows monitoring/maintenance) consisting of:
a. a set of on-device probes (Nataraj: [0019], “receives application metric data from other agents”, i.e. on-device or application probe; see also figure 1 and [0020], agents on devices; and figure 2, [0032], [0042], at least “language agent 220” and “machine agent 240”) adapted to measure on-device performance metrics from application layer, network layers, and hardware layers (Nataraj: [0042], language agent gathers “lowest level of the application”, IP and port information; [0044], machine agent gather hardware information), and on-device analytics for said on-device performance metrics (Nataraj: figures 9-10; [0056]-[0057], correlate application/on-device with network/off-device, report anomalies);
b. a set of off-device probes (Nataraj: [0019], “remote controller receives the data from the network agent”, i.e. off-device or network probe; see also figure 1 and [0020], agents that are on other devices, i.e. off certain devices; and figure 2, [0032], [0042], at least “network agent 230”) adapted to measure off-device performance metrics concerning how the underlying infrastructure is performing, including global network performance (Nataraj: [0043]), and analytics for said off-device performance metrics (Nataraj: figures 9-10; [0056]-[0057], correlate application/on-device with network/off-device, report anomalies);
wherein hybrid on-device and off-device monitoring and maintenance are performed simultaneously for purposes of application monitoring (Nataraj: [0005]-[0006], collecting and correlating application data and network data “during” execution of the application).
To the extent Nataraj does not explicitly state probes measuring performance metrics concerning ISP performance, CDN performance, and cloud infrastructure (including providers, regions, availability zones), Dam demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to measure (Dam: [0029]) ISP performance, CDN performance, and cloud infrastructure (Dam: [0023], [0030], [0130], [0135]-[0136], [0167], showing the importance of monitoring and maintaining ISP, CDN, and cloud infrastructures, including outages, and destinations, and providers). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the probes of Nataraj with the monitoring, i.e. measuring performance metrics, of ISP performance, CDN performance, and cloud infrastructure as suggested by the teachings of Dam. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: it is valuable to troubleshoot problems with monitoring and visualizing performance in network applications/services (Dam: [0025]-[0026]); both references provide the mechanisms for measuring/monitoring various attributes/characteristics in network distributed applications/services; and the above implementation of is an application of known elements/techniques yielding a predictable result.
Claim 2
Nataraj and Dam disclose the system of claim 1 wherein said on-device analytics include time-series baselining and anomaly detection of said on-device performance metrics (Nataraj: [0051], time series of tuples for data collection; figure 9, shows anomaly detection).
Claim 3
Nataraj and Dam disclose the system of claim 1 wherein said off-device analytics include building representations of said application's physical and logical infrastructure, determining the logical purpose(s) of network subcomponents by means of analyzing connectivity patterns and performance metrics, and graph topology link and node features, using said off-device performance metrics (Nataraj: figure 10; Dam: figures 2, 5, 7-8, 10-11).
Claim 7
Nataraj and Dam disclose the system of claim 3 wherein said representations are built using deep graph analysis to automate classification of physical and logical structure of the application and its underlying infrastructure (Nataraj: figure 10; Dam: figures 2, 5, 7-8, 10-11).
Claim 8
Nataraj and Dam disclose the system of claim 1 wherein said on-device analytics are optimized to minimize compute and traversal cost from network and compute perspectives (Dam: [0107], gzip is a well-known and available, i.e. minimal cost, solution to reduce data transfer volume, that is to say data collected/correlated is optimized to minimize compute/traversal cost).
Claims 15-17 and 21-22
The limitations of claims 15-17 and 21-22 substantially correspond to the limitations of claims 1-3 and 7-8 and as such are rejected in a corresponding manner. Further, Nataraj shows gathering data from said on-device probes and said off-device probes for purposes of synthesis and analysis thereof (Nataraj: [0005]-[0006], collecting and correlating) as found in claim 15.
Claim(s) 4-6, 9, 10-14, 18-20, 23, and 24-28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2017/0034019 A1 to Nataraj et al. (herein Nataraj) in view of in view of US 2017/0366421 A1 to Dam et al. (herein Dam) in further view of US 2023/0231785 A1 to Kumar et al. (herein Kumar).
Claim 4
Nataraj and Dam do not explicitly state the system of claim 3 wherein said off-device analytics further include prediction of said on-device and said off-device metrics for purposes of baselining and anomaly detection, including deep-learning based analysis of said on-device and said off-device metrics. However, Kumar demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to predict metrics (Kumar: figure 12; [0013]-[0015], predict one more network issues based on data) and use machine learning based analysis (Kumar: [0072], [0076]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the baselining and anomaly detection analytics of Nataraj with including prediction of metrics using deep-learning, i.e. machine learning as suggested by the teachings of Kumar. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: it is valuable to troubleshoot problems with monitoring and visualizing performance in network applications/services (Dam: [0025]-[0026]) similar to Kumar’s monitoring and managing network faults (Kumar: [0030]); all the references provide the mechanisms for measuring/monitoring various attributes/characteristics in network distributed applications/services; and as such the above implementation of is an application of known elements/techniques yielding a predictable result.
Claim 5
Nataraj, Dam and Kumar disclose the system of claim 4 wherein said deep-learning based analysis includes root-cause analysis and correlation analysis (Kumar: [0004], [0111]-[0114], [0142]).
Claim 6
Nataraj, Dam and Kumar disclose the system of claim 5 wherein said deep-learning based analysis comprises algorithms to find explanations for metric behaviors based on other measured metrics in the distributed system (Kumar: [0073], [0114]-[0115], machine learning models using feedback to analyze model suggestions and also attempting root-cause analysis), and correlations comprising mathematical relationships between different distributed metrics and their respective derivatives (Kumar: [0113]-[0115], [0124], AI and machine learning finding relationships using statistics of the collected information and using the trained models).
Claim 9
Nataraj and Dam do not explicitly state the system of claim 1 further provided with algorithms adapted to propose and modify said application's network structure, such that the performance of said network may be improved in terms of latency, backlog, or other performance metrics of said application. However, Kumar demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide algorithms to propose/modify an application's network structure, such that the performance of said network may be improved in terms of latency, backlog, or other performance metrics of said application (Kumar: figure 12; [0072]-[0073], [0076], [0200], for example path data configuration changes). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the monitoring system of probes of Nataraj with algorithms to propose/modify an application's network structure as suggested by the teachings of Kumar. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: it is valuable to troubleshoot problems with monitoring and visualizing performance in network applications/services (Dam: [0025]-[0026]) similar to Kumar’s monitoring and managing network faults (Kumar: [0030]); all the references provide the mechanisms for measuring/monitoring various attributes/characteristics in network distributed applications/services; and as such the above implementation of is an application of known elements/techniques yielding a predictable result.
Claim 10
The limitations of claim 10 substantially correspond to the limitations of claim 1 and as such are rejected in a corresponding manner. Though, Nataraj and Dam do not explicitly state distributed application having an SLA. However, Kumar demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use distributed applications having an SLA (Kumar: [0074], [0189]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the monitoring system of probes of Nataraj for distributed applications having an SLA as suggested by the teachings of Kumar. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: it is valuable to troubleshoot problems with monitoring and visualizing performance in network applications/services (Dam: [0025]-[0026]) similar to Kumar’s monitoring and managing network faults (Kumar: [0030]); all the references provide the mechanisms for measuring/monitoring various attributes/characteristics in network distributed applications/services (Kumar: [0033]); and as such the above implementation of is an application of known elements/techniques yielding a predictable result.
Claim 11
Nataraj does not explicitly state the system of claim 8 adapted to isolate said metrics interfering with said SLA, and further adapted to use said metrics to derive relevant alternative network structures to preserve said SLA (Kumar: [0074], [0189]). However, Kumar demonstrates that it was known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use distributed applications having an SLA (Kumar: [0074], [0189]) and derive metrics from and SLA (Kumar: [0189]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the monitoring system of probes of Nataraj for distributed applications having an SLA, including the deriving relevant metrics from an SLA as suggested by the teachings of Kumar. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: it is valuable to troubleshoot problems with monitoring and visualizing performance in network applications/services (Dam: [0025]-[0026]) similar to Kumar’s monitoring and managing network faults (Kumar: [0030]); all the references provide the mechanisms for measuring/monitoring various attributes/characteristics in network distributed applications/services (Kumar: [0033]); and as such the above implementation of is an application of known elements/techniques yielding a predictable result.
Claim 12
Nataraj does not explicitly state the system of claim 1 further providing auto service tagging using a speculative approach signing performance counter (metrics) and behavior. However, Kumar shows using counters for metrics and behavior (Kumar: [0104], [0106], [0113]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the monitoring system of probes of Nataraj with counters for metrics and behavior as suggested by the teachings of Kumar. This implementation would have been obvious because one of ordinary skill in the art would have found: it is valuable to troubleshoot problems with monitoring and visualizing performance in network applications/services (Dam: [0025]-[0026]) similar to Kumar’s monitoring and managing network faults (Kumar: [0030]); all the references provide the mechanisms for measuring/monitoring various attributes/characteristics in network distributed applications/services (Kumar: [0033]); and as such the above implementation of is an application of known elements/techniques yielding a predictable result.
Claim 13
Nataraj, Dam and Kumar disclose the system of claim 9 further including automatic creation of service insights (Kumar: [0073], at least machine generated suggestions).
Claim 14
Nataraj, Dam and Kumar disclose the system of claim 9 further including automatic creation of an RCA log including explanations (Kumar: [0076], at least logging; [0111]-[0114]).
Claims 18-20 and 23
The limitations of claims 18-20 and 23 substantially correspond to the limitations of claims 4-6 and 9 and as such are rejected in a corresponding manner.
Claims 24-28
The limitations of claims 24-28 substantially correspond to the limitations of claims 10-14 and as such are rejected in a corresponding manner. However, it is noted that claims 25-28 are dependent on claim 24 (corresponding to claim 10), unlike claims 11-14 (dependent on claims 8, 1, 9, and 9, respectively).
Correspondence Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WILLIAM H WOOD whose telephone number is (571)272-3736. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7am-3pm.
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/William H. Wood/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3992
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