DETAILED ACTION
Priority
This action is in response to the original filing dated 24 September 2024 which claims priority to a U.S. provisional application, dated 25 September 2023. Claims 1-5 are pending and have been considered below.
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 .
Drawings
Color photographs and color drawings are not accepted in utility applications unless a petition filed under 37 CFR 1.84(a)(2) is granted. Any such petition must be accompanied by the appropriate fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(h), one set of color drawings or color photographs, as appropriate, if submitted via the USPTO patent electronic filing system or three sets of color drawings or color photographs, as appropriate, if not submitted via the via USPTO patent electronic filing system, and, unless already present, an amendment to include the following language as the first paragraph of the brief description of the drawings section of the specification:
The patent or application file contains at least one drawing executed in color. Copies of this patent or patent application publication with color drawing(s) will be provided by the Office upon request and payment of the necessary fee.
Color photographs will be accepted if the conditions for accepting color drawings and black and white photographs have been satisfied. See 37 CFR 1.84(b)(2).
Examiner notes that the color drawings must be of sufficient quality such that all details in the drawings are reproducible in black and white in the printed patent. Certain text of the reproduced color drawings in the instant application is unreadable (e.g. Figs 5-19F).
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: claim 1 recites “VPC resources including in the VPC data”, examiner suggests “VPC resources included in the VPC data”. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Gupta et al. (US 2023/0275814 A1).
As for independent claim 1, Gupta discloses a method comprising:
receiving data for a virtual private cloud (VPC) [(e.g. see Gupta paragraphs 0043, 0078, 0091) ”Provisioning portal 104 may obtain available functions, interfaces, and other network infrastructure elements to use when defining a network slice template from network topology 115 of database 108 … the Infrastructure Topology view depicts a first level of the hierarchical view as a Cloud (or data center) View … The Cloud View may represent … private clouds … a service provider desires to onboard and manage clouds from … private clouds”].
receiving, via a graphical user interface (GUI), a request to access the VPC data [(e.g. see Gupta paragraphs 0010, 0136) ”Provisioning portal 104 receives, via UI 106 and from a user, a selection of a first icon of the first icons (1304). In response to the selection, provisioning portal 104 displays, via UI 106, display second icons (1306). Each icon of the second icons represents a resource group hosted by a cloud provider associated with the selected first icon … the user interface may apply filtering logic so as to filter out elements that form the network slice, such as clouds, cloud providers, data centers, resource groups, resources, clusters, manager nodes, or worker nodes, to as to arrive at a subset of the elements that match with certain criteria. In some examples, the user interface may receive the criteria from a user. The user interface may thereafter display the subset of elements, thereby facilitating search capabilities, management, and administration of the various elements forming the network slice”].
and displaying, at the GUI, a resource page providing a filter view of VPC resources including in the VPC data [(e.g. see Gupta paragraphs 0010, 0112, 0113) ”user interface 900 of FIG. 9 provides tooltip window 902 which provides functionality to filter a complete topology and display icons 704, 706, 708, 710 representing only a subset of elements and sub-elements, e.g., such as clouds or resources, which satisfy certain criterion specified by the filter. This feature allows a user to focus on a specific subset of the infrastructure … user interface 900 enables a user to filter resources and clouds according to a number of criteria. For example, a user may filter clouds and resources that belong to a particular provider, are tagged with a specific label, host a workload of a network slice instance, or belong to a common provider, etc … the user interface may apply filtering logic so as to filter out elements that form the network slice, such as clouds, cloud providers, data centers, resource groups, resources, clusters, manager nodes, or worker nodes, to as to arrive at a subset of the elements that match with certain criteria”].
As for dependent claim 2, Gupta discloses the method as described in claim 1 and Gupta further discloses:
wherein the VPC resources comprises a cloud based storage container [(e.g. see Gupta paragraph 0125) ”the Cloud tooltip window 1002A may display workload information, such as slice subnets or network functions deployed on a cloud selected by a user. In some examples, the Cloud tooltip window 1002A may display storage and compute statistics, such as available and total CPU, Memory, and Disk information for a cloud selected by a user”].
As for dependent claim 3, Gupta discloses the method as described in claim 1 and Gupta further discloses:
further comprising: displaying, at the GUI, a menu including one or more filter options selectable to apply one or more additional filters to present VPC resource information [(e.g. see Gupta paragraph 0112) ”user interface 900 of FIG. 9 provides tooltip window 902 which provides functionality to filter a complete topology and display icons 704, 706, 708, 710 representing only a subset of elements and sub-elements, e.g., such as clouds or resources, which satisfy certain criterion specified by the filter. This feature allows a user to focus on a specific subset of the infrastructure”].
As for dependent claim 4, Gupta discloses the method as described in claim 3 and Gupta further discloses:
wherein the VPC resource information comprises at least one of resource identifiers, resource types, resource groups, alerts on the resources, compliance violations of the resources, attack paths associated with the resources, vulnerabilities of the resources [(e.g. see Gupta paragraph 0113) ”user interface 900 enables a user to filter resources and clouds according to a number of criteria. For example, a user may filter clouds and resources that belong to a particular provider, are tagged with a specific label, host a workload of a network slice instance, or belong to a common provider, etc”]. Examiner notes the use of “at least one of” language.
As for dependent claim 5, Gupta discloses the method as described in claim 1 and Gupta further discloses:
further comprising: displaying, at the GUI, hierarchical filter selectable to unfold sub-level items in a directory [(e.g. see Gupta paragraphs 0112, 0134, 0137) ”operation by which a user, such as an administrator, tenant, or other party, may use UI 106 to easily traverse (e.g., “drill down” through) an organizational hierarchy of elements and sub-elements of a network slice. For example, a network slice may be formed from multiple hierarchical elements and sub-elements, such as hierarchical groups of clouds, cloud providers, data centers, resource groups, resources, clusters, manager nodes, and worker nodes, etc … a user may continue using UI 106 to perform additional operations to traverse lower hierarchical levels of the network slice. In the illustrated example, provisioning portal 104 optionally receives, via UI 106 and from the user, a selection of a second icon of the second icons (1308). In response, provisioning portal 104 displays, via UI 106, third icons (1310). Each icon of the third icons represents a resource of the resource group associated with the selected second icon. In some examples, each icon of the third icons represents multiple resources of the resource group that are clustered together according to like criteria. Therefore, such optional operations may allow a user to further descend the hierarchical elements of the network slice (or “drill down”) to obtain more detailed information of the elements of the network slice … On applying the filter, user interface 900 updates the topology view with icons representing, e.g., the clouds that host workloads (e.g., network functions) for the selected network slice 702 in accordance with the selected filter options”].
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
U.S. Patent 12,143,279 B1 issued to Jegarajan on 12 November 2024. The subject matter disclosed therein is pertinent to that of claims 1-5 (e.g. filtering cloud networks).
U.S. PGPub 2021/0328893 A1 issued to Cherkas on 21 October 2021. The subject matter disclosed therein is pertinent to that of claims 1-5 (e.g. filtering cloud networks).
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHRISTOPHER J FIBBI whose telephone number is (571)-270-3358. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday (8am-6pm).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William Bashore can be reached at (571)-272-4088. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHRISTOPHER J FIBBI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2174
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