DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Other references Shi (US 20190102087) Remote persistent memory.
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.
Claims 1, 2, 9, 10, 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 20210173776) and in view of Huo (US 20180260136) and further in view of Baddepudi (US 20130086330), Diestelhorst (US 20170123723), and Cota-Robles (US 20140359229)
Claim 1. Li discloses A data storage method (eg., 0001 - system and method for facilitating data storage ), comprising:
receiving a write data request transmitted by a server (eg., 0040 - CPU complex 252 can send the data) , wherein the write data request is used to request to store target data into a storage cluster (eg., 0038 - as part of a write operation, CPU complex 202 can send data to be written to persistent buffer 214; 0039 - system can write all data which enters the persistent buffer in a sequential manner), and the storage cluster is used to store and manage data to support writing and reading of the data (eg., 0041 During operation, as part of a write operation, CPU complex 252 can receive data to be stored in a non-volatile memory of environment 250. CPU complex 252 can send the data, at approximately the same time, to persistent buffer 266 (via a write 282 communication) and to storage drive 274 (via a write 284 communication));
storing the target data into a persistent memory in a data processing unit (eg., 0043 incoming data can be received as sectors, where each sector is written into persistent buffer with its corresponding logical block address appended to the respective sector.).
Li does not disclose but Huo discloses
dynamically recording, in a constructed index table, a data storage condition in the persistent memory, wherein the index table supports the server to read all or part of the target data (eg., 0043 - in-memory B-tree index (e.g., in the persistent memory 120) of all the buffered write requests. This index records the mapping of the LBA of each original write request to the specific log records which store this write request. The index serves two purposes, one of which is to remove earlier received, and not yet executed write requests); and
and writing into the storage cluster until all the target data indicated by the write data request is written (eg., 0042 - when the end of the persistent memory 120 is reached, the location being written (which may be identified by a write pointer) wraps around to the beginning of the circular buffer, which, if the buffer is not full, has free LBA space.; 0043 - write request to the same LBA is pending and has not yet been executed on the nonvolatile memory 110. ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, with Huo, providing the benefit of there is a need for an improved alternative to a storage system including battery backed NVRAM or NVDIMM (see Huo, 0004) maintain an index of write requests temporarily stored in the persistent memory (0005).
Li in view of Huo does not disclose, but Baddepudi discloses
feeding back stored information of the target data to the server after the target data is stored in the persistent memory, wherein the stored information instructs the server to transmit next write data to the data processing unit (eg., [0029] In write-back mode, storage device 101 writes the data block requested by a client to a persistent cache device and acknowledges the commit of the data block before the data block may be written to the respective primary storage device. The cache copy may then later be written to primary storage device.); and
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, providing the benefit of acknowledgement is sent without necessarily having written the data that was requested to be written to primary storage. Instead, the data is written to primary storage later (see Baddepudi, 0015).
Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi does not disclose, but Diestelhorst discloses
sequentially reading the target data from the persistent memory in a chronological order and writing the target data into the storage cluster until all the target data indicated by the write data request is written (eg., 0025 Fig. 1 - a respective persist unit 18, 20 which serves to control at least the ordering of write accesses to a non-volatile memory 22),
wherein storing the target data into the persistent memory and reading the target data chronologically for writing to the storage cluster proceed in parallel. (eg., 0036 sequence of program instructions indicates that any write to the non-volatile memory preceding that persist barrier (instruction) in the sequence of program instructions should be made before any writes to the non-volatile memory 22 following that persist barrier (instruction) in the sequence of program instructions… are issued from the persist unit 18, 20 before preceding persists have actually reached the non-volatile memory 22, but the memory system downstream of the persist unit 18, 20 ensures that such persists are not reordered).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, providing the benefit of control of memory accesses to non-volatile memory (see Diestelhorst, 0002) in response to said persist buffer data, controlling writes to said non-volatile memory (0014).
Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi and Diestelhorst does not disclose, but Cota-Robles discloses
wherein the stored information instructs the server to transmit next write data to the data processing unit (eg., 0017 - since the primary host system can communicate the write acknowledgement to the originating VM immediately upon determining that wire transmission of the data packet is complete, the VM can continue with its processing without waiting for a network roundtrip between the primary host system and the secondary host system.); and
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, with Diestelhorst with Cota-Robles providing the benefit of the performance loss associated with replicating a write-back cache using RAID (or other similar mirroring schemes) can be minimized or avoided… without waiting for roundtrip (see Cota-Robles, 0017).
Claim 2. Li does not disclose but Huo discloses wherein the persistent memory uses a first-in-first-out circular buffer structure (eg., 0042 - circular buffer,), and the storing the target data into the persistent memory in the data processing unit comprises: searching for a free storage area of the persistent memory, and writing the target data into the free storage unit in a circular order of a circular buffer (eg., 0042 - the circular buffer, which, if the buffer is not full, has free LBA space).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, with Huo, providing the benefit of there is a need for an improved alternative to a storage system including battery backed NVRAM or NVDIMM (see Huo, 0004) maintain an index of write requests temporarily stored in the persistent memory (0005).
Claim 17. Li does not disclose but Huo discloses A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein a computer-executable instruction is stored in the computer-readable storage medium, and when a processor executes the computer-executable instruction, the data storage method according to claim 1 is implemented (eg., [0058] Each of the NAND controller 115, the storage device controller 130, and the persistent memory controller 125 may be, or be part of, a processing circuit. The term “processing circuit” is used herein to mean any combination of hardware, firmware, and software, employed to process data or digital signals.) .
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, with Huo, providing the benefit of there is a need for an improved alternative to a storage system including battery backed NVRAM or NVDIMM (see Huo, 0004) maintain an index of write requests temporarily stored in the persistent memory (0005).
Claim 9. Li discloses An electronic device, comprising: at least one processor and a memory; the memory storing a computer-executable instruction; and the at least one processor executing the computer-executable instruction stored in the memory to cause the at least one processor to: (eg., Fig. 4 [0048] During operation, storage device 400 can receive, via SSD controller 402, data from host 460 (depicted as “D, . . . , D”). SSD controller 402 can send the data (as data 462) to DRAM 412), comprising:
receive a write data request transmitted by a server, (eg., 0040 -CPU complex 252 can send the data) wherein the write data request is used to request to store target data into a storage cluster, and the storage cluster is used to store and manage data to support writing and reading of the data (eg., 0038 - as part of a write operation, CPU complex 202 can send data to be written to persistent buffer 214; 0039 - system can write all data which enters the persistent buffer in a sequential manner; 0041 During operation, as part of a write operation, CPU complex 252 can receive data to be stored in a non-volatile memory of environment 250. CPU complex 252 can send the data, at approximately the same time, to persistent buffer 266 (via a write 282 communication) and to storage drive 274 (via a write 284 communication));
store the target data into a persistent memory in a data processing unit (eg., 0043 incoming data can be received as sectors, where each sector is written into persistent buffer with its corresponding logical block address appended to the respective sector.), and
Li does not disclose but Huo discloses
dynamically record, in a constructed index table, a data storage condition in the persistent memory, wherein the index table supports the server to read all or part of the target data (e.g., in the persistent memory 120) of all the buffered write requests. This index records the mapping of the LBA of each original write request to the specific log records which store this write request. The index serves two purposes, one of which is to remove earlier received, and not yet executed write requests); and
write into the storage cluster until all the target data indicated by the write data request is written (0042 - when the end of the persistent memory 120 is reached, the location being written (which may be identified by a write pointer) wraps around to the beginning of the circular buffer, which, if the buffer is not full, has free LBA space.; 0043 - write request to the same LBA is pending and has not yet been executed on the nonvolatile memory 110. ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, with Huo, providing the benefit of there is a need for an improved alternative to a storage system including battery backed NVRAM or NVDIMM (see Huo, 0004).
Li in view of Huo does not disclose, but Baddepudi discloses
feeding back stored information of the target data to the server after the target data is stored in the persistent memory, wherein the stored information instructs the server to transmit next write data to the data processing unit (eg., [0029] In write-back mode, storage device 101 writes the data block requested by a client to a persistent cache device and acknowledges the commit of the data block before the data block may be written to the respective primary storage device. The cache copy may then later be written to primary storage device.); and
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, providing the benefit of acknowledgement is sent without necessarily having written the data that was requested to be written to primary storage. Instead, the data is written to primary storage later (see Baddepudi, 0015).
Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi does not disclose, but Diestelhorst discloses
sequentially reading the target data from the persistent memory in a chronological order and writing the target data into the storage cluster until all the target data indicated by the write data request is written (eg., 0025 Fig. 1 - a respective persist unit 18, 20 which serves to control at least the ordering of write accesses to a non-volatile memory 22),
wherein storing the target data into the persistent memory and reading the target data chronologically for writing to the storage cluster proceed in parallel. (eg., 0036 sequence of program instructions indicates that any write to the non-volatile memory preceding that persist barrier (instruction) in the sequence of program instructions should be made before any writes to the non-volatile memory 22 following that persist barrier (instruction) in the sequence of program instructions… are issued from the persist unit 18, 20 before preceding persists have actually reached the non-volatile memory 22, but the memory system downstream of the persist unit 18, 20 ensures that such persists are not reordered).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, with Diestelhorst providing the benefit of control of memory accesses to non-volatile memory (see Diestelhorst, 0002) in response to said persist buffer data, controlling writes to said non-volatile memory (0014).
Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst does not disclose, but Cota-Robles discloses
wherein the stored information instructs the server to transmit next write data to the data processing unit (eg., 0017 - since the primary host system can communicate the write acknowledgement to the originating VM immediately upon determining that wire transmission of the data packet is complete, the VM can continue with its processing without waiting for a network roundtrip between the primary host system and the secondary host system.); and
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, and Diestelhorst with Cota-Robles providing the benefit of the performance loss associated with replicating a write-back cache using RAID (or other similar mirroring schemes) can be minimized or avoided… without waiting for roundtrip (see Cota-Robles, 0017).
Claim 10 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 2 above.
Claims 3, 5, 11, 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 20210173776) Huo (US 20180260136 A1) and in view of Baddepudi (US 20130086330), Diestelhorst (US 20170123723), and Cota-Robles (US 20140359229) and further in view of Sorenson (US 12045199 B1)
Claim 3. Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles does not disclose, but Sorenson discloses
selecting any one of a red-black tree, a trie, and a key-value pair as a table structure to construct the index table when the index table is initially constructed (eg., col 8:35-45 - other key-value data formats … table; col 2:50-52 Fig. 1 - Filesystem 120 may implement a persistent cache 120 of data blocks 122a, 122b, 122c).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li in view of Huo with Sorenson, providing the benefit of data blocks in the persistent cache in a memory, providing fast access to block metadata without the use of a hierarchal structure such as a directory (see Sorenson, col 12:30-35).
Claim 5. Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles does not disclose, but Sorenson discloses
wherein the persistent memory comprises a plurality of sequentially connected storage units, and each storage unit comprises a metadata header area and a data body area, wherein the metadata header area is used to store metadata, and the data body area is used to store data (eg., a persistent cache 120 of data blocks 122a, 122b, 122c, and so on. Each block may contain a portion of a data file (e.g., stored in a file format as discussed below with regard to FIG. 4). Thus the data block may store a range of bytes or other portion of the data file, as indicated at 124. A portion of the block may store block metadata 126), col 2:48-52).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles with Sorenson, providing the benefit of data blocks in the persistent cache in a memory, providing fast access to block metadata without the use of a hierarchal structure such as a directory (see Sorenson, col 12:30-35).
Claim 11 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 3 above.
Claim 13 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 5 above.
Claims 4, 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 20210173776) in view of Huo (US 20180260136 A1) and Baddepudi (US 20130086330), Diestelhorst (US 20170123723), and Cota-Robles (US 20140359229) and further in view of Liu (US 20160306552 A1)
Claim 4. Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles does not disclose, but Liu discloses
wherein the storing the target data into the persistent memory in the data processing unit is performed when a write throughput supported by the server is less than a preset threshold (eg., 0023 - SSD has a program unit (PU) (e.g., a page), and when the buffer for a given stream is filled up to at least the size of the PU, then the data in the buffer is written to the flash memory. This way, the data written to the page in flash memory fills up the page completely and the page holds data of just one stream; 0043 - if the block size is 2 MB and the chunk size is 10 MB, then the application could write one full chunk followed by the next chunk, etc., up until 5 blocks are filled with the data from one chunk).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo, Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles with Liu, providing the benefit of improving performance of a Solid State Drive (SSD) (see Liu, 0003).
Claim 12 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 4 above.
Claims 6, 8, 14, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 20210173776) in view of Huo (US 20180260136 A1) and Baddepudi (US 20130086330), Diestelhorst (US 20170123723), and Cota-Robles (US 20140359229) and further in view of Sorenson (US 12045199 B1) and Batwara (US 20130166855)
Claim 6. Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles and Sorenson does not disclose, but Batwara discloses
wherein the metadata header area further comprises a metadata mark bit, and the metadata mark bit is used to dynamically mark a data storage state (eg., 0116 Fig. 7 - a persistent metadata flag 717 ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles with Sorenson with Batwara, providing the benefit of storage controller may be configured to perform input/output (IO) operations in response to requests from one or more storage clients (see Batwara, 0030) configured to include respective persistent metadata flags in one or more of the data packets of the atomic storage request within the log on the non-volatile storage medium to indicate that that the one or more data packets correspond to an atomic storage request that is in process (0034) ensure that atomic storage operations (including atomic vector storage operations) are crash safe, such that data packets of failed atomic operations can be identified and rolled back during restart and/or recovery processing (0114).
Claim 8. Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles and Sorenson does not disclose, but Batwara discloses wherein when the data processing unit is powered off and restarted (eg., 0168 Fig. 14 - power failure 1488.), the data storage method further comprises: obtaining a metadata mark bit of a storage unit in the persistent memory; and upon determining that the metadata mark bit is marked as the second state, continuing to read the target data from the storage unit and write into the storage cluster (eg., 0168 Fig. 14 - a persistent metadata flag in a first state 1417a; … the append point 1420 during a restart recovery, the packets 1410a-c will be identified as comprising part of a failed atomic write.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li in view of Huo with Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles with Sorenson with Batwara, providing the benefit of storage controller may be configured to perform input/output (IO) operations in response to requests from one or more storage clients (see Batwara, 0030) configured to include respective persistent metadata flags in one or more of the data packets of the atomic storage request within the log on the non-volatile storage medium to indicate that that the one or more data packets correspond to an atomic storage request that is in process (0034) ensure that atomic storage operations (including atomic vector storage operations) are crash safe, such that data packets of failed atomic operations can be identified and rolled back during restart and/or recovery processing (0114).
Claim 14 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 6 above.
Claim 16 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 8 above.
Claims 7 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 20210173776) in view of Huo (US 20180260136 A1) and Baddepudi (US 20130086330), Diestelhorst (US 20170123723), and Cota-Robles (US 20140359229) and further in view of Sorenson (US 12045199 B1) and Batwara (US 20130166855) and Thorat (US 20240176772 A1)
Claim 7. Li in view of Huo, Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles and Sorenson does not disclose, but Batwara discloses
wherein the metadata mark bit supports three states of data, and the three states comprise: a second state indicating that the data is written into the persistent memory but not written into the storage cluster (eg., 0115, 0163 - data pertaining to an "incomplete" and/or "in process" atomic storage operation may be identified by use of a persistent metadata indicator in a first state.), and a third state indicating that the data is written into the storage cluster (0115 - Persistent metadata in a second state may be used to signify completion of the atomic storage operation).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles with Sorenson with Batwara, providing the benefit of storage controller may be configured to perform input/output (IO) operations in response to requests from one or more storage clients (see Batwara, 0030) configured to include respective persistent metadata flags in one or more of the data packets of the atomic storage request within the log on the non-volatile storage medium to indicate that that the one or more data packets correspond to an atomic storage request that is in process (0034) ensure that atomic storage operations (including atomic vector storage operations) are crash safe, such that data packets of failed atomic operations can be identified and rolled back during restart and/or recovery processing (0114).
Li in view of Huo, Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles, Sorenson and Batwara does not disclose, but Thorat discloses
a first state indicating that the data is not stored in the persistent memory, (eg., 0018 - write flag 250 is set to 0 to indicate the no writing of the pages of page set 205 is in process, as shown at 270.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Huo with Baddepudi, Diestelhorst and Cota-Robles with Sorenson with Batwara, with Thorat providing the benefit of to provide systems and methods to improve an efficiency of writing database pages (see Thorat, 0003) Buffer cache manager 115, in general, manages buffer cache memory to allow the efficient querying and accessing of frequently accessed data quickly (0013).
Claim 15 is rejected for reasons similar to Claim 7 above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 2/11/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
For claims 1 and 9, Applicant argues that that the cited references do not disclose the amended limitations. The Office disagrees.
In the present OA, the updated combination of references render the amended limitations as obvious.
Specifically, Li in view of Huo does not disclose, but Baddepudi discloses
feeding back stored information of the target data to the server after the target data is stored in the persistent memory, wherein the stored information instructs the server to transmit next write data to the data processing unit (eg., [0029] In write-back mode, storage device 101 writes the data block requested by a client to a persistent cache device and acknowledges the commit of the data block before the data block may be written to the respective primary storage device. The cache copy may then later be written to primary storage device.); and
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, providing the benefit of acknowledgement is sent without necessarily having written the data that was requested to be written to primary storage. Instead, the data is written to primary storage later (see Baddepudi, 0015).
Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi does not disclose, but Diestelhorst discloses
sequentially reading the target data from the persistent memory in a chronological order and writing the target data into the storage cluster until all the target data indicated by the write data request is written (eg., 0025 Fig. 1 - a respective persist unit 18, 20 which serves to control at least the ordering of write accesses to a non-volatile memory 22),
wherein storing the target data into the persistent memory and reading the target data chronologically for writing to the storage cluster proceed in parallel. (eg., 0036 sequence of program instructions indicates that any write to the non-volatile memory preceding that persist barrier (instruction) in the sequence of program instructions should be made before any writes to the non-volatile memory 22 following that persist barrier (instruction) in the sequence of program instructions… are issued from the persist unit 18, 20 before preceding persists have actually reached the non-volatile memory 22, but the memory system downstream of the persist unit 18, 20 ensures that such persists are not reordered).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, providing the benefit of control of memory accesses to non-volatile memory (see Diestelhorst, 0002) in response to said persist buffer data, controlling writes to said non-volatile memory (0014).
Li in view of Huo and Baddepudi does not disclose, but Cota-Robles discloses
wherein the stored information instructs the server to transmit next write data to the data processing unit (eg., 0017 - since the primary host system can communicate the write acknowledgement to the originating VM immediately upon determining that wire transmission of the data packet is complete, the VM can continue with its processing without waiting for a network roundtrip between the primary host system and the secondary host system.); and
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method to facilitate data storage in persistent memory with index as disclosed by Li, Huo with Baddepudi, with Cota-Robles providing the benefit of the performance loss associated with replicating a write-back cache using RAID (or other similar mirroring schemes) can be minimized or avoided… without waiting for roundtrip (see Cota-Robles, 0017).
Applicant’s arguments for dependent claims are based on their respective base independent claims 1 and 9, which are addressed above.
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.
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/GAUTAM SAIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2135