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 .
DETAILED ACTION
The pending claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 1/07/2025 has been considered by the examiner. Please see attached PTO-1449.
Claim Objections
Claim 11 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 11, line 3, it is suggested to have “
Because “[A]pparatus claims cover what a device is, not what a device does.” Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Bausch & Lomb Inc., 909 F.2d 1464, 1469, 15 USPQ2d 1525, 1528 (Fed. Cir. 1990), see MPEP 2114.II.
Appropriate correction is required.
Priority
Applicant's claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, or 365(c) is acknowledged. As required by M.P.E.P. 201.14(c), acknowledgement is made of applicant's claim for priority based on application filed on April 26, 2024 (CHINA 202410516990.8 ).
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies retrieved under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d), which propriety documents have been placed of record in the file.
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 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claims 1-10 are method claims. A claimed process is surely patent-eligible under § 101 if: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. However, claims 1-10 fail to transform underlying subject matter to a different state or thing. Furthermore, the claims are not tied to another statutory class and can be performed without the use of a particular apparatus. For example, claim 1 recites “generating raw snapshots of a storage system…; determining, based on the raw snapshots, at least one of attacked data blocks…; determining, based on the data block ID of each data block of the at least one of the attacked data blocks…and recovering the data block corresponding to the first target snapshot…”, but in no way is it clear as to how this is accomplished (i.e., accomplished by a particular machine). In order to make the method claim a statutory subject matter, a hardware component (i.e. a processor) must be explicitly provided in the body of the claim to execute the steps in the method claim. As such, they fail to fall within a statutory category.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 12-19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
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 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 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 11 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Brewer et al. (U.S. Pat. Pub. 2019/0235973) in view of Mukku et al. (U.S. Pat. Pub. 2022/0091942).
Referring to claim 1, Brewer et al. teaches a method for recovering data, comprising:
generating raw snapshots of a storage system (Block-oriented storage is a storage architecture that manages data as blocks of bits/bytes. In some instances, the blocks of data for a given set of data ( e.g., a storage device of a computer) are the same size. "Blocking" refers to the process of breaking up a larger set of data into blocks. Each block can contain one or more files and/or partial files, see Brewer et al., Para. 20), wherein each of the snapshots of the storage system has a snapshot ID (Each snapshot includes the information to recover the server 105 back to the time the snapshot was taken. The snapshots can be copies of the data stored on the server 105, see Brewer et al., Para. 32, wherein the “time” is interpreted as ID);
determining, based on the raw snapshots, at least one of attacked data blocks in the storage system, wherein the data block of the storage system has a data block ID (identifies, from the recorded back-up data, an infection point. In some implementations, the infection point is a point in time (or span of time) after which the client system is infected with malware (e.g., the detected ransomware) and before which the client system is not infected with the malware. The infection point may be an exact time, a time span, a date, a period, etc. In some implementations, the infection point is a demarcation between back-up data in a series of back-up data, where the data before the demarcation is not infected and the data after the demarcation is (or may be) infected, see Brewer et al., Para. 86);
determining, based on the data block ID of each data block of the at least one of the attacked data blocks (identifies, from the recorded back-up data, an infection point. In some implementations, the infection point is a point in time (or span of time) after which the client system is infected with malware (e.g., the detected ransomware) and before which the client system is not infected with the malware. The infection point may be an exact time, a time span, a date, a period, etc. In some implementations, the infection point is a demarcation between back-up data in a series of back-up data, where the data before the demarcation is not infected and the data after the demarcation is (or may be) infected, see Brewer et al., Para. 86), wherein the first target snapshot has a latest unattacked replica corresponding to the data block (identifies, from the recorded back-up data, an infection point. In some implementations, the infection point is a point in time (or span of time) after which the client system is infected with malware (e.g., the detected ransomware) and before which the client system is not infected with the malware. The infection point may be an exact time, a time span, a date, a period, etc. In some implementations, the infection point is a demarcation between back-up data in a series of back-up data, where the data before the demarcation is not infected and the data after the demarcation is (or may be) infected, see Brewer et al., Para. 86); and
recovering the data block corresponding to the first target snapshot by loading the first target snapshot separately for each data block (The disaster recovery system 100 then iteratively restores each incremental back up and scans each increment for malware. Eventually the disaster recovery system 100 will recover an infected back up, see Brewer et al., Para. 87).
However, Brewer et al. does not teaches
determining, based on the data block ID, a first target snapshot having a corresponding snapshot.
Mukku et al. teaches
determining, based on the data block ID, a first target snapshot having a corresponding snapshot (The method 1600 may include requesting 1606 the deleted segments from backup storage 1502. This may include transmitting a listing of the identified VSIDs or transmitting a list of snapshot identifiers determined to have deleted segments, including the subject snapshot identifier. Where segments are identified by UUIDs or object identifiers in the segment metadata 1506, the request may include these UUIDs or object identifiers. In response to the instruction, backup storage 1502 may identify segments 1512 referenced by the request. This may include evaluating snapshot metadata 1510 for snapshot identifiers referenced in the request, see Mukku et al., Para. 128-129).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Brewer et al., to have determining, based on the data block ID, a first target snapshot having a corresponding snapshot, as taught by Mukku et al., to provide an improved approach for creating snapshots of a database and returning to a previous snapshot (Mukku et al., Para. 3).
Referring to claim 11, Brewer et al. teaches an electronic device, comprising: at least one processor; and coupled to the at least one processor and having instructions stored thereon, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the electronic device to, which recites the corresponding limitations as set forth in claim 1 above; therefore, it is rejected under the same subject matter.
Referring to claim 20, Brewer et al. teaches a computer program product having a non-transitory computer readable medium which stores a set of instructions to recover data; the set of instructions, when carried out by computerized circuitry, causing the computerized circuitry to perform a method of, which recites the corresponding limitations as set forth in claim 1 above; therefore, it is rejected under the same subject matter.
Conclusion
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/JAU SHYA MENG/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2168