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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed 6/11/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-19 under 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Marley.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer.
Double Patenting
Claims 1-19 are rejected on the ground of non statutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-19 of U.S. Patent No. 12107828. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the limitations in each claim set relate to the same concept.
18/504,374
18/940,297
A method for automatically determining a networked data center architecture, comprising:
assembling a database describing capabilities of a data center provider, the database describing capabilities of a plurality of data centers of the data center provider, the capabilities comprising availability of physical computer server space and network connectivity service for customers of the data center provider;
receiving a specification of requirements for the networked data center architecture, the specification describing a desired physical computing server space and the customer's desired networked connectivity;
searching the database to determine a solution including a plurality of connections and a data center that satisfies the specification; and
based on the searching, outputting the solution as a recommendation to provide the networked data center architecture.
A method for automatically determining a networked data center architecture,
comprising:
assembling a database describing capabilities of a data center provider, the database describing capabilities of a plurality of data centers of the data center provider;
receiving a specification of requirements for the networked data center architecture, the specification describing data processing and connectivity requirements of a customer of the data center provider;
searching the database to determine a solution including a plurality of connections and a data center that satisfies the specification; and
based on the searching, outputting the solution as a recommendation to provide the networked data center architecture.
Dependent claims 2-19 are rejected based on the same rationale as independent claim 1.
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) 1-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vukojevic (US Patent 11,857,872) in view of Marley (US Patent Pub. 2023/0333952).
As per claim 1: A method for automatically determining a networked data center architecture, comprising:
receiving a specification of requirements for the networked data center architecture, the specification describing data processing and connectivity requirements of a customer of the data center provider (claim 17; wherein at least one of: the first data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more first metrics associated with the first network connection satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application; or the second data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more second metrics associated with the second network connection satisfying the one or more application performance requirements associated with the application).
Vukojevic does not specifically disclose retrieving, from a data source, connectivity information of a data center and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) data of the data center; identifying, based on the connectivity information and the DCIM data, a solution including the data center, wherein the solution satisfies the specification; and rendering a three-dimensional visualization of the solution as a digital twin of the data center (See Marley; Paragraph 40; DCIM solutions documents physical infrastructure systems by creating a digital version or “digital twin” of the physical environment in software to re-create the actual physical environment. This digital version may be created according to downloaded and manually entered data that allows for remote viewing, planning, and analysis to be performed without physically being on-site the physical data center).
Therefore, it 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, having the teachings of Vukojevic and Marley in it’s entirety, to modify the technique of Vukojevic for satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application by adopting Marley's teaching for DCIM solutions documents physical infrastructure systems by creating a digital version or “digital twin” of the physical environment. The motivation would have been to improve infrastructure management.
As per claim 2: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the requirements include a compliance with at least one of a data privacy standard, an ESG standard, or a cybersecurity standard (Col 18, lines 27-37; the interconnect system 602 may include one or more bus or link types, such as an industry standard architecture (ISA)).
As per claim 3: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the requirements include locations for each data center sought in the networked data center architecture (Col 22, lines 4-14; Any of these various functions may be distributed over multiple locations from central or core servers (e.g., of one or more data centers that may be distributed across a state, a region, a country, the globe, etc.)).
As per claim 4: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the requirements include cloud connections sought in the networked data center architecture (claim 17; wherein at least one of: the first data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more first metrics associated with the first network connection satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application; or the second data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more second metrics associated with the second network connection satisfying the one or more application performance requirements associated with the application).
As per claim 5: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the requirements include a specification of at least one application supported by the networked data center architecture (claim 17; wherein at least one of: the first data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more first metrics associated with the first network connection satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application; or the second data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more second metrics associated with the second network connection satisfying the one or more application performance requirements associated with the application).
As per claim 6: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 5, wherein the requirements include a specification of where a server providing the at least one application is hosted (claim 17; wherein at least one of: the first data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more first metrics associated with the first network connection satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application; or the second data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more second metrics associated with the second network connection satisfying the one or more application performance requirements associated with the application).
As per claim 7: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the requirements include a specification of vendors utilized to build or support the networked data center architecture (claim 17; wherein at least one of: the first data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more first metrics associated with the first network connection satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application; or the second data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more second metrics associated with the second network connection satisfying the one or more application performance requirements associated with the application).
As per claim 8: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the searching the database comprises
determining a plurality of solutions, each of the plurality of solutions including the plurality of connections and the data center that satisfy the specification (Col 6, lines 39-67; The data centers 102 may include any number of sub-devices such as servers, network attached storage (NAS), APIs, other backend devices, and/or another type of sub-device. For example, the data centers 102 may include a plurality of computing devices (e.g., servers, storage, etc.) that may include or correspond to some or all of the components of the example computing device 600 of FIG. 6, described herein).
As per claim 9: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 8, further comprising:
for each of the plurality of solutions, determining a score for a respective solution
based on a preference of the customer (Col 10, lines 58-65; one or more packets may be transmitted from the data centers 102 to the client device 104, or a combination thereof, and the time of transmission may be computed to determine latency scores).
As per claim 10: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 9, further comprising:
sorting the plurality of solutions based on the determined score (Col 10, lines 58-65; one or more packets may be transmitted from the data centers 102 to the client device 104, or a combination thereof, and the time of transmission may be computed to determine latency scores).
As per claim 11: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 10, further comprising:
receiving a selection of the recommendation; and in response to the selection, calling at least one API to provision the plurality of connections through an SDN orchestration and control framework (Col 21, lines 54-60; A cloud-based network environment may include a framework layer, a job scheduler, a resource manager, and a distributed file system implemented on one or more of servers, which may include one or more core network servers and/or edge servers. A framework layer may include a framework to support software of a software layer and/or one or more application(s) of an application layer).
As per claim 12: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising:
retrieving data center data comprising data specifying the plurality of data centers, how the data centers are interconnected, network characteristics of the interconnections, and availability of space at the interconnections (claim 17; wherein at least one of: the first data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more first metrics associated with the first network connection satisfying one or more application performance requirements associated with the application; or the second data center accepts to host the application session based at least on the one or more second metrics associated with the second network connection satisfying the one or more application performance requirements associated with the application);
retrieving publicly available data describing geographic information relevant to a
requirement for the networked data center architecture (Col 22, lines 4-14; Any of these various functions may be distributed over multiple locations from central or core servers (e.g., of one or more data centers that may be distributed across a state, a region, a country, the globe, etc.); and
overlaying the data center data and the publicly available data on a map to visualize options for selecting the networked data center architecture (Col 22, lines 14-18; A cloud-based network environment may be private (e.g., limited to a single organization), may be public (e.g., available to many organizations), and/or a combination thereof (e.g., a hybrid cloud environment).
As per claim 13: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 12, wherein the data specifying the plurality of data centers includes locations of each data center of the plurality of data centers (Col 6, lines 39-67; The data centers 102 may include any number of sub-devices such as servers, network attached storage (NAS), APIs, other backend devices, and/or another type of sub-device. For example, the data centers 102 may include a plurality of computing devices (e.g., servers, storage, etc.) that may include or correspond to some or all of the components of the example computing device 600 of FIG. 6, described herein).
As per claim 14: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 13, wherein the data specifying the plurality of data centers specifies layer 2 connections between the plurality of data centers (Col 6, lines 39-67; The data centers 102 may include any number of sub-devices such as servers, network attached storage (NAS), APIs, other backend devices, and/or another type of sub-device. For example, the data centers 102 may include a plurality of computing devices (e.g., servers, storage, etc.) that may include or correspond to some or all of the components of the example computing device 600 of FIG. 6, described herein).
As per claim 15: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 13, wherein the data specifying the plurality of data centers specifies layer 3 routing between the data centers (Col 6, lines 39-67; The data centers 102 may include any number of sub-devices such as servers, network attached storage (NAS), APIs, other backend devices, and/or another type of sub-device. For example, the data centers 102 may include a plurality of computing devices (e.g., servers, storage, etc.) that may include or correspond to some or all of the components of the example computing device 600 of FIG. 6, described herein).
As per claim 16: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 13, wherein the data specifying the plurality of data centers specifies latency between the data centers (Col 6, lines 39-67; The data centers 102 may include any number of sub-devices such as servers, network attached storage (NAS), APIs, other backend devices, and/or another type of sub-device. For example, the data centers 102 may include a plurality of computing devices (e.g., servers, storage, etc.) that may include or correspond to some or all of the components of the example computing device 600 of FIG. 6, described herein).
As per claim 17: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 13, wherein the publicly available data specifies public infrastructure (Col 21, lines 33-40; By way of example, the network may include one or more Wide Area Networks (WANs), one or more Local Area Networks (LANs), one or more public networks such as the Internet and/or a public switched telephone network (PSTN), and/or one or more private networks).
As per claim 18: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 13, further comprising:
on the map, zooming into a representation of a data center from the plurality of data centers (Col 7, lines 1-35; The core switches may include import route maps (e.g., for egress network traffic) and/or export route maps (e.g., for ingress network traffic) that may be configured to aid in routing the network traffic coming to the data centers 102 and/or leaving from the data centers 102).
As per claim 19: The combination of Vukojevic and Marley discloses the method of claim 18, wherein the representation of the data center is a three-dimensional model of the data center (Col 12, lines 64-67; generating streams of required quality, which may include GPUs, CPUs, memory, a particular model or capability of a GPU, CPU, or memory, etc.).
Relevant Prior Art References
The following prior art is cited as being of interest to the claimed invention but has not been applied in any of the current rejections.
Aharchaou et al. - US Patent Publication 2020/0228571 A1: The prior art teaches techniques for enforcing universal security policies across data centers.
Sampath et al. - US Patent Publication 2016/0134461 A1: The prior art teaches selecting different application launch endpoints from data centers for a user.
Gomatam et al. – US Patent Pub. 2016/0057077 A1: The prior art teaches facilitating and automating provision of services in cloud environment
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANTHONY D BROWN whose telephone number is (571)270-1472. The examiner can normally be reached 730-330pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Linglan Edwards can be reached at 5712705440. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ANTHONY D BROWN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2408
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