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 .
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because the abstract is a recitation of the claims. The claims themselves are the legal bounds and legal description of the invention. The use of the legal phraseology of the claims should be avoided when writing the abstract. The abstract itself should be a short and concise summarization of the invention in its entirety, or at least the key features of the invention that can be summarized in the allotted space. Correction is required. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
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 12-18 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. Claim 12 contains the term “the first write command” which lacks antecedent basis in the claim and leads to indefiniteness in the claims. There is mention of “a write command” previously which could be construed to be the same as “the first write command”, however if this is the case then the terms used should be consistent. As there are two different terms that could or could not be referring to the same thing, this leads to confusion in the claims and needs to be addressed. For examination purposes, “a write command” and “the first write command” will be construed to be the same thing.
Since claim 12 is rendered indefinite, so too are the claims dependent upon it.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 are allowed over the prior art (claims 12-18 have 112 issues that need to be resolved before being allowable). After careful consideration, examination, and search of the claimed invention, prior art was not found to teach the amended limitation to the independent claims “generating data transfer length hint information indicating a length of data to be programmed in the non-volatile memory device through one programming operation…wherein the data of the first stream associated with the first write command correspond to the data transfer length hint information…” (and similar limitations in claims 12 and 19). The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Baek (US PGPub 2025/0044987) teaches a system that uses UFS protocol and generating and sending hint information to a host regarding data to be read from the memory. However Baek does not teach the cited limitations to the independent claims.
Bensity (US PGPub 2023/0259290) teaches a UFS system that will send hint information to a host regarding the order in which data is to be sent to the memory device and the host issuing write commands according to the hints. However, Bensity does not teach the cited limitations to the independent claims.
Stonelake et al. (US PGPub 2021/0405913, hereafter referred to as Stonelake) teaches generating and sending hints to a host regarding the frequency of which certain data is being accessed. However, Stonelake does not teach the cited limitations to the independent claims. Neither alone nor in combination do the references teach the limitations of the independent claims.
Conclusion
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/NICHOLAS A. PAPERNO/Examiner, Art Unit 2132