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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
As required by M.P.E.P. ' 609 (C), the applicant's submission of the Information Disclosure Statement dated December 12th, 2024, is acknowledged by the examiner and the cited references have been considered in the examination of the claims now pending. As required by M.P.E.P. ' 609 C(2), a copy of the PTOL-1449 initialed and dated by the examiner is attached to the instant office action.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-17 of U.S. Patent No. 12,204,786. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other.
Claim 1 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 1 and 3 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 1 and 3 of the instant application.
Claim 2 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 2 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 2 of the instant application.
Claim 3 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 4 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 4 of the instant application.
Claim 4 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 5 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 5 of the instant application.
Claim 5 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 6 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 6 of the instant application.
Claim 6 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 7 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 7 of the instant application.
Claim 7 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 8 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 8 of the instant application.
Claim 8 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 9 and 11 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 9 and 11 of the instant application.
Claim 9 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 10 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 10 of the instant application.
Claim 10 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 12 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 12 of the instant application.
Claim 11 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 13 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 13 of the instant application.
Claim 12 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 14 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 14 of the instant application.
Claim 13 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 15 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 15 of the instant application.
Claim 14 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 16 and 18 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 16 and 18 of the instant application.
Claim 15 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 17 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 17 of the instant application.
Claim 16 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 19 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 19 of the instant application.
Claim 17 of U.S. Patent 12,204,786 contains every element of claim 20 of the instant application and as such anticipates claim 20 of the instant application.
“A later patent claim is not patentably distinct from an earlier patent claim if the later claim is obvious over, or anticipated by, the earlier claim. In re Longi, 759 F.2d at 896, 225 USPQ at 651 (affirming a holding of obviousness-type double patenting because the claims at issue were obvious over claims in four prior art patents); In re Berg, 140 F.3d at 1437, 46 USPQ2d at 1233 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (affirming a holding of obviousness-type double patenting where a patent application claim to a genus is anticipated by a patent claim to a species within that genus). “ ELI LILLY AND COMPANY v BARR LABORATORIES, INC., United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ON PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC (DECIDED: May 30, 2001).
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.
The factual inquiries 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.
Claims 1-2, 4-6, 9-10, 12-14, 16-17, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mu et al. [US2016/0110378] in view of KARR [US2022/0019350] further in view of Chen et al. [US2019/0303490]. Mu teaches techniques for performing resynchronizing on a clustered system. KARR teaches application replication among storage systems synchronously replicating a dataset. Chen teaches storage system with fast recovery and resumption of previously-terminated synchronous replication.
Regarding claims 1, 9, and 16, Mu teaches a computer implemented method performed by one or more processing resources of a distributed storage system [Mu paragraph 0027, first lines “…clustered system 100 including a first cluster 106-1 having one or more nodes 108-1-x configured to provide processing and storage services on a plurality of storage devices 114-1-m of a storage array 112-1…”], the method comprising:
initiating a reconciliation procedure having compound operations when a parallel split [Mu paragraph 0048, most lines “…the resync engine 129 may utilize a resynchronous operation to ensure that inflight information is stored on the clustered system and data structures for each cluster are in sync. More specifically, the resync engine 129 may perform the resynchronous operation after a failure event has been resolved by copying information from one cluster to another cluster based on the inflight tracker log information and dirty region log information. Thus, each of the logs, the inflight tracker log and the dirty region log, may provide information to the resync engine 129 to ensure that a clustered system is synchronized after a failure event or any other event that may cause the clusters to become unsynchronized…”(The examiner has determined the inflight log and dirty region log to require a plurality of write operations thus reading on compound write operations.)] when a parallel split [Mu paragraph 0041, middle lines “…The splitter 127 may send the information to storage devices associated with both the primary cluster and the secondary cluster in parallel or in a synchronous manner…”] operation fails [Mu paragraph 0037, last lines “…This tracking and logging of information may be used to ensure that the primary cluster and secondary cluster are in sync and to enable the resynchronization of information across the clustered system when it falls out of sync, such as when a failure event occurs…”] on a first storage object of a primary storage cluster and succeeds on a replicated second storage object of a secondary storage cluster, which causes a data divergence [Mu paragraph 0023, middle lines “…inflight information may have been committed on the secondary cluster, but not on the primary cluster….”]; and
Mu fails to explicitly teach undoing the operation that succeeds on the secondary storage cluster and reading a first version of data from the primary storage cluster and storing this first version of data on the secondary storage cluster.
However, KARR does teach undoing the operation that succeeds on the secondary storage cluster and reading a first version of data from the primary storage cluster and storing this first version of data on the secondary storage cluster [KARR paragraph 0352, middle lines “…In the process of detaching a storage system, some number of operations may have been in progress for the pod. Further, some of those operations may have persisted only on the detached storage system, other operations may have persisted only on the storage systems that remained in-sync immediately after the detachment was processed, and other operations may have persisted on both the detached storage system and the storage systems that remained in-sync. In this example, because the in-sync state for the pod could not have recorded the operations persisted only on the detached storage system, any updates to the in-sync content and common metadata for the pod since the detachment of the storage system would not include those updates, which is the reason these updates should be backed out—either explicitly by undoing the updates, or implicitly by overwriting that content as part of a resynchronization process. On the in-sync storage systems themselves, there may be two lists to be accounted for prior to starting a reattachment of a detached storage system: (a) a list of operations, which may be referred to as an in-sync pending operations list at detach, that were in progress and were persisted on any storage system that was in-sync when the reattaching storage system was detached from a pod and that remained in-sync for any duration of time after the detach from the pod, and (b) a list of changes to content or common metadata during the window of time the reattaching storage system was detached from the pod. Further, depending on the pod and storage system implementations, the two lists associated with the in-sync storage systems may be represented by a single list: content not known to be on the reattaching storage system. In a pod where multiple storage systems are detached, and in particular where those storage systems at different times, tracking of changes since each detach may yield separate lists—and how those lists are described may vary considerably from one pod implementation to another. In some cases, an additional issue beyond tracking changes from the time of detach and copying those changes to the attaching storage system is ensuring that new modifying operations received during the resynchronization are applied to the attaching storage system. Conceptually, this problem may be described as ensuring that operations to copy data and processing of modifying operations received by the pod may be merged in such a way that the result is correctly up-to-date at the end of the attach and prior to considering the attaching storage system to be in-sync for the pod…”(Where the secondary storage is the detached storage and resynchronizing the changes by writing from the primary storage to the previously detached storage.)].
Mu and KARR are analogous arts in that they both deal with synchronized data replication.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Mu’s clustered storage with KARR’s tracking of data recovery checkpoints for in-progress write operations for the benefit of efficient crash recovery [KARR paragraph 0365, most lines “…may enable efficient crash recovery…”].
Mu and KARR fail to explicitly teach wherein the reconciliation procedure is being performed to avoid a resynchronization process between the first storage object of a primary storage cluster and the replicated second storage object of a secondary storage cluster of the distributed storage system.
However, Chen does teach wherein the reconciliation procedure is being performed to avoid a resynchronization process between the first storage object of a primary storage cluster and the replicated second storage object of a secondary storage cluster of the distributed storage system [Chen paragraph 0095, middle lines “…a process for fast recovery and resumption of previously-terminated synchronous replication is advantageously configured to automatically maintain target replica consistency in the presence of potentially dependent mirrored host writes, while also avoiding the need for a time-consuming full data re-synchronization after synchronous replication termination…”].
Mu, KARR, and Chen are analogous arts in that they all deal with data resynchronization methods.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Mu and KARR with Chen’s avoidance of a full resynchronization process by use of fast recovery procedures for the benefit of lowering re-synchronization latency and thus improving overall system performance [Chen paragraph 0095, last lines “…Moreover, such advantages are provided without adversely impacting system performance…”].
Regarding claims 2, 10, and 17, as per claim 1, Mu teaches during a persistent inflight replay an additional reconciliation procedure is not performed if the reconciliation procedure is already complete [Mu paragraph 0053, most lines “…the clustered system may receive new information from a client for storage while the resynchronous operation is being conducted. The resync engine 129 may handle the writing of the new information to the storage devices of both the primary cluster and the secondary cluster during the resynchronous operation. More specifically, the resync engine 129 may receive the new information from the splitter 127 and may determine whether the new information is to be stored in a portion of a region that already has been resynced, in a portion of the region that is currently being resynced or in a portion of the region that will be resynced at a future point in time…”].
Regarding claims 4, 12, and 19, as per claim 1, Karr teaches the reconciliation record is updated by a most recent write Op or a most recent deallocate space Op [Karr paragraph 0316, first half “…recording recent activity for operation tracking may be implemented in various ways to identify operations that were in progress on in-sync storage systems in a pod at the time of a fault or other type of service interruption that led to a recovery. For example, one model is to record recovery information in modifications to each in-sync storage system within a pod either atomically with any modification (which can work well if the updates are staged through fast journaling devices) or by recording information about operations that will be in progress before they can occur. The recorded recovery information may include a logical operation identifier, such as based on the original request or based on some identifier assigned by a leader as part of describing the operation, and whatever level of operation description may be necessary for recovery to operate. Information recorded by a storage system for a write which is to be included in the content of a concurrent snapshot should indicate that the write is to be included in the snapshot as well as in the content of the volume that the write is applied to…”].
Regarding claims 5, 13, and 20, as per claim 1, KARR teaches undoing a write operation on the secondary storage cluster comprises undoing a number of blocks of the write Op with the blocks including a second version of data at the secondary storage cluster because the write Op failed on the primary storage cluster [KARR paragraph 0356, middle lines “…the content of a storage system that is being reattached may be reverted back to its last synchronized snapshot that predates the detach, and then rolled forward from that point to match current in-sync content in the pod. Generally, snapshots indicate a difference relative to a previous snapshot or indicate a difference to current content. Using these features of snapshots, resynchronizing content to a reattaching storage system may include replicating differences between the time of the reattach and the time of the last complete pre-detach synchronized snapshot…”].
Regarding claims 6 and 14, as per claim 1, Mu teaches the reconciliation procedure causes one or more replicating Ops including write or deallocate space Operations (Ops) to be performed depending on whether data or absence of data exist in a file range for the first storage object [Mu paragraph 0048, most lines “…the resync engine 129 may utilize a resynchronous operation to ensure that inflight information is stored on the clustered system and data structures for each cluster are in sync. More specifically, the resync engine 129 may perform the resynchronous operation after a failure event has been resolved by copying information from one cluster to another cluster based on the inflight tracker log information and dirty region log information. Thus, each of the logs, the inflight tracker log and the dirty region log, may provide information to the resync engine 129 to ensure that a clustered system is synchronized after a failure event or any other event that may cause the clusters to become unsynchronized…”].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 7-8, 11, 15 and 18 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.
Regarding claims 3, 11, and 18, the prior art of record, either alone or in combination, fails to explicitly teach a reconciliation record maintains subfields for the compound operations including a write Op, a deallocate space Op, and a number of Ops needed to complete the reconciliation procedure.
Regarding claims 7 and 15, the prior art of record, either alone or in combination, fails to explicitly teach the one or more replicating Ops each include an indicator to indicate that the replicating Op is part of the reconciliation procedure.
Regarding claim 8, the prior art of record, either alone or in combination, fails to explicitly teach the replicating Ops include a reconciliation message count to specify a number of replicating Ops to complete the reconciliation procedure.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Natanzon et al. [US9,619,264] Natanzon teaches undoing writes so as to avoid a full resynchronization process.
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/ERIC CARDWELL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2139