CTNF 18/959,219 CTNF 80463 Detailed Action 07-03-aia AIA 15-10-aia The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application. Information Disclosure Statement The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on August 20, 2025 and October 31, 2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, and accordingly, the IDS have been considered by the examiner. Double Patenting 08-33 AIA 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. 08-36 AIA Claim s 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim s 1-8, 10-17 of U.S. Patent No. 12,184,559 (“Patent ‘559”) in view of Sakata et al. US Patent Publication No. 2021/0344611 (“Sakata”) . As shown below, claims of Patent ‘559 substantially disclose claims of the application with the differences being obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. Instant Application US Patent No. 12,184,559 1. A method, comprising: maintaining a record of allocated computing resources on a plurality of computing nodes of a computing zone, the computing zone including a plurality of agent allocators configured to concurrently allocate resources in response to incoming placement requests in accordance with a first placement policy, the first placement policy being associated with allocating a first type of resource on computing nodes within the computing zone ; 1. A method, comprising: maintaining a placement store including a record of allocated computing resources on a plurality of computing nodes of a computing zone, the computing zone including a plurality of agent allocators configured to concurrently allocated resources in response to incoming placement requests in accordance with a placement policy applicable to each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators; determining, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, that a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type is greater than or equal to a threshold number of placement conflicts; determining, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, that a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to incoming placement requests is greater than or equal to a threshold number of placement conflicts for a predetermined period of time; based on determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number, modifying the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type within the computing zone; and based on determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number of placement conflicts, modifying the placement policy applicable to each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators by decreasing one or more restrictions from the placement policy associated with allocating resources on the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone; and causing the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently allocate resources of the first type on the plurality of computing nodes in accordance with the modified first placement policy. causing the plurality of agent allocators to allocate resources on the plurality of computing nodes in accordance with the modified placement policy applicable to each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators. Claim 1 of Patent ‘559 does not disclose the first placement policy being associated with allocating a first type of resource on computing nodes within the computing zone and allocating resource of the first type of resource. Sakata discloses a first placement policy being associated with allocating a first type of resource on computing nodes within a computing zone and allocating resource of the first type of resource (para. [0039] requirements such as processing capability and capacity. para. [0040] resources… may be provided from a plurality of apparatuses or a plurality of sites. para. [0050] examples of the relaxed resource requirements include performance of the CPU, a memory size, a size of a storage, and a band of a network. para. [0061] resource requirements, constraint conditions include conditions related to a location at which the virtual network functions operate.). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have implemented Sakata’s disclosure in order to have enabled allocation of different types of resources, such as CPU, memory, and/or storage, to handle requests, and enabled a service or workload to be executed while shortening a lead time for providing a service (para. [0051]). Claim 2-3, 5-12 are unpatentable over claims 1-8, 10-11 of Patent ‘559. Claim 4 is substantially disclosed by claim 8 of Patent ‘559. Claim 8 does not specify that the second number of placement conflicts is less than second threshold number of placement conflicts. However, the claims disclose decreasing one or more restrictions when the number of placement conflicts exceeds a threshold number, and separately, not decreasing one or more restrictions from the placement policy for the second set of placement requests. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have recognized that since the restrictions associated with the second set of placement requests are not decreased, “without decreasing one or more restrictions from the placement policy for the second set of placement requests,” the second number of placement conflicts is less than second threshold number of placement conflicts. In other words, there is an insufficient number of placement conflicts to cause the decreasing of one or more restrictions. Claim 13 is unpatentable over claim 12 of Patent ‘559. The differences between the claims are obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art for the same reasons as applied to claim 1 above. Claims 14-19 are unpatentable over claims 4, 12-16 of Patent ‘559. Claim 20 is unpatentable over claim 17 of Patent ‘559. The differences between the claims are obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art for the same reasons as applied to claim 1 above . Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 07-20-aia AIA 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. 07-21-aia AIA Claim s 1-2, 7m 12-14, 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amaral et al. US Patent Publication No. 2016/0283270 (“Amaral”) in view of Abedini et al. US Patent Publication No. 2021/0051711 (“Abedini”) and Sakata et al. US Patent Publication No. 2021/0344611 (“Sakata”) . Regarding claim 1, Amaral teaches a method, comprising: maintaining a record of allocated computing resources on a plurality of computing nodes of a computing zone, (abstract: allocating computing resources in a datacenter cluster. para. [0021],[0062] datacenter cluster states) the computing zone including a plurality of agent allocators configured to concurrently allocate resources in response to incoming placement requests in accordance with a first placement policy, the first placement policy being associated with allocating a first type of resource on computing nodes within the computing zone (para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision… datacenter efficiency monitor collects data regarding the state of the datacenter. CPU utilization, memory utilization. para. [0067] parallel workloads deployment); determining, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type (para. [0059] identifying conflicts between schedulers' decisions. para. [0067] resource demands, cpu, memory, network. para. [0069] conflict occurs when the multiple schedulers' decisions choose the same host to place the request where the host can only accommodate one of the decisions. policies are recommended in step 518 to resolve the conflicts); based on determining the placement conflicts, determining the first placement policy (para. [0103] policies might accept server overloading of some resources. para. [0104] policy to solve the conflict. server overloading can be accepted, low priority workloads can be migrated. para. [0117] reduce the resource of a running workload to fit the schedulers' decision); and causing the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently allocate resources of the first type on the plurality of computing nodes in accordance with the determined first placement policy (para. [0070] after the conflicts have been resolved, the workloads are committed to the datacenter infrastructure. para. [0117] reduce the resource of a running workload to fit the schedulers' decision). Amaral does not teach determining, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, that a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type is greater than or equal to a threshold number of placement conflicts. Amaral does not teach based on determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number, modifying the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type within the computing zone. Abedini discloses determining, based on information from a record of allocated computing resources, that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts (para. [0063] determine, for a particular time interval, a number of conflicting instances of resource allocations. based at least in part on the number of conflicting instances in the particular time interval satisfying a threshold. para. [0064] cause an alteration to resource scheduling). Amaral discloses a plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Abedini’s disclosure of determining that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts such that the system of Amaral determines whether a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type are determined to equal a threshold number of conflicts. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for similarly establishing a threshold for triggering reporting of conflicts for conflict resolutions, which would reduce the triggering of conflict resolutions. Amaral discloses allowing the overloading of servers and/or reducing resources of a workload, which suggests modifying a placement policy by decreasing of one or more restrictions. However, Amaral does not expressly teach modifying the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type. Sakata discloses modifying a first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type; and allocating resources of the first type in accordance with the modified placement policy (para. [0039] requirements such as processing capability and capacity. para. [0040] resources… may be provided from a plurality of apparatuses or a plurality of sites. para. [0050] examples of the relaxed resource requirements include performance of the CPU, a memory size, a size of a storage, and a band of a network. para. [0061] resource requirements, constraint conditions include conditions related to a location at which the virtual network functions operate. para. [0124] relaxes the resource requirements of the virtual network function to which the released resource A is allocated. para. [0143] relax the resource requirements and the constraint conditions (change to relax the resource requirements according to the adjustment policy). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Abedini with Sakata’s disclosure of decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling a service or workload to be executed and shortening a lead time for providing a service (para. [0051]). Regarding claim 13, Amaral teaches a system, comprising: at least one processor; memory in electronic communication with the at least one processor; and instructions stored in the memory, the instructions being executable by the at least one processor to: maintain a record of allocated computing resources on a plurality of computing nodes of a computing zone (abstract: allocating computing resources in a datacenter cluster. para. [0021],[0062] datacenter cluster states), the computing zone including a plurality of agent allocators configured to concurrently allocate resources in response to incoming placement requests in accordance with a first placement policy, the first placement policy being associated with allocating a first type of resource on computing nodes within the computing zone (para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision… datacenter efficiency monitor collects data regarding the state of the datacenter. CPU utilization, memory utilization. para. [0067] parallel workloads deployment); determine, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, that a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type is greater than or equal to a threshold number of placement conflicts (para. [0059] identifying conflicts between schedulers' decisions. para. [0067] resource demands, cpu, memory, network. para. [0069] conflict occurs when the multiple schedulers' decisions choose the same host to place the request where the host can only accommodate one of the decisions. policies are recommended in step 518 to resolve the conflicts); based on determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number, modify the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type within the computing zone (para. [0103] policies might accept server overloading of some resources. para. [0104] policy to solve the conflict. server overloading can be accepted, low priority workloads can be migrated); and cause the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently allocate resources of the first type on the plurality of computing nodes in accordance with the determined first placement policy (para. [0070] after the conflicts have been resolved, the workloads are committed to the datacenter infrastructure. para. [0117] reduce the resource of a running workload to fit the schedulers' decision). Amaral does not teach determine, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, that a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type is greater than or equal to a threshold number of placement conflicts. Amaral does not teach based on determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number, modify the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type within the computing zone. Abedini discloses determining, based on information from a record of allocated computing resources, that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts (para. [0063] determine, for a particular time interval, a number of conflicting instances of resource allocations. based at least in part on the number of conflicting instances in the particular time interval satisfying a threshold. para. [0064] cause an alteration to resource scheduling). Amaral discloses a plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Abedini’s disclosure of determining that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts such that the system of Amaral determines whether a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type are determined to equal a threshold number of conflicts. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for similarly establishing a threshold for triggering reporting of conflicts for conflict resolutions, which would reduce the triggering of conflict resolutions. Amaral discloses allowing the overloading of servers and/or reducing resources of a workload, which suggests modifying a placement policy by decreasing of one or more restrictions. However, Amaral does not expressly teach modifying the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type. Sakata discloses modifying a first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type; and allocating resources of the first type in accordance with the modified placement policy (para. [0039] requirements such as processing capability and capacity. para. [0040] resources… may be provided from a plurality of apparatuses or a plurality of sites. para. [0050] examples of the relaxed resource requirements include performance of the CPU, a memory size, a size of a storage, and a band of a network. para. [0061] resource requirements, constraint conditions include conditions related to a location at which the virtual network functions operate. para. [0124] relaxes the resource requirements of the virtual network function to which the released resource A is allocated. para. [0143] relax the resource requirements and the constraint conditions (change to relax the resource requirements according to the adjustment policy). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Abedini with Sakata’s disclosure of decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling a service or workload to be executed and shortening a lead time for providing a service (para. [0051]). Regarding claim 20, Amaral teaches a non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions thereon that, when executed by at least one processor, causes the at least one processor to: maintain a record of allocated computing resources on a plurality of computing nodes of a computing zone (abstract: allocating computing resources in a datacenter cluster. para. [0021],[0062] datacenter cluster states), the computing zone including a plurality of agent allocators configured to concurrently allocate resources in response to incoming placement requests in accordance with a first placement policy, the first placement policy being associated with allocating a first type of resource on computing nodes within the computing zone (para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision… datacenter efficiency monitor collects data regarding the state of the datacenter. CPU utilization, memory utilization. para. [0067] parallel workloads deployment); determine, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type (para. [0059] identifying conflicts between schedulers' decisions. para. [0067] resource demands, cpu, memory, network. para. [0069] conflict occurs when the multiple schedulers' decisions choose the same host to place the request where the host can only accommodate one of the decisions. policies are recommended in step 518 to resolve the conflicts); based on determining the placement conflicts, determine the first placement policy (para. [0103] policies might accept server overloading of some resources. para. [0104] policy to solve the conflict. server overloading can be accepted, low priority workloads can be migrated); and cause the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently allocate resources of the first type on the plurality of computing nodes in accordance with the determined first placement policy (para. [0070] after the conflicts have been resolved, the workloads are committed to the datacenter infrastructure. para. [0117] reduce the resource of a running workload to fit the schedulers' decision). Amaral does not teach determining, based on information from the record of allocated computing resources, that a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type is greater than or equal to a threshold number of placement conflicts. Amaral does not teach based on determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number, modify the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type within the computing zone Abedini discloses determining, based on information from a record of allocated computing resources, that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts (para. [0063] determine, for a particular time interval, a number of conflicting instances of resource allocations. based at least in part on the number of conflicting instances in the particular time interval satisfying a threshold. para. [0064] cause an alteration to resource scheduling). Amaral discloses a plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Abedini’s disclosure of determining that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts such that the system of Amaral determines whether a number of placement conflicts between the plurality of agent allocators with respect to allocating resources of the first type are determined to equal a threshold number of conflicts. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for similarly establishing a threshold for triggering reporting of conflicts for conflict resolutions, which would reduce the triggering of conflict resolutions. Amaral discloses allowing the overloading of servers and/or reducing resources of a workload, which suggests modifying a placement policy by decreasing of one or more restrictions. However, Amaral does not expressly teach modifying the first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of the first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type. Sakata discloses modifying a first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type; and allocating resources of the first type in accordance with the modified placement policy (para. [0039] requirements such as processing capability and capacity. para. [0040] resources… may be provided from a plurality of apparatuses or a plurality of sites. para. [0050] examples of the relaxed resource requirements include performance of the CPU, a memory size, a size of a storage, and a band of a network. para. [0061] resource requirements, constraint conditions include conditions related to a location at which the virtual network functions operate. para. [0124] relaxes the resource requirements of the virtual network function to which the released resource A is allocated. para. [0143] relax the resource requirements and the constraint conditions (change to relax the resource requirements according to the adjustment policy). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Abedini with Sakata’s disclosure of decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling a service or workload to be executed and shortening a lead time for providing a service (para. [0051]). Regarding claim 2, Amaral in view of Abedini and Sakata teach the method of claim 1, wherein the first placement policy is applicable to each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators (Amaral: para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision… datacenter efficiency monitor collects data regarding the state of the datacenter. CPU utilization, memory utilization. para. [0067] parallel workloads deployment). Regarding claim 7, Amaral in view of Abedini and Sakata teach the method of claim 1, further comprising identifying the placement conflicts based on detected conflicts between attempted placement of services by one or more of the plurality of agent allocators and previously placed services indicated within the record of allocated computing resources (Amaral: para. [0069] conflicts (interferences), missing resources. conflicts are detected since one placement becomes successful and the other one fails due to not having enough capacity. multiple schedulers' decisions choose the same host to place the request). Regarding claim 12, Amaral in view of Abedini and Sakata teach the method of claim 1, wherein causing the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently allocate resources of the first type comprises causing each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently process placement requests and allocate resources on the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone in accordance with the first placement policy (Amaral: para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision…). Amaral does not expressly teach allocating resources in accordance with the modified first placement policy. Sakata discloses allocating resources in accordance with the modified placement policy (para. [0039] requirements such as processing capability and capacity. para. [0050] examples of the relaxed resource requirements include performance of the CPU, a memory size, a size of a storage, and a band of a network. para. [0061] resource requirements, constraint conditions include conditions related to a location at which the virtual network functions operate. para. [0124] relaxes the resource requirements of the virtual network function to which the released resource A is allocated. para. [0143] relax the resource requirements and the constraint conditions (change to relax the resource requirements according to the adjustment policy). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Abedini with Sakata’s disclosure. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling a service or workload to be executed and shortening a lead time for providing a service (para. [0051]). Regarding claim 14, Amaral in view of Abedini and Sakata teach the system of claim 13, wherein the first placement policy is applicable to each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators (Amaral: para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision… datacenter efficiency monitor collects data regarding the state of the datacenter. CPU utilization, memory utilization. para. [0067] parallel workloads deployment). Regarding claim 19, Amaral in view of Abedini and Sakata teach the system of claim 13, wherein causing the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently allocate resources of the first type comprises causing each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators to concurrently process placement requests and allocate resources on the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone in accordance with the first placement policy (Amaral: para. [0028] optimistic or semi-pessimistic resource allocation types. schedulers … will take a snapshot of the current available resources and plan the decisions based on it. schedulers will (i.e., via resource allocation attempter 214) attempt to commit the decision…). Amaral does not expressly teach allocating resources in accordance with the modified first placement policy. Sakata discloses allocating resources in accordance with the modified placement policy (para. [0039] requirements such as processing capability and capacity. para. [0050] examples of the relaxed resource requirements include performance of the CPU, a memory size, a size of a storage, and a band of a network. para. [0061] resource requirements, constraint conditions include conditions related to a location at which the virtual network functions operate. para. [0124] relaxes the resource requirements of the virtual network function to which the released resource A is allocated. para. [0143] relax the resource requirements and the constraint conditions (change to relax the resource requirements according to the adjustment policy). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Abedini with Sakata’s disclosure. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling a service or workload to be executed and shorten a lead time for providing a service (para. [0051]) . 07-21-aia AIA Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amaral in view of Abedini, Sakata, and Jin et al. US Patent Publication No. 2019/0235909 (“Jin”) . Regarding claim 6, Amaral does not teach the method of claim 1, wherein maintaining the record of allocated computing resources comprises storing pairings of service identifiers and node identifiers indicating a placement of one or more services on corresponding computing nodes of the computing zone. Jin teaches maintaining a placement store comprises storing pairings of service identifiers and node identifiers indicating a placement of one or more services on corresponding computing nodes of a computing zone (para. [0051] assign a virtual machine… on the physical server. para. [0053] table 7, table 8. see virtual machine information and device identifier). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Jin’s disclosure of storing the pairings of service identifiers and node identifiers. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to have enabled management of services including tracking the location of deployed services and enabling routing of communication to the service . 07-21-aia AIA Claim s 8 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amaral in view of Abedini, Sakata, and Breitgand et al. US Patent Publication No. 2013/0007272 (“Breitgand”) . Regarding claim 8, Amaral does not teach the method of claim 1, wherein determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number of placement conflicts comprises detecting a threshold percentage of commit failures for incoming placement requests by the plurality of agent allocators. Breitgand discloses detecting a threshold percentage of commit failures for incoming placement requests (para. [0052] determined whether percentage of failures in the above noted placement trials exceed a threshold risk probability). Amaral discloses incoming placement requests by the plurality of agent allocators. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Breitgand’s disclosure of detecting a threshold percentage of commit failures for incoming placement requests such that for requests by the plurality of agent allocators as disclosed by Amaral, a threshold percentage of the commit failures are detected. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to have similarly identified an unsafe number of failures that are occurring on the system. Regarding claim 16, Amaral does not teach the system of claim 13, wherein determining that the number of placement conflicts is greater than or equal to the threshold number of placement conflicts comprises detecting a threshold percentage of commit failures for incoming placement requests by the plurality of agent allocators. Breitgand discloses detecting a threshold percentage of commit failures for incoming placement requests (para. [0052] determined whether percentage of failures in the above noted placement trials exceed a threshold risk probability). Amaral discloses incoming placement requests by the plurality of agent allocators. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Breitgand’s disclosure of detecting a threshold percentage of commit failures for incoming placement requests such that for requests by the plurality of agent allocators as disclosed by Amaral, a threshold percentage of the commit failures are detected. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to have similarly identified an unsafe number of failures that are occurring on the system . 07-21-aia AIA Claim s 9 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amaral in view of Abedini, Sakata, and Chen et al. US Patent Publication No. 2021/0240537 (“Chen”) . Regarding claim 9, Amaral does not teach the method of claim 1, wherein the first placement policy includes a set of rules executable by each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators to: identify candidate nodes for resource allocation by identifying a subset of computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone; and randomly allocate resources for the incoming placement requests on the identified candidate nodes. Chen teaches a set of rules executable by a plurality of agent allocators to: identify candidate nodes for resource allocation by identifying a subset of computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone; and randomly allocate resources for the incoming placement requests on the identified candidate nodes (para. [0019] scheduler service 152, and the scheduler service extender 138 may execute within one or more nodes. para. [0040] receiving a request to execute a function. para. [0041] resource constraint may then be identified for the function. para. [0046] scheduler service extender 138 may determine the amount of available computing resources for all or part of the second plurality of nodes 316, 317, 319. randomly select the second node from the nodes with sufficient available resources. second node may then be assigned to execute the function). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Chen’s disclosure such that the agent allocators as disclosed by Amaral are further configured to identify candidate nodes and randomly allocate resources for requests on the identified candidate nodes. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling the provisioning of additional computing resources to service requests. Regarding claim 17, Amaral does not teach the system of claim 13, wherein the first placement policy includes a set of rules executable by each agent allocator of the plurality of agent allocators to: identify candidate nodes for resource allocation by identifying a subset of computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone; and randomly allocate resources for the incoming placement requests on the identified candidate nodes. Chen teaches a set of rules executable by a plurality of agent allocators to: identify candidate nodes for resource allocation by identifying a subset of computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone; and randomly allocate resources for the incoming placement requests on the identified candidate nodes (para. [0019] scheduler service 152, and the scheduler service extender 138 may execute within one or more nodes. para. [0040] receiving a request to execute a function. para. [0041] resource constraint may then be identified for the function. para. [0046] scheduler service extender 138 may determine the amount of available computing resources for all or part of the second plurality of nodes 316, 317, 319. randomly select the second node from the nodes with sufficient available resources. second node may then be assigned to execute the function). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Chen’s disclosure such that the agent allocators as disclosed by Amaral are further configured to identify candidate nodes and randomly allocate resources for requests on the identified candidate nodes. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling the provisioning of additional computing resources to service requests . 07-21-aia AIA Claim s 10 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Amaral in view of Abedini, Sakata, Chen, and Gaddehosur et al. US Patent Publication No. 2018/0123830 (“Gaddehosur”) . Regarding claim 10, Amaral does not teach the method of claim 9, wherein modifying the first placement policy comprises modifying the set of rules to cause the plurality of agent allocators to expand the candidate nodes to include the subset of computing nodes and additional computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone. Chen discloses causing a plurality of agent allocators to expand candidate nodes to include the subset of computing nodes and additional computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone (para. [0019] scheduler service 152, and the scheduler service extender 138 may execute within one or more nodes. para. [0040] receiving a request to execute a function. para. [0041] resource constraint may then be identified for the function. para. [0046] scheduler service extender 138 may determine the amount of available computing resources for all or part of the second plurality of nodes 316, 317, 319. randomly select the second node from the nodes with sufficient available resources. second node may then be assigned to execute the function). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Chen’s disclosure of providing additional resources by expanding candidate computing nodes and additional computing nodes. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling the provisioning of additional computing resources to service requests. Chen does not teach modifying the placement policy comprising modifying the set of rules to cause the allocators to expand the resources. Gaddehosur discloses modifying rules to expand resources (para. [0054] one or more updated policy templates. policy templates may indicate new constraints on policy elements. para. [0087] updated policy template that indicates a change in the one or more configurable network policy elements to provide additional network resources). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Chen with Gaddehosur’s disclosure such that Chen’s expansion of resources is based on policy updates. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for similar benefits of providing updated guidelines for the use of resources. Regarding claim 18, Amaral does not teach the system of claim 17, wherein modifying the first placement policy comprises modifying the set of rules to cause the plurality of agent allocators to expand the candidate nodes to include the subset of computing nodes and additional computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone, and wherein modifying the set of rules comprises discounting one or more rules from the set of rules to expand the candidate nodes eligible for resource allocation. Chen discloses causing a plurality of agent allocators to expand candidate nodes to include the subset of computing nodes and additional computing nodes from the plurality of computing nodes of the computing zone (para. [0019] scheduler service 152, and the scheduler service extender 138 may execute within one or more nodes. para. [0040] receiving a request to execute a function. para. [0041] resource constraint may then be identified for the function. para. [0046] scheduler service extender 138 may determine the amount of available computing resources for all or part of the second plurality of nodes 316, 317, 319. randomly select the second node from the nodes with sufficient available resources. second node may then be assigned to execute the function). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral with Chen’s disclosure of providing additional resources by expanding candidate computing nodes and additional computing nodes. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for benefits of enabling the provisioning of additional computing resources to service requests. Chen does not teach modifying the placement policy comprising modifying the set of rules to cause the allocators to expand the resources. Gaddehosur discloses modifying rules to expand resources (para. [0054] one or more updated policy templates. policy templates may indicate new constraints on policy elements. para. [0087] updated policy template that indicates a change in the one or more configurable network policy elements to provide additional network resources). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Amaral and Chen with Gaddehosur’s disclosure such that Chen’s expansion of resources is based on policy updates. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so for similar benefits of providing updated guidelines for the use of resources. Allowable Subject Matter Claims 3-5, 11, and 15 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the double patenting rejection(s), set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. Examiner's Note 07-96 The following prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant' s disclosure. Kishan et al. US Patent Publication No. 2014/0123151 discloses modifying a first placement policy by decreasing one or more restrictions of a first placement policy associated with allocating resources of the first type (para. [0022] one or more restrictions (e.g., constraints on memory access, I/O operation access, CPU access, network bandwidth, etc.) placed on the application by the de-prioritized operating mode may be reduced (e.g., a constraint may be temporarily removed, a priority may be increased, etc.). In this way, the application may have access to computing resources) Lu et al. US Patent Publication No. 2020/0045724 discloses determining that a number of conflicts is greater than or equal to a threshold number of conflicts (para. [0158] triggering condition. number of consecutive collisions exceeding a threshold, the number of collisions in a predefined time duration exceeding a threshold). Conclusion A shortened statutory period for reply to this Office action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Joshua Joo whose telephone number is 571 272-3966. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 7am-3pm EST. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Oscar Louie can be reached on 571 270-1684 . The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /JOSHUA JOO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 2 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 3 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 4 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 5 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 6 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 7 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 8 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 9 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 10 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 11 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 12 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 13 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 14 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 15 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 16 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 17 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 18 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 19 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 20 Art Unit: 2445 Application/Control Number: 18/959,219 Page 21 Art Unit: 2445
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