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 .
This action is in response to the amendment filed August 12, 2026. No claim is amended. Claims 1-9 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 3, 4, and 7-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Feiertag et al., (US 6772203, hereinafter referred to as “Feiertag”).
Regarding claim 1, Feiertag teaches a method for allowing a client to access a web service deployed on a server through a telecommunications network, said method being performed by the server and including:
receiving a request designating a requested page associated with said web service (col. 2, lines 46-48: at a cache server, a request for a data object stored in a data object server);
measuring traffic relating to said server (abstract – hit rate for a data object stored in a cache); and
allocating a cache duration for said requested page based on said measurement (abstract - updating a time-to-live period for the data object stored in the cache based on the hit rate and the change rate for the data object.).
Regarding claim 3, Feiertag teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein said allocation comprises a comparison between said measurement and a determined threshold, and said duration corresponds to a default value when said measurement is below said threshold (col. 8, lines 60-67: At block 318, upon determining that the data object retrieved from data object server 108 is not identical to the data object stored in cache 206, the data object is updated within cache 206. In an embodiment, data object comparison logic 244 updates the data object within cache 206. The process then continues to block 319. If the data object was identical to the data object retrieved from the server, the process continues directly to block 319. At block 319, the time to live (TTL) of the data object is updated. In one embodiment, TTL calculation logic 242 updates the time-to-live period for the data object in cache 206. The process then continues to block 320.).
Regarding claim 4, Feiertag teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein said duration is proportional to said measurement (col. 10, lines 12-18: The updating of data (including the hit rate, change rate and scaling factor (based on freshness)) related to a given data object will now be described. FIG. 4 illustrates a flow diagram for updating a policy for a time-to-live period for a given data object, according to one embodiment of the present invention.).
Regarding claim 7, Feiertag teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein said allocation comprises an estimation of an evolution of said traffic measurement and a comparison of said evolution with an objective to determine said duration (col. 13, lines 17-39: At block 409, the scaling factor is updated. In one embodiment, the scaling factor, f, is derived from the user freshness value, F.sub.u, entered by the user/system administrator/owner of the data object. In an embodiment, the user/system administrator/owner employs user interface 260 (shown in FIG. 2B) to enter the user freshness value (which is one of preferences 262). In one embodiment, the freshness value may not be a single value. Rather, the user may set multiple freshness values, depending on the time-of-day. Thus, for example, the user may set the preference that during working hours (for example 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) the data must be 95% fresh, but after working hours and on weekends, the data may be 80% fresh. Thus, while for the purposes of this discussion, the value of F.sub.u is assumed to be a constant, it may, in fact vary with time of day. In that instance, during this calculation, the time of day is determined, prior to determining the value of F.sub.u. In one embodiment, the freshness value may be adjusted based on the current server load. For example, the user may set the preference that F.sub.u =95% if server load is under 90%, while F.sub.u =80% if server load is 95%. An arbitrary number of such delineations may be set for the value of F.sub.u.).
Regarding claim 8, Feiertag teaches a server (figure 1B) comprising: at least one processor (figure 1B: 160) adapted to deploy a web service and to: receive a request designating a requested page associated with said web service (col. 2, lines 46-48: at a cache server, a request for a data object stored in a data object server), measure traffic relating to said server (abstract – hit rate for a data object stored in a cache), and, allocate a cache duration for said requested page based on said measurement (abstract - updating a time-to-live period for the data object stored in the cache based on the hit rate and the change rate for the data object.).
Regarding claim 9, Feiertag teaches a non-transitory data medium on which at least one series of program code instructions has been stored for execution of a method for allowing a client to access a web service deployed on a server through a telecommunications network (figure 1A), said method comprising: receiving a request designating a requested page associated with said web service (col. 2, lines 46-48: at a cache server, a request for a data object stored in a data object server); measuring traffic relating to said server (col. 2, lines 46-48: at a cache server, a request for a data object stored in a data object server), measure traffic relating to said server (abstract – hit rate for a data object stored in a cache); and allocating a cache duration for said requested page based on said measurement (abstract - updating a time-to-live period for the data object stored in the cache based on the hit rate and the change rate for the data object.).
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) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Feiertag in view of Kuperman et al., (US 10218810, hereinafter referred to as “Kuperman”).
Regarding claim 2, Feiertag teaches the method according to claim 1, wherein said requested page references a set of elements called dynamic elements that need to be dynamically determined (col. 8, lines 36-46: dynamic content). However, Feiertag does not teach at least some of said dynamic elements corresponding to audio-video content.
In an analogous art, Kuperman teaches at least some of said dynamic elements corresponding to audio-video content (col. 2, lines 54-67: The online content originates from an origin server and may include static content and dynamic content. An example of online content is a web page including images, text, audio, video, etc. Examples of static content include image, text, audio, video, etc. in a web page that are not user specific—such as those included in an article, gallery, homepage, etc. that are not personalized. Examples of dynamic content include images, text, audio, video, etc. in a web page that are user specific—such as those included in a shopping cart, targeted recommendation, targeted advertisement, and account information specific (or personalized) for the user on the web page. Dynamic content within the web page is wrapped with a dynamic content tag registered with the proxy server.).
Before the effective filing date of the invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate the teaching of Kuperman by including audio/video in order to reduce server load, therefore improving multimedia delivery efficiency.
Claim(s) 5-6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Feiertag in view of “Hyper Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Caching,” hereinafter referred to as “RFC 7234”).
Regarding claim 5, Feiertag does not teach the method according to claim 1, wherein said allocation comprises an incorporation of information relating to said duration in a header of a response to said request. In an analogous art, RFC 7234 teaches wherein said allocation comprises an incorporation of information relating to said duration in a header of a response to said request (cache-duration information in HTTP response (page 21, 5.2. Cache-control). Before the effective filing date of the invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to dynamically determine cache duration into a response header because HTTP headers were the standard mechanism for communicating cache behavior to clients and intermediary caches.
Regarding claim 6, Feiertag does not teach the method according to claim 5, wherein said information is inserted in a “Cache-control” field within a response compliant with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP protocol). RFC 7234 teaches wherein said information is inserted in a “Cache-control” field within a response compliant with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP protocol) (page 21, 5.2. Cache-control). The motivation to combine is the same as claim 5.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed August 12, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
In response to Applicant’s argument that the “hit rate” of Feiertag does not measure the overall traffic at the server, the Patent Office respectfully disagrees and submits that Feiertag does teach the claimed limitation.
The claim recites: “measuring traffic relating to said server,” no where in the claim does it recite that measurement of all traffic processed by the server. Feiertag measures the rate of requests directed to a data-object server for the requested data object. Those requests constitute traffic related to that server.
“Relating to” has a broad meaning. In this case, it is interpreted as directed to, received by, or associated with the server. Under this interpretation, a request for a particular page hosted by the server is plainly interpreted as traffic relating to the server.
In response to Applicant’s argument that in Feiertag, the hit rate considers an individual object and is not representative of the global traffic at the server, again, as pointed out above, the claim requires measuring traffic “relating to” the server, not necessarily measuring all traffic handled by the server. A request rate for a requested web page is traffic directed to the server and therefore is traffic relating to that server. Feiertag expressly measures such request traffic and uses that measurement to determine the cache duration.
For at least the reasons above, the rejection is sustained.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALINA N BOUTAH whose telephone number is (571)272-3908. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:00 AM - 3:00 PM.
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ALINA BOUTAH
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2458
/ALINA A BOUTAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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