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 .
Response to Amendment
This Office action is in response to Applicant’s amendment filed on July 16, 2026, claims 1-20 are pending in the application, claims 6, 12, 14 and 19 are amended.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claims 1-2, 9-10, 16 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Noh et al. (US 2022/0171742 A1 hereinafter Noh).
Regarding claim 1, Noh discloses a method comprising: receiving a command from a host system ([0072], by mapping the first block 620 on the main memory area 40, the free page added to the main memory area 40 may be allocated to a user space 650 according to a user request); determining, in response to receiving the command from the host system, a number of free data blocks in a file system area of a memory device ([0068], the resource monitoring module 520 may monitor whether the size of the free page of the second memory is reduced to less than the first threshold value); determining that the number of free data blocks in the file system area does not satisfy a threshold criterion ([0053], if the size of the free page of the second memory 120 is less than a first threshold value); and allocating, in response to determining that the number of the free data blocks in the filesystem area does not satisfy the threshold criterion, one or more data blocks from a user data area to the file system area ([0053], if the size of the free page of the second memory 120 is less than a first threshold value, the processor 130 may allocate the free block included in the file system area 10 to the pseudo file 20).
Regarding claim 2, Noh discloses wherein allocating the one or more data blocks comprises: selecting a first data block from a plurality of available data blocks in a first pool in the user data area ([0071], the electronic device 100 may control a first block 620 of a plurality of free blocks included in a PM block allocator 610); determining that a number of the plurality of available data blocks in the first pool is less than a first threshold ([0068], the resource monitoring module 520 may monitor whether the size of the free page of the second memory is reduced to less than the first threshold value); and selecting a second data block from a plurality of available data blocks in a second pool in the user data area ([0079], the electronic device 100 may allocate the free block included in the file system area to the pseudo file, and the percentage of the file system area on the first memory may increase).
Regarding claim 9, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 1.
Regarding claim 10, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 2.
Regarding claim 16, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 1.
Regarding claim 17, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 2.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 4-5, 12-13 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Noh et al. (US 2022/0171742 A1 hereinafter Noh) in view of Awusie (US 2020/0342949 A1).
Regarding claim 4, Noh does not teach wherein selecting the first data block from the plurality of available data blocks in the first pool comprises: determining a number of bad data blocks in a plurality of data block stripes in the first pool; identifying a data block stripe from the plurality of data block stripes with a least number of bad data blocks; and allocating one or more data blocks from the data block stripe to the file system area. However, Awusie teaches a processing device determining a first pool of data blocks, e.g., bad data blocks, of a memory sub-system, the processing device can update the bad block data location information, and the processing device can look up the record of bad data blocks and/or good data blocks and determine a good data block to store data ([0035]-[0038]) in order to effectively manage bad blocks for a memory sub-system. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Noh in having that selecting the first data block from the plurality of available data blocks in the first pool comprises: determining a number of bad data blocks in a plurality of data block stripes in the first pool; identifying a data block stripe from the plurality of data block stripes with a least number of bad data blocks; and allocating one or more data blocks from the data block stripe to the file system area, as per teaching of Awusie, in order to effectively manage bad blocks for a memory sub-system.
Regarding claim 5, Awusie teaches marking the one or more data blocks as a reserved bad data block and adding the one or more data blocks to a file system area data block list ([0037], processing device can further erase data stored at the particular data block from the second pool of data blocks before adding the particular data block to the first pool of data blocks) in order to effectively manage bad blocks for a memory sub-system.
Regarding claim 12, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 4.
Regarding claim 13, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 5.
Regarding claim 19, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 4.
Regarding claim 20, the limitations of the claim are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claim 5.
Claims 6-7, 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Noh et al. (US 2022/0171742 A1 hereinafter Noh) in view of Myoung et al. (US 2004/0085849 A1, hereinafter Myoung).
Regarding claims 6-7, Noh does not teach generating a lookup table mapping each data block to a corresponding status identifier, the status identifier identifying a current status of the corresponding data block; and selecting, based on a selection criteria, the data block from the lookup table, wherein the status identifier comprises at least one of a good data block, a manufacturing burn in retired data block, a field grown retired data block, a one-time programmable retired data block, or a file system area reserved data block. However, Myoung teaches such ([0054]-[0058] and [0077]-[0078], PAT 131 is a mapping table that consists of information from multiple blocks constituting the data block 150, the PBN allocated to each of the multiple blocks, and status information on each of the blocks, BIT 133 is a mapping table consisting of mapping information between LBN and PBN for each of the blocks of the PAT 131 from which error blocks are excluded and status information of each of the blocks is comprised of `0` indicating a good block and `1` indicating a bad block) in order to efficiently access the memory. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Noh in generating a lookup table mapping each data block to a corresponding status identifier, the status identifier identifying a current status of the corresponding data block; and selecting, based on a selection criteria, the data block from the lookup table, wherein the status identifier comprises at least one of a good data block, a manufacturing burn in retired data block, a field grown retired data block, a one-time programmable retired data block, or a file system area reserved data block, as per teaching of Myoung, in order to efficiently access the memory.
Regarding claims 14-15, the limitations of the claims are rejected as the same reasons as set forth in claims 6-7.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Noh et al. (US 2022/0171742 A1 hereinafter Noh) in view of Bassov (US 10,146,780 B1).
Regarding claim 8, Noh does not teach suspending a host operation prior to selecting the one or more data blocks. However, Bassov teaches temporarily suspending the file system operation and de-pacing the background update to hasten the deallocation of the truncated blocks (col. 11 lines 12-20) in order to smooth the impact on system performance. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Noh in suspending a host operation prior to selecting the one or more data blocks, as per teaching of Bassov, in order to smooth the impact on system performance.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 11 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 7/16/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
In response to applicant's argument that Noh does not disclose the claim features of (1) "allocating... one or more data blocks from a user data area to the file system area," (2) "determining... a number of free data blocks in a file system area... does not satisfy a threshold criterion," or (3) determining the number of free data blocks "in response to receiving the command from the host system," as claimed, Examiner respectfully disagreed. It is noted the claimed language does not explicitly define a user data area nor file system area such that claim 1 merely defines to determine a number of free data block in a file system area of a memory device. Further Noh clearly teaches allocating, in response to determining that the number of the free data blocks in the filesystem area does not satisfy the threshold criterion, one or more data blocks from a user data area to the file system area ([0053], if the size of the free page of the second memory 120, read as file system area, is less than a first threshold value, the processor 130 may allocate the free block included in the file system area 10, read as user data area, to the pseudo file 20 such that the percentages of the main memory area and the file system area on the first memory is adjusted by allocating an free block included in the file system area to the pseudo file based on a size of a free page of the second memory). In addition, Noh also teaches to determine that the number of free data blocks in the file system area, i.e., second memory (figure 3, 50) does not satisfy a threshold criterion ([0052]). Therefore, Noh anticipates the broad claimed limitations.
For at least the reasons stated above, Noh discloses all the features of claims 1, 9, and 16. Therefore, the rejection of claims 1, 9, and 16 are maintained. Note claims 2, 10, and 17 directly or indirectly depend on at least one of the above independent claims, the rejection of claims 1-2, 9-10, and 16-17 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) are maintained for reasons similar as stated above. Because Noh teaches the broad claimed limitations as stated above, the combination of cited references teach or suggest all the features of the claims 4-8, 12-15 and 19-20. Therefore, the rejection of claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103 are maintained.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Maede et al. (US 2011/0320692 A1) discloses a method for stabilizing and increasing the speed of processing for writing a plurality of different-sized files such as a video file and a management file in parallel in the case where the area in a non-volatile memory of an information recording module is managed by a file system (abstract and figure 2).
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 ZHUO H LI whose telephone number is (571)272-4183. The examiner can normally be reached Mon. Tue. and Thurs. 8:00-4:00 PM.
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/ZHUO H LI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2133
