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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because given the broadest reasonable interpretation a “computer-readable medium” can include transmission media or signals. As such, the claim is drawn to a form of energy. Energy is not one of the four categories of invention and therefore this claim(s) is/are not statutory. Examiner suggests amending claims to recite a “non-transitory computer-readable storage medium”.
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.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gong (US Pub. No. 2013/0080395 A1) in view of Zulak et al. (US Patent No. 11,640,410 B1).
In respect to Claim 1, Gong teaches:
a method, comprising: storing, by a computing system, an expiration time in a node of a tree data structure associated with an archive, the node indicating an archived object corresponding to an object stored in a source storage; (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
traversing, by the computing system, a portion of the tree data structure to identify one or more nodes associated with the archived object and having respective expiration times expiring before an expiration time of the archive; (Gong teaches [0012, 0021, 0032] traversal of a tree data structure associated with the archive.)
Gong teaches that a determination of associated constraints are identified, wherein these constraints include [0016] defined policy threshold time periods for an archive.
updating, by the computing system, in the identified one or more nodes, the respective expiration times according to the expiration time of the archive; (Gong teaches [0016, 0026-0027] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.
Gong teaches [0016] policy for determining threshold time periods for relocation and Gong teaches [0026-0027, 0041] updating the archiving process based on a previously determined threshold time period.
Gong does not explicitly disclose:
and deleting, by the computing system and based on the respective, updated expiration times of the identified one or more nodes, one or more archived objects associated with the identified one or more nodes
However, Zulak teaches:
and deleting, by the computing system and based on the respective, updated expiration times of the identified one or more nodes, one or more archived objects associated with the identified one or more nodes (Zulak teaches [column 6, lines 41-53] deletion based on an expiration time trigger for a node.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Zulak into the system of Gong. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to provide a system which protects customer data against failure by creating consistent replicas while minimizing any required additional computing resources. (Zulak [column 1, lines 36-46])
As per Claim 2, Gong teaches:
determining to archive the object to a remote storage associated with the archive based on one or more conditions associated with an archive policy being satisfied (Gong [0016])
As per Claim 3, Gong teaches:
wherein the one or more conditions associated with the archive policy are associated with at least one of: an amount of time passing since a previous archive; a threshold amount of data being changed since a previous backup snapshot; a threshold number of incremental backup snapshots being performed since the previous archive; or a frequency at which an object is modified within a particular time period (Gong [0016, 0025, 0041])
As per Claim 4, Gong teaches:
wherein the expiration time of the archive is specified by a data management policy associated with the archive (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
As per Claim 5, Gong teaches:
wherein the one or more archived objects are associated with one or more previous archives (Gong [0009, 0013-0014])
As per Claim 6, Gong teaches:
wherein traversing the portion of the tree data structure associated with the archive includes comparing respective expiration times of the one or more nodes of the tree data structure to the expiration time of the archive (Gong teaches [0012, 0021, 0032] traversal of a tree data structure associated with the archive.)
As per Claim 7, Gong teaches:
wherein traversing the portion of the tree data structure associated with the archive includes traversing the tree data structure from the node to the one or more nodes based on a determination that the expiration time stored in the node expires before the expiration time of the archive, the one or more nodes being child nodes of the node (Gong teaches [0012, 0021, 0032] traversal of a tree data structure associated with the archive.)
As per Claim 8, Gong teaches:
wherein traversing the portion of the tree data structure associated with the archive includes traversing the tree data structure from the node to the one or more nodes based on a determination that the expiration time stored in the node does not expire before the expiration time of the archive, the one or more nodes being at a same level of the tree data structure as the node (Gong teaches [0012, 0021, 0032] traversal of a tree data structure associated with the archive.)
As per Claim 9, Gong teaches:
wherein storing the expiration time in the node of the tree data structure includes storing the expiration time in a leaf node of the tree data structure, and wherein traversing the portion of the tree data structure includes, at each node above a leaf node level of the tree data structure, comparing respective expiration times of one or more child leaf nodes associated with the node (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
As per Claim 10, Gong teaches:
wherein storing the expiration time in the node of the tree data structure includes storing, in the node, a minimum of the respective expiration times of the one or more child leaf nodes associated with the node (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
As per Claim 11, Gong teaches:
wherein the expiration time associated with the leaf node is based on a minimum of the expiration time of the archive and a child retention time of a tree metadata object associated with the leaf node (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
As per Claim 12, Gong teaches:
further comprising archiving the tree data structure associated with archive (Gong [0018-0019])
As per Claim 13, Gong teaches:
further comprising setting the expiration time stored in the node as the expiration time of the archive (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
As per Claim 14, Gong teaches:
wherein the expiration time of the archive is based on an expiration of a data lock period (Gong teaches [0016, 0026] storing archiving policy based on a time threshold.)
Claims 15-17 are the media claims corresponding to method claims 1-2 & 6 respectively, therefore are rejected for the same reasons noted above.
Claims 18-20 are the system claims corresponding to method claims 1-2 & 6 respectively, therefore are rejected for the same reasons noted above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSHUA BULLOCK whose telephone number is (571)270-1395. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 am - 4:00 pm.
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/JOSHUA BULLOCK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2153 January 6, 2026