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 .
Claim Objections
Applicant is advised that should claim 1 be found allowable, claim 7 will be objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being a duplicate thereof. When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
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.
Claims 1-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sitka (US Patent 6,330,572) in view of Chang et al. (US Patent 11,593,017).
With regard to Claim 1, Sitka teaches a medical information management apparatus comprising:
a hardware processor (Col. 6 ll. 41-43: “the present invention provides a computer-implemented system for storing files comprising a processor.”), wherein,
the hardware processor requests that medical data stored in a first storage apparatus having a predetermined access speed be stored in a second storage device having a lower access speed than the first storage device (Col. 6 ll. 42-50: “a processor that is programmed to... control movement of the files assigned to the respective fileset together from the common data storage medium to another common data storage medium.” Col. 2 ll. 16-18: “the system and method may be useful in handling the storage of medical diagnostic images associated with a particular medical patient or study.” Col. 27 ll. 45-48: “when the images are checked into DSM system 10, the thumbnail, screen resolution, and high resolution images can all be stored on the short-term media, subject to subsequent migration of the high resolution images.” Col. 1 ll. 24-27: “Files that... have larger sizes are stored on ‘long-term’ media having longer access times and larger storage capacities.” Col. 1 ll. 45-47: “the system automatically migrates the corresponding file to the longer-term storage media and updates the file location database.” Col. 4 ll. 32-35: “For scenario (3), files are scheduled to be copied soon after they are stored, but not deleted from the storage until space on the storage is low. Here, migration can occur as a continuous, low-priority task.”).
With further regard to claim 1, Sitka does not teach the deletion suppressing as described in claim 1. Chang teaches
the hardware processor instructs suppressing deletion of the medical data stored in the first storage device, and the hardware processor requests control to suppress the deletion of the medical data for which the suppressing of the deletion is instructed (Col. 17 ll. 42-43: “The object could be a file.” Col. 59 ll. 37-45: “As described herein, an object retention management system associated with an object-based storage system may establish a retention policy for a bucket of the object-based storage system. When the object retention management system detects an operation that causes an object to be stored within the bucket, the object retention management system may apply the retention policy to the object. The retention policy may prevent the object from being deleted or overwritten for a predefined time duration.” Col. 62 ll. 50-55: “if system 620 receives a request to delete the object version of the object... during the retention period of the object version, such request may be rejected and, in some examples, responded to with an access denied error.” Col. 51 ll. 52-56: “Processor 354... capable of... directing execution of one or more of the instructions, processes, and/or operations described herein.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to have modified the apparatus as disclosed by Sitka with the deletion suppressing as taught by Chang such that “data loss caused by accidental or intentional user actions of the user can be prevented at least for the predefined time duration” (Chang Col. 60 ll. 21-23).
With regard to Claim 2, Sitka in view of Chang teaches all the limitations of Claim 1 as described above. Sitka further teaches wherein,
the hardware processor requests to store by requesting to move the medical data stored in the first storage device to the second storage device (Col. 3 ln 66 – Col. 4 ln 4: “policies can be defined to control the set of media to be used for storage of files associated with particular clients, the movement and replication of the files to other sets of media, peer-to-peer data movement between servers, the timing of data movement and replication.” Col. 6 ll. 39-41: “moving the files assigned to the respective fileset together from the common data storage medium to another common data storage medium.”).
With further regard to Claim 2, Chang further teaches wherein,
the hardware processor suppresses the deletion by suppressing the movement of the medical data stored in the first storage device, and the hardware processor requests control to suppress the deletion by suppressing the movement of the medical data for which the suppressing of the movement is instructed (Col. 19 ln. 67 – Col. 20 ln. 4: “If too many failures or replication events occur in too short a time period, the system goes into a self-preservation mode and halts replication and data movement activities until an administrator intervenes in accordance with some embodiments.”).
With regard to Claim 3, Sitka in view of Chang teaches all the limitations of Claim 1 as described above. Sitka further teaches wherein,
the hardware processor requests to store by requesting to copy the medical data stored in the first storage device to the second storage device, and the hardware processor performs control to automatically delete the medical data from the first storage device based on a deletion condition to delete the medical data stored in the first storage device (Col. 21 ln. 59-67: “Water Mark Migration with Deletion (Move files from one Store to Another) is a strategy that combines the copy and delete operations. In essence, CopyLWM is equal to DeleteLWM and CopyHWM is equal to DeleteHWM. In this strategy, the migration agent starts to copy files to the Migration Store when the CopyHWM is reached. It copies as many files as necessary to the Migration Store, and deletes them from the current Store, until the CopyLWM is reached.”).
With further regard to Claim 3, Chang further teaches wherein,
the hardware processor instructs suppressing the deletion of the medical data stored in the first storage device, and the hardware processor requests the control to suppress the deletion of the medical data for which the suppressing of the deletion is instructed (Col. 59 ll. 37-45: “As described herein, an object retention management system associated with an object-based storage system may establish a retention policy for a bucket of the object-based storage system. When the object retention management system detects an operation that causes an object to be stored within the bucket, the object retention management system may apply the retention policy to the object. The retention policy may prevent the object from being deleted or overwritten for a predefined time duration.” Col. 62 ll. 50-54: “if system 620 receives a request to delete the object version of the object... during the retention period of the object version, such request may be rejected.”).
With regard to Claim 4, Sitka in view of Chang teaches all the limitations of Claim 1 as described above. Chang further teaches
wherein the hardware processor instructs suppressing the deletion of the [data] by one instruction with respect to the [data] stored in the first storage device (Col. 53 ll. 44-50: “A method comprising: establishing, by an object retention management system, a retention policy for a bucket of an object-based storage system; detecting... an operation that causes an object to be stored within the bucket; and applying, by the object retention management system based on the detecting of the operation, the retention policy to the object,” wherein the “operation” is the “one instruction”.).
With further regard to Claim 4, Sitka further teaches wherein the [data] is medical data of one patient (Col. 2 ll. 16-18: “the system and method may be useful in handling the storage of medical diagnostic images associated with a particular medical patient or study.”).
With regard to Claim 5, Sitka in view of Chang teaches all the limitations of Claim 1 as described above. Chang further teaches
wherein the hardware processor instructs suppressing the deletion of the [data] by one instruction with respect to the [data] stored in the first storage device (Col. 53 ll. 44-50: “A method comprising: establishing, by an object retention management system, a retention policy for a bucket of an object-based storage system; detecting... an operation that causes an object to be stored within the bucket; and applying, by the object retention management system based on the detecting of the operation, the retention policy to the object,” wherein the “operation” is the “one instruction”.).
With further regard to Claim 5, Sitka further teaches wherein the [data] is medical data of one examination (Col. 2 ll. 16-18: “the system and method may be useful in handling the storage of medical diagnostic images associated with a particular medical patient or study,” wherein “medical diagnostic images” are “medical data of one examination”.).
With regard to Claim 6, Sitka in view of Chang teaches all the limitations of Claim 1 as described above. Sitka further teaches
the deletion of the medical data determined to be deleted based on a predetermined deletion condition among the medical data stored in the first storage device (Col. 21 ln. 59-67: “Water Mark Migration with Deletion (Move files from one Store to Another) is a strategy that combines the copy and delete operations. In essence, CopyLWM is equal to DeleteLWM and CopyHWM is equal to DeleteHWM. In this strategy, the migration agent starts to copy files to the Migration Store when the CopyHWM is reached. It copies as many files as necessary to the Migration Store, and deletes them from the current Store, until the CopyLWM is reached,” wherein the “CopyHWM,” i.e. high-watermark, being reached is the “predetermined deletion condition.”).
With further regard to Claim 6, Chang further teaches
wherein the hardware processor requests control to suppress the deletion (Col. 59 ll. 37-45: “As described herein, an object retention management system associated with an object-based storage system may establish a retention policy for a bucket of the object-based storage system. When the object retention management system detects an operation that causes an object to be stored within the bucket, the object retention management system may apply the retention policy to the object. The retention policy may prevent the object from being deleted or overwritten for a predefined time duration.” Col. 62 ll. 50-54: “if system 620 receives a request to delete the object version of the object... during the retention period of the object version, such request may be rejected.”).
With regard to Claims 7-9, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claim 1 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 7-9 are respectively rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 1.
With further regard to Claim 9, the claim recites additional elements not specifically addressed in the rejection of Claim 1. The Chang reference also anticipates these additional elements of Claim 9, for example, Chang further teaches:
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising a program for causing a computer to perform operations (Col. 53 ll. 18-26: “a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-readable instructions may be provided in accordance with the principles described herein. The instructions, when executed by a processor of a computing device, may direct the processor and/or computing device to perform one or more operations, including one or more of the operations described herein. Such instructions may be stored and/or transmitted using any of a variety of known computer-readable media.”).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is as follows:
Tucker (US Patent 7,338,443) discloses a system comprising a monitor unit for gathering vital sign data from a patient and a memory module for automatically recording the data, including means for protecting the data from accidental or intentional deletion of the data without proper authorization.
Li et al. (“Managing Data Retention Policies at Scale,” 2012) discusses a policy management service that offers scalable management of data retention policies attached to data objects stored in a cloud environment.
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/NICHOLAS J SIMONETTI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2137 June 25, 2026
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