DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to Application filed on 28 April 2025.
Claims 1-20 are pending. The claims have been considered and examined.
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 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) 1-5, 8, 10-13, and 16-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hulick, JR., U.S. Patent App. Pub. 2023/0118838, hereinafter referred to as “Hulick” in view of Check et al., 2025/0335342, hereinafter referred to as “Check”.
Referring to claim 1, Hulick discloses a method (See Hulick, paragraph 0020). - A method, comprising:
Hulick discloses an agent instrumenting an application with catching throwable exceptions (See Hulick, paragraphs 0043, 0092, page 15). - instrumenting, by an agent process, a base throwable class of an application;
Hulick discloses intercepting exceptions by catching thrown exceptions (See Hulick, paragraph 0092). - intercepting, by the agent process, an exception during runtime of the application based on the exception calling a throwable constructor during instrumenting;
Hulick does not disclose processing, by the agent process, the exception to determine one or more features associated with the exception; determining, by the agent process, a responsive action to the exception based on the one or more features; and executing, by the agent process, the responsive action.
Check discloses an exception interpreter and catching exceptions from an application (See Check, paragraph 0005). Check discloses analyzing the exception report that comprise different exception types (See Check, paragraph 0024). Check discloses generating an exception handling response based on the exception (See Check, paragraph 0004). Check discloses transmitting the exception handler to the environment of the executing application (See Check, paragraph 0004).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing of the invention to combine the agent instrumenting for intercepting exceptions of Hulick, with the analyzing and providing an exception handling response of Check. This would have been obvious to do because it improves programming and operation of software applications (See Check, paragraph 0018).
Referring to claim 2, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Check discloses analyzing the exception report that comprise different exception types (See Check, paragraph 0024). - The method as in claim 1, wherein processing comprises: classifying the exception based on type, severity, or both type and severity.
Referring to claim 3, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 2) including Check discloses generating an exception handling response based on the exception (See Check, paragraph 0004). - The method as in claim 2, wherein the responsive action is based on classifying.
Referring to claim 4, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Hulick discloses collecting span context (See Hulick paragraph 0201). - The method as in claim 1, wherein processing comprises: retrieving a current span context associated with an executing thread of the application at a time of the exception.
Referring to claim 5, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 4) including Check discloses generating an exception handling response based on the exception (See Check, paragraph 0004). - The method as in claim 4, wherein the responsive action is based on the current span context.
Referring to claim 8, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Check discloses determining different exception handling options for an exception (See Check, paragraph 0017). - The method as in claim 1, wherein processing comprises: consulting a policy to determine the responsive action.
Referring to claim 10, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Check discloses determining different exception handling options for an exception (See Check, paragraph 0017). - The method as in claim 1, wherein the responsive action comprises a plurality of responsive actions.
Referring to claim 11, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Check discloses an exception report and providing an alarm in response to the exception (See Check, paragraphs 0005 and 0023). - The method as in claim 1, wherein the responsive action comprises: reporting the exception.
Referring to claim 12, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 11) including Hulick discloses intercepting telemetry (See Hulick paragraph 0020). - The method as in claim 11, wherein reporting comprises: generating a telemetry signal; and transmitting the telemetry signal to a telemetry collector for further processing.
Referring to claim 13, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 12) including Hulick discloses collecting metrics (See Hulick, paragraph 0039). - The method as in claim 12, wherein the telemetry signal comprises one or more of: a trace event, a log, or a metric.
Referring to claim 16, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Hulick discloses a visualization system for displaying reports (See Hulick, paragraph 0044). - The method as in claim 1, wherein the responsive action comprises: updating an exception report card visualization based on the one or more features.
Referring to claim 17, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Check discloses sanitizes sensitive information in the exception report (See Check, paragraph 0022). - The method as in claim 1, wherein the responsive action comprises: suppressing exception reporting based on the one or more features.
Referring to claim 18, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) including Hulick discloses a core agent that instruments, thus a single agent (See Hulick paragraph 0063). - The method as in claim 1, wherein the base throwable class of the application is a sole instrumentation point for the application.
Claim 19 is rejected for similar reasons as claim 1, see above rejection. Additionally, Hulick discloses a computer-readable medium with instructions store thereon for execution by a processor (See Hulick, paragraph 0300).
Claim 20 is rejected for similar reasons as claim 1, see above rejection. Additionally, Hulick discloses an apparatus with one or more network interfaces, a processor and memory (See Hulick, paragraph 0301).
Claim(s) 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hulick and Check as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hulick, JR. et al., U.S. Patent App. Pub. 2021/0029210, hereinafter referred to as “210”.
Referring to claim 15, Hulick and Check disclose all the limitations (See rejection of claim 1) except for The method as in claim 1, wherein the responsive action comprises: triggering a circuit breaker condition if the exception meets a predefined threshold related to the one or more features.
210 discloses an agent for instrumenting selected methods of an application, monitoring exceptions, and trip a circuit breaker when surpassing a particular respective threshold (See 210, paragraph 0022).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing of the invention to combine the agent instrumenting for intercepting exceptions and providing a response to the exception of Hulick and Check with the circuit breaker tripping of 210. This would have been obvious to do because it shuts down transaction components based on exceptions and prevents downstream cascading failures (See 210, paragraph 0003).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6, 7, 9, 14 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
U.S. Patent 2020/0364581 to Kuo
- AI service based handling of exceptions
U.S. Patent App. Pub. 2009/0013208 to DiMuzio
- Real time automated exception notification and reporting solution
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSEPH D MANOSKEY whose telephone number is (571)272-3648. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30am to 3:30pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bryce Bonzo can be reached at 571-272-3655. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOSEPH D MANOSKEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2113
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