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 .
DETAILED ACTION
The instant detailed action is in response to Applicant's submission filed on 24 September 2025.
ALLOWABLE SUBJECT MATTER
Claim 6-8,10-11, 17-20 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.
REJECTIONS BASED ON PRIOR ART
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) 1-2,12-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurashige (US PG PUB No. 20100161884 ) in view of Shuma (US PG PUB No. 20180268040 )
As per claim [1,12], a storage device (see FIG 5: 12) comprising:
a memory including a plurality of memory blocks (See FIG 5: 204a~204h); and
a controller configured to, when detecting an occurrence of an event (see FIG 7: B1), compress target data stored in a first memory block from among the plurality of memory blocks into compressed data, and store the compressed data in a second memory block from among the plurality of memory blocks (see FIG 7: B3 and [0059]),
[Kurashige discloses a main storage area for uncompressed data and a compressed storage area for compressed data.]
However, Kurashige does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor Shuma discloses
wherein the controller stores compression information indicating a state of compression operation progress during a period when the target data is compressed and stored as the compressed data in the second memory block (see Shuma [0049])
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Kurashige to further store status of the compression as taught by Shuma.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of recovering from abnormal termination (see Shuma [0049]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Kurashige to further store a state of compression operation progress as taught by Shuma for the benefit of recovery from abnormal termination to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
As per claim [2,13], the storage device according to claim 1,
wherein the target data is e-fuse data or a query descriptor (see Kurashige [0020]).
[Kurashige broadly discloses data, where the data is taken as inclusive of e-fuse data or a query descriptor.]
Claim(s) 3,14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurashige (US PG PUB No. 20100161884 ) in view of Shuma (US PG PUB No. 20180268040 ) as applied to claim 2 above and further in view of Guyer (US PG PUB No. 20210157726).
As per claim [3,14], Kurashige in view of Shuma the storage device according to claim 2,
However, Kurashige in view of Shuma does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor discloses
wherein the event is a power-off notification (see Guyer FIG 2: 200 and [0019]).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further compress and store data in response to a power-off notification as taught by Guyer.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of emergency power loss management procedure (See Guyer [0020]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further provide a battery backup to perform compression in case of a power-off notification for the benefit of emergency power loss management procedure to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
Claim(s) 4-5,15-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurashige (US PG PUB No. 20100161884 ) in view of Shuma (US PG PUB No. 20180268040 ) as applied to claim 1 above and further in view of Huang (US PG PUB No. 20210011845)
As per claim [4,15], Kurashige in view of Shuma discloses the storage device according to claim 1,
However, Kurashige in view of Shuma does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor Huang discloses
wherein the target data is data that is a target of garbage collection (see Huang FIG 6: 650 and [0081]).
[Huang discloses compressing and migrating expired blocks as part of a garbage collection operation.]
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Kurashige to further perform the migration as part of a garbage collection operation as taught by Huang.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of restoration capability (see Huang [0022]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further modify Kurashige to further compress and migrate as part of a garbage collection operation for the benefit of restoration capability to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
As per claim [5,16], the storage device according to claim 4,
wherein the event indicates at least one of a power-off notification, a throttling notification or a shutdown notification for the storage device, a notification indicating that an emergency background operation on the storage device is required, and a notification indicating that the number of free memory blocks from among the plurality of memory blocks is equal to or smaller than a threshold number (see Huang [0037]).
Claim(s) 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurashige (US PG PUB No. 20100161884) in view of Shuma (US PG PUB No. 20180268040) as applied to claim 1 above and further in view of Kim (US PG PUB No. 20210200469)
As per claim 9, Kurashige in view of Shuma discloses the storage device according to claim 1,
However, Kurashige in view of Shuma does not expressly disclose but in the same field of endeavor Kim discloses
wherein the controller compresses the target data into the compressed data using a run-length encoding (RLE) algorithm or a Huffman coding algorithm (see Kim [0052]).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further modify Kurashige to implement a Huffman coding algorithm as taught by Kim.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been for the benefit of a suitable data compression technique (see Kim [0052]).
Therefore it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the invention to further compress the target data using a Huffman coding algorithm for the benefit of a suitable data compression technique to arrive at the invention as specified in the claims.
CONCLUSION
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. 20110093650 : A nonvolatile memory system comprises a temporary power supply that supplies power in the event of an unexpected power interruption. The temporary power supply provides power while metadata stored in one or more buffers is compressed and transferred to a nonvolatile memory device (Abstract).
DIRECTION OF FUTURE CORRESPONDENCES
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KALPIT PARIKH whose telephone number is (571)270-1173. The examiner can normally be reached MON THROUGH FRI 9:30 TO 6:00.
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/KALPIT PARIKH/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2137
KALPIT . PARIKH
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2137
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