Appeal No. 2004-1190
Application No. 09/286,160
of claim 1 would not be suggested. Alternatively, if the Khosrowpour
controllers 140, 200 were combined consistent with Massiglia, this
combination would fail to provide the redundant, failover function taught as
desirable by Khosrowpour.
In response, the examiner states, on page 14 of the answer:
The claim, for example claim 1, calls for a second plurality of back-end
controllers coupled to the first plurality of disks of organizing and
presenting the first plurality of disks as a third plurality of redundant arrays
of disk. This feature is taught by Massiglia, refer to Figure 73, page 151;
Figure 74, page 153- lower array management function(s)/ Mirroring Array
Management Function(s)). The lower array management function
organizes and presents the first plurality of disks as redundant arrays of
disks (mirrored). Additionally, claim 1, requires a front-end controller
coupled to the second plurality of back-end controllers for generating
mirror sets from at least one of the disks in a third plurality of redundant
arrays of disks received from the second plurality of back-end controllers,
striping at least one of the disks in the third plurality of redundant arrays of
disks and presenting the striped arrays as a virtual volume. Essentially,
the claimed front-end controller performs mirroring and striping. The
above rejection indicates that Massiglia teaches a front-end controller
which performs striping but does not also provide mirroring. Khosrowpour
is relied upon for teaching a controller which performs mirroring and
striping. The above rejection indicates that the combination of Massiglia
and Khosrowpour teaches the required elements for the front-end
controller by modifying Massiglia’s front-end controller, with the teachings
of Khosrowpour, to also include the functionality of mirroring, based on the
controller taught by Khosrowpour which performs mirroring and striping.
(emphasis original)
We disagree with the appellants and find that the rejection does set forth
proper motivation to combine the references, however, we agree with the
appellants and find that the combination of the references do not teach the
functionality of the front-end controller and back-end controllers as is claimed.
Claim 1 includes the limitations of a “a front-end controller coupled to the
second plurality of back-end controllers for generating mirror sets from at least
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