Appeal 2006-2843
Application 09/872,970
We have also reviewed the Casorso reference which has been added
to Blumenau to provide a disclosure of mapping virtual disk positions to
locations on storage devices instead of virtual ports or addresses as in
Blumenau. We find nothing in the disclosure of Casorso, however, which
overcomes the deficiencies of Blumenau discussed supra.
In view of the above discussion, since we are of the opinion that the
proposed combination of the Blumenau and Casorso references set forth by
the Examiner does not support the obviousness rejection, we do not sustain
the rejection of independent claims 1 and 12, nor of claims 2-11, 13-23, and
36-40 dependent thereon.
Turning to a consideration of the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection, based on the combination of Blumenau and Casorso, of
independent claim 24, we note that, while we found Appellants’ arguments
to be persuasive with the respect to the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of
claims 1-23 and 36-40, we reach the opposite conclusion with respect to the
rejection of claim 24. Although Appellants argue (Br. 13) that the Examiner
is relying solely on the mapping tables illustrated in Figures 23-25 of
Blumenau in addressing the language of claim 24, a review of the
Examiner’s position (Final Office Action 8; Answer 8) reveals that this is
simply not the case. In fact, the Examiner has cited several portions of the
disclosure of Blumenau which, in our view, supports the conclusion that
Blumenau discloses the specifying of a block on a virtual disk as claimed.
Further, it is our opinion that Blumenau, when combined with Casorso,
would have suggested the claimed accessing of a table which maps the block
to a storage location on a storage device.
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