Obviousness

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103, a patent claim is considered obvious if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA). The analysis requires identifying prior art references, determining the scope and content of the prior art, identifying the differences between the prior art and the claimed invention, and discerning the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. Crucially, there must be a motivation for a PHOSITA to combine the identified prior art references to achieve the claimed invention, with a reasonable expectation of success.

For US Patent 8782282, the independent claims 1 (method) and 3 (system) disclose a network management system (NMS) architecture that features a plurality of application server instances, load balancing for selecting these instances, distributed adapters (first/southbound and second/northbound) for protocol processing and event information handling, gateway devices, and a fault tolerance mechanism to re-establish associations between adapters/gateways and a functioning server instance upon disablement of a primary server instance.

A combination of the following prior art references, available at the priority date of US8782282 (2003-12-19), would render the claimed invention obvious:

1. US20030093403A1 (Upton): "System and method for implementing an event adapter".
2. US7730489B1 (Oracle): "Horizontally scalable and reliable distributed transaction management in a clustered application server environment".
3. US7325062B2 (International Business Machines Corporation - IBM): "Method and system for automated adapter reallocation and optimization between logical partitions".

Obviousness Analysis of Claims 1 and 3

Claim 1 (Method):

• "receiving, at a first application server instance selected from a plurality of application server instances based on a load balancing process, first adapter processed information from a first adapter, wherein the first adapter processed information comprises event information received by the first adapter from a network element and processed by the first adapter based on a first communication protocol":

  • Upton teaches an "event adapter" that receives events and converts them into a standard internal format, directly addressing the "first adapter processed information comprises event information received by the first adapter from a network element and processed by the first adapter based on a first communication protocol."
  • Oracle teaches a "clustered application server environment" that is "horizontally scalable" and employs "distributed transaction management." This inherently implies a "plurality of application server instances" and the selection of an instance based on a "load balancing process" to distribute the workload, a common practice for scalable systems.
  • A PHOSITA would be motivated to combine the event processing capabilities of Upton's adapter with the scalable, clustered architecture of Oracle to efficiently handle the large volumes of event information (e.g., thousands of events) generated in a growing network, as acknowledged as a challenge in the background of US8782282.

• "processing, by the first application server instance, the first adapter processed information based on an event management service to produce application processed information":

  • This step logically follows from Upton's event adapter, where processed event information would be managed by an application server. Event management services (e.g., fault management) are a fundamental aspect of network management systems, as recognized by US8782282 (e.g., FCAPS functions). A PHOSITA would naturally expect the application server to perform such processing.

• "sending, by the first application server instance, the application processed information to a gateway device, wherein the gateway device is one of a plurality of gateway devices respectively associated with the plurality of application server instances and is configured to transfer the application processed information to a second adapter of a plurality of second adapters configured to process the application processed information based on a second communication protocol to produce second adapter processed information and transfer the second adapter processed information to an operation support system device":

  • The concept of using gateway devices and protocol-specific adapters (e.g., for SNMP, CORBA, XML, TL1) to communicate with external Operation Support Systems (OSS) is a well-known aspect of NMS design, as described in US8782282 itself. The patent explicitly details NB gateways and adapters for this purpose. The motivation to employ "a plurality of gateway devices" and "a plurality of second adapters" within a distributed system, consistent with Oracle's scalable architecture, would be to handle diverse OSS protocols and scale the northbound communication capabilities.

• "in response to determining that the first application server instance has become disabled, facilitating establishing an association between the first adapter and a second application server instance of the plurality of application server instances and between the gateway device and the second application server instance":

  • Oracle explicitly teaches a "reliable distributed transaction management in a clustered application server environment" that aims to ensure high availability and resilience to "failures." A PHOSITA would understand that a critical component like an NMS requires mechanisms to maintain continuous operation even if a server instance fails. Re-establishing connections (associations) between clients (adapters, gateways) and an available server instance in a cluster is a standard technique for achieving this reliability.
  • IBM's '062 patent further provides a concrete teaching of a "method and system for automated adapter reallocation and optimization," directly supporting the concept of dynamically re-establishing an association for adapters in a distributed environment, particularly in response to changes or failures in processing resources.

Claim 3 (System):

The elements of Claim 3 are the system counterparts of the method steps in Claim 1 and are rendered obvious by the same combination of prior art for similar reasons:

• "A first application server instance configured to receive first adapter processed information from a first adapter, process the first adapter processed information based on an event management service to yield application processed information, and send the application server processed information to a gateway device, wherein the first adapter processed information comprises event information from a network element that has been processed by the first adapter based on a first communication protocol": This system configuration is a direct implementation of the method steps described above using Upton's adapter and Oracle's server instance.
• "A load balancing component configured to select the first application server instance from a plurality of application server instances based on a load balancing process": This component is a direct feature of Oracle's "horizontally scalable and reliable distributed transaction management in a clustered application server environment."
• "wherein the gateway device is one of a plurality of gateway devices respectively associated with the plurality of application server instances and is configured to transfer the application server processed information to a second adapter of a plurality of second adapters configured to process the application server processed information based on a second communication protocol to yield second adapter processed information, and send the second adapter processed information to an operation support system device": This system configuration aligns with the distributed gateway and adapter architecture known in NMS, extended for scalability using principles from Oracle.
• "wherein, the first adapter and the gateway device are further configured to, in response to disablement of the first application server instance, establish an association with a second application server instance of the plurality of application server instances": This configuration reflects the fault tolerance and reallocation capabilities taught by Oracle and IBM, applied to the adapters and gateway devices.

Motivation to Combine

A person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) in network management systems, facing the well-known challenges of managing large, growing networks and the need for robust and scalable solutions (as explicitly stated in the background of US8782282), would have been strongly motivated to combine the teachings of Upton, Oracle, and IBM:

1. Addressing Scalability and Performance: US8782282 highlights that "thousands of events can be generated when a fault is discovered at a network element. In a large network, a network management system can easily be overwhelmed." Oracle's patent provides a direct solution for creating "horizontally scalable" systems through "clustered application server environments" and "distributed transaction management," which is exactly what a PHOSITA would seek to implement to handle increased event loads and ensure efficient processing.
2. Ensuring Reliability and Fault Tolerance: Given the critical nature of network management, ensuring continuous operation is paramount. Oracle's emphasis on "reliable distributed transaction management" directly motivates implementing fault-tolerant features, such as re-establishing associations with active server instances upon failure. IBM's '062 patent further provides a practical method for "automated adapter reallocation and optimization" in a dynamic environment, complementing Oracle's fault tolerance by enabling adapters to switch to available server instances.
3. Efficient Protocol and Event Management: Upton's event adapter provides a fundamental component for processing diverse event information and translating protocols from network elements. Integrating this specific functionality into Oracle's scalable and fault-tolerant server cluster allows the NMS to not only handle a high volume of events but also to do so reliably, irrespective of server instance failures. The distributed nature of adapters and gateways (as described in US8782282) further allows for handling a wide array of southbound (NE) and northbound (OSS) communication protocols.

Therefore, the combination of these prior art references would have been obvious to a PHOSITA who was motivated to develop a robust, scalable, and fault-tolerant network management system capable of efficiently handling growing networks and diverse communication protocols. The combination represents a predictable outcome of applying known solutions to known problems in the field of distributed network management.