DETAILED ACTION
This is in response to the RCE filed on November 25th 2025.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 11/25/25 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/10/25 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pg. 7-9, filed 11/25/25, with respect to the 103 rejection have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Uttaro US 20090164835 A1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 4, 6-8, 11, 13-15, 18, 20-22 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hamilton US 2008/0307436 A1 and P. Costa and G. P. Picco, "Semi-Probabilistic Content-Based Publish-Subscribe," 25th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'05), Columbus, OH, USA, 2005, pp. 575-585, hereinafter “Costa” in view of Uttaro US 20090164835 A1.
Regarding claim 4, Hamilton discloses sending the first event message to a … device associated with a user account as a result of the user account being included in a list of subscribers of the second event channel (subscriber applications receive message on device – paragraphs 31, 40 and Fig. 4). Hamilton does not explicitly disclose a “client” device but this would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention because server/client devices are very well-known in the art and yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 6, Hamilton discloses the first event message is generated in response to a detection of an occurrence of a first type of event (event messages can be created because of subscription or publication event types – Fig. 1, paragraph 32).
Regarding claim 7, Hamilton discloses receiving at least one routing attribute …, the routing attribute providing details pertaining to routing the first event message to user accounts included in a list of subscribers of the first event channel (receive routing attribute – paragraphs 27-28). Hamilton does not explicitly disclose using the second interface of the event router but this is taught by Uttaro as explained in the rejection of claim 22. The motivation to combine is the same.
Regarding claim 8, Hamilton discloses in response to receiving the first event message, not routing the first event message to the first event channel (only events that match are routed – paragraph 33, Fig. 4; so if there is no match, the event is not routed to the first event channel).
Regarding claims 11 and 13-15, they are method claims that correspond to the system of claims 4 and 6-8 respectively. Therefore, they are also rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claims 18 and 20-21, they are non-transitory medium claims that correspond to the system of claims 4 and 6-7 respectively. Therefore, they are also rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claim 22, Hamilton discloses:
one or more computer processors; one or more computer memories; a set of instructions stored in the one or more computer memories, the set of instructions configuring the one or more computer processors to perform operations (computer system to perform the invention – see Fig. 5, paragraph 41) comprising:
establishing, via a first interface of the an event router, subscriptions for a first set of subscribers to receive event messages from a first event channel (event router has at least one interface to receive subscription information – abstract, Fig. 1, paragraph 23);
receiving … a customization of a routing attribute associated with the event router (event router – Fig. 1, subscription event configures attributes for routing messages on the event channel – see paragraphs 1, 8, 28, 35, 40 and Fig. 4), the customization specifying that event messages of the first event channel are to be additionally routed to a second event channel having a second set of subscribers (system includes a plurality of publishers/subscribers and channels – see paragraphs 8-9 and 27; a user of the system sends a subscription event, this allows messages to be routed to a channel in real-time – see paragraphs 2, 9 22, Figs. 2 and 4);
in response to receiving a first event message for the first event channel, processing the first event message according to the customization of the routing attribute, the processing including distributing the first event message to the first set of subscribers of the first event channel and additionally routing the first event message to a second event channel for distribution (distributing the event message using the route order configured by the subscription event message – see paragraphs 9, 31 and Figs. 1, 4; this includes multiple channels as explained above).
Hamilton does not explicitly disclose routing to subscribers who haven’t subscribed, wherein the second set of subscribers have not subscribed to the first event channel via the first interface but this is taught by Costa as a probabilistic publish/subscribe routing system that forwards events along random links/channels (see abstract, Section 1). Thus, Costa discloses routing events to subscribers who haven’t subscribed, as agued by applicant; and routing to a link/channel having subscribers that have not subscribed to the first event channel as recited by the claim.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify Hamilton with the probabilistic based routing technique taught by Costa for the purpose of delivering events to subscribers. Costa discloses many advantages such as the ability to tolerate dynamic network reconfiguration, provide high scalability and delivery with low overhead and reduce routing table size/complexity (Section 3).
The combination of Hamilton and Costa does not explicitly disclose a second interface of the event router for receiving a customization of a routing attribute associated with the router. But this is taught by Uttaro as a router with a first interface for receiving/sending data (e.g. network interface) and a second “I/O interface” that allows a user to configure the router (paragraph 23, Fig. 1 item 140). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify the combination of Hamilton and Costa with the second interface taught by Uttaro for the purpose of configuring a router. Costa teaches the well-known paradigm of a control plane which controls the routing, and a data plane which actually forwards the data (paragraphs 22-23, Fig. 1). Costa teaches the second interface allows a user to interact with the router using well-known I/O devices (paragraphs 19). Thus, the second interface is beneficial to the combination because it allows a user to configure the control plane of the router to perform routing customization as recited by the claim.
Regarding claim 23, it is a method claim that corresponds to the system of claim 22; therefore it is rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claim 24, it is a non-transitory medium claim that corresponds to the system of claim 22; therefore it is also rejected for the same reasons.
Claims 25-27 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hamilton, Costa and Uttaro in further view of Liimatta et al. US 2010/0322264 A1.
Regarding claims 25-27, the combination of Hamilton, Costa and Uttaro does not explicitly disclose the second event channel being a parent of the first event channel in a hierarchy but this is taught by Liimatta as a message routing service (abstract, Fig. 2) wherein a channel is set up in a tree-model hierarchy (paragraph 22). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify the combination of Hamilton, Costa and Uttaro with the channel hierarchy taught by Liimatta for the purpose of routing messages in a publish/subscribe system. Liimatta teaches this allows for services to be customized (paragraph 22) which provides a better user experience.
Claims 28-30 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hamilton, Costa and Uttaro in further view of Jalava et al. US 2007/0197293.
Regarding claims 28-30, the combination of Hamilton, Costa and Uttaro discloses the customization implements … routing attribute so that event messages published to the first event channel are routed to the second event channel as explained above (see rejection of claim 22). The combination does not explicitly disclose: routing aliases, wherein the second event channel serves as an alias to the first event channel. But this is taught by Jalava as the use of routing alias to distribute packets over a network (abstract, paragraphs 7 and 47).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
to modify the combination of Hamilton, Costa and Uttaro to use routing alias as
taught by Jalava for the purpose of distributing event messages. Jalava suggests this improves
upon existing technology by giving users more control over addressing (paragraphs 5-6).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Zhu teaches that intelligent dynamic routing (e.g. premium routes, filtered routes, default routes, etc.) provides benefits provides benefits such as reliability, cost, etc. (Fig. 7, paragraphs 137-138).
Cheng et al. US 2011/0276636 A1 discloses efficient message routing with a default route (abstract, paragraph 66).
Pardo-Castellote et al. US 7,882,253 B2 discloses a real-time publish subscribe system (abstract).
Samuel et al. US 2005/0144298 A1 discloses a multi-channel publish/subscribe system (abstract, Fig. 1, paragraphs 9, 34).
Jaggu et al. US 2006/0287593 A1 discloses an event router using channels to communicate messages from publishers to subscribers (paragraph 22).
Whipple et al. US 2002/0038340 A1 discloses sending and receiving API request message “API calls” that have parameters (paragraphs 5, 23 and Figs. 3 and 5).
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/JASON D RECEK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458