DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
A response was received on 16 December 2025. This response was not fully compliant with the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121(c) as detailed in the notice of non-compliant amendment mailed 26 March 2026.
A response to the notice of non-compliant amendment was received on 26 May 2026. By this response, Claims 1-8, 10-16, and 18-21 have been amended. Claim 24 has been canceled. New Claim 25 has been added.
A supplemental reply was received on 29 May 2026. By this supplemental reply, Claims 3-5, 7, 10-13, 15, 16, 20, 21, and 25 have been amended. No claims have been added or canceled. Applicant is reminded that supplemental replies are not entered as a matter of right as per 37 CFR 1.111(a)(2)(i). However, because the supplemental reply appears to be limited to correction of informalities as per 37 CFR 1.111(a)(2)(i)(E), the supplemental reply has been entered.
Claims 1-22 and 25 are currently pending in the present application.
Election/Restrictions
The cancellation of nonelected Claim 24 is acknowledged.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 16 December 2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding the rejection of Claims 1-22 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as indefinite, and with particular reference to Claim 13, Applicant argues that the terms “good” and “bad” are not relative or subjective terms but instead are merely labels for first and second types of known SIP call communications session establishment data (page 18 of the 16 December 2025 response). However, Applicant has not provided any evidence for this assertion. The plain meaning of the term “good” includes synonyms such as favorable, suitable, adequate, moral, or competent (see Merriam-Webster) and “bad” is the opposite. All of these meanings are generally relative or subjective, and the specification has not clearly provided a definition or standard of comparison for how to determine whether data is good or bad. To the extent that the specification indicates that the data can be labeled as good or bad (see, e.g., paragraph 0041) there is no indication of how those labels have been applied or what makes the data good or bad. To merely use the terms as labels without relying on the underlying meaning of the terms good and bad, appears to be contradictory to the ordinary meaning of the terms; however, the terms have not been clearly redefined in the description as required by MPEP § 2173.05(a) III. The specification does not provide a clear definition or standard of comparison for how the model classifies data as good or bad, and therefore these terms are indefinite. See also MPEP § 2173.05(b).
Therefore, for the reasons detailed above, the Examiner maintains the rejections as set forth below.
Specification
The objection to the abstract is NOT withdrawn because the abstract includes additional informalities as detailed below.
The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because it includes informalities. In particular, in lines 3 and 5, the commas after “operating” should be deleted (see page 2 of the response filed 16 December 2025). A corrected abstract of the disclosure is required and must be presented on a separate sheet, apart from any other text. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
Claim Objections
Claim 16 is objected to because of the following informalities:
In Claim 16, line 5, it appears that “call” should be inserted after “SIP” for consistency in the claims.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
The rejection of Claims 1-22 under 35 U.S.C. 101 is withdrawn in light of the amendments reciting determining and performing mitigation actions based on the determined probabilities, which is considered to integrate the abstract ideas into a practical application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The rejection of Claims 1-22 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as indefinite is NOT withdrawn, because not all issues have been addressed and/or because the amendments have raised new issues, as detailed below.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claim 25 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Claim 25 recites “said one or more mitigation actions is also determined based on the type of attack which the malicious transaction is determined to be a part of”. Although Applicant points to paragraphs 0100-0104 and 0109 of the specification and Figure 7 for support for new Claim 25 (see page 13 of the 16 December 2025 response), and although the specification generally describes determining a type of attack (see paragraph 0109, for example) and determining a mitigation action (see paragraph 0179 describing portions of Figure 7, for example), there appears to be no mention in the cited paragraphs or elsewhere in the specification of determining a mitigation action based on a determined type of attack. Therefore, there is not clear written description of the claimed subject matter in the specification.
Claims 1-22 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the enablement requirement. The claims contain subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and/or use the invention.
A determination of a failure to comply with the enablement requirement is made considering the undue experimentation factors set forth in MPEP § 2164.01(a). In the present application, the factors which appear to weigh most heavily are the breadth of the claims (MPEP § 2164.08), the amount of direction provided by the inventor (MPEP § 2164.03), and the existence of working examples (MPEP § 2164.02). Independent Claims 1, 13, and 20 broadly recite “determining… based on said determined probability one or more mitigation actions to be performed from the following mitigation actions” or similar language. Claim 25 further recites “said one or mitigation actions is also determined based on the type of attack which the malicious transaction is determined to be a part of”. The phrases of determining mitigation actions to be performed “based on said determined probability” or “based on the type of attack” are broad recitations which only recite a general relationship between the probability or type and the determined actions. Although the claims recite that if the probability is greater than or equal to a threshold, then it is determined that a transaction is malicious, there are no details of how that determined probability would subsequently be used to actually determine which of plural mitigation actions are to be performed. Although the specification generally discusses determining an action to be performed based on probability in a manner similar to the claims (see paragraph 0179, for example), there appears to be no detail provided in the specification of how a particular action or actions are to be determined based on the probability. More specifically, the specification appears to have no particular mapping of what levels of probability would lead to performance of which mitigation actions, and the specification appears to have no other working example of how the mitigation actions are to be determined. The only detail the specification provides of how the probability is used is that if the probability is greater than or equal to the threshold, then the transaction is malicious, and if it is less than the threshold, it is not malicious, and that a mitigation action should be taken if the transaction is malicious (see paragraphs 0175-0178). However, this does not discuss how the probability is used to determine which particular mitigation action(s) to perform. The specification also does not discuss how a determined type of attack would be used to determine which mitigation action(s) to perform. The lack of details or examples in any detail suggests that there is little direction provided by the inventor. Combined with the broad scope of the claims, this suggests that the enablement of the description is not commensurate in scope with the claims (MPEP § 2164.08) and that undue experimentation would be required to make or use the invention based on the disclosure (MPEP § 2164.06).
Claims not explicitly referred to above are rejected due to their dependence on a rejected base claim.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-22 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “a non-suspect malicious communications session” in lines 29-30. This appears to be contradictory, as it appears that a malicious session would always be suspect or suspicious. It is not clear what it means to be a non-suspect malicious session. The above ambiguities render the claim indefinite.
Claim 3 recites “proprietary customer call communications session data” in line 5. It is not clear whether this is intended to refer to the same proprietary customer call communications session data recited in Claim 1, lines 10-11, or if this refers to distinct data.
Claim 7 recites “proprietary customer call communications session data”. It is not clear whether this is intended to refer to the proprietary customer call communications session data of Claim 1 and/or Claim 3, or to distinct data.
Claim 13 recites “said malicious transaction detection device including a determination model” in lines 11-12. While this is not indefinite, the clarity of the claim would be increased if the model were explicitly included in the list of structural elements of the device (i.e. the memory and first processor) in lines 3-4. The claim further recites “a non-suspect malicious communications session” in lines 35-36. This appears to be contradictory, as it appears that a malicious session would always be suspect or suspicious. It is not clear what it means to be a non-suspect malicious session. The claim also includes a list of operations performed by the processor in lines 6-40. However, there is not a clear conjunction (e.g. “and” or “or”) joining the list of operations, and therefore, it is not clear whether all the operations are required or if any are alternatives. The claim additionally recites “classify communications session establishment data as good or bad” in line 47. The terms “good” and “bad” are relative or subjective terms which have not been clearly defined in the claims or specification, and which have not been clearly redefined in the specification in a manner contrary to their ordinary meaning. See MPEP § 2173.05(a) and (b). The above ambiguities render the claim indefinite.
Claim 20 recites “a non-suspect malicious communications session” in line 29. This appears to be contradictory, as it appears that a malicious session would always be suspect or suspicious. It is not clear what it means to be a non-suspect malicious session.
Claim 25 recites “an attack determination model” in line 2. It is not clear whether this is intended to refer to the determination model of Claim 1 or to a distinct model. Claim 25 further recites “the determination model” in line 9. It is not clear whether this is intended to refer to the attack determination model or the determination model of Claim 1, if these are distinct. Claim 25 additionally recites “an artificial intelligence neural network” in lines 14-15. It is not clear if this is intended to refer to the same neural network recited in lines 9-10 or a distinct network. Similarly, the claim recites “the neural network nodes” in line 16 and “the neural network” in line 17, and it is not clear to which of the potentially plural nodes and neural networks these limitations are intended to refer. The claim also recites “different synthetic data generator neural networks” in line 18. It is not clear in context what these are different from. The claim additionally recites “said synthetic call communication session data” in line 21; however, it is not clear whether this is intended to refer to the synthetic call communication session data of Claim 1 or the synthetic call communication session data generated from the different neural networks.
Claims not explicitly referred to above are rejected due to their dependence on a rejected base claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-22 and 25 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) and (b) set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the cited prior art does not clearly teach or suggest determining, based on the determined probability of whether the SIP session establishment data indicates that a session is malicious, a mitigation action to be performed, in combination with the other claimed elements.
It is noted that amendments which change the scope of the claims may require reconsideration of the determination of allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Zachary A Davis whose telephone number is (571)272-3870. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:30pm, Eastern Time.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rupal D Dharia can be reached at (571) 272-3880. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Zachary A. Davis/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2492
