DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 12/12/2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/12/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The sequence the applicant describes as patentable over Madden is not suggested or described by the applicant’s originally filed disclosure. The applicant has not described any meaningful technology regarding applying isolation profiles or generating filtered lists that can be found patentable over Madden. Madden clearly teaches a policy which governs the list of gateways which are provided visibility into service traffic and those which are not. The amended limitations are mapped in the concurrent rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph 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.
Claims 1-20 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 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. The applicant claims the following sequence of limitations in claims 1 and 16:
applying the isolation profile based on one or more policies to facilitate per-gateway level filtering by the floating hub gateway router;
havinq applied the isolation profile, generating, from among the plurality of gateway routers, a filtered list of gateway routers that are allowed to connect to the floating hub gateway router;
The applicant did not describe a step of “applying the isolation profile” in their original disclosure. Paragraphs 7, 8, 27, 28, 61, 63, and 66 use the phrase “isolation profile” but there is no description or even reference to any action of “applying” an isolation profile. Further, these paragraphs provide no description of the format of the isolation profile in a way that suggests how it would be “applied” so it cannot be inferred how such a concept would be applied according to the claim.
Additionally, the applicant is claiming a sequence of steps. Paragraph 35 describes generating the filtered list but there is not description of this occurring subsequent to an explicit step of applying an isolation profile. Paragraphs 35 references states that the generating can occur after “policy and/or settings to facilitate per-gateway level filtering have been applied” but there is no description of such “policy and/or settings” and how they might correspond to any “isolation profile”.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-10 and 12-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2018/0349323 by Madden in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2022/0321604 by Majumdar et al.
As to claim 1, Madden teaches a method for enabling inter-gateway connectivity (Figure 1) in an SD-WAN that connects a plurality of sites (paragraph 47), the method comprising: deploying for the SD-WAN a floating hub gateway (service peering exchange 301 and cloud exchange point 303 read on the functionality of the gateway router) that (i) connects to at least some of a plurality of gateway routers (PE 309 and CE 311 in Figures 2A and 2B) each of which is deployed in a cloud and connects to at least one edge router in at least one site (Figures 2A and 2B, service endpoints and gateways 312 and 314 are edge routers), and (ii) does not connect to edge routers at any site (Figures 1, 2A, 2B and 5), the floating hub gateway router having a network address (paragraph 35, ref. no. 106 and Figure 2A and 2B ref. no. 306), the floating hub gateway being deployed with an isolation profile (paragraph 76 describes the policies which define an isolation profile); applying the isolation profile based on one or more policies to facilitate per-gateway level filtering by the floating hub gateway router (paragraph 76 described applying policies which describe “per-gateway level” filtering); having applied the isolation profile, generating, from among the plurality of gateway routers, a filtered list of gateway routers that are allowed to connect to the floating hub gateway router (paragraph 76, a list is implemented to management which gateways may connect); providing, to the floating hub gateway router from among the plurality of gateway routers, a list of gateway routers allowed to connect to the floating hub gateway router (paragraph 76, policies 332 manage which gateways 309 and 311 may connect); providing the network address of the floating hub gateway router to each gateway router in the filtered list (paragraphs 68 and 82); and causing the floating hub gateway router to iterate over the list of gateway routers, and to establish, using the network address of the floating hub gateway router (paragraph 82 describes how address 306 is used), a tunnel with each gateway router in the filtered list to enable the inter-gateway connectivity between the plurality of gateway routers in the filtered list (paragraphs 49, 58, 62, 63); however Madden does not explicitly teach the floating hub gateway as a router.
Majumdar teaches a method for enabling inter-gateway connectivity in an SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) that connects a plurality of sites, the method comprising: deploying (paragraph 32, network 100 is deployed) for the SD-WAN a floating hub gateway router (paragraph 42, “service provider cloud operating as a hub device”) that (i) connects to a plurality of gateway routers (CPE 108) each of which is deployed in a cloud and connects to at least one edge router in at least one site (site 106), and (ii) does not connect to edge routers at any site.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the inter-network connectivity art at the time of the applicant’s filing to combine the teachings of Madden regarding a gateway which connects a plurality of gateway routers with the teachings of Majumdar regarding using a single device/router to connect a plurality of gateways because, as shown in Figure 1 of Madden, the service peering exchange can act as a single entity and incorporating such an entity into a single router/device, as taught by Majumdar would simplify the implementation of the exchange taught by Madden.
As to claim 2, see paragraph 54 of Madden and paragraph 44 of Majumdar.
As to claim 3, see paragraph 44 of Majumdar, the applicant provides no definition for the term “multi-link optimization process”.
As to claim 4, see paragraph 33 of Majumdar.
As to claim 5, see paragraph 33 of Majumdar, the public Internet service reads on an ISP.
As to claim 6, see paragraph 62 of Madden and paragraph 42 and 44 of Majumdar.
As to claim 7, see ref. no. 330 of Madden and ref. no. 102 of Majumdar.
As to claim 8, see paragraph 27 and 35 of Madden and paragraph 33 of Majumdar, services are grouped by type which includes the CPEs which enable the provision of these services.
As to claim 9, see paragraph 27 and 35 of Madden and paragraphs 32 and 33 of Majumdar.
As to claim 10, see paragraph 49 of Madden and paragraph 45 of Majumdar.
As to claim 12, see paragraph 45 of Majumdar.
As to claims 13 and 14, see paragraph 76 of Madden and paragraph 62 of Majumdar.
As to claim 15, see paragraph 27 of Madden and paragraph 33 of Majumdar.
As to claim 16 it is rejected for the same reasoning as claim 1.
As to claim 17, it is rejected for the same reasoning as claims 2, 4, and 5.
As to claim 18, it is rejected for the same reasoning as claim 3
As to claim 19, it is rejected for the same reasoning as claims 8 and 9.
As to claim 20, it is rejected for the same reasoning as claim 10.
Claim(s) 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2018/0349323 by Madden in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2022/0321604 by Majumdar et al. further in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2010/0142410 by Huynh Van et al.
As to claim 11, the Madden-Majumdar combination teaches the subject matter of claim 1 however the Madden-Majumdar combination does not explicitly teach dynamically adding a gateway router.
Huynh Van teaches a method of dynamically adding a new gateway router to connect to a hub and directing the hub to establish a tunnel with the new gateway router (paragraph 331).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the virtual network art at the time of the filing to combine the teachings of the Madden-Majumdar combination regarding managing various CPE devices and their services with a hub with the teachings of Huynh Van regarding adding new CPE devices to be managed by a hub because managing new CPEs allows for more flexibility when managing the network.
Conclusion
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/DOUGLAS B BLAIR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454