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 .
DETAILED ACTION
2. This action is in response to the amendment filed October 31, 2025.
3. Claims 1-2 and 4-18 have been examined and are pending with this action.
Response to Arguments
4. Applicant’s arguments, filed October 31, 2025, have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. In the arguments, the applicant(s), seems to be asserting Bhandarkar et al. (US 2019/0020546 A1), herein referenced Bhandarkar, fails to explicitly teach “specialize the global policy and to produce, for each of the one or more network nodes, an associated local policy specific to that network node”. It is noted such features are explicitly taught by Moriconi (US 7,673,323 B1), herein referenced Moriconi (please see rejections below).
Bhandarkar is merely relied on to teach the element of performing registration of a new execution environment and responsive to the registration, specialize the global policy to reproduce (i.e., reproduce Moriconi’s teaching). Such “specialize the global policy to reproduce” can be construed simply as updating the policies, which are explicitly taught by both Moriconi and Bhandarkar, (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 32-34: “Global security policy 224 is passed to distributor 214 once the policy has been updated to incorporate the created or modified policy rules” and Bhandarkar, Abstract: “The policy server may asynchronously update the policy for the subscribers”).
Clearly, one of ordinary skill in the art would concur an instantiation of a new execution environment can trigger policy updates. For these reasons above and the rejections set forth below, claims 1-2 and 4-18 remain rejected and pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
5. Claims 1-2, 4-14, and 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) and 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Moriconi (US 7,673,323 B1) in view of Bhandarkar et al. (US 2019/0020546 A1).
INDEPENDENT:
As per claim 1, Moriconi teaches a network node coordinator system comprising:
communication circuitry configured to communicate, via a network, with one or more network nodes (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 19-21: “Management station 212 includes a communication interface 460 in order to pass information between various other components in system 110”; and col.11, lines 37-45: “… and then distributes only changes to the relevant policy rules (or local client security policy 318) through a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 440 and a communication interface 442 to the appropriate application guard 310 (FIG. 3), which enforces access control to local applications 312 and data.”);
receive circuitry configured to receive a global policy that describes a security policy to be applied across the network (see Moriconi, Abstract: “In the preferred embodiment, a global policy specifies access privileges of the user to securable components. The policy manager may then preferably distribute a local client policy based on the global policy to the client.” ; and col.11, lines 32-34: “Global security policy 224 is passed to distributor 214 once the policy has been updated to incorporate the created or modified policy rules.”);
policy processing circuitry configured to specialize the global policy and to produce, for each of the one or more network nodes, an associated local policy specific to that network node (see Moriconi, Abstract: “In the preferred embodiment, a global policy specifies access privileges of the user to securable components. The policy manager may then preferably distribute a local client policy based on the global policy to the client.”; col.12, lines 18-29: “… this structure enables requests to access the protected application to be evaluated by reviewing only the relatively few policy rules that make up the local client security policy rather than by reviewing the much larger set of policy rules forming the global security policy. In addition, the policy rules developed at policy manager 210 are compiled into an optimized form before changes to the sets of policy rules forming the various local client security policies are distributed to the target application guards 310.”; col.15, lines 1-9: “In the process of generating the new version of the enforced local client security policy… ”; and col.15, lines 38-40: “FIG. 11 shows the principle of reconstructing a previously enforced version of a local client security policy, in accordance with the invention”);
transmit circuitry configured to transmit, to each of the one or more network nodes, the associated local policy specific to that network node (see Moriconi, Abstract: “In the preferred embodiment, a global policy specifies access privileges of the user to securable components. The policy manager may then preferably distribute a local client policy based on the global policy to the client.”; and col.11, lines 46-49: “Since the application guards 310 can be distributed among various clients or client servers 116, and each application guard 310 has its own specific local client security policy 318, the system provides scalability”).
Although Moriconi explicitly teaches above of specializing the global policy and producing an associated local policy specific to that network node, Moriconi does not explicitly teach registration circuitry configured to perform registration of a new execution environment that has started execution on one of the network nodes in response to a notification received by the receive circuitry, wherein in response to the registration, the policy processing circuitry is configured to specialize the global policy to reproduce Moriconi’s teaching above.
Bhandarkar teaches registration of a new execution environment that has started execution on one of the network nodes in response to a notification received by the receive circuitry (see Bhandarkar, [0009]: “the policy client receives a notification upon an update to the policy code, which is then compared with an underlying subscription table where client applications register interest in specific policies. The notification can be obtained through a publish subscribe mechanism, a notification from Linux iNotify, or an equivalent service. The notification may cause a pre-registered call-back function to be invoked in the client application, which may trigger a set of processing calling into the dynamic library associated with the policy to process a policy.”; [0063]: “Subscribers 512 may be network devices which are registered to use or otherwise maintain a particular policy.”; [0069]: “In some embodiments, a client application (or daemon) for each (or a group of subscribers), such as BGP, ISIS etc., may express interest in, request access to, or otherwise identify a specific policy table, policy object or policy attribute. The interest expressed by the client application may be identified, flagged, maintained or otherwise registered (or deregistered) by the policy client 504 in a subscriber table.”; and [0073]: “The policy client may expose an interface to client applications for registering interest for subscribing (and unsubscribing) to updates of specific routing policies.”),
wherein in response to the registration, the policy processing circuitry is configured to specialize the global policy to reproduce (see Bhandarkar, [0009]: “The notification may cause a pre-registered call-back function to be invoked in the client application, which may trigger a set of processing calling into the dynamic library associated with the policy to process a policy.”; [0068]: “Notification updates to the global notification table may trigger a review of new rules within the policy associated with policy tables installed, maintained, operating on, or otherwise used by subscribers.”; and [0075]: “The policy client may maintain a plurality of subscriber tables which identify subscribers for a specific policy. Additionally, the policy client may maintain a subscriber table including identifiers for several subscribers and the corresponding policy (or policies) to which they subscribe. The policy client can compare an identifier for the policy from the notification to the subscriber table(s) to determine which subscribers subscribe to the updated policy. Where a subscriber has subscribed to the policy corresponding to the notification, the policy client may invoke a call back function, which is registered by the client application”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the system of Moriconi in view of Bhandarkar by implementing registration of a new execution environment that has started execution on one of the network nodes in response to a notification received by the receive circuitry, wherein in response to the registration, the policy processing circuitry is configured to specialize the global policy to reproduce. One would be motivated to do so because registration of new execution environment is common, well-known, routine, and conventional, thus when security policies are employed, a new execution environment will trigger policies to be updated.
As per claim 16, Moriconi and Bhandarkar teach a method comprising:
communicating, via a network, with one or more network nodes (see Moriconi, FIG. 1);
receiving a global policy that describes a security policy to be applied across the network (see Claim 1 rejection above);
specializing the global policy to produce, for each of the one or more network nodes, an associated local policy specific to that network node (see Claim 1 rejection above); and transmitting, to each of the one or more network nodes, the associated local policy specific to that network node (see Claim 1 rejection above);
performing registration of a new execution environment that has started execution on one of the network nodes in response to a notification (see Claim 1 rejection above); and
in response to the registration, specializing the global policy to reproduce, for each of the one or more network nodes, the associated local policy specific to that network node, and causing retransmission, to each of the one or more network nodes, of the associated local policy specific to that network node (see Claim 1 rejection above).
As per claim 17, Moriconi and Bhandarkar teach a network node comprising:
network interface circuitry configured to enable communication via a network (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 19-21: “Management station 212 includes a communication interface 460 in order to pass information between various other components in system 110”; and col.11, lines 37-45: “… and then distributes only changes to the relevant policy rules (or local client security policy 318) through a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 440 and a communication interface 442 to the appropriate application guard 310 (FIG. 3), which enforces access control to local applications 312 and data.”);
processing circuitry configured to provide one or more encapsulated execution environments (see Claim 1 rejection above);
transmit circuitry configured to transmit a registration request to a network node coordinator system in the network in response to a new encapsulated execution environment in the one or more encapsulated execution environments, wherein the registration request regards the new encapsulated execution environment (see Claim 1 rejection above);
receive circuitry configured to receive a local policy from the network node coordinator system in response to the registration request being transmitted to the network node coordinator system, wherein the local policy is specific to the network node (see Claim 1 rejection above);
barrier circuitry configured to restrict use of the network interface circuitry based on the local policy (see Moriconi, col.4, lines 44-49: “An application guard located on the client or client server then manages authorization requests to the securable components as specified by the local client security policy.”; and col.6, lines 6-16: “… the application guard acting to grant or deny access to securable components, as specified by the local client security policy.”),
wherein network traffic from each of the one or more encapsulated execution environments is restricted to flowing via the barrier circuitry (see Moriconi, col.2, lines 44-48: “A security policy that spans a large enterprise can consist of tens or hundreds of thousands of individual rules that cover which users are authorized to access particular applications, perform various operations, or manage the delegation and transfer of tasks.”; and col.12, lines 35-42: “Each application being protected is associated with its own copy of the access authorization service. The policy relevant to the local application then resides at the application so there is no bandwidth constraint on the network trying to connect back to the central policy server for each access request. Because the application-specific policy resides locally and the applications do not share authorization services, there is no network delay or bottleneck.”).
As per claim 18, Moriconi and Bhandarkar teach a method comprising:
providing one or more encapsulated execution environments;
transmitting a registration request to a network node coordinator system in response to a new encapsulated execution environment in the one or more encapsulated execution environments, wherein the registration request regards the new encapsulated execution environment (see Claim 1 rejection above); and
receiving a local policy from a network node coordinator system in response to the registration request being transmitted to the network node coordinator system, wherein the local policy is specific to the network node (see Claim 1 rejection above);
providing a barrier that restricts use of network interface circuitry based on the local policy (see Moriconi, col.4, lines 44-49: “An application guard located on the client or client server then manages authorization requests to the securable components as specified by the local client security policy.”; and col.6, lines 6-16: “… the application guard acting to grant or deny access to securable components, as specified by the local client security policy.”),
wherein network traffic from each of the one or more encapsulated execution environments is restricted to flowing via the barrier (see Moriconi, col.2, lines 44-48: “A security policy that spans a large enterprise can consist of tens or hundreds of thousands of individual rules that cover which users are authorized to access particular applications, perform various operations, or manage the delegation and transfer of tasks.”; and col.12, lines 35-42: “Each application being protected is associated with its own copy of the access authorization service. The policy relevant to the local application then resides at the application so there is no bandwidth constraint on the network trying to connect back to the central policy server for each access request. Because the application-specific policy resides locally and the applications do not share authorization services, there is no network delay or bottleneck.”).
DEPENDENT:
As per claim 2, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the associated local policy for each network node in the one or more network nodes indicates a security policy in respect of communications between one or more execution environments that are configured to execute on that network node and the network (see Moriconi, col.6, lines 6-16: “The invention preferably includes a system and method for managing and enforcing complex security requirements in a distributed computer network, and comprises a policy manager located on a server for managing and distributing changes to a local client security policy based on a global security policy, and an application guard located on either a client or a client server, the application guard acting to grant or deny access to securable components, as specified by the local client security policy.”; and col.12, lines 18-21: “The design and architecture of application guard 310 separate the local client security policy from a given protected application and impose virtually no performance overhead on an existing application 312.”.
As per claim 4, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein in response to the registration when the global policy omits behaviour of the new execution environment, the policy processing circuitry is configured to produce the associated local policy for at least one of the network nodes on which the execution environment is located in which traffic from the new execution environment to the network is blocked (see Moriconi, col.4, lines 44-49: “An application guard located on the client or client server then manages authorization requests to the securable components as specified by the local client security policy.”; and col.6, lines 6-16: “… the application guard acting to grant or deny access to securable components, as specified by the local client security policy.”).
As per claim 5, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the global policy is written in a Domain Specific Language (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 22-31: “Prior to the policy rules being distributed, a parser/type checker 428 preferably reviews and reconstructs the policy rules to make sure that they are syntactically and semantically correct according to a predefined policy language. The policy rules pass through a database layer (DB layer) 430 and a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 432 before being stored as part of the global security policy 224. DB layer 430 formats the policy rules into standard database storage tables, and a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 432 provides a common interface to various vendor-specific databases.”).
As per claim 6, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the one or more network nodes are first-class entities in the global policy (see Moriconi, col.4, lines 4-7: “a policy may contain thousands of inter-related rules which are enforced for many functional branches in an organization and hundreds of applications used by thousands of users.”; and col.18, lines 22-31: “In FIG. 15, four organization nodes are arranged in two layers, namely, "global," "trading," "human resources," and "payroll." Each organization node at the second layer is associated with one or more applications (i.e. t1, t2, and t3; h1 and h2; or p1). Each application is associated with one or more resources nodes. For example, if an application node is an intranet management application, the associated resources can be web pages; or if an application node is a database, the associated resources can be database table views.”).
As per claim 7, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the one or more network nodes are heterogeneous (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 25-31: “DB layer 430 formats the policy rules into standard database storage tables, and a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 432 provides a common interface to various vendor-specific databases.”; and col.11, lines 46-49: “Since the application guards 310 can be distributed among various clients or client servers 116, and each application guard 310 has its own specific local client security policy 318, the system provides scalability.”).
As per claim 8, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the global policy is platform-agnostic (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 22-31: “Prior to the policy rules being distributed, a parser/type checker 428 preferably reviews and reconstructs the policy rules to make sure that they are syntactically and semantically correct according to a predefined policy language… DB layer 430 formats the policy rules into standard database storage tables, and a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 432 provides a common interface to various vendor-specific databases.”).
As per claim 9, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the associated local policy of each of the network nodes is platform-agnostic (see Moriconi, col.11, lines 22-31: “Prior to the policy rules being distributed, a parser/type checker 428 preferably reviews and reconstructs the policy rules to make sure that they are syntactically and semantically correct according to a predefined policy language… DB layer 430 formats the policy rules into standard database storage tables, and a database connectivity layer such as ODBC 432 provides a common interface to various vendor-specific databases.”).
As per claim 10, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein in response to the receive circuitry receiving an updated global policy, the policy processing circuitry specialises the global policy to reproduce, for each of the one or more network nodes, the associated local policy specific to that network node, and causes the transmit circuitry to retransmit, to each of the one or more network nodes, the associated local policy specific to that network node (see Moriconi, col.2, lines 38-44: “A real-world security policy that spans a large enterprise, otherwise known as an enterprise or global security policy, uses a detailed and dynamic knowledge base specific to that enterprise. The authorization privileges are specific to the constantly evolving sets of users, applications, partners, and global policies that the enterprise puts in place to protect its key information resources.”; and col.10, lines 36-40: “Repository API 330 communicates with a policy repository to receive policy updates. Location API 331 is for registering Application Guard 310 with a location service to facilitate communication with the guard.”).
As per claim 11, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein the global policy comprises one or more rules (see Moriconi, col.3, lines 21-25: “A typical enterprise environment consists of several thousand users, hundreds of applications, and a myriad of network resources, resulting in a security policy that can consist of tens or hundreds of thousands of interrelated policy rules.”),
at least some of the rules are applied to entities in the network having one or more labels (see Moriconi, FIG. 14; col.3, lines 21-25: “a policy may contain thousands of inter-related rules which are enforced for many functional branches in an organization and hundreds of applications used by thousands of users.”; and col.18, lines 32-34: “When processing a policy inquiry, the system considers the rule inheritance, object hierarchy and role hierarchy as shown in FIGS. 14 and 15. The results present rules that match the given privilege, object, and subject in a query request.”); and
the network node coordinator system is adapted to assign the one or more labels dynamically (see Moriconi, col.7, lines 53-64: “If a user is granted a certain privilege on a parent object, then he is automatically granted the privilege on all the children objects. Similarly, if a user is denied a certain privilege on a parent object, then he is automatically denied the privilege on all the children objects. In other words, privileges are inherited from parent to children objects. Privilege inheritance through the object hierarchy eases security management because rather than granting the same privilege to every child object, the privilege is granted once to the parent object, and if the privileges of an object change, the policy on all the children objects automatically reflects the changes made to the object”; and col.8, lines 56-62: “The members of a role automatically inherit all the privileges granted or denied to the role. In addition, roles may be organized into a role hierarchy where parent roles are granted to children roles. If a parent role is granted a privilege, then the children roles are automatically granted the privilege. Similarly, if a parent role is denied a privilege, then the children roles are automatically denied the privilege.”).
As per claim 12, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein each of the global policy, and the associated local policy for each of the one or more network nodes, is configured to indicate at least one of: allowed traffic flows in the network and prohibited traffic flows in the network (see Moriconi, col.4, lines 44-49: “An application guard located on the client or client server then manages authorization requests to the securable components as specified by the local client security policy.”; and col.6, lines 6-16: “… the application guard acting to grant or deny access to securable components, as specified by the local client security policy.”).
As per claim 13, which depends on claim 1, Moriconi further teaches wherein each of the global policy, and the associated local policy for each of the one or more network nodes, is configured to indicate required security for communications (see Moriconi, col.4, lines 44-49: “An application guard located on the client or client server then manages authorization requests to the securable components as specified by the local client security policy.”; and col.6, lines 6-16: “… the application guard acting to grant or deny access to securable components, as specified by the local client security policy.”).
As per claim 14, which depends on claim 12, Moriconi further teaches wherein the required security for communications requires that at least one end-point of communications are to be authenticated (see Moriconi, col.9, lines 49-50: “Another evaluation function could invoke an external server to authenticate the subject.”).
6. Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moriconi (US 7,673,323 B1) and in view of Bhandarkar et al. (US 2019/0020546 A1), and still further in view of Mahajan et al. (US 2020/0336484 A1).
As per claim 15, which depends on claim 1, although Moriconi explicitly teaches a global policy and an associated local policy, Moriconi and Bhandarkar do not explicitly teach wherein the policies for each of the one or more network nodes, is configured to implement a Zero Trust Networking security pattern.
Mahajan teaches the policies for each of the one or more network nodes, is configured to implement a Zero Trust Networking security pattern (see Mahajan, [0050]: “The central authority 152 then calculates the policies that apply to that user 102 and sends the policy to the enforcement node 150 as a highly compressed bitmap.”; and [0063]: “The application 350 can support various cloud services, including ZIA, ZPA, ZDX, etc., allowing the best in class security with zero trust access to internal apps.”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the system of Moriconi and Bhandarkar in view of Mahajan so that each of the policies for each of the one or more network nodes, is configured to implement a Zero Trust Networking security pattern. One would be motivated to do so because Moriconi teaches of overcoming such shortfalls in prior art approach to security (see Moriconi, col.1, lines 44-50: “While most organizations focus their security concerns on protecting the internal network from the outside world, it is estimated that 80-90% of all corporate security breaches come from within an organization (source: Aberdeen Group, September 1997). This further underscores the need to specify and enforce an access control security policy within the enterprise network.”).
Conclusion
7. For the reasons above, claims 1-2 and 4-18 have been rejected and remain pending.
8. THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
9. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL Y WON whose telephone number is (571)272-3993. The examiner can normally be reached on Wk.1: M-F: 8-5 PST & Wk.2: M-Th: 8-7 PST.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Nicholas R Taylor can be reached on 571-272-3889. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/Michael Won/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443