DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the amendment to Application Ser. No. 18/083,762 filed on June 23, 2026. Claims 2, 9, 16 and 24 are cancelled. Claims 1, 5, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15 19 and 21 are currently amended. Claims 1, 3-8, 10-15, 17-23 and 25 are pending and are examined.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 June 23, 2026, has been entered.
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 .
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 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.
Response to Arguments
The arguments with respect to the rejection of Claims 1, 3, 5-8, 10, 12-15, 17, 19-23 and 25 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered by the Examiner.
Specifically, on page 9 of the response filed June 23, 2026, Applicant argues, “The cited references have the following effective filing dates. Bichot claims priority to EP 15305840, filed June 1, 2015. Judge claims priority to US Provisional Application No. 62/149,990, filed April 20, 2015. Keidar has an earliest effective filing date of February 17, 2016. Chambers claims priority to US Provisional Application No. 61/695,316, filed August 31, 2012.
The present application claims priority to US Provisional Application No. 62/146,008, filed April 10, 2015.
The pending claims, as amended, are entitled to the benefit of the April 10, 2015 provisional filing date. The amended claims find exemplary, non-limiting support in at least paragraphs [0007], [0022], [0036], [0038], [0040], [0060], [0067], [0070], and [0080] of the provisional application.
Because the amended claims are entitled to the April 10, 2015 priority date, the earliest possible filing dates of Bichot (June 1, 2015), Judge (April 20, 2015), and Keidar (February 17, 2016) do not qualify as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2). The remaining reference, Chambers, does not teach or suggest all elements of the amended claims.”
While the features recited by the limitations of Claims 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21-23 and 25 are supported by the disclosure of provisional application 62/146,008, filed April 10, 2015, the provisional filing does not provide adequate written description support for the features recited by the limitations of Claims 4, 6, 11, 13, 18 and 20, respectively, contrary to Applicant’s assertion. Therefore, Claims 4, 6, 11, 13, 18 and 20 will retain the April 18, 2016, filing date of non-provisional application 15/904,404 as their effective filing date.
New grounds of rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103, necessitated by the amendment, are set forth in this Office Action.
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.
Claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22, 23 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Head et al., Pub. No. US 2015/0350912 A1, hereby “Head”, in view of Mahadik et al., Pub. No. US 2014/0089661 A1, hereby “Mahadik”.
Regarding Claim 1, Head discloses “A method (Head fig. 2 and paragraphs 7 and 46: a method for delivering a residential service to an electronic device of a user over a network) comprising:
receiving, by a virtual gateway via a tunnel from a router that forwards traffic from a client device to the virtual gateway, an encapsulated dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) request message (Head figs. 1B, 2 and 4A and paragraphs 39, 43, 46 and 56: virtualized home gateway 150 receives an access request, e.g., a DHCP request, of an electronic device via a tunnel established between the virtualized home gateway 150 and home network device 120A);
analyzing, by the virtual gateway, data associated with the client device to determine device information (Head figs. 1B, 2 and 4A and paragraphs 42, 46-48 and 56: virtualized home gateway 150 identifies a MAC address included in the access request received from the electronic device);
determining, based on the determined device information, an identity of the client device (Head figs. 1B, 2 and 4A and paragraphs 42, 46-48 and 56: virtualized home gateway 150 identifies the electronic device based on the MAC address)”.
However, while Head discloses permitting access to the requested residential service based on the identity of the electronic device (Head paragraphs 48 and 60), and further suggests differentiated services, e.g., content filtering/parental control, based on device identity (Head paragraph 4), Head does not explicitly disclose “determining, based on the identity of the client device, a domain name system (DNS) policy associated with the client device;
receiving, from the client device, user credentials of a user associated with the client device and a request to bypass the DNS policy; and
permitting, based on authenticating the user credentials, the client device to bypass the DNS policy.”
In the same field of endeavor, Mahadik discloses “determining, based on the identity of the client device, a domain name system (DNS) policy associated with the client device (Mahadik figs. 1, 2 and 5 and paragraphs 14-16, 20-23 and 41: a resource access level to be applied to a DNS query, i.e., a DNS policy, is determined, e.g., based on the identity of the device from which the DNS request originated);
receiving, from the client device, user credentials of a user associated with the client device and a request to bypass the DNS policy (Mahadik fig. 1, 2 and 5 and paragraphs 16 and 25-26: "Replacement resource IP addresses preferably direct to a block page containing a notice of blocked content with a prompt or method for overriding the block page for users with appropriate credentials."); and
permitting, based on authenticating the user credentials, the client device to bypass the DNS policy (Mahadik fig. 1, 2 and 5 and paragraphs 16 and 25-26: "Replacement resource IP addresses preferably direct to a block page containing a notice of blocked content with a prompt or method for overriding the block page for users with appropriate credentials.").”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the method of Head to determine a resource access level to apply to a DNS query based on the MAC address of the electronic device as taught by Mahadik. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to determine a resource access level to apply to a DNS query based on the MAC address of the electronic device to provide customized network security for a particular machine or user (Mahadik paragraphs 14, 22-23 and 31).
Regarding Claim 3, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 1.
Additionally, Head discloses “adding the client device to a local network comprising the router (Head figs. 2 and 4A and paragraphs 3, 48-51, 56 and 67: the electronic device is assigned an IP address and connected to the residential network, i.e., a local area network, if authorized).
Regarding Claim 5, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 1.
Additionally, Head discloses “wherein the device information comprises at least one of a MAC address, a type of the client device, or a location of the client device (Head figs. 1B, 2 and 4A and paragraphs 42, 46-48 and 56: the electronic device is identified by the MAC address included in the access request).
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 8 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 1.
Additionally, Head discloses “A virtual gateway apparatus (Head fig. 1B and paragraph 43: virtualized home gateway 150) comprising:
one or more processors (Head figs. 1B and 5A and paragraphs 43, 77 and 83: processors 542);
memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the virtual gateway apparatus... (Head figs. 1B and 5A and paragraphs 43, 77 and 83: non-transitory machine readable storage medium 548 having software 555 stored thereon)”.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 10 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 3.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 12 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 5.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 15 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 1.
Additionally, Head discloses “A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed... (Head figs. 1B and 5A and paragraphs 43, 77 and 83: non-transitory machine readable storage medium 548 having software 555 stored thereon)”.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 17 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 3.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 19 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 5.
Regarding Claim 22, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 1.
Additionally, Head discloses “wherein the encapsulated DHCP request message is encapsulated using Generic Routing Encapsulation (Head fig. 1B and paragraphs 43, 46 and 91: the tunnel may be established using GRE).”
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 23 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 22.
Regarding Claim 25, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 8.
Additionally, Head discloses “wherein the virtual gateway apparatus is in a cloud network, and wherein the router is in a local network (Head fig. 1B and paragraphs 3, 39 and 43: virtualized home gateway 150 is hosted in a cloud execution environment and home network device 120A is a part of a residential network, i.e., a local network).”
Claims 4, 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Head and Mahadik in view of Keidar et al., Pub. No. US 2017/0238235 A1, hereby “Keidar”.
Regarding Claim 4, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 1.
However, while Head discloses identifying the electronic device using the MAC address included in the access request received from the electronic device (Head paragraphs 42, 46-48 and 56), the combination of Head and Mahadik does not explicitly disclose “sending, to an additional device, a notification comprising one or more possible identities of the client device and a request to validate the identity of the client device; and
receiving, from the additional device, user feedback verifying the identity of the client device.”
In the same field of endeavor, Keidar discloses “sending, to an additional device, a notification comprising one or more possible identities of the client device and a request to validate the identity of the client device (Keidar fig. 1 and paragraphs 18 and 25: the device type of client device 120 determined by router 110 when the client device connects to the network is provided to router management device 140 for presentation to the user); and
receiving, from the additional device, user feedback verifying the identity of the client device (Keidar fig. 1 and paragraphs 18 and 25: the user is asked to confirm the determined device type – while not explicitly stated, receiving confirmation from the user by the router is implied).”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the method of Head, as modified by Mahadik, to send a prompt for manual resolution of the device identity to a user device of the administrator as taught by Keidar because doing so constitutes applying a known technique (sending a request to confirm a device type to a device of the user) to known devices and/or methods (a virtualized home gateway) ready for improvement to yield predictable and desirable results (manual resolution of the device identity by the administrator).
Insofar as they recite similar claim elements, Claims 11 and 18 are rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 4.
Claims 6, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Head and Mahadik in view of Chambers et al., Pub. No. US 2014/0068030 A1, hereby “Chambers”.
Regarding Claim 6, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 1.
However, while Head discloses identifying the electronic device using the MAC address included in the access request received from the electronic device (Head paragraphs 42, 46-48 and 56), the combination of Head and Mahadik does not explicitly disclose “updating, based on a unique identifier associated with the client device indicating a manufacturer, the identity of the client device to indicate the manufacturer.”
In the same field of endeavor, Chambers discloses “updating, based on a unique identifier associated with the client device indicating a manufacturer, the identity of the client device to indicate the manufacturer (Chambers paragraphs 47 and 50: network access device 102 sends update information comprising at least the MAC address of client device 108 to management server 101, wherein the device manufacturer is ascertained from a prefix portion of the MAC address).”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the method of Head, as modified by Mahadik, to determine the manufacturer of the electronic device based on the MAC address as taught by Chambers. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine determining the manufacturer of the electronic device based on the MAC address to help determine the device type of the electronic device (Chambers paragraph 50).
Insofar as they recite similar claim elements, Claims 13 and 20 are rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 6.
Claims 7, 14 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Head and Mahadik in view of Spencer et al., Pub. No. US 2013/0167196 A1, hereby “Spencer”.
Regarding Claim 7, the combination of Head and Mahadik discloses all of the limitations of Claim 1.
However, while Head discloses identifying the electronic device using the MAC address included in the access request received from the electronic device (Head paragraphs 42, 46-48 and 56), the combination of Head and Mahadik does not explicitly disclose “wherein the determining the identity of the client device further comprises analyzing the data to identify a MAC address, a type of the client device, and a location of the client device.”
In the same field of endeavor, Spencer discloses “wherein the determining the identity of the client device further comprises analyzing the data to identify a MAC address, a type of the client device, and a location of the client device (Spencer figs. 1, 4 and 13 and paragraphs 6, 33-35, 72, 78, 84-85, 119, 128, 184-185 and 189: remote device information including MAC address, device type and device location is identified from a request for network access received from the remote device 102).”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing to modify the method of Head, as modified by Mahadik, to identify the MAC address, device type and device location from the access request received from the electronic device as taught by Spencer. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine identifying the MAC address, device type and device location from the access request for authorization or authentication purposes (Spencer paragraphs 85-87).
Insofar as they recite similar claim elements, Claims 14 and 21 are rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 7.
Conclusion
A shortened statutory period for reply to this action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. An extension of time may be obtained under 37 CFR 1.136(a). However, in no event, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this action.
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/WILLIAM C MCBETH/Examiner, Art Unit 2449
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