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 .
Amendment filed on 12/15/2025 has been entered. Claims 1, 5-13, 16-17 and 20-27 are pending. Claims 1, 5, 8-11, 13, 16-17 and 20 are currently amended. Claims 20-27 are newly added.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1, 5-13, 16-17 and 20-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Regarding independent claims 1, 13 and 17
Step 1 -- whether the claim falls within any statutory category. See MPEP 2106.03
Claim 1 is drown to a method claim, claim 13 is drawn to a system claim, and claim 17 is drawn to a product claim. Therefore, each of these claims falls under one of the four categories of statutory subject matter (process/method, machine/product/apparatus, manufacture, or composition of matter).
Step 2A Prong 1 – whether the claim recites a judicial exception. See MPEP 2106.04, subsection II.
Regarding independent claim 1, the claim is directed to a method that comprising unifying a first representation of a first microservice with a second representation of the first microservice in a knowledge graph of a cloud environment based on the first representation and the second representation sharing a workload deployment name and a container image name; unifying a third representation of a second microservice with a fourth representation of the second microservice in the knowledge graph based on a temporal activity signature of the third representation being matched to the fourth representation; and outputting the knowledge graph with a first unified representation of the first microservice based on the first representation and the second representation and a second unified representation of the second microservice based on the third representation and the fourth representation.
The limitations of “unifying …attributes”, “unifying … the fourth representation” and “outputting …fourth representation”, as drafted and under its broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) in light of the instant specification, fall under the abstract idea of a mental process and are performed by a human being with the aid of pencil and paper.
Because the claim recites limitations which can practically be implemented as mental processes, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Independent claim 13 is system claim reciting similar limitations of claim 1 and is directed towards the abstract idea for similar reasons.
Independent claim 17 is computer program product claim reciting similar limitations of claim 1 and is directed towards the abstract idea for similar reasons.
Step 2A Prong 2 -- whether the claim as a whole integrates the recited judicial exception into a practical application of the exception or whether the claim is “directed to” the judicial exception. This evaluation is performed by (1) identifying whether there are any additional elements recited in the claim beyond the judicial exception, and (2) evaluating those additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether the claim as a whole integrates the exception into a practical application. See MPEP 2106.04(d).
Regarding independent claim 1, the claim recites additional elements of “cloud environment” and a “Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) network model”. This limitations amount to no more than generally linking the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)). It recites using LSTM network model, which is capable of coalescing duplicative representations of a same entity. A human being can observation representations of the same entity and tell whether or not these representations are the same or different and thus, fails to integrate the exception into a practical application. Although claim 1 recites steps of “unifying…” and “outputting” describes the improvement in the technology as described in paragraph [0033] of the Specification, it is noted, the improvement in the abstract idea itself, but do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Regarding independent claim 13 is drawn to a system claim reciting similar limitations of claim 1 and is rejected under the same rationale. Claim 13 also recites additional elements of “one or more of readable storage media” and “one or more processors”. These limitations amount to no more than generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)). It recites a generic computer or generic computer components that merely act as a tool on which the method operates, and thus, fails to integrate the exception into a practical application.
Regarding independent claim 17 is drawn to a computer program product claim reciting similar limitations of claim 1 and is rejected under the same rationale. Claim 17 also recites additional elements of “one or more of readable storage media” and “one or more processors”. These limitations amount to no more than generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)). It recites a generic computer or generic computer components that merely act as a tool on which the method operates, and thus, fails to integrate the exception into a practical application.
Step 2B – Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception?
In accordance with Step 2B, the claims 1, 13 and 17 do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because when considered separately or in combination, they do not constitute an inventive concept. Additionally, the claim recites the additional element of a LSTM network model (claim 1), and computer readable storage media and processor (claim 13 and 17) for processing data, which represents no more than mere instructions to apply the abstract idea on a computer.
The additional elements listed above do not amount to significantly more than the abstract ideas. Therefore, claims 1, 13 and 17 are subject-matter ineligible.
Regarding dependent claims 2-12, 14-16 and 18-20.
Claims 5-12, 16 and 20-27 merely narrow the previously cited abstract idea limitations. For the reasons described above with respect to independent claims 1, 13 and 17, these judicial exceptions are not meaningfully integrated into a practical application, or significantly more than the abstract ideas. The claims disclose similar limitations described for the independent claims above and do not provide anything more than the mathematical relationships and mental processes that are practically capable of being performed in the human mind with the assistance of pen and paper. Therefore, claims 5-12, 16 and 20-27 also recite abstract ideas that do not integrate into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, and are rejected under U.S.C. § 101.
Claims 5-12, 16 and 20-27 are also subject-matter ineligible for the same reasons set forth in claims 1, 13 and 17 above.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 5-11, 13, 16-17 and 20-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Choudhury et al. (Choudhury), US Patent Application Publication No. US 2018/0103052 A1 and further in view of Gamliel et al. (Gamliel), US Patent Application Publication No. US 2022/0286362 A1.
As to independent claim 1, Choudhury discloses a method comprising:
unifying a first representation of a first entity with a second representation of the first entity in a knowledge graph of a cloud environment based on the first representation and the second representation sharing a workload deployment name and a container image name (paragraphs [0007], [0010], [0012]: unifying multiple data sources (first representation and second representation) into a unified property graph representation, and detecting events in the graph model functions similarly; paragraph [0013]: aggregating information such as all-machine-to-machine communication for a given IP address; paragraph [0051]: we can model network traffic as a graph with every unique internet protocol (IP) address represented as a node in the graph, and communications between the IP addresses are summarized and represented as edges between the nodes, in other words, if two IP addresses exchange 10,000 packets during the observed period, we will summarize all of the communications as a single edge and use the total exchanged bytes or packets duration as edge weight);
unifying a third representation of a second entity with a fourth representation of the second entity in the knowledge graph based on a temporal activity signature of the third representation being matched to the fourth representation by a Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) network model (paragraphs [0013], [0014]: aggregating activities across multiple workstation or devices (third representation and fourth representation) to infer behavioral signatures for a single user account, which can be further aggregated to infer group-level behavior of users or machines within an organization, and then training a LSTM neural network model to detect important behavioral shifts at each layer of the multi-scale graph model); and
outputting the knowledge graph with a first unified representation of the first entity based on the first representation and the second representation and a second unified representation of the second entity based on the third representation and the fourth representation (paragraph [0015]: a sequence can represent all communication records associated with a give machine, or the sequence of activities associated with a user account on multiple workstations).
Choudhury, however, does not disclose the first entity and the second entity are microservice.
In the same field of endeavor, Gamliel discloses generating an organizational graph and a microservice graph (Abstract). Gamliel further discloses generating a service mesh graph, which can describe a network of microservices that make up a distributed application and the interactions between those microservices (paragraph [0029]). Gamliel further discloses a node of the organizational graph representing a person of an organization that produces a group of microservices, and an edge of the organizational graph representing an organizational relationship between two people of the organization, and determining a microservice graph based on the group of microservices, a node of the microservice graph representing a microservice of the group of microservices, and an edge of the microservice graph representing a communication between two microservices of the group of microservices (Claim 1).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the system of Choudhury to include representation of microservices in a knowledge graph, as taught by Gamliel, for the purpose of helping reduce risk and improving a quality assurance approach (Gamliel, paragraphs [0022], [0025]).
As to dependent claim 5, Choudhury and Gamliel disclose wherein respective representations of respective microservices are generated by different cybersecurity tools implemented in the cloud environment (Choudhury, paragraphs [0007], [0031]; Gamliel, paragraph [0029], claim 1).
As to dependent claim 6, Choudhury discloses wherein the method is performed without accessing application binaries (paragraph [0018]).
As to dependent claim 7, Choudhury discloses wherein the method is performed without accessing application source code (paragraph [0018]).
As to dependent claim 8, Choudhury and Gamliel disclose wherein the third representation of the second microservice and the fourth representation of the second microservice are associated with different Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (Choudhury, paragraphs [0013], [0051]; Gamliel, paragraph [0029], claim 1).
As to dependent claim 9, Choudhury and Gamliel disclose wherein the third representation of the second microservice and the fourth representation of the second microservice are associated with different hostnames (Choudhury, paragraph [0051]; Gamliel, paragraph [0029], claim 1).
As to dependent claim 10, Choudhury and Gamliel disclose wherein the third representation of the second microservice and the fourth representation of the second microservice are discrete implementations of the second entity in different distributed computing environments (Choudhury, paragraph [0014]; Gamliel, paragraph [0029], claim 1).
As to dependent claim 11, Choudhury discloses wherein the knowledge graph of the cloud environment is an ontology of the cloud environment (paragraph [0007]).
Claims 13 and 16 are system claims that contain similar limitations of claims 1 and 5, respectively. Therefore, claims 13 and16 are rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 17 and 20 are product claims that contain similar limitations of claims 1 and 5, respectively. Therefore, claims 17 and 20 are rejected under the same rationale.
As to claim 21, Choudhury discloses the knowledge graph of the cloud environment is a schema of the cloud environment (paragraph [0007]).
As to claim 22, Choudhury discloses wherein the knowledge graph of the cloud environment is a graph of the cloud environment (paragraph [0007]).
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Choudhury and Gamliel as applied to claims 1, 5-11, 13, 16-17 and 20-27 above, and further in view of Deo et al. (Deo), US Patent Application Publication No. US 2021/0105331 A1.
As to dependent claim 12, Choudhury, however, does not disclose wherein the method is performed by a server implementing cloud management code, and wherein the method further comprises: metering usage of the cloud management code; and generating an invoice based on metering the usage of the cloud management code.
In the same field of endeavor, Deo discloses systems and methods for securely using cloud services on on-premises data (Title and Abstract). Deo further discloses third-party user data that is transmitted from cloud network to on-remises network can be metered (e.g., monitored or tracked for the purpose of charging the company associated with on-remises network), for example, profile meter is implemented using executable code that, when executed by a server, tracks the requests for third-party user data that are transmitted out of on-premises network using API, and generating an invoice with a fee for charging the company associated with on-premises network (paragraph [0036).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the system of Choudhury to include wherein the method is performed by a server implementing cloud management code, and wherein the method further comprises: metering usage of the cloud management code; and generating an invoice based on metering the usage of the cloud management code, as taught by Deo for the purpose of enabling the on-remises networks to retrieve and process third-party data stored on cloud-based networks.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments and amendments filed on 12/15/2025 have been fully considered but they are not deemed fully persuasive. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 5-13, 16-17 and 20-27 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection as explained here below, necessitated by Applicant’s substantial amendment (i.e., unifying microservices in knowledge graph) to the claims which significantly affected the scope thereof. Please see the rejection above with newly cited art Gamliel.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37CFR 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 extension fee 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 CHAU T NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-4092. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday from 8am to 5pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Cesar Paula, can be reached at telephone number 5712724128. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHAU T NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2145