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 .
Claims 15-34 have been examined. Claims 1-14 are cancelled by preliminary amendment filed on 5/10/23.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/10/26 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 5/19/26 is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Regarding Double Patenting rejection, the rejection is withdrawn in light of Terminal Disclaimer filed on 10/28/25.
Applicant's arguments filed on 4/22/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 15-34 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Specifically, Applicant argues that the prior art of record does not explicitly disclose ”generating a plurality of markers and at least one encoding function, wherein the at least one encoding function associates at least one document property of a document with at least one encoded marker that is produced based on a combination of markers of the plurality of markers.” However, the examiner has relied upon a new prior art, Rhoads et al. U.S. 2007/0055689, for disclosure of the disputed limitation.
Lastly, the disputed limitations are recited at a high level of generality (i.e. encoding function, encoded marker, document property, etc.). Without additional information to clarify how the encoding function transforms the marker to generate the search term, the limitation may be interpreted as generating search term by extracting title or content of a media content and providing the search term to search engine to identify file location. Therefore, 35 U.S.C. 103 rejections are maintained for claims 15-34.
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.
Claims 15-19, 22-26 and 29-33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rodriguez et al. U.S. Pub. No. 2009/0012944 (hereinafter Rodriguez) in view of Rhoads et al. U.S. 2007/0055689 (hereinafter Rhoads) and further in view of Nelson et al. U.S. Pat. No. 9,319,417 (hereinafter Nelson).
As per claim 15, 22 and 29, Rodriguez discloses a method/system/memory for detecting leaked documents, the system comprising:
a non-transitory memory storing executable code; and
at least one processor that, upon executing the executable code, performs a method comprising:
generating unique marker for the content (Rodriguez: [0041]; [0052]);
obtaining, from at least one search engine, one or more search results corresponding to one or more search terms (Rodriguez: [0042]: search engine looks for keywords/search terms in content metadata based on key; [0052]: encoding function generates digital watermark contains unique identifier used as keywords for indexing and searching content associated with document property);
identifying, from among the one or more search results and using at least one decoding function, at least one document having the at least one document property and a respective at least one identified location on a computer network (Rodriguez: 0072]-[0073]: reporting at least one watermark identifier and corresponding network location when digital watermarking is found; [0121]: watermark identifier is used for indexing);
applying at least one action using the at least one identified location, content, and/or property of the at least one identified document (Rodriguez: [0031]-[0032]: report to central server or directly to content owner based on identified content).
Rogriguez discloses using metadata and other information to search content on the web, generation of unique identifier/watermark that is searchable by the search engine (Rodriguez: [0042]; [0052]). Rodriguez does not explicitly disclose generating one or more search terms using a plurality of markers and at least one encoding function, wherein: the at least one function associates at least one document property of a document with at least one encoded marker that is produced based on a combination of markers of the plurality of markers. However, Rhoads discloses creating searchable index of media content based on metadata to retrieve media content, wherein search engine uses content types tags and/or keyword search terms to search the index of content (Rhoads: Abstract; [0046]-[0047]: the content index has searchable index of keywords and content tags, which reasonable correspond to a plurality of markers). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to generate search terms based on various types of information associated with document property to identify leaked or pirated content because Rodriguez and Rhoads are analogous art involving searching and identifying media based on metadata associated with content. The motivation to combine would be to identify and track media content without significant modification by using information associated with document property.
Rodriguez as modified does not explicitly disclose identifying at least one action to apply to a network entity using at least one identified location, content, and/or property of the at least one identified document. However, Nelson discloses identifying an action to be taken based on detected watermark for data leak protection (Nelson: col. 1 ll. 42-57; col. 10 l. 29- col. 11 l.6: various types of actions may be taken based on type of watermark detected, i.e. sensitivity level). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to identify particular action to be taken based on type of watermark identified because Rodriguez and Nelson are analogous art involving detection of embedded watermarks in multi-media content. The motivation to combine would be to prevent further unauthorized dissemination of content (Nelson: col. 1 ll. 30-38).
As per claim 16, 23 and 30, Rodriguez the limitations of claims 15, 22 and 29 respectively. Rodriguez further discloses wherein the encoding function comprises at least one obfuscation element (Rordiguez: [0007]: function of digital watermark is to embed codes that are imperceptible or nearly imperceptible to the user; [0025]: embedding digital watermarks).
As per claim 17, 24 and 31, Rodriguez as modified discloses the limitations of claims 15, 22 and 29 respectively. Rodriguez further discloses wherein the at least one marker comprises a character string or an image data element (Rodriguez: [0007]: watermarking techniques that are well known in the art).
As per claim 18, 25 and 32, Rodriguez as modified discloses the limitations of claims 15, 22 and 29 respectively. Rodriguez further discloses wherein the at least one document property comprises a property selected from the group consisting of: a subject of the document, a title of the document, an owner of the document, a pertinence of the document, and a level of secrecy associated with the document (Rodriguez: [0126]-[0127]: embedding watermark based on document property, i.e. location, author, date, etc.).
As per claim 19, 26 and 33, Rodriguez as modified discloses the limitations of claims 15, 22 and 29 respectively. Rodriguez further discloses wherein the identifying at least one document comprises: retrieving one or more documents according to the at least one identified location, and applying the at least one decoding function to the one or more retrieved documents to identify the at least one document having the at least one document property (Rodriguez: [0042]-[0044]: identifying file by searching keyword associated with metadata, the file is further analyzed with a watermark reader/decoding function to determine the presence of watermark having particular document property).
Claims 20, 21, 27, 28 and 34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rodriguez in view of Rhoads and further in view of Nelson and further in view of Borkar et al. U.S. Pub. No. 20200143016 (hereinafter Borkar).
As per claim 20, 27 and 34, Rodriguez as modified discloses the limitations of claims 15, 22 and 29 respectively. Rodriguez as modified does not explicitly disclose wherein the identifying at least one action comprises: classifying, using a machine-learning (ML) based classifier model, the at least one identified document based on the at least one identified location, content, and/or property of the at least one identified document on the computer network, and selecting, based on the classification of the at least one identified document, the at least one action to apply to the network entity. However, Borkar discloses identifying and classifying content based on machine learning models to protect content from unauthorized access (Borkar: [0150]-[0151], [0185]: tagging and classifying content for digital rights management). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to apply machine learning model to classify content and to control usage of the content because Rodriguez, Nelson and Borkar are analogous art involving use of watermark to detect unauthorized usage of multimedia content. The motivation to combine would be to enforce content usage rules for similar types of contents.
As per claim 21 and 28, Rodriguez as modified discloses the limitations of claims 20 and 27 respectively. Rodriguez as modified further discloses wherein the ML-based classifier model comprises a natural language processing (NLP) model (Borkar: [0183]). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate use of NLP model for classification because NLP is well known machine learning model.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Walters et al. U.S. 9,659,014 discloses audio and video matching using a hybrid of fingerprinting and content based classification.
Thambiratnam et al. U.S. 2016/0259782 discloses embedding content-based searchable indexes in multi-media files.
Master et al. U.S. 2016/0196631 discloses hybrid automatic content recognition and watermarking.
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/SHIN-HON (ERIC) CHEN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2431
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