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 .
Response to Arguments
In response to claim objection, filed 09/01/2025 on page 5 of the remarks, the claim objection is withdrawn in light of claim amendment.
In response to 35 USC 112, filed 09/01/2025 on pages 5-6 of the remarks, the 35 USC 112 rejection is withdrawn in light of claim amendment.
In response to 35 USC 101, filed 09/01/2025 on page 6 of the remarks, the 35 USC 101 rejection is withdrawn in light of claim amendment.
In response to 35 USC 102, filed 09/01/2025 on pages 6-7 of the remarks, the 35 USC 102 rejection is withdrawn in light of claim amendment.
In response to 35 USC 103, filed 09/01/2025 on pages 7-9 of the remarks, applicant argues that none of the prior art discloses the use of a logarithmic relationship for encoding information into null-sized spaces and this specific mathematical relationship linking M and N.
The Examiner does not concede. Georgiev discloses a messages with text characters and null-sized spaces. Duan further teaches “encoding the obtained information comprises using a number of null-sized spaces equal to the upper integer of the logarithm in base N of M”. Duan discloses “each character is multiplied or the logarithm of the occurrence probability of each character is added to obtain the occurrence probability of the character string corresponding to each character encoding method [0019][0022][0023]”. Duan shows the use of logarithm for encoding information with null-sized spaces.
Furthermore, Zaynalov et al. (“Unicode for Hiding Information In A Text Document”) teaches a character set of 27 characters is encoded. From Table 3 and Table 4, shows different encoding characters.
In response to applicant's argument that the references fail to show certain features of the invention, it is noted that the features upon which applicant relies (i.e., the synergy between the invisibility of null-sized spaces and the robustness provided by the logarithmic formula) are not recited in the rejected claim(s). Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993).
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 30-33, 36, and 40-42 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Georgiev et al. (US 20140157441, hereinafter Georgiev) in view of Duan (CN 104750666).
Re. claim 30, Georgiev discloses a method of encoding information into an original text (Georgiev discloses encode auxiliary data into text [0017]), comprising the following steps: obtaining information and encoding it using null-sized spaces from the original text (Georgiev discloses data can be distributed [0013]. Auxiliary data encoder 106 of FIG. 1 receives the source data to be encoded (e.g., as individual data units, as a set of data units, etc.), encodes auxiliary information into the source data, and outputs encoded data (e.g., for distribution, for storage, etc.) [0035] Fig. 1, obtains information and encoding it with zero-width characters), wherein the obtained information comprises a message consisting of text characters from a set of M characters and having N null-sized spaces available in the original text, wherein N is an integer representing the number of available null-sized spaces (Georgiev discloses encode auxiliary data into text data by replacing white space characters in the text data with combinations of one or more non-zero-width white space characters, zero-width characters, and/or flow control characters [0017][0089][0099][0111] Fig. 1); and determining at least one part of the original text to integrate the information encoded into the, at least one, determined part of the original text transforming it into a text with hidden information, wherein integrating the encoded information consists in adding the null-sized spaces used for encoding (Georgiev discloses encode auxiliary data into text data by replacing white space characters in the text data with combinations of one or more non-zero-width white space characters, zero-width characters, and/or flow control characters [0017]. Auxiliary data encoder 106 of FIG. 1 receives the source data to be encoded (e.g., as individual data units, as a set of data units, etc.), encodes auxiliary information into the source data, and outputs encoded data (e.g., for distribution, for storage, etc.) [0035] Fig. 1, obtains information and encoding it with zero-width characters).
Georgiev does not explicitly teach but Duan teaches encoding the obtained information comprises using a number of null-sized spaces equal to the upper integer of the logarithm in base N of M (Duan teaches each character is multiplied or the logarithm of the occurrence probability of each character is added to obtain the occurrence probability of the character string corresponding to each character encoding method [0019][0022][0023]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and system disclosed by Georgiev to include encoding equal to the upper integer of the logarithm in base N of M as disclosed by Duan. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated for the purpose of o determine the occurrence probability of each character (Duan [0034]).
Re. claim 31, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 30, wherein said encoding information into the original text is performed by an encoder module implemented in a processor receiving the original text (Georgiev discloses processor performing encoding [0094][0013][0017][0035][0043]).
Re. claim 32, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 31, wherein said step of obtaining the information comprises manually entering the information into the encoder module (Georgiev discloses the input device permit a user to enter data [0034][0120][0035]).
Re. claim 33, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 31, wherein said step of obtaining the information comprises automatically generating the information by the encoder module (Georgiev discloses embed a watermark into a distributed data. In the event of unauthorized distribution, the watermark in the text data can be decoded to prove the origin of the data [0026]).
Re . claim 36, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 33, wherein the information generated comprises metadata of the original text, an author of the original text, or a combination thereof (Georgiev discloses embed a watermark into a distributed data. In the event of unauthorized distribution, the watermark in the text data can be decoded to prove the origin of the data [0026]).
Re. claim 40, Georgiev discloses a method of decoding information from a text received with hidden information (Georgiev discloses decode text data to recover or obtain auxiliary information [0030]), wherein said step of decoding information comprises: identifying, detecting null-sized spaces, at least part of the received text containing the information (Georgiev discloses the data character extractor detects a first symbol, including a white space character [0025]. For example, the data character extractor 304 may determine combinations of Unicode white space characters, zero-width characters, and/or flow control characters in each of the example white spaces of the selected data unit [0111]), which comprises a message consisting of text characters from a set of M characters, wherein N is an integer representing the number of null-sized spaces available in the original text (Georgiev discloses encode auxiliary data into text data by replacing white space characters in the text data with combinations of one or more non-zero-width white space characters, zero-width characters, and/or flow control characters [0017][0089][0099][0111] Fig. 1); and decoding the information using the detected null-sized spaces and extracting it from the received text to obtain an original text (Georgiev discloses auxiliary data assembler determines the encoded data [0025]. Text data can be decoded to prove the origin of the data [0026] Auxiliary data decoder 108 of FIG. 1 obtains data in which auxiliary information may be present (e.g., suspect data) and attempts to extract the auxiliary information. The auxiliary data decoder 108 attempts to extract auxiliary data from the suspect data using multiple decoding methods, each decoding method being based on a method used by the auxiliary data encoder 106 to encode data [0036]).
Georgiev does not explicitly teach but Duan teaches decoding the information comprises using a number of null-sized spaces equal to the top integer of the N-base logarithm of M (Duan teaches each character is multiplied or the logarithm of the occurrence probability of each character is added to obtain the occurrence probability of the character string corresponding to each character encoding method [0019][0022][0023]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and system disclosed by Georgiev to include decoding the information comprises using a number of null-sized spaces equal to the top integer of the N-base logarithm of M as disclosed by Duan. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated for the purpose of o determine the occurrence probability of each character (Duan [0034]).
Re. claim 41, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 40, wherein said decoding information is performed by a decoder module implemented in a processor receiving text with hidden information (Georgiev discloses processor performing decoding [0094][0095][0035][0043][0050][0116]).
Re. claim 42, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 41, wherein said decoder module verifies the information by comparing the information decoded with a reference information generated by the decoder module, the reference information generated comprising at least one of the following data: i) a hash string of the received text calculated by the decoder module by means of a hash function; and ii) metadata of the received text and/or an author of the received text (Georgiev discloses the decrypted auxiliary data may be used for comparison to auxiliary data encoded into source data to determine a match and/or to obtain information encoded into the data [0115]).
Claims 34-35, 37 and 38 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Georgiev et al. (US 20140157441, hereinafter Georgiev) in view of Duan (CN 104750666) and in further view of Zhang (WO 2016023471).
Re. claim 34, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 33, although Georgiev discloses said step of generating information comprises dividing, by the encoder module, the original text (Georgiev [0048][0092]). Georgiev-Duan do not explicitly teach but Zhang teaches into a number of blocks of pre- established size and numbering each block, and wherein the generated information includes the number of blocks, the numbering of each block and the size of each block (Zhang teaches Splitting goal: Split the information of the data object into three parts: metadata block, data block (i.e. data fragment), and index block (i.e. encoding). The file name, size, date and other information of the source file, as well as the file names of the data block file and the index file can be stored in the metadata database. As long as these three parts (metadata blocks, data blocks, i.e. data fragments, and index blocks, i.e. encoding and encoding sequence information) [Page 59]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and system disclosed by Georgiev-Duan to include divide the text into a number of blocks of pre- established size and numbering each block, and wherein the generated information includes the number of blocks, the numbering of each block and the size of each block as disclosed by Zhang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated for the purpose of improve availability and effectiveness (Zhang [Page 59 and Page 70]).
Re. claim 35, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 33, Georgiev-Duan do not explicitly teach but Zhang teaches wherein said step of generating information comprises calculating, by the encoder module, by means of a hash function, a hash string from the original text, and wherein the generated information comprises the hash string (Zhang teaches perform a hash algorithm on the text to form a 128-bit number [Page 132]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and system disclosed by Georgiev-Duan to include wherein said step of generating information comprises calculating, by the encoder module, by means of a hash function, a hash string from the original text, and wherein the generated information comprises the hash string as disclosed by Zhang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated for the purpose of tamper-proof. Where the information is being verified that the information has not been tampered (Zhang [Pages 132-133]).
Re. claim 37, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 36, Georgiev-Duan do not explicitly teach but Zhang teaches wherein the information generated comprises the hash string concatenated with at least part of the metadata (Zhang teaches perform a hash algorithm on the text to form a 128-bit number. Forms a content verification code (including the length of the text), and places this code before the text. Compare the verification code obtained based on the content verification code with the hash value of the corresponding text [Page 132]. A code representing a combination or concatenation of the meta-code and the instance code may be included in the final object code [Page 89]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and system disclosed by Georgiev-Duan to include wherein the information generated comprises the hash string concatenated with at least part of the metadata as disclosed by Zhang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated for the purpose of tamper-proof. Where the information is being verified that the information has not been tampered (Zhang [Pages 132-133]).
Re. claim 38, Georgiev-Duan teach the method according to claim 33, Georgiev-Duan do not explicitly teach but Zhang teaches wherein the information generated comprises a time stamp indicating a time of reception of the original text in the encoder module (Zhang teaches the If there is an encoding, the data fragments can also be restored according to the encoding to obtain the original user data object content; if the metadata contains a unique identifier of the data object, the file size, file name, file type, creation time, etc. can also be verified according to the file metadata [Page 58]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method and system disclosed by Georgiev-Duan to include wherein the information generated comprises the hash string concatenated with at least part of the metadata as disclosed by Zhang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated for the purpose of verification (Zhang [Page 58]).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Balasa et al. (US 20180203983) discloses watermarking a portion of code with identification data includes: determining, by a computing device, a number of existing whitespace characters in the portion of code; encoding, by the computing device, the identification data using a set of reference whitespace characters; and embedding, by the computing device, the encoded identification data into the portion of code, wherein the embedding the encoded identification data includes, based on the determined number of existing whitespace characters, either replacing existing whitespace characters in the portion of code with the encoded identification data or inserting the encoded identification data characters into the portion of code.
Zaynalov et al. (“Unicode for Hiding Information In A Text Document”) teaches a character set of 27 characters is encoded. From Table 3 and Table 4, shows different encoding characters.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KEVIN A AYALA whose telephone number is (571)270-3912. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8AM-5PM; Friday: Variable EST.
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, Jorge Ortiz-Criado can be reached at 571-272-7624. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KEVIN AYALA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2496