DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to application 17/283,308 filed on June 21, 2023.
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.
Claims 1-20 are pending and herein considered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 09/21/2023. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 USC § 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Regarding claim 1; claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claim 5 recites “A system” In light of the specification, does not exclude the system to contain only non-transitory embodiment. Therefore, the claim is directed to a software per se. It is suggested that the claim be further amended to positively recite at least one hardware element within the body of the claim to make the claim statutory under 35 USC § 101.
Regarding claims 2-20 are also rejected under 35 U.S.C 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter for the same reasons addressed above.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Regarding claims 1 are/is rejected under 35 USC 101 because the claims are/is directed to an abstract idea without being integrated into a practical application nor being significantly more.
The claims reciting the limitations “calculating the similarity between a first vector and a second vector using homomorphic encryption having homomorphic operations defined with respect to at least one multiplication and a plurality of additions; transforming the value of a component of the second vector into a component in a unit vector that becomes 1 and encrypting the transformed result with the public key for the homomorphic encryption, wherein the similarity calculation apparatus obtains encrypted similarity between the first and the second vectors by calculating the inner product of the first and the second encrypted vectors using the homomorphic operations; are directed to an abstract idea as the claims recite mental processes. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. It’s noted that the claims recite additional element(s) (i.e., encrypting the transformed result, calculating the inner product). However, said additional elements are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a processing device performing a generic computer function of calculating/encrypting/performing) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply to data using a generic computer component. Accordingly, this additional element does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Therefore, the claims are not integrated into a practical application.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements when considered both individually and as an ordered combination do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. As mentioned above, although the claims recite additional elements, said elements taken individually or as a combination, do not result in the claim amounting to significantly more than the abstract idea because as the additional elements perform generic computer content distributing functions routinely used in information technology field. receiving, and storing in the memory, data for performing a homomorphic encryption operation, the data comprising or corresponding to a ciphertext having a first number of dimensions; in view of Berkheimer memo. Generic computer components recited as performing generic computer functions that are well understood, routine and conventional activities amount to no more than implementing the abstract idea with a computerized system. Therefore, the claim is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Regarding claims 2-20 are also rejected under 35 U.S.C 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter for the same reasons addressed above as the claims are directed to abstract idea without being integrated into a practical application nor being significantly more.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim2-20 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101 or 35 U.S.C. 101 (pre-AIA ), , set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Related Art
The following prior art made of record and cited on PTO-892, but not relied upon, is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure:
U.S. Pub. Number 2017/0169241 A1 to Unagami-Unagami teaches a data search method of a first device storing multiple sets of privacy data acquired from multiple persons and multiple reference features corresponding to the multiple sets of privacy data, where the multiple reference features each are expressed by an n-dimensional vector, includes receiving first encrypted features from a second device connected to the first device, generating multiple second converted features by a second conversion of the multiple reference features, generating of multiple second encrypted features by encrypting the multiple second converted features using inner product encryption, acquiring multiple inner product values by performing inner product computation of each of the first encrypted features and the multiple second encrypted features, determining whether or not the first features and the first reference features are similar, and transmitting of first privacy data corresponding to the first reference features out of the multiple sets of privacy data to the second device.
Conclusion
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/VU V TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2491