DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 7/31/2025 has been entered. Claims 1-5, 7-13, 15-20 are pending in the application.
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
Applicant's arguments filed 7/31/2025 have been fully considered. Regarding the arguments in relating to the amended limitations in claims 1-5, 7-13, and 15-10, please see below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1, 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential steps, such omission amounting to a gap between the steps. See MPEP § 2172.01. The omitted steps are:
The claims state in the renaming step, “copying the RLA log file”. The claim does not specify where “the RLA log file” is being copied and the specification did not provide a good answer and/or whether the system copies said RLA log file to the hidden directory structure or not. Therefore, the claims are vague.
Claims 2-5, 7-10, 12-13, 15-17, and 19-20 are rejected for incorporating the errors of claims 1, 11, and 18 by dependency.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Regen et al. (US 20240281338) teaches at para. 32, 36: the backup file attribution system may further generate an immutability feature for each of the files comprising the generated or determined backup file attribution, such that each of these files will remain immutable (e.g., will not be deleted, modified, overwritten, moved, removed, and/or the like). Further, and in some embodiments, the backup file attribution system may generate a report (e.g., a backup file report) comprising each of the file identifiers for each of the files determined to be a backup (e.g., comprising a backup file attribution), such that the file may be quickly recalled, such as when an attack on the original file is detected.
Shaik (US 20230045034) teaches at para. 25: data retention settings; para. 28: an object lock enabled.
Potyraj et al. (US 20220334929) teaches at para. 132: data protection techniques can include, for example, data archiving techniques that cause data that is no longer actively used to be moved to a separate storage device or separate storage system for long-term retention; para. 232: generating reports.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LINH BLACK whose telephone number is (571)272-4106. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM EST M-F.
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/LINH BLACK/Examiner, Art Unit 2163 9/26/2025
/TONY MAHMOUDI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2163