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 .
This Office Action is in response to the Amendment filed on 12/02/2025.
In the instant Amendment, claims 1-24 have been amended; and claims 1, 9, and 17 are independent claims. Claims 1-24 have been examined and are pending. This Action is made Final
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments of the response filed on 12/02/2025, in regards to the objection and 112 b rejection are persuasive. The objection of claims 1, 9, and 17, the 112 f, and the 112 b rejection of claims 1-24 are withdrawn.
Applicants’ arguments with respect to the rejection(s) of claims 1-24 under 103 have been fully considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection, which were necessitated by amendment.
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 1-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1, 9, and 17 recite, “the missing iterative packets”, the claim does not have a previous recitation of “a missing iterative packets’ as a result lack proper antecedent basis. Appropriate correction is required to ensure proper claim interpretation.
As per claims 2-8, 10-16, and 18-24, they are rejected as being dependent of claims 1, 9 and 17.
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 1-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Adamson et al. ( “NACK-Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) Transport Protocol” November 2009 ) in view of Perrig et al. (“Timed Efficient Stream Loss-Tolerant Authentication (TESLA)” June 2005), Zhang et al. (“Peer-to-peer error recovery for wireless video broadcasting” June 2014) and Roca (“Simple Authentication Schemes for the Asynchronous Layered Coding (ALC) and NACK-Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) Protocols ” RFC 6584 2012; Hereinafter “Roca”).
As per claims 1, 9, and 17, Adamson teaches a method for transferring data, the method comprising (Adamson: 1.1-1.2, “The Negative-ACKnowledgment (NACK) Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) protocol can provide reliable transport of data from one or more senders to a group of receivers over an IP multicast network.”):
multiple iterative packets and a complete message, wherein the complete message comprises the multiple iterative packets and each iterative packet comprises a subsection of the complete message (Adamson: 4.2.1, 5.1-6, “The NORM_DATA message is generally the predominant type transmitted by NORM senders. These messages are used to encapsulate segmented data content for objects of type NORM_OBJECT_DATA, NORM_OBJECT_FILE,
and NORM_OBJECT_STREAM. NORM_DATA messages contain original or FECencoded application data content.”);
sending, by the back-end unit, an announcement message to a plurality of receivers (Adamson: 4.2., 5.1-6, “NORM sender messages include the NORM_DATA type, the NORM_INFO type, and the NORM_CMD type.”, 8.1.2-3 “The NORM_CMD message "sub-type" field is an 8-bit value with valid values in the range of 1-255. Note the value 0 is reserved to indicate an invalid NORM_CMD message sub-type. The current specification defines a number of NORM_CMD message sub-types senders can use to signal the receivers in various aspects of NORM protocol operation. ”);
sending, by the back-end unit, the complete message to the plurality of receivers (Adamson: 1., 4.2., 5.1-6 “The Negative-ACKnowledgment (NACK) Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) protocol can provide reliable transport of data from one or more senders to a group of receivers over an IP multicast network. ”, “The NORM_DATA message is generally the predominant type transmitted by NORM senders…”);
wherein the missing iterative packets are determined from the complete message by the plurality of receivers (Adamson: 4.3, “The NORM message types generated by participating receivers consist of the NORM_NACK and NORM_ACK message types. NORM_NACK messages are sent to request repair of missing data content from sender transmission, and NORM_ACK messages are generated in response to certain sender commands including NORM_CMD(CC) and NORM_CMD(ACK_REQ).”);
wherein a confirmation message is generated by the one or more of the plurality of receivers (Adamson: 4.3, “The NORM message types generated by participating receivers consist of the NORM_NACK and NORM_ACK message types. NORM_NACK messages are sent to request repair of missing data content from sender transmission, and NORM_ACK messages are generated in response to certain sender commands including NORM_CMD(CC) and NORM_CMD(ACK_REQ).”), wherein the confirmation message is a compilation of re-transmission requests of the missing iterative packets that were not located in the plurality of receivers or a push-button selective confirmation response (Adamson: 4.3, “NORM_NACK messages are sent to request repair of missing data content from sender transmission”);
sending, by the back-end unit only the missing iterative packets to the plurality of receivers, based at least in part on the confirmation message (Adamson: 4.3, 5.1-6, “The sender aggregates repair requests from the receivers and logically "rewinds" its transmit position to send appropriate repair messages. The sender sends repairs for the earliest ordinal transmit position first and maintains this ordinal repair transmission sequence. FEC parity content not previously transmitted for the applicable FEC coding block is used for repair transmissions to the greatest extent possible.”).
Adamson does not explicitly teaches authenticating, by a back-end unit, multiple iterative packets and a complete message; generating, by the back-end unit, authentication data for the multiple iterative packets and the complete message; wherein the missing iterative packets are obtained from one or more receivers of the plurality of receivers; wherein the confirmation message is signed and sent to the back-end unit by the one of the plurality of receivers.
However, in the related art, Perrig teaches authenticating, by a back-end unit, multiple iterative packets and a complete message (Perrig: 3.5, “To authenticate one of the buffered packets P_h containing message M_h protected with a MAC that used key index i-d, the receiver will compute K'_{i-d} = F'(K_{i-d}) from which it can compute MAC( K'_{i-d}, M_h). If this MAC equals the MAC stored in the buffer, the packet is authenticated and can be released from the buffer. If the MACs do not agree, the buffered packet P_h should be discarded.”);
generating, by the back-end unit, authentication data for the multiple iterative packets and the complete message (Perrig: 3.5, the sender computes a MAC for each packet, “Message verification tests: If the disclosed key is legitimate, the receiver then verifies the authenticity of any earlier safe, buffered packets of interval i-d. To authenticate one of the buffered packets P_h containing message M_h protected with a MAC that used key index i-d, the receiver will compute K’_{i-d} = F’(K_{i-d}) from which it can compute MAC( K’_{i-d}, M_h). If this MAC equals the MAC stored in the buffer, the packet is authenticated and can be released from the buffer. If the MACs do not agree, the buffered packet P_h should be discarded. The receiver continues to verify and release (or not) any remaining buffered packets that depend on the newly disclosed key K_{i-d}.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date to have combine per-packet authentication of Perrig with Adamson multicast reliability and feedback mechanism, it will ensure integrity and prevent malicious packet injection in multicast communications (Perrig: sect. 2.).
Adamson in view of Perrig does not explicitly teach wherein the missing iterative packets are obtained from one or more receivers of the plurality of receivers; wherein the confirmation message is signed and sent to the back-end unit by the one of the plurality of receivers.
However, in the related art, Zhang teaches wherein the missing iterative packets are obtained from one or more receivers of the plurality of receivers (Zhang: page 3, “BOPPER, a fully-distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) recovery algorithm: With above, we propose and study a fully-distributed algorithm called BOPPER. Each MS locally exchanges information with its neighbors and dynamically decides the number of parity packets to be generated..”, “P2 holds some source packets which are required by P1. P2 hence selects nmax sets of random coefficients to generate parity packets from its C2 (since f1 = 0) and broadcasts them. Similarly, P3 also generates nmax number of parity packets and broadcasts them for P1 (hopefully P2 could overhear them). After P1 receives both of P2’s and P3’s parity packets, P1 can use Gauss-Jordan elimination to solve the linear system to recover M1 and M2.Meanwhile P2 and P3 can also recover lost packets from each other’s parity packet. After parity recovery, each peer i then updates fi. Take P1 for example. For M1 it receives nmax number of parities from P2; for M2 it receives the same number of parities from P3.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to combine the modified Adamson with the peer-to-peer recovery of Zhang, it will efficiency and reduces retransmission load on the sender (Zhang, page 2).
Adamson in view of Perrig and Zhang does not explicitly teach wherein the confirmation message is signed and sent to the back-end unit by the one of the plurality of receivers.
However, in the related art, Roca teaches wherein the confirmation message is signed and sent to the back-end unit by the one of the plurality of receivers (Roca: : section 6., “The integration of combined RSA/ECC Digital Signatures and Group-keyed MAC schemes is similar in ALC and NORM and relies on the header extension mechanism defined in both protocols….A Signature field contains a digital signature computed over the packet.” Section 3.3 “The authenticated portion of the packet is used as the message M, which is passed to the signature generation function. The signer's RSA private key is passed as K. In summary (when SHA-256 is used), the signature generation process computes a SHA-256 hash of the authenticated packet bytes, signs the SHA-256 hash using the private key, and encodes the result with the specified RSA encoding type. This process results in a value S, which is the Digital Signature to be included in the packet.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to apply Roca’s digital signature authentication scheme to the modified Adamson’s feedback packets, it will prevent forged feedback messages and improve security of multicast communication systems ( Roca, sect. 3).
Furthermore, Adamson also disclose the satellite communication system of claim 9 (Adamson: 2.1, “This configuration is sensible for certain network conditions and can allow for robust, asymmetric multicast (e.g., unidirectional routing, satellite, cable) [FecHybrid] with reduced receiver feedback, or, in some cases, no feedback”),
Regarding claims 2, 10, and 18, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the independent claim 1. Perrig teaches wherein each of the plurality of receivers comprise a cache configured of authentication data to authenticate the complete message and each of the iterative packets received from the back-end unit (Perrig: 3.5, “Once a sender discloses a key, we must assume that all parties might have access to that key. An adversary could create a bogus message and forge a MAC using the disclosed key. So whenever a packet arrives, the receiver must verify that the MAC is based on a safe key; a safe key is one that is still secret (known only by the sender). We define a safe packet or safe message as one with a MAC that is computed with a safe key.”, 3.8, “TESLA's requirement that a key be received in a later packet for authentication prevents a receiver from authenticating the last part of a message. Thus, to enable authentication of the last part of a message or of the last message before a transmission suspension, the sender needs to send an empty message with the key.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date to have combine per-packet authentication of Perrig with Adamson multicast reliability and feedback mechanism, it will ensure integrity and prevent malicious packet injection in multicast communications (Perrig: sect. 2.).
Regarding claims 3, 11, and 19, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the independent claim 1. Roca teaches wherein each of the receivers maintains a cache of signatures (Roca: : section 6., “The integration of combined RSA/ECC Digital Signatures and Group-keyed MAC schemes is similar in ALC and NORM and relies on the header extension mechanism defined in both protocols….A Signature field contains a digital signature computed over the packet.” Section 3.3 “The authenticated portion of the packet is used as the message M, which is passed to the signature generation function. The signer's RSA private key is passed as K. In summary (when SHA-256 is used), the signature generation process computes a SHA-256 hash of the authenticated packet bytes, signs the SHA-256 hash using the private key, and encodes the result with the specified RSA encoding type. This process results in a value S, which is the Digital Signature to be included in the packet.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to apply Roca’s digital signature authentication scheme to the modified Adamson’s feedback packets, it will prevent forged feedback messages and improve security of multicast communication systems ( Roca, sect. 3).
Regarding claims 4, 12, and 20, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the independent claim 1. Zhang teaches w wherein the plurality of receivers communicate with each other to provide the missing iterative packets and re-transmission requests (Zhang: page 2-3, “Each MS locally exchanges information with its neighbors and dynamically decides the number of parity packets to be generated.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to combine the modified Adamson with the peer-to-peer recovery of Zhang, it will efficiency and reduces retransmission load on the sender (Zhang, page 2)
As per claims 5, 13, and 21, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the dependent claim 4. Zhang teaches wherein the plurality of receivers obtain missing iterative packets through one of a pull method for sharing iterative packets or a push method (Zhang: 4.1-4.4, “To suppress NAKs, before j broadcasts its NAK, it first checks whether Lj has already been covered by the NAKs it heard from others, i.e., it checks whether Lj ⊆i∈N AKj Li, where N AKj is the set of MSs whose NAKs are heard by j . If so, its neighboring MSs have already requested”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to combine the modified Adamson with the peer-to-peer recovery of Zhang, it will efficiency and reduces retransmission load on the sender (Zhang, page 2).
As per claims 6, 14 and 22, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the dependent claim 5. Zhang teaches the pull method further comprising an ordered set execution hierarchy comprising a top receiver sending a request for a set of missing iterative packets to the plurality of receivers, wherein the plurality of receiver provide the missing iterative packets; and queuing the ordered set execution hierarchy from the top receiver to a bottom receiver of the execution hierarchy (Zhang: 4.1-4.4, “For source packet recovery, the only difference is that instead of network coding, it shares source packets for cooperative recovery. After receiving NAKs from the neighbors, a peer randomly selects a source packet that has been requested by some NAK. The peer then repeats this process for ni times to select in total ni source packets and re-transmits them….After packets transmission of a coding window, each errored MS waits for a random time between 0 and ω before it sends its NAK with Lj and fj , if not suppressed.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to combine the modified Adamson with the peer-to-peer recovery of Zhang, it will efficiency and reduces retransmission load on the sender (Zhang, page 2).
As per claims 7, 15, and 23, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the dependent claim 5. Zhang teaches the push method further comprising: a) requesting, by the plurality of receivers, missing iterative packets; b) determining, by the plurality of receivers, a lead receiver from one of the plurality of receivers with the most complete message ; c) sending, by the lead receiver, one or more of the missing iterative packets; and d) iteratively performing steps a)-c) until the plurality of receivers have a complete message, all receivers are missing identical iterative packets or a predetermined timeout period has expired (Zhang: pag. 3-4, 4.1-4.4, “For source packet recovery, the only difference is that instead of network coding, it shares source packets for cooperative recovery. After receiving NAKs from the neighbors, a peer randomly selects a source packet that has been requested by some NAK. The peer then repeats this process for ni times to select in total ni source packets and re-transmits them….After packets transmission of a coding window, each errored MS waits for a random time between 0 and ω before it sends its NAK with Lj and fj , if not suppressed.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to combine the modified Adamson with the peer-to-peer recovery of Zhang, it will efficiency and reduces retransmission load on the sender (Zhang, page 2).
As per claims 8, 16, and 24, Adamson in view of Perrig, Zhang and Roca teaches the dependent claim 5. Zhang teaches the push method further comprising: a) sending, by the plurality of receivers, all the receiving units sending to the other receiving units a request for any missing iterative packets; b) sending, by a top receiver missing iterative packets to the plurality of receivers; c) determining, by the plurality of receivers, a receiver with the most complete set of iterative packets and designating the determined receiver as the lead receiver; d) sending, by the lead receivers the missing iterative packets; and e) iteratively performing steps a)-d) until all receivers have a complete message, all receivers are missing identical iterative packets or a predetermined timeout period has expired (Zhang: 4.1-4.4, “For source packet recovery, the only difference is that instead of network coding, it shares source packets for cooperative recovery. After receiving NAKs from the neighbors, a peer randomly selects a source packet that has been requested by some NAK. The peer then repeats this process for ni times to select in total ni source packets and re-transmits them….After packets transmission of a coding window, each errored MS waits for a random time between 0 and ω before it sends its NAK with Lj and fj , if not suppressed.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to combine the modified Adamson with the peer-to-peer recovery of Zhang, it will efficiency and reduces retransmission load on the sender (Zhang, page 2)
Conclusion
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.
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/L.L.N./Examiner, Art Unit 2437
/BENJAMIN E LANIER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2437