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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. CN202111133642.5, filed on September 27, 2021.
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on December 27, 2023, and March 13, 2025 was filed. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
Figure 1 should be designated by a legend such as --Prior Art-- because only that which is old is illustrated. See MPEP § 608.02(g). Corrected drawings in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. The replacement sheet(s) should be labeled “Replacement Sheet” in the page header (as per 37 CFR 1.84(c)) so as not to obstruct any portion of the drawing figures. If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Specification
Applicant is reminded of the proper content of an abstract of the disclosure.
A patent abstract is a concise statement of the technical disclosure of the patent and should include that which is new in the art to which the invention pertains. The abstract should not refer to purported merits or speculative applications of the invention and should not compare the invention with the prior art.
If the patent is of a basic nature, the entire technical disclosure may be new in the art, and the abstract should be directed to the entire disclosure. If the patent is in the nature of an improvement in an old apparatus, process, product, or composition, the abstract should include the technical disclosure of the improvement. The abstract should also mention by way of example any preferred modifications or alternatives.
Where applicable, the abstract should include the following: (1) if a machine or apparatus, its organization and operation; (2) if an article, its method of making; (3) if a chemical compound, its identity and use; (4) if a mixture, its ingredients; (5) if a process, the steps.
Extensive mechanical and design details of an apparatus should not be included in the abstract. The abstract should be in narrative form and generally limited to a single paragraph within the range of 50 to 150 words in length.
See MPEP § 608.01(b) for guidelines for the preparation of patent abstracts.
The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because the abstract in the application is 190 words long, and is over the limit of 150 words in length for an abstract. A corrected abstract of the disclosure is required and must be presented on a separate sheet, apart from any other text. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b)
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 7 and 11 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.
The term “real quantity of positive/negative samples” in claims 7 and 11 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “real quantity of positive/negative samples” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. The Specification of the Applicant does not provide a definition as to what a “real quantity of positive/negative samples” is defined as, and it is not clear if other ‘quantities of positive/negative samples’ are present in the invention that are predicted, false, or otherwise not “real”.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-6, 8-10, and 12-20 are allowed. Claims 7 and 11 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the 112(b) second paragraph rejection set forth in this Office action.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
In the reference of Fan et al. (CN 113362048 B, using the translated English document included in the Office Action), hereinafter Fan, discloses a method for “separately encrypting a plurality of binary classification labels to obtain a plurality of encrypted labels, the plurality of binary classification labels corresponding to a plurality of samples, a first feature portion of the plurality of samples being stored in a first party, the plurality of binary classification labels being stored in a second party (a Guest party performing homomorphic encryption on Y, where Y corresponds to a binary classification label, sends the encryption results to the Host in pages 37, lines 25-31, which is also shown in Fig. 7A in page 110); “sending the plurality of encrypted labels to the first party” (Host party calculates ciphertext request and result of each initial sub-box, and sends the request and result to the Guest party, page 37, lines 39-40). The reference of Li et al. (CN 110209994 B, using the translated English document included in the Office Action), hereinafter Li, teaches the noise addition of positive and negative noise on the gradient of each transmission being encrypted and being encrypted by homomorphic encryption techniques, in page 5, lines 4-11, also shown on Fig. 1 in page 20. However, the combination of the Fan and Li does not sufficiently teach the limitation of a “first positive sample encrypted noise addition quantity and a first negative sample encrypted noise addition quantity corresponding to each first bin in a plurality of first bins”.
None of the prior arts taken individually or in combination fails to particularly disclose, fairly disclose, or render obvious: “receiving, from the first party, a first positive sample encrypted noise addition quantity and a first negative sample encrypted noise addition quantity corresponding to each first bin in a plurality of first bins, and decrypting the first positive sample encrypted noise addition quantity and the first negative sample encrypted noise addition quantity, to obtain a corresponding first positive sample noise addition quantity of the first bin and a corresponding first negative sample noise addition quantity of the first bin;”, and “determining a first noise addition index of the first bin based on the first positive sample noise addition quantity of the first bin and the first negative sample noise addition quantity of the first bin” recited in claim 1.
Dependent claims 2-18 depend on the independent claim 1, and are allowable based on claim 1 being determined to be allowable.
Independent claims 19 and 20 recite substantially the same features and are allowable for the rationale.
The closest prior art made of record are:
US 8904181 B1 (“System And Method For Secure Three-party Communications”)
US 20180101697 A1 (“METHOD FOR DIFFERENTIALLY PRIVATE AGGREGATION IN A STAR TOPOLOGY UNDER A REALISTIC ADVERSARIAL MODEL”)
US 20210334808 A1 (“IDENTITY MANAGEMENT SERVICE USING A BLOCKCHAIN PROVIDING CERTIFYING TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN DEVICES”)
US 20230267216 A1 (“MACHINE LEARNING MODELS WITH MULTI-BUDGET DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY”)
US 20250036803 A1 (“Machine Learning Training With Enforced Differential Privacy Using Secure Multi-Party Computation”)
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TOMMY MARTINEZ whose telephone number is (703)756-5651. The examiner can normally be reached Monday thru Friday ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jorge L. Ortiz-Criado can be reached at (571) 272-7624 on Monday thru Friday, 7AM-7PM ET. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/T.M./Examiner, Art Unit 2496
/SHAHRIAR ZARRINEH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2496