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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/26/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 10 and 19 objected to because of the following informalities: the claims read “to be equal to “1.”” The claim should read “to be equal to “1”.” . Appropriate correction is required.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-3, 5-13, and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Asterjadhi et al. (US-20240298173-A1, EFD: 2023-03-1) hereinafter Asterjadhi in view of Chu et al. (US-20240276223-A1, EFD: 2023-02-15) hereinafter Chu.
For examination purposes, claims 1-10 referring to an apparatus, claims 11-19 referring to a non-transitory computer readable medium and claim 20 referring to a method medium are henceforth grouped together for claims mirroring the same limitations or which disclose analogous art to the invention as claimed.
Regarding independent claims 1, 11 and 20, Asterjadhi discloses a device, non-transitory computer readable medium and method, comprising processing circuitry coupled to storage, the processing circuitry (Asterjadhi, par. 7; a wireless communication device) configured to: utilize a Galois Message Authentication Code with a 256-bit key (GMAC-256) as an integrity protocol (Asterjadhi, fig. 15, par. 82; a HDR PRO field 1502 may be included before or after a Galois/counter mode protocol (GCMP) header 1504 of the MPDU) for block acknowledgment (BA) and block acknowledgment request (BAR); generate a packet number (PN) (Asterjadhi, fig. 15, par. 82; The HDR PRO field may include an indication of the packet number (PN) associated with the MAC header) and Message Integrity Code (MIC) (Asterjadhi, fig. 15, par. 82; The HDR PRO may also include an indication of a MIC for the MAC header) using GMAC-256 for integrity design in the BA (Asterjadhi, figs. 3, 8-9, par. 73; a Per AID TID information field 902 of a secure M-BA frame, such as secure M-BA frame 800 … a block ACK starting sequence control field 920 that includes zero or two octets, and a CMF 930 that includes sixteen or thirty-two octets) and BAR (Asterjadhi, fig. 10, par. 76; secure multiple traffic identifier (multi-TID) block acknowledgment request (BAR) frame 1000); and include a key identification (ID) indication in a BA control or BAR control field for the BA and BAR (Asterjadhi, fig. 10, par. 76; The MIC of the CMF may be calculated over the secure multi-TID BAR frame body, including the BAR control field, the BAR information fields, the security key ID field, and the PN field).
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Asterjadhi does not explicitly teach the device uses a GMAC-256 integrity protocol, however, in analogous art Chu discloses a system for frame protection which utilizes a GMAC-256 protocol for frame protection (Chu, par. 62; the control frame is integrity protected, e.g., by using Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC)-256 for integrity protection, i.e., the MAC header and the Data part of the protected Control frame before MIC field is clear text).
Therefore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Asterjadhi’s methods for securing control information with Chu’s teachings for frame protection to enhance frame security and reduce the processing time of the encrypted frames. (examiner notes, a person seeking to enhance frame protection would be motivated to use a GMAC or CMAC with a 128-bit or 258-bit integrity key to comply with IEEE 802.11 standards.
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Regarding claims 2 and 12, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to construct Additional Authenticated Data (AAD) for the BA and (Asterjadhi, figs. 12-14, par. 78; some fields of the MAC header of the MPDU 1100 are protected from alteration by being included in additional authenticated data (AAD) of the MPDU), including incorporating a Frame Control (FC) field of the BA and BAR with specific subfields modifications BAR (Chu, fig. 3, par. 60; the protected trigger frame format 350 includes a frame control field 352 (e.g., two-octet) that may contain frame control information (e.g., protected frame field indicates whether the control frame is protected or not), see also par. 47.
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Regarding claims 3 and 13, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 2 and 11, wherein the specific subfields modifications in the FC field include masking out the Retry, Power Management, (Asterjadhi, fig. 12; The AAD does not protect the three least significant bits of the Subtype subfield of the FC field (i.e., bits 4, 5, and 6 of the FC field), the retry subfield (i.e., bit 11 of the FC field), the power management subfield (i.e., bit 12 of the FC field), and the more data subfield (i.e., bit 13 of the FC field)) and More Data subfields (Chu, figs. 3-6, par. 71; the protected control frame format 450 includes a frame control field 452 (e.g., two-octet) that may contain frame control information whose Type subfield and Subtype subfield indicate a new defined control subtype), see also pars. 57-58. Examiner notes, in combination Asterjadhi and Chu teach that other subfields such as power management and retry can be masked or protected.
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Regarding claims 5 and 15, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to use the same key for individually addressed and group addressed frame protection as used for Trigger frame protection (Asterjadhi, par. 37; The frame may, in some examples, be a trigger frame, a null data packet (NDP) announcement frame, a multi-station block acknowledgment (M-BA) frame, a compressed BlockAck frame, a block acknowledgment request (BAR) frame, or another type of control frame … A receiver receiving such a frame can verify the frame by computing an integrity check for the frame using the security key identified by the ID included in the frame and comparing the computed integrity check with the integrity check included in the frame), see also pars. 36 and 47.
Regarding claims 6 and 16, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to utilize the same replay counter as used for Trigger frame protection for both individually addressed and group addressed frames (Chu, par. 80; if the following are true for the received A-MPDU of PBA agreement, each received frame are used to update the scoreboard context and the replay counter are updated: the received frame can by decrypted correctly or the PN of the received frame is no less than the lower layer replay counter) see also Asterjadhi, figs. 12-14.
Regarding claims 7 and 17, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the GMAC-256 is mandated for use in all variants of the BA and BAR where an integrity protocol is applied (Chu, par. 62; to decrease the responding time to process the protected Control frames, the control frame is integrity protected, e.g., by using Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC)-256 for integrity protection, i.e., the MAC header and the Data part of the protected Control frame before MIC field is clear text).
Regarding claims 8 and 18, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the PN and MIC are included for both protected BA and BAR right before the FCS is checked by a receiver (Chu, par. 14; packet number (PN) information, key identification (ID) information, and MIC information are carried in the protected control frame), see also pars. 17, 52, 59 and 61-63.
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Regarding claim 9, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device of claims 1, wherein for Multi-STA BA, a per AID-TID info subfield with special AID is used to include the PN and MIC (Chu, fig. 3, pars. 61; User Info field if the special User Info field carries the security parameters, other subfields 394-1, . . . , or 394-14, and an optional trigger dependent user info field 396-1, . . . , or 396-14 with variable length. For example, the other subfields 394-8 may include packet number fields PN0, PN1, PN2, PN3, PN4, PN5 370, 372, 374, 380, 382, 384, 386, a reserved (Rsvd) field 376, a key ID field 378 that may contain key identification information, and a MIC field 388 (e.g., sixteen-octet or 8-octet) that may contain message integrity check (MIC) information).
Regarding claims 10 and 19, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to: encrypt one or more control frames using authentication encryption protocols including Galois/counter mode protocol (GCMP) with 256-bit key (Chu, par. 62; to decrease the responding time to process the protected Control frames, the control frame is integrity protected, e.g., by using Galois Message Authentication Code (GMAC)-256 for integrity protection, i.e., the MAC header and the Data part of the protected Control frame before MIC field is clear text); and set a protected frame subfield field in a frame control field to be equal to “1.” (Chu, par. 47; the Protected Frame field of a control frame being equal to 1 indicates that the control frame is a protected Control frame).
Claims 4 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Asterjadhi et al. (US-20240298173-A1, EFD: 2023-03-1) hereinafter Asterjadhi in view of Chu et al. (US-20240276223-A1, EFD: 2023-02-15) hereinafter Chu and further in view of Chitrakar et al. (US-20230148178-A1, published: 2023-05-11) hereinafter Chitrakar.
Regarding claims 4 and 14, the combination of Asterjadhi and Chu further teaches the device and non-transitory computer readable medium of claims 1 and 10, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to truncate the size of the MIC to 8 bytes if the original size of the MIC is larger than 8 bytes (Chu, par. 59; The 16-octet length of the MIC field 288 is an example. However, the other length, e.g., 8-octet MIC field, is also possible), see also Asterjadhi figs. 3A-3B.
The combination of Asterjadhi and Chu does not explicitly teach the MIC being truncated when it exceeds an 8-byte size, however, Chitrakar discloses a system for implementing a secure low power transmission by truncating MIC wake-up radio (WUR) frames (Chitrakar, par. 64; If the WUR frame is a unicast frame, the AP uses its secret Key, for example the Temporal Key (TK) portion of the pairwise secret Key PTK or W-PTK, the Transmitter Address (TA) and the Receiver Address (RA), as well as the P-TSF field as input to the cryptographic algorithm to obtain a MIC. Usually, the output of a standard cryptographic function may be too long to directly use in WUR PPDUs and may need to be truncated to fit the limited size of the WUR frames), see also par. 65.
Therefore, a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have been motivated to combine Asterjadhi’s methods for securing control information, Chu’s teachings for frame protection and Chitrakar methods for secure WUR frame transmission, to reduce communication overhead.
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It is noted that any citations to specific pages, columns, lines or figures in the prior art
references and any interpretation of the reference should not be considered limiting in any way. A
reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably
suggested to a person of ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP 2123
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Kishida et al. (US-20240373213-A1), Transmitting Station And Receiving Station, 2024.
Asterjadhi et al. (US-20150124704-A1), Apparatus And Methods For Mac Header Compression, 2015.
Kounavis et al. (US-20190229925-A1), Systems And Methods Of Using Cryptographic Primitives For Error Location, Correction, And Device Recovery, 2019.
Asterjadhi et al. (US-20190208470-A1), Implementing Wake-Up Radio (WUR) Device Communications, 2019.
Seok (US-20160337783-A1), Method And Apparatus For Transmitting And Receiving Frame Supporting Short Mac Header In Wireless Lan System, 2016.
Yong (US-20190097952-A1), Block Acknowledgement With Out-of-Order Packets, 2019.
Ptasinski et al. (US-8473732-B2), Method And System For Secure Block Acknowledgment (block ACK) With Protected MAC Sequence Number, 2013.
Asterjadhi et al. (US-10361832-B2), Block Acknowledgment Generation And Selection Rules, 2019.
Jiang et al. (US-20220132306-A1), Protected High-Throughput Control Subfield, 2022.
Xin et al. (US-20230199846-A1), Receive Reordering Buffer Control For Latency Sensitive Traffic, 2023.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARIO R CAMPERO MIRAMONTES whose telephone number is (571)272-5792. The examiner can normally be reached Monday -Thursday 0600 - 1600.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Yuwen (Kevin) Pan can be reached at (571) 272-7855. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MARIO R CAMPERO MIRAMONTES/Examiner, Art Unit 2649 /YUWEN PAN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2649
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