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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/30/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-20 are pending. Newly amended features, where relevant, necessitate new ground(s) of rejections.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 4/30/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
On pages 7-11 of the Remarks, the Applicants argue that Lin does not disclose “generating a challenge prompt associated with the positive memorable experience to authenticate an identity of the user, wherein the challenge prompt relates to a real world event associated with the positive memorable experience”.
In response, the Examiner respectfully disagrees and submits that Lin at least discloses an emotion-based authentication that at least allow users to capture a photo or a video, associate the user’s emotion with the photo or video and share the photo or video to others such as family members which the capturing the photo or video and/or sharing it to others corresponds to the claimed real world event associated with the positive memorable experience (see FIG. 10A-10F), and Lin further discloses displaying an interface of the emotion-based authentication to request user to indicate what kind of emotion the user has associated with the captured photo or video shared with other; for example, a prompt” “How did you describe this photograph in your text message to “Mom” last week” (see FIG. 10E-G). As such, Lin clearly discloses the claimed limitation “generating a challenge prompt associated with the positive memorable experience to authenticate an identity of the user, wherein the challenge prompt relates to a real world event associated with the positive memorable experience”.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 4/30/2026 is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-6 and 8-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Lin et al. (US 2022/0284086 hereinafter Lin).
Regarding claim 1, Lin discloses a method for using an event associated with a user as an authentication factor, the method comprising:
receiving, from a user device associated with the user, an indication of a request for the user to access a network resource via the user device (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0033]-[0035], [0047]-[0048]; i.e. the user device attempts to access a resource, for example, an application, web page, service, data host, etc.);
receiving, from a time series database, time series sensor data associated with the user, wherein the time series sensor data is a sequence of data points collected by one or more sensors associated with the user during real-world events that the user experiences during a period of time (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0032]-[0035], [0042]-[0046]; i.e. capturing/receiving from data sources and/or sensors different kinds of data associated with data and time information, for example, images, text, video, blog or social posts, reactions to posts, etc.);
identifying, using the sensor data, a particular experience from the real-world events experienced by the user that is a positive memorable experience (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. retrieving and/or obtaining emotion data associated with the user or the user device, for example, a user’s happy photograph);
generating a challenge prompt associated with the positive memorable experience to authenticate an identity of the user, wherein the challenge prompt relates to a real world event associated with the positive memorable experience (FIG. 1-3, 10A-10G, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. generating authentication challenge including the emotion data such as the happy photograph to the user wherein at least the challenge prompt relates to a real world event of taking a photo and sharing the photo associated with an emotion with other); and
causing the user device to output the challenge prompt (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. presenting the authentication challenge to the user of the client device).
Regarding claim 2, Lin discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the challenge prompt is at least one of a question in text form displayed on a user interface of the user device, one or more images displayed on the user interface of the user device, or an audio question output by a speaker of the user device (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 3, Lin discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the identifying further comprises identifying that the positive memorable experience is exclusively known to the user (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 4, Lin discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the positive memorable experience is associated with a positive reaction experienced by the user (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 5, Lin discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising restricting collection of the time series sensor data based at least in part on a user profile associated with the user, the user profile including rules for time series sensor data collection associated with the user and wherein the rules include where and when to restrict collection of the time series sensor data (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0046], [0083]).
Regarding claim 6, Lin discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the identifying is based at least in part on a user profile associated with the user, the user profile including rules for positive memorable experience identification associated with the user (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0046], [0083]).
Regarding claim 8, Lin discloses a system comprising:
one or more processors (FIG. 1-3); and
one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising (FIG. 1-3):
receiving, from a user device associated with a user, an indication of a request for the user to access a network resource via the user device (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0033]-[0035], [0047]-[0048]; i.e. the user device attempts to access a resource, for example, an application, web page, service, data host, etc.);
receiving, from a time series database, time series sensor data associated with the user, wherein the time series sensor data is a sequence of data points collected by one or more sensors associated with the user during real-world events that the user experiences during a period of time (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0032]-[0035], [0042]-[0046]; i.e. capturing/receiving from data sources and/or sensors different kinds of data associated with data and time information, for example, images, text, video, blog or social posts, reactions to posts, etc.);
identifying, using the sensor data, a particular experience from the real-world events experienced by the user that is a positive memorable experience (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. retrieving and/or obtaining emotion data associated with the user or the user device, for example, a user’s happy photograph);
generating a challenge prompt associated with the positive memorable experience to authenticate an identity of the user, wherein the challenge prompt relates to a real world event associated with the positive memorable experience (FIG. 1-3, 10A-10G, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. generating authentication challenge including the emotion data such as the happy photograph to the user wherein at least the challenge prompt relates to a real world event of taking a photo and sharing the photo associated with an emotion with other); and
causing the user device to output the challenge prompt (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. presenting the authentication challenge to the user of the client device).
Regarding claim 9, Lin discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the challenge prompt is at least one of a question in text form displayed on a user interface of the user device, one or more images displayed on the user interface of the user device, or an audio question output by a speaker of the user device (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 10, Lin discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the identifying further comprises identifying that the positive memorable experience is exclusively known to the user (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 11, Lin discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the positive memorable experience is associated with a positive reaction experienced by the user (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 12, Lin discloses the system of claim 8, the operations further comprising restricting collection of the time series sensor data based at least in part on a user profile associated with the user, the user profile including rules for time series sensor data collection associated with the user and wherein the rules include where and when to restrict collection of the time series sensor data (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0046], [0083]).
Regarding claim 13, Lin discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the identifying is based at least in part on a user profile associated with the user, the user profile including rules for positive memorable experience identification associated with the user (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0046], [0083]).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin et al. (US 2022/0284086 hereinafter Lin) in view of Weber et al. (US 2017/0317993 hereinafter Weber).
Regarding claim 7, Lin discloses the method of claim 1 wherein generating a challenge prompt further comprises: generating one or more plausible events [[using a predetermined level of hallucination and]] based at least in part on the positive memorable experience and the time series sensor data; and generating, using the positive memorable experience and the one or more plausible events, a challenge and response to be used as a challenge-response authentication for the user to access the network resource via the user device (FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0033]-[0035]).
Lin does not explicitly disclose using a predetermined level of hallucination.
However, Weber discloses generating one or more plausible events using a predetermined level of hallucination (¶ [0064], [0068]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Lin and Weber in order to scale the difficulty of the authentication challenge to meet different security needs (Weber, ¶ [0039], [0068]).
Regarding claim 14, see claim 7 above for the same reasons of rejections.
Claims 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin et al. (US 2022/0284086 hereinafter Lin) in view of DE et al. (US 2018/0293989 hereinafter DE).
Regarding claim 15, Lin discloses one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
receiving, from a user device associated with a user, an indication of a request for the user to access a network resource via the user device (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0033]-[0035], [0047]-[0048]; i.e. the user device attempts to access a resource, for example, an application, web page, service, data host, etc.);
receiving, from a time series database, time series sensor data associated with the user, wherein the time series sensor data is a sequence of data points collected by one or more sensors associated with the user during real-world events that the user experiences during a period of time (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0032]-[0035], [0042]-[0046]; i.e. capturing/receiving from data sources and/or sensors different kinds of data associated with data and time information, for example, images, text, video, blog or social posts, reactions to posts, etc.), wherein the one or more sensors include at least one sensor that measures one or more biomarkers associated with the user during the period of time;
identifying, using the sensor data, a particular experience from the real-world events experienced by the user that is a positive memorable experience (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. retrieving and/or obtaining emotion data associated with the user or the user device, for example, a user’s happy photograph);
generating a challenge prompt associated with the positive memorable experience to authenticate an identity of the user, wherein the challenge prompt relates to a real world event associated with the positive memorable experience (FIG. 1-3, 10A-10G, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. generating authentication challenge including the emotion data such as the happy photograph to the user wherein at least the challenge prompt relates to a real world event of taking a photo and sharing the photo associated with an emotion with other); and
causing the user device to output the challenge prompt (FIG. 1-3, ¶ [0050]-[0053]; i.e. presenting the authentication challenge to the user of the client device).
Lin does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more sensors include at least one sensor that measures one or more biomarkers associated with the user during the period of time.
However, DE discloses wherein the one or more sensors include at least one sensor that measures one or more biomarkers associated with the user during the period of time (¶ [0063]-[0066], [0084]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Lin and DE in order to authenticate a user using speech and associated biometric information measured during the received speech (DE, ¶ [0001]-[0007]).
Regarding claim 16, Lin in view of DE discloses the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 15, wherein the identifying further comprises identifying that the positive memorable experience is exclusively known to the user (Lin, FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 17, Lin in view of DE discloses the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 15, wherein the positive memorable experience is associated with a positive reaction experienced by the user (Lin, FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0034]).
Regarding claim 18, Lin in view of DE discloses the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 15, the operations further comprising restricting collection of the time series sensor data based at least in part on a user profile associated with the user, the user profile including rules for time series sensor data collection associated with the user and wherein the rules include where and when to restrict collection of the time series sensor data (Lin, FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0046], [0083]).
Regarding claim 19, Lin in view of DE discloses the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 15, wherein the identifying is based at least in part on a user profile associated with the user, the user profile including rules for positive memorable experience identification associated with the user (Lin, FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0046], [0083]; Chiang, ¶ [0049]).
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin et al. (US 2022/0284086 hereinafter Lin) in view of DE et al. (US 2018/0293989 hereinafter DE) and further in view of Weber et al. (US 2017/0317993 hereinafter Weber).
Regarding claim 20, Lin in view of DE discloses the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 15, wherein generating a challenge prompt further comprises: generating one or more plausible events [[using a predetermined level of hallucination and]] based at least in part on the positive memorable experience and the time series sensor data; and generating, using the positive memorable experience and the one or more plausible events, a challenge and response to be used as a challenge-response authentication for the user to access the network resource via the user device (Lin, FIG. 10E-G, ¶ [0033]-[0035]).
Lin in view of DE does not explicitly disclose using a predetermined level of hallucination.
However, Weber discloses generating one or more plausible events using a predetermined level of hallucination (¶ [0064], [0068]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Lin, DE and Weber in order to scale the difficulty of the authentication challenge to meet different security needs (Weber, ¶ [0039], [0068]).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHI D NGUY whose telephone number is (571)270-7311. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9-5 ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Amir Mehrmanesh can be reached at (571)270-3351. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/C.D.N/Examiner, Art Unit 2435
/AMIR MEHRMANESH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2435
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