DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the amendment to Application Ser. No. 18/409,005 filed on November 18, 2025. Claims 5, 8 and 17 are cancelled. Claims 1, 14 and 18 are currently amended. Claims 1-4, 6, 7, 9-16 and 18-20 are pending and are examined.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 November 18, 2025, has been entered.
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 .
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 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.
Response to Arguments
The amendment to Claims 1, 14 and 18 has overcome the rejection of Claims 1-4 and 6-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 set forth in the Final Office Action mailed September 3, 2025. The rejection of Claims 1-4 and 6-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 is hereby withdrawn.
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.
Claims 1-4, 6, 7, 9-16 and 18-20 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.
Claim 1 recites the limitation “responsive to determining that a value of a metric reflecting a difference between a portion of the second messaging content and the baseline associated with the corresponding use case exceeds a corresponding maximum allowable variability threshold, suspending third messaging content originated by the specified message-originating entity until a secondary inspection of the portion of the second messaging content is completed, wherein the secondary inspection is performed by a second neural network utilizing a second plurality of numeric vectors, each numeric vector of the second plurality of numeric vectors having a second dimensionality that exceeds a first dimensionality of a first numeric vector of the first plurality of numeric vectors” in lines 15-24. There is insufficient antecedent basis for the term “the first plurality of numeric vectors” in the claims. More generally, the relationship between the terms “a first numeric vector” and “the first plurality of numeric vectors” and the terms “a numeric vector” and “numeric vectors representing respective messages” recited earlier in the claim is unclear, rendering the claim indefinite.
Dependent Claims 2-4, 6, 7, and 9-13 are rejected for the reasons presented above with respect to rejected Claim 1 in view of their dependence thereon.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 14 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 1.
Dependent Claims 15 and 16 are rejected for the reasons presented above with respect to rejected Claim 14 in view of their dependence thereon.
Insofar as it recites similar claim elements, Claim 18 is rejected for substantially the same reasons presented above with respect to Claim 1.
Dependent Claims 19 and 20 are rejected for the reasons presented above with respect to rejected Claim 18 in view of their dependence thereon.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 14 and 18 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The cited prior art discloses a method for electronic impersonation detection wherein a new email is flagged as malicious or inauthentic in response to a similarity score falling below a threshold similarity, wherein the similarity score is generated by comparing a vector representing the content of the new email against vectors representing the content of a corpus of authentic emails previously sent from the email account (Sampath et al., US 2022/0400094 A1). The prior art separately discloses a threat detection platform that implements a “bi-phasal approach” for screening emails wherein a first model, trained using past emails addressed to an employee that have been verified as non-malicious emails, is applied to a new email addressed to the employee, and wherein a second model is applied to the new email if the first model cannot verify the new email as non-malicious (Jeyakumar et al., US 2020/0344251 A1). However, the cited prior art, alone or in combination, does not teach or reasonably suggest, in combination with the other claim limitations, suspending third messaging content originated by the specified message-originating entity until a secondary inspection of the portion of the second messaging content is completed, wherein the secondary inspection is performed by a second neural network utilizing a second plurality of numeric vectors, each numeric vector of the second plurality of numeric vectors having a second dimensionality that exceeds a first dimensionality of a first numeric vector of the first plurality of numeric vectors as recited in the limitations of independent Claim 1 (and the substantially similar limitations of independent Claims 14 and 18).
Request for Examiner Interview
The Examiner respectfully requests an interview with the Applicant to discuss clarifications to the claims that would overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b), presented supra, and other remaining issues with the present Application. The Examiner suggests filing USPTO form PTO/SB/439 “Authorization for Internet Communications” along with an Automated Interview Request (AIR) via EFS Web to expedite prosecution of this application.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Jakobson, Pub. No. US 2018/0152471 A1, discloses a method for determining whether a messaging account of a sender has been compromised (“account take-over”) based on the degree to which a new message sent by the account deviates from typical messages sent by the sender and performing a security action in response to determining the account is compromised;
Jeyakumar et al., Pub. No. US 2020/0344251 A1 discloses a threat detection platform that implements a “bi-phasal approach” for screening emails; and
Stolfo et al., Pub. No. US 2003/0167402 A1, discloses a system and method for detecting a violation of an email security policy by comparing a histogram generated from a new email, represented by a vector, with a histogram representing the baseline behavior of an email account, wherein a violation is identified when the difference between the histograms exceeds a threshold.
A shortened statutory period for reply to this action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. An extension of time may be obtained under 37 CFR 1.136(a). However, in no event, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WILLIAM C MCBETH whose telephone number is (571)270-0495. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday, 8:00AM - 4:30PM ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Vivek Srivastava can be reached on 571-272-7304. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WILLIAM C MCBETH/Examiner, Art Unit 2449