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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This is a reply to the application filed on 01/17/2024, in which, claim(s) 1-16 are pending. Claim(s) 1, 11 and 14 are independent.
Response to Election
Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 1-10 and 14-16 in the reply filed on 12/11/2025 is acknowledged. Claims 1-10 and 14-16 will be examined on the merits in this Non-Final Office Action. Claims 11-13 are canceled.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 04/17/2024 and 12/16/2024, has been reviewed. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the examiner is considering the information disclosure statement.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 01/17/2024 are accepted by The Examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 recites “A method of generating a key”; however, it is not clear what is performing the method. Is it a computer implemented method? Please clarify.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Claim 14 is non-statutory under the most recent interpretation of the Interim Guidelines regarding 35 U.S.C.101 because: the machine readable medium claimed is not positively disclosed in the specification as a statutory only embodiment. When the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers a signal per se, the claim must be rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter. (See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1356-57 (Fed. Cir. 2007) transitory embodiments are not directed to statutory subject matter, further see MPEP 2106). Examiner suggests amending the claim to include “non-transitory machine readable medium” consistent with the OG notice (2/23/2010, 1351 OG 212, http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/og/2010/week08/TOC.htm#ref20) concerning “Subject Matter Eligibility of Computer Readable Media”.
Claims 15-16 don't cure the deficiency of claim 14 and are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 for their dependency upon claim 14.
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 of this title, 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.
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.
Claims 1-5, and 14-15, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yuan et al. (US 2020/0274701 A1, cited by the applicant in the 04/17/2024 IDS) in view of Hughes et al. (US 2013/0083926 A1, cited by the applicant in the 04/17/2024 IDS).
Regarding Claim 1, Yuan discloses A method of generating a key ([0083], “to generate a key”) comprising:
deriving a first key with a first node and a second node ([0083], “A and B first execute a QKD protocol to generate a key KAB”),
deriving a second key with the second node and a third node ([0083], “B executes a QKD protocol with E to generate KBE”),
encrypting the first key with the second key ([0083], “A encrypts secret information KS with KAB”),
encrypting the second key with the first key ([0083], “B re-encrypts KS with KBE”),
sending the encrypted first key to the third node ([0083], “transmits the encrypted information to F”),
sending the encrypted second key to the first node ([0083], “End nodes A and F now have knowledge of the secret information KS”), and
deriving a stitched key from the first key and the second key ([0113-0114], “The source node and the destination node are configured to form a combined cryptographic key, KF, from the two keys KQKD and KCKE”);
Yuan does not explicitly teach but Hughes teaches
wherein a key is a cryptographic key made from a string of bits ([0210], “key--a short string of shared secret bits”),
the first node has a direct connection with the second node, and the second node has a direct connection with the third node (see Fig. 10a, node a0,0 connects to node a1,0 and node a1,0 connects to node a2,0).
Yuan and Hughes are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Hughes with the disclosure of Yuan. The motivation/suggestion would have been for digital signatures and key distribution (Hughes, [0014]).
Regarding Claim 2, the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes teaches
where deriving a stitched key is performed with a key derivation function (KDF) (Hughes, [0100], “the keyed hash function H [a; b] is a keyed cryptographic hash function”).
Regarding Claim 3, the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes teaches
wherein the key derivation function is a hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) key derivation function (HKDF) (Hughes, [0100], “the keyed hash function H [a; b] is a keyed cryptographic hash function such as HMAC-SHA-256 (see FIPS 198 "The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC)")”).
Regarding Claim 4, the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes teaches
where deriving a stitched key from the first key and the second key is performed by concatenating the first key and the second key (Hughes, [0216], “concatenation of P(1, 2) and A(1, 2)”).
Regarding Claim 5, the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes teaches
wherein each node is a node of a binary tree, the first node is a parent node to the second node, the second node is a child to the first node and a parent to the third node, and the third node is a child to the second node (Hughes, see Fig. 10a, a binary tree, node a0,0 connects to node a1,0 and node a1,0 connects to node a2,0).
Regarding Claim 14, Yuan discloses A method of generating a key ([0083], “to generate a key”) comprising:
deriving a first key with a first node and a second node ([0083], “A and B first execute a QKD protocol to generate a key KAB”),
deriving a second key with the second node and a third node ([0083], “B executes a QKD protocol with E to generate KBE”),
encrypting the first key with the second key ([0083], “A encrypts secret information KS with KAB”),
encrypting the second key with the first key ([0083], “B re-encrypts KS with KBE”),
sending the encrypted first key to the third node ([0083], “transmits the encrypted information to F”),
sending the encrypted second key to the first node ([0083], “End nodes A and F now have knowledge of the secret information KS”), and
receiving a stitched key from the first node, the stitched key derived by the first node from the first key and the second key ([0113-0114], “The source node and the destination node are configured to form a combined cryptographic key, KF, from the two keys KQKD and KCKE”);
Yuan does not explicitly teach but Hughes teaches
wherein a key is a cryptographic key made from a string of bits ([0210], “key--a short string of shared secret bits”),
the first node has a direct connection with the second node, and the second node has a direct connection with the third node (see Fig. 10a, node a0,0 connects to node a1,0 and node a1,0 connects to node a2,0).
Yuan and Hughes are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Hughes with the disclosure of Yuan. The motivation/suggestion would have been for digital signatures and key distribution (Hughes, [0014]).
Regarding Claim 15, the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes teaches
wherein the stitched key is a hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) key (Hughes, [0100], Key “A(i,j)=H[K(j,i); M(i)]”, “the keyed hash function H [a; b] is a keyed cryptographic hash function such as HMAC-SHA-256 (see FIPS 198 "The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC)")”).
Claims 6 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yuan et al. (US 2020/0274701 A1, cited by the applicant in the 04/17/2024 IDS) in view of Hughes et al. (US 2013/0083926 A1, cited by the applicant in the 04/17/2024 IDS) further in view of Berend et al. (US 2022/0231844 A1).
Regarding Claims 6 and 16, the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes does not explicitly teach but Berend teaches
wherein deriving a first key and deriving a second key include at least one node sending a string of qubits to at least one receiving node, each qubit being in a state of 2-qubit entanglement ([0078], “entanglement of pairs of qubits”),
Yuan, Hughes and Berend are analogous art as they are in the same field of endeavor of information security. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Berend with the combined teaching of Yuan and Hughes. The motivation/suggestion would have been for secure quantum computation (Berend, [0001]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 7 is objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claim 1, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim (i.e., including claim 1) since the prior arts taken individually or in combination fails to particular discloses, fairly suggest or render obvious the following limitations of the claim 7:
a confirmation that the stitched key is common to the first and third node, the confirmation comprising the second node:
receiving from the first node a message including:
a confirmation request, and
a signature of the first node;
sending to the third node a message including:
the confirmation request,
the signature of the first node,
a signature of the second node;
receiving from the third node a message including:
a confirmation response,
a signature of the third node;
sending to the first node a message including:
the confirmation response,
the signature of the third node,
a signature of the second node
Claims 8-10 are allowable in view of their dependencies on claim 7.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHENG-FENG HUANG whose telephone number is (571)272-6186. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday: 9 am - 5 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Eleni A Shiferaw can be reached at (571) 272-3867. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHENG-FENG HUANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2497