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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
Claim 10 recites the limitation “the computing resource management service”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim because there is no prior reference of “a computing resource management service” in claim 10 or claim 1 from which it is dependent from.
Claim 10 recites the limitation “the third party”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim because there is no prior reference of “a third party” in claim 10 or claim 1 from which it is dependent from.
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 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because they are directed to non-statutory subject matter. Claims 18-20 do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the disclosed computer readable storage medium is not specified to be non-transitory.
Step 1) Does the claimed invention fall outside of one of the 4 statutory categories (process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter)?
Non-limiting examples of claims that are not directed to any of the statutory categories include:
Products that do not have a physical or tangible form, such as information (often referred to as "data per se") or a computer program per se (often referred to as "software per se") when claimed as a product without any structural recitations;
Transitory forms of signal transmission (often referred to as "signals per se"), such as a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal or carrier wave; and
Subject matter that the statute expressly prohibits from being patented, such as humans per se, which are excluded under The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA ), Public Law 112-29, sec. 33, 125 Stat. 284 (September 16, 2011).
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 1-3, 10-12, and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20210056184 A1 Modani, et al., hereinafter Modani.
Regarding Claim 1, Modani teaches a platform comprising a plurality of computing resources; and at least one memory coupled to at least one processor, the at least one memory having program instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by the at least one processor, cause the instructions to (Modani; [0043], [0007]):
receive, from a customer, a request to grant to a computing resource management tool limited access to at least a portion of the computing resources (Modani; Claim 1),
the computing resource management tool managed by a vendor of the computing resources (Modani; Claim 1);
generate an access control policy key ("access token") in response to the request (Modani; [0005], [0036]),
the key comprising one or more policies associated with how the computing resource management tool is allowed to access the portion of computing resources (Modani; [0005], [0036]);
provide the key to the computing resource management tool (Modani; [0006], [0033]); and access, by the computing resource management tool, the portion of computing resources according to the policies included in the key (Modani; [0005], Claim 1).
Modani does not teach, that the platform is a cloud computing platform.
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the known methods of Modani to include a cloud computing platform. It would be reasonable to expect a person of ordinary skill in the art to be able to modify Modani to work with a cloud computing platform because the methods disclosed by Modani would yield predictable results within a cloud environment. Doing so would have resulted in an improved cloud computing platform capable of access control.
Regarding claim 11, Modani teaches a third-party trusted access method comprising: receiving, from a customer, a request to grant to a computing resource management tool limited access to at least a portion of a plurality of computing resources (Modani; Claim 1),
the computing resource management tool managed by a vendor of the computing resources (Modani; Claim 1);
generating an access control policy key ("access token") in response to the request (Modani; [0005], [0036]),
the key comprising one or more policies associated with how the computing resource management tool is allowed to access the portion of computing resources (Modani; [0005], [0036]);
providing the key to the computing resource management tool; and accessing, by the computing resource management tool, the portion of computing resources according to the policies included in the key (Modani; [0005], Claim 1).
Modani does not teach, that the portion of a plurality of computing resources is of a cloud computing platform.
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the known methods of Modani to include a cloud computing platform. It would be reasonable to expect a person of ordinary skill in the art to be able to modify Modani to work with a cloud computing platform because the methods disclosed by Modani would yield predictable results within a cloud environment. Doing so would have resulted in an improved cloud computing platform capable of access control.
Regarding claim 18, Modani teaches a computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by an Information Handling System (IHS), cause the IHS to (Modani; [0044]):
receive, from a customer, a request to grant to a computing resource management tool limited access to at least a portion of a plurality of computing resources of a computing platform (Modani; Claim 1),
the computing resource management tool managed by a vendor of the computing resources (Modani; Claim 1);
generate an access control policy key (“access token”) in response to the request (Modani; [0005], [0036]),
the key comprising one or more policies associated with how the computing resource management tool is allowed to access the portion of computing resources (Modani; [0005], [0036]);
provide the key to the computing resource management tool; and access, by the computing resource management tool, the portion of computing resources according to the policies included in the key (Modani; [0005], Claim 1).
Modani does not teach, that the portion of a plurality of computing resources is of a cloud computing platform.
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the known methods of Modani to include a cloud computing platform. It would be reasonable to expect a person of ordinary skill in the art to be able to modify Modani to work with a cloud computing platform because the methods disclosed by Modani would yield predictable results within a cloud environment. Doing so would have resulted in an improved cloud computing platform capable of access control.
Regarding claims 2, 12 and 19, Modani teaches the IHS of claim 1, wherein the program instructions, upon execution, further cause IHS to: receive, from the customer, user input for modifying the policies associated with the access control policy key (Modani; [0033-0034], [0038-0039]);
and access, by the computing resource management tool, the portion of the computing resources according to the modified policies (Modani; [0033-0034], [0038-0039]).
Regarding claim 3, Modani teaches the IHS of claim 1, wherein the policies comprise at least one of access policies (Modani; [0036-0039] “is a request to grant a third party access to specific resources such as resources”). and trust policies (Modani; [0036-0039] “in some examples, the authorization request includes a user identifier (UID) to identify to the SDM which user the third party is requesting to access”).
Regarding claim 10, Modani teaches the IHS of claim 1, wherein the computing resource management service comprises a storage data server service managed by the third-party (Modani; [0033]).
Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20210056184 A1 Modani, et al., (hereinafter Modani) in view of US 20250106221 Wang et al., (hereinafter Wang).
Regarding claim 4, Modani teaches the HIS of claim 1 and the access policy control key.
Modani does not teach wherein the key comprises an Amazon Web Services (AWS) IAM key.
Wang teaches wherein a key comprises an Amazon Web Services (AWS) IAM format (Wang; [0051]).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Modani to incorporate the teachings of Wang to have the disclosed policy control access key comprise an AWS IAM key. AWS IAM is a commonly accepted format for cloud systems, and having the policy control access key comprise of an AWS IAM key would allow for cloud computing platforms to utilize the key (Wang; [0050]).
Claims 5 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20210056184 A1 Modani, et al., (hereinafter Modani) in view of US 20240205226 A1 Lukyanov et al., (hereinafter Lukyanov).
Regarding claims 5 and 13, Modani teaches the IHS of claim 1.
Modani does not teach: wherein the program instructions, upon execution, further cause IHS to store the key in a secure vault.
Lukyanov teaches, wherein the program instructions, upon execution, further cause IHS to store the key in a secure vault (Lukyanov; [0005]).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Modani to incorporate the teachings of Lukyanov to further store the key in a secure vault. Doing so would have yielded the predictable improvement of increasing security by isolating the key in a separate vault in the case the system is compromised (Lukyanov; [0018]).
Claims 6 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20210056184 A1 Modani, et al., (hereinafter Modani) in view of US 20220321562 A1 Sholtis et al., (hereinafter Sholtis).
Regarding claims 6 and 14, Modani teaches the IHS of claim 1, wherein the program instructions, upon execution, further cause IHS to generate the key (Modani; [0005], [0036]).
Modani does not teach: wherein the generated key is done by using a third-party account in the cloud computing platform, the third-party account managed by the vendor of the computing resources.
Sholtis teaches, wherein the key is generated using a third-party account in the cloud computing platform, the third-party account managed by the vendor of the computing resources (Sholtis; [0035]).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Modani to incorporate the teachings of Sholtis to have the key generated using a third-party account managed by the vendor of the computing resources. Having a third-party provider managing security policies of the accounts will provide greater security to client accounts (Sholtis; [0056]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-9, 15-17, and 20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Regarding claims 7, 15, and 20, the prior art does not appear to disclose, or fairly teach in reasonable combination to one of ordinary skill in the art the claimed invention.
Modani teaches the IHS of claim 1, but does not teach wherein the program instructions, upon execution, further cause IHS to: obtain, using the key, telemetry information associated with the portion of the computing resources; correlate the obtained telemetry information with third-party information of a computing resource management service; and display the correlated information for view by a user.
Although other prior art of record such as US20160255050 (hereinafter Grayson) teaches regarding telemetry data that can be viewed by a third-party account (Grayson; [0076]), the prior art of record does not appear to disclose, or fairly teach in reasonable combination to one of ordinary skill in the art “using the key, telemetry information associated with the portion of the computing resources; correlate the obtained telemetry information with third-party information of a computing resource management service; and display the correlated information for view by a user.
Claims 8-9, and 16-17 are dependent from either claim 7 or 15 and would be allowable under the same rationale ((given if claim 6 is rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHRISTOPHER LAM whose telephone number is (571)272-8912. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7:30-5PM.
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/C.L./ Examiner, Art Unit 2435
/J. BRANT MURPHY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2435
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