DETAILED ACTION
This non-final office action is in response to ‘response to restriction’ filed January 05, 2026. Applicant’s election without traverse of Group 1 in the reply filed on 01/05/2026 is acknowledged. Applicant has withdrawn claims 14-22. Claims 5, 9, and 23-26 were previously canceled. Claims 1-4, 6-8, and 10-13 are being examined and are pending.
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 filed 04/10/2024 and 09/03/2025 has been placed in the application file and the information referred to therein has been considered as to the merits.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 01/31/2024 have been accepted.
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.
Claims 1-4, 6-8, and 10-13 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
I) Reason for rejection:
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification, as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
I the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitations are: “(i) one or more resources, each of the one or more resources configured to…, (ii) a registry service…configured to…, (iii) one or more tunnels configured to…” in claim 1. Nowhere in specification clearly mentioned corresponding hardware structure or hardware with algorithm for resources, registry service, and tunnels.
“A general-purpose computer is usually only sufficient as the corresponding structure for performing a general computing function (e.g., “means for storing data”), but the corresponding structure for performing a specific function is required to be more than simply a general-purpose computer or microprocessor.” (MPEP 2181)
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Dependent claims 2-4, 6-8, 10-13 do not cure the deficiencies set forth above.
II) Claim 1 recites, “one or more resources, each of the one or more resources configured to multicast…It is unclear what kind of resources are able to multicast a beacon. The scope of resources is unclear.
Claim further recites, one or more locations, each of the one or more locations containing at least one of the one or more resources. The scope of location is further unclear because whether the locations are physical or logical location.
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 non-obviousness.
Claims 1-4 and 6-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WO 2022/261837 to Zhao et al. (“Zhao”) in view of US 7,940,685 B1 to Breslau et al. (“Breslau”).
Regarding claim 1, (Original) Zhao taught a system for implementing communication between one or more resources in one or more locations, comprising (Para. 0025. The network referred to in this manual refers to at least one wired or wireless data network connecting the Internet of Things device (IOT) devices. The network can be smart home network, industrial Internet of Things, logistics and transportation network, Internet of Vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicle air-ground communication network, etc.): one or more resources, each of the one or more resources configured to multicast a beacon comprising one or more data (Para. 0030. S230: IoT devices broadcast their own presence and/or uncommissioning state.); one or more locations, each of the one or more locations containing at least one of the one or more resources (Para. 0026. This IoT device can be a home smart device, such as smart lamps, smart TVs, smart speakers, smart refrigerators, smart air conditioners, microwaves/ovens, dishwashers, stir-fryers, sweeping robots, and many more. The IoT device can be industrial equipment, such as industrial control robots or other industrial control intelligent equipment, industrial control sensors, industrial control monitors, and industrial assembly line controllers for automated or semi-automated production. This IoT device can be logistics equipment, such as logistics data sensors, logistics monitoring sensors, logistics controllers, and more. This IoT device can be an Internet of Vehicles device, such as base station equipment, vehicle equipment, relay equipment, infrastructure, etc.in the Internet of Vehicles. – Each IoT devices/resources are set on a location); a registry service at each of the one or more locations configured to receive the multicast beacons (Para. 0032-0033. S250: With S240, the configuration device (provide registry service) can obtain the load information of IoT devices (Setup Payload). S260: The configuration device searches for IoT devices based on the discovery capabilities in the load information obtained in the S250.) and to verify each multicast beacon by communicating with a URI (uniform resource identifier) associated with the respective one of the one or more resources that multicast the beacon (Para. 0035-0036. S280: Determine whether the authentication certificate of an IoT device can be requested and valid (Device Attestation). S290: The configuration device grants network certificates and other network access parameters to IoT devices. Para. 0041. The payload includes, but is not limited to, the following information elements: payload version information, vendor ID, product ID, vendor-specific process, discovery capability information, discriminator, configuration code, password, fill code, and so on. See Para. 0045-0046, 065); and one or more tunnels configured to allow communication between the one or more resources at different of the one or more locations (Para. 0034. S270: After the device searches for and discovers the IoT device, it uses a discriminator and/or PIN code to establish a link layer connection with the IoT device to establish a secure channel between the two. Para. 0081. S410: The configuration device establishes a secure configuration channel with the device based on the downloaded device configuration algorithm and configuration credentials. Para. 0233. The unit described as a separate part may or may not be physically separated, and the component displayed as a unit may or may not be a physical unit, that is, it can be located in one place, or it can also be distributed over multiple network units.).
Zhao is silent on multicast, however multicast is known in the art and the analogous art Breslau taught a method that can comprise establishing a tunnel between a monitor and at least one router; sending a message to join a multicast transmission; and/or transmitting a packet via the tunnel to a router (See abstract and col. 7, lines 60-67 (Multicast Virtual Private Network).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the applicant(s) invention was filed to modify the invention of Zhao by including the well-known multicasting technique as taught by Breslau so that Multicast Virtual Private Networks (MVPNs) can extend the capabilities of conventional (point-to-point) Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) by allowing the customer to transmit multicast packets across the VPN (Breslau, col. 7, lines 60-63).
Regarding claim 2, (Original) Zhao further taught the system of claim 1, wherein the one or more data comprise at least one of: manufacturer; model, family, type, URI (Para. 0041. The payload includes, but is not limited to, the following information elements: payload version information, vendor ID, product ID, vendor-specific process, discovery capability information, discriminator, configuration code, password, fill code, and so on. Para. 0044. The vendor ID is assigned by the Zigbee Alliance. The product ID is specified by the supplier. This allows the make and model of the device to be determined and further used in the commissioning process, e.g. in the device certification procedure.).
Regarding claim 3, (Original) Zhao further taught the system of claim 1, wherein the registry service is further configured to facilitate communication between the one or more resources by providing one or more APIs (application programming interfaces) associated with a requested one of the one or more resources to a requesting service (Para. 0080. S409: Configure the device to start the corresponding configuration script module according to the downloaded device configuration scheme. For example, if the IoT device supports the PASE solution, the configuration device starts the configuration script module to negotiate the security channel with the IoT device. If the IoT device supports DPP solution, the configuration device starts the configuration script module to perform DPP authentication with the device. Para. 225, 227).
Regarding claim 4, (Original) Zhao further taught the system of claim 3, wherein the requesting service comprises one of the one or more resources (Para. 0026. it includes configuration devices 110, IoT devices 120, and cloud platforms 130.).
Regarding claim 6, (Original) Zhao further taught the system of claim 3, wherein the communication is preceded by an authentication step (See authentication in Para 0062-0065).
Regarding claim 7, (Original) Zhao further taught the system of claim 6, wherein the authentication is token-based (Para. 0120).
Claims 8, 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao in view of Breslau as applied to claims 1, 7 above, and further in view of US 2017/0331812 A1 to Lander et al. (“Lander”).
Regarding claim 8, (Original) Zhao-Breslau combination taught the system of claim 7, the combination did not but the analogous art Lander taught, wherein the authentication comprises an OAuth2 compliant service (Lander [0079] The OAuth2 platform service provides token authorization services. It provides a rich API infrastructure for creating and validating access tokens conveying user rights to make API calls. It supports a range of useful token grant types, enabling customers to securely connect clients to their services. It implements standard 2-legged and 3-legged OAuth2 token grant types.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the applicant(s) invention was filed to modify the combined invention of Zhao and Breslau by including the idea of the authentication comprises an OAuth2 compliant service as taught by Lander in order to enable customers to allow social identities policy-based access to applications (Lander, Para. 0079).
Regarding claim 10, (Original) Zhao-Breslau-Lander combination taught the system of claim 1, wherein the registry service is further configured to record events in the system to an auditing system (Lander, [0087] The IDCS infrastructure services support the functionality of IDCS platform services. These runtime services include an event processing service (for asynchronously processing user notifications, application subscriptions, and auditing to database)).
Claims 11-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao in view of Breslau as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of WO 2016/123293 A1 to Rubenstein et al. (“Rubenstein”).
Regarding claim 11, (Original) Zhao-Breslau combination taught the system of claim 1, the combination did not but the analogous art Rubenstein taught wherein a tunnel component at one of the one or more locations comprises a proxy client and a remote tunnel component at others of the one or more locations comprise proxy servers (Rubenstein, Page 21, lines 11-20. Host client 8100, a client device in Client-Server(CS) relationship with host server 8500 makes request to access content from the remote server (S) via a universal resource locator (URL)… The proxy client software connects to a Proxy Server 8306 via a tunnel, encrypted or unencrypted, via path 8P02 from the gateway GW 8102 to point of presence (POP) 8200, via path 8P04 to WAN 8308 (part of the Internet), via path 8P6 to the Proxy Server 8306 in a remote region.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the applicant(s) invention was filed to modify the combined invention of Zhao and Breslau by including the idea of a tunnel component at one of the one or more locations comprises a proxy client and a remote tunnel component at others of the one or more locations comprise proxy servers as taught by Rubenstein in order to provide secure, reliable, fast, stable, precise and focused concurrent connectivity over the top of one or more regular Internet connections. (Rubenstein, Col. 5, lines 1-3).
Regarding claim 12, (Original) Zhao-Breslau-Rubenstein combination taught the system of claim 11, wherein the proxy client transmits one or more data comprising the multicast beacon or authentication through a tunnel to be registered with the proxy server via API (Rubenstein, Col. 24, lines 7-8. Communication paths between devices labeled P### can represent an API call).
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhao in view of Breslau and Rubenstein as applied to claim 11 above, and further in view of US 2011/0145363 A1 to Ananthanarayanan et al. (“Anan”).
Regarding claim 13, (Original) Zhao-Breslau-Rubenstein combination taught the system of claim 11, wherein the tunnel component and remote tunnel component are configured, the combination did not but the analogous art Anan taught support caching and replay of messages in case of temporary network outages (Anan, claim 2. supporting data and metadata writes to the cache during temporary or long-term network outages or remote cluster file system outages.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the applicant(s) invention was filed to modify the combined invention of Zhao, Breslau, and Rubenstein by including the idea of supporting caching and replay of messages in case of temporary network outages as taught by Anan so that upon disconnection from the remote cluster file system, all file operations are supported at the cache. Then, upon reconnection to the remote cluster file system over the network, the remote cluster file system is synchronized with the information cached in the cache during the disconnection even in the presence of failures. (Anan, Abstract.).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 6.988,146 B1 (Magret et al.): In addition, in each MH an entity called the route analyzer keeps track of the recent beacons it has received to approximate its current location and motion. The MH uses statistics such as the received signal strength of the beacons and communication quality of the beacons to identify which BSs are nearby. Thus, BSs that are identified as likely handoff targets are asked to join the multicast group by the MH. These BSs do not forward the packets from the multicast group to the wireless network. Instead, they buffer the last few packets transmitted from the HA. When a MH enters such a cell, the new primary BS begins transmitting packets from its buffer of packets. This approach does not define a regional concept where handoffs are supposed to occur smoothly with fewer overheads than handoff between different regions
WO 2007134082 A2 (Price et al.): 59. An article of manufacture, comprising: a machine- readable medium; a set of machine-readable instructions on the medium, the instructions providing a method for providing secure communications between two remote processes running on respective computers, comprising instructions for: in a client proxy process, intercepting a communication stream directed to a secure server process from a client process and associating the communication stream with a client proxy cryptography key pair, including a client proxy private key and a client proxy public key; forming a proxy tunnel between the client proxy process and a server proxy process associated with the secure server process; in the server proxy process: storing a copy of the client proxy public key for the communication stream; generating a security certificate using the client proxy public key; and forming a proxy between the client process and the secure server process, in which the security certificate is used to establish a secure communication link between the client process and the client proxy.
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/Shawnchoy Rahman/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2438