DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 11/3/2025 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
The double patenting rejection is withdrawn in view of the applicant’s amendments.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 21-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Written Description Issue #1
The applicant claims the following limitations in each independent claim:
determining, based on a customer-defined custom region configuration, that the first server is not within a permitted custom region for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7 and thus is not permitted to decrypt the HTTPS request;
identifying the permitted custom region for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7;
The applicant did not teach any technology for determining that a server is or is not within a particular region. Paragraphs 16, 57, and 58 make it clear that the first server determines whether or not it is permitted to process the traffic but there is no step of determining if the server is within a region, as claimed. Paragraph 16 is clear that information can be preconfigured into the server about whether or not the server is allowed to process the traffic and that this pre-configuration can be based on regions but there is no active step disclosed of determining which region a server is in. Additionally, the applicant has disclosed an active step of identifying permitted edge servers that happened to be in certain regions but not identifying permitted regions. See paragraph 58.
Written Description Issue #2
The applicant did not provide support for the amendments to claims 7, 14, and new claim 27. The Examiner could not find an embodiment disclosed where the latency of sets of servers reachable by different IP addresses is compared. The disclosure provides general descriptions of using latency to select particular servers and general descriptions of IP addresses applied to sets of servers but the applicant does not provide a description of the comparison in the newly amended claims. In particular the applicant does not disclose that latency for a set of servers is determined and then such latency is compared to latency for another set of servers. Instead, the applicant discloses embodiments for measuring latency for single servers and comparing the latency of these single servers, not sets of servers.
Written Description Issue #3
The applicant did not provide support for new claims 21, 23, and 25. Paragraphs 20 and 22 are the only references to a “map” in the context of a user interface but they do not describe allowing a customer to select permitted regions by interacting with a map of edge server locations. Paragraphs 20 and 22 are vague about the map and how it is interacted with.
The applicant disclosed the following:
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 8, 10, 11, 23, 24, 26, and 27 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.
Claims 8, 10, 11, 14, 23 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential structural cooperative relationships of elements, such omission amounting to a gap between the necessary structural connections. See MPEP § 2172.01. The omitted structural cooperative relationships are: It is not clear how the non-transitory medium, that is the subject of the claim, is related to the first server. It would appear from the disclosure that the claimed medium that performs the claim limitations and the first server would be the same entity so it is not clear how the first server relates to the instructions stored by the medium or the medium itself.
Claims 26 and 27 recite the limitation "the server of claim 8" in their preambles. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Claim 8 refers to a plurality of server and a first server of the plurality of server so it is not clear what the applicant is referring to. It is assumed the applicant was trying to depend on claim 15, which recites a server, and not claim 8.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2010/0138488 by Fletcher et al.
As to claim 1, Fletcher teaches a method, comprising: receiving first internet traffic from a first client device (client in Figure 6) at a first server (edge server 602 in Figure 6) of a plurality of servers of a distributed cloud computing network (paragraph 118 describes distributed CDN as “cloud”), wherein the first internet traffic is destined for a first destination (target server 612 in Figure 6) associated with a customer (paragraph 43), and wherein the internet traffic includes an HTTPS request (paragraph 120);
determining, based on a customer-defined custom region configuration, that the first server is not within a permitted custom region for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7 and thus is not permitted to decrypt the HTTPS request (paragraph 55); identifying the permitted custom region for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7 (paragraphs 71-74) and transmitting the first internet traffic from the first server to the permitted custom region second server of the plurality of servers for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7 including decrypting the HTTPS request (paragraph 75).
As to claims 8 and 15, they are rejected according to the same mapping as claim 1.
As to claims 3, 10, and 17, the destination, target server 612, of HTTPS traffic inherently has access to the key for decryption of the HTTPS traffic.
As to claims 4, 11, and 18, see Figures 7 and 15.
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.
Claim(s) 22, 24, and 26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2010/0138488 by Fletcher et al. in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2014/0207818 by Jellick et al.
As to claims 22, 24, and 26, Fletcher teaches the subject matter of claims 1, 8, and 15; however, Fletcher does not explicitly teach that the permitted custom region comprises a plurality of second servers of the plurality of servers of the distributed cloud computing network that share an anycast IP address.
Jellick teaches that a permitted custom region comprises a plurality of second servers of a plurality of servers (Figure 12) of a distributed cloud computing network that share an anycast IP address (paragraphs 42-26).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the content delivery art at the time of the applicant’s filing to combine the teachings of Fletcher regarding managing requests in a geographically distributed content serving system with the teachings of Jellick regarding a destination using any anycast IP address to identify multiple servers because such a concept would provide redundancy to the target server of Fletcher.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DOUGLAS B BLAIR whose telephone number is (571)272-3893. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9am-5pm.
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/DOUGLAS B BLAIR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454