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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/1/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The applicant’s amendments have overcome the written description rejection of claims 1, 8, and 15 (Written Description Issue #1 presented in last office action) and the rejections based on 35 USC section 112(b).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 4/1/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The applicant’s arguments regarding the written description rejection of claims 7, 14, and 27 are not persuasive. The applicant cited paragraphs 33, 38, and 58 as providing support for determining the latency and comparing the latency of a set of servers. None of these paragraphs define determining latency for a set of servers; they determine individual latencies for each server in the set of servers. The applicant is encouraged to amend the claims to cover the actually details disclosed in order to overcome the rejection.
With respect to the claims 21, 23, and 25, the applicant’s arguments are not persuasive. Paragraph 20 is the only reference to a “graphical interface map” in the specification. Paragraph 20 only lists this map as an example of “location options and server identify options to select the providing configuration”. This is clearly not a technical description of a what the map comprises. Paragraph 22 references a “custom map” but provides no description of what that comprises. The applicant did not provide a “full and clear description” (section 2162 of the MPEP) of the map. The applicant is claiming the “functional language specifying a desired result” of the map GUI but “the specification does not sufficiently describe how the function is performed or the result is achieved” (section 2161.01(I) of the MPEP). The Examiner finds that the claim does not “allow persons of ordinary skill in the art to recognize that he or she invented what is claimed” because there is no description of the visual properties of the map or how interacting with the map allows the customer to select permitted regions. The Examiner recognizes that section 2163(II)(A)(3)(a) states that “The description need only describe in detail that which is new or not conventional” but there is no evidence that the claimed map is conventional and considering the applicant is arguing that the policy collected using the map is non-conventional, one should expect a description of how the map is implemented to collect “select permitted regions”.
Regarding the prior art reference Fletcher, the applicant does not provide a limiting definition of the term “region identity”. Paragraphs 21 and 25 of the applicant’s disclosure use the term but do not provide a specific definition. Paragraph 16 gives and example that a region could be considered a country but this is not a limiting definition of a region. Figure 1 of the applicant’s disclosure shows that a region could be considered just a grouping of servers. Figure 6 of Fletcher shows the servers grouped by “region”. The Fletcher invention analyzes the traffic and determines which servers tunnel the traffic and which servers are allowed to process the traffic at a higher layer. Paragraph 51 of Fletcher, for example, explains how the regional identity is taken into account to do this.
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 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 #2
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.
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 selective traffic policy that specifies one or more permitted region identities (paragraph 55, virtual IP address in IP packets), that a region identity associated with the first server is not among one or more permitted region identities for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7 and that the first server is therefore not permitted to decrypt the HTTPS request (paragraphs 36-39 and 55); identifying a permitted region identify of the one or more permitted region identities for processing the internet traffic at layers 5-7 (paragraphs 42-44 and 71-74) and transmitting the first internet traffic from the first server toward a permitted region corresponding to the identified permitted region identity 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
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
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