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 .
Claim Objections
Claim 17 is objected to because of the following informalities: The examiner suggest amending the claim limitation “an intermediate device” to “the intermediate device” to correspond with the other claim language. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 6 is objected to because of the following informalities: The claims recite the acronym “IEEE” without spelling out the acronym at its first occurrence. The Examiner suggest the acronym to be spelled out to recite “Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers”. Appropriate correction is required.
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 1-2 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.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the address" in line 15. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examiner purposes, the claim limitation will be considered as an address.
Claim 2 recites the limitation "the activation" in line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examiner purposes, the claim limitation will be considered as an activation.
Any claim not specifically addressed above is being rejected as incorporating the deficiencies of a claim upon which it depends.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 10-16 and 18-20 are allowed.
Claims 1-9 and 17 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the claim objections and rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Examiner’s Statement of Reasons for Allowance
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: After a fully conducted search and consideration, the prior art either taken alone or in combination neither anticipates nor render obvious to the claimed subject matter of the instant application. The closest prior art Daly (US Pub No. 2021/0266302) discloses securely transferring a private key from the user device to an operating device. A proximity-based communication interface is provided between the user and operating devices. The user device is operable to store a private key. The user device requests an identifying code from the operating device, which is then validated by the user device as a valid private key receiving device. The user device is operable to access a predetermined physical interface on the operating device and, in conjunction with access, activate the physical interface to initialize a transfer operation across the communication interface that is dependent upon accessing the physical interface. The stored private key is then transferred to the operating device across the communication interface for storage in a dedicated memory location on the operating device, the transfer operation being a one-way Write-only memory transfer operation. The transfer of information from the dedicated memory location across the communication interface is prohibited, such that any Read operation of the dedicated memory location on the operating device is prohibited across the communication interface. After the button is pressed, the application 804 running on the user device 102 interfaces with the server 106 and the server 106 then creates a device shared key to establish a trusted relationship between the server and the IoT device 104, this being a device-to-server key. This device shared encryption key will be registered in the IoT device 104 through the system application's (804) connection to the IoT device 104, but not on the actual application 804 itself. This is illustrated as the path {circle around (7)} which path illustrates the shared key being passed to the application 804 and then the user secure or private key plus the user hash plus the shared key is then relayed to the chip 1302 in the IoT device 104. This is a registration process of the shared encryption key with the IoT device 104. Paths {circle around (8)} and {circle around (9)} illustrate the transmission of the user hash+shared key, respectively. This operation comprises the registration of the user secure or private key into the IoT device 104 (and not in the application 804 on the user device 102), this being the created user private key from the user PIN/image dataset. It is noted that this diagram relates to registration of the user secure or private encryption key with the IoT device 104. For this registration of a single user, the private (or secure) key of the user will be registered with the IoT device 104. This means that it will be stored in memory on IoT device 104 for use with encryption/decryption. Thereafter, the user hash for the user will be transferred. Thus, the overall bonding process is a sequence wherein 1) the user disposes the user device 102 upon which the application 804 is running proximate to the IoT device 104 in order to establish a proximity-based communication link, 2) the application, once a connection is made, requests the ESID from the device (or just the connection results in interpretation by the IoT device 104 as being a request), 3) the device responds with ESID to the application 804, 4) the application verifies the IoT device 104 ESID with the server 106, 5) the server 106 verifies the ESID, 6) the user presses a contact button on the IoT device 104, 7) the server 106 creates a shared encryption key for device-to-server communication, 8) the shared encryption key is returned from the server 106 to the application 804, 9) the application 804 then registers the shared encryption key with the IoT device 106, and 10) the secure or private key of the user is registered with the IoT device 104. As described in hereinabove, this is a Write Only operation to memory on the IoT device 104 that cannot be read from the device 104. (Daly, Abstract and paragraph 0217) which is equivalent to claim limitations “by operation of a first wireless device, in response to detecting a user input at the first wireless device, transmitting a first wireless message, in response to receiving a second wireless message, determining that an intermediate device; a predetermined proximity, receiving at least a sharing message that includes a secret value, in response to receiving at least an exchange message”; The other relevant prior art Prakash et al. (US Patent No. 12,317,342) discloses establishing a direct wireless communication link between a first device and a second device (the first device being designated as a sender and the second device being designated as a receiver) comprises: a proximity authentication operation that comprises determining, based on signals received by the first and second devices over one or more RF channels from a plurality of wireless access points, that the first device is proximate the second device; following the proximity authentication operation, a key generation operation that comprises: generating a shared secret by performing randomness extraction on respective signals received at the first and second devices over a selected channel of the one or more RF channels; and establishing the direct wireless communication link using the shared secret. (Prakash, Abstract), Heydon (US Pub No. 2015/0245204) discloses authenticating a first device capable of operating according to a wireless communications protocol, the method comprising: at a second device, receiving a first message comprising an identifier for the first device and an authorisation code associated with the first device, the first message not being received from the first device in accordance with the wireless communications protocol; at the second device, receiving a second message comprising a value, the second message being sent from the first device in accordance with the wireless communications protocol; and authenticating the first device if the authorisation code received via the first message relates, according to a predetermined algorithm, to the received value. Configuring device 201 receives this information. This information may be received via an intermediate device within the mesh network if devices 201 and 202 are out of range from each other. The configuring device 201 determines that new device 202 is to be added to the network and starts a verification procedure. An eavesdropper or a MITM device 203 may also observe the broadcasted ID. (Heydon, Abstract and paragraph 0060), Shaheen et al. (US Patent No. 7,519,181) discloses enforcing network cluster proximity requirements using a proxy is useful in preventing unauthorized devices from receiving encrypted broadcast content intended for only authorized users within a network cluster. The current art allows users to remotely establish trust via a cryptographic handshake. This results in encrypted broadcast content being delivered to unauthorized devices. The present invention assures that encrypted broadcast content is delivered to only authorized devices, allowing authorized remote devices to receive encrypted broadcast content while preventing unauthorized remote devices from doing so. The present invention enforces network proximity requirements to authorized devices within a defined area by timing the cryptographic handshaking, and by authorizing device proxies within a geographic area for retransmitting to authorized remote devices outside said geographic area. (Shaheen, Abstract), Stammers et al. (US Pub No. 2021/0051069) discloses to provide industrial machine configurations using private wireless networking. In one example, a method includes provisioning a segmentation policy for a network area, wherein the segmentation policy identifies policy groups for the network area in which each policy group comprises a plurality of devices capable of inter-device communications; provisioning, at a proximity services controller, a connectivity policy for each policy group, wherein the connectivity policy for each of policy group identifies at least one proxy configuration for one or more types of information to be communicated among the plurality of devices of each policy group; establishing connectivity between each device of each of the policy groups and an access point; and communicating the one or more types of information to each of the policy groups based on the at least one proxy configuration for each policy group. (Stammer, Abstract), and SHI et al. (US Pub No. 2019/0261168) discloses configuring a second wireless device to access a wireless network using a first wireless device whereby one-round key exchange protocol is adopted to share the wireless network's configuration data with the second wireless device in an efficient and secure manner. (SHI, Abstract), however, the prior art taken alone or in combination fails to teach or suggest “determining that an intermediate device is within a predetermined proximity, receiving at least a sharing message that includes a secret value, in response to receiving at least an exchange message, determining that a second wireless device stores the secret value, and executing an operation to add the first or second wireless device to a wireless network comprising transmission of provisioning messages having the address corresponding to the second wireless device” (as recited in claim 1, 10 and 15). Claims are allowed in light of the above claim limitations when in combination with the remaining claim limitations.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHAQUEAL D WADE whose telephone number is (571)270-0357. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00-5:00.
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/SHAQUEAL D WADE-WRIGHT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2407