DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Applicant(s) Response to Office Action
The response filed on 12/24/2025 has been entered and made of record.
Response to Amendment/Remarks
Claims 37, 42, 48, 50-51, and 62 have been amended. Claims 37-45, 48-56, 59-66 and 68-70 remain pending in the application.
Applicant's remarks and/or amendments to claims have overcome each and every claim rejection under 35 USC 112(b) previously set forth. Accordingly, said claim rejections as articulated therein are withdrawn. Applicant contends that the decision to rely on en re Steele and not apply prior art was in error, which is moot as the applicant’s amendments broaden the claims requiring an expanded search.
Examiner thanks applicant for their thoughtful remarks regarding the rejection under 35 USC 101 which have been fully considered. Applicant’s remarks are not persuasive. Applicant makes rebuttal arguments for independent claim 48 and its dependents which were not rejected under 35 USC 101. Similarly, various dependent claims have not been rejected under 35 USC 101 (although dependent upon a rejected claim) when they successfully overcome the criteria for the rejection.
Regarding 101 analysis step 2A prong 1, applicant contends that the limitations cannot be performed by the human mind. Examiner respectfully disagrees. With regard to independent claims 37 and 62 which are written at such a high degree of generality, that rudimentary examples can be constructed with pencil and paper which are encompassed by the broad claim scope of the claims. Such concepts are taught in graduate school courses and are constructed using the human mind with the aid of simple writing implements. At such time that this rejection is considered by a higher tribunal, the examiner will scan examples of this onto the record. Other claims specifically refer to mathematical concepts themselves and are abstract ideas.
Regarding 101 analysis step 2A prong 2, simply implementing the abstract idea with a generic computer does not constitute implementing the abstract idea into a practical application. In many cases, the claims determine a result and do nothing with this result.
Similarly, 101 analysis step 2B, implementing the abstract ideas with a generic computer, to simply ingest information and output results does not amount to substantially more. The delineation between rejected and unrejected claims illuminate where the examiner believes that sufficient implementation exists to overcome the statute.
Finally, applicant applies the remarks to all dependent claims, although not all dependent claims were rejected under 35 USC 101.
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.
Claim(s) 37-40, 45, 62-63, 66, and 68-70 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
The analysis is guided by the Supreme Court's two-step framework, described in Mayo and Alice (Alice Corp. Pty Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014) and Mayo Collaborative Servs. V. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1289, 1296-97 (2012)).Step 1: Is/Are the claim(s) directed to a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter?Answer: Yes.Step 2A Prong 1: Is/Are the claim(s) directed to a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea, i.e., judicially recognized exceptions (both individually and as an ordered combination)?
Answer: Yes, claim 37 is directed to the mental process of “training an Outlier Exposure (OE)-based autoencoder using unlabeled network data and labeled network attack data, the OE-based autoencoder being trained to reconstruct input data to minimize a reconstruction error on unlabeled network data and to maximize the reconstruction error on labeled network attack data; using the trained OE-based autoencoder to determine a reconstruction error on network traffic; and comparing the determined reconstruction error to a threshold to determine if local network traffic is an anomaly” beyond the scope of § 101. Claims 38-40 further describe the identified the abstract idea. Claim 45 further describes mental processes and mathematical concepts. Claim 62 is directed to the mental concept of “training a local Outlier Exposure (OE)-based autoencoder model using local unlabeled network data and the training information, the local OE-based autoencoder being trained to reconstruct input data to minimize a reconstruction error on local unlabeled network data of local network traffic; and maximize the reconstruction error on labeled network attack data of the local network traffic; using the trained local OE-based autoencoder model to determine a reconstruction error on the local network traffic; and comparing the determined reconstruction error to a threshold to determine if the local network traffic is an anomaly” beyond the scope of 101. Claim 66 further describes the identified abstract idea. Claims 68-69 further describe the abstract idea. Claim 70 further describes mental processes and mathematical concepts.
Step 2A Prong 2: Is/Are the claim(s) implemented into a practical application?
Answer: No, regarding claim 37-40 and 45 there are no other limitations beyond abstract ideas. Regarding claim 62 and 63, no, the limitations of the claim as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers implementation of the mental concepts which can be performed by the mind using pencil and paper but for the recitation of generic computer components. The claims recite extra solution activity including the ingestion via receiving of data and transmitting computational results by a generic computer. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Extra solution activity of ingesting and outputting data on a generic computer amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Therefore, the claim is directed to an abstract idea. Regarding claim 66-70 there are no other limitations beyond abstract ideas.
Step 2B: Does/Do the claim(s) recite additional elements that when analyzed individually and in ordered combinations amount to significantly more than the judicial exception(s)?
Answer: No, regarding claim 37-40 and 45 there are no other limitations beyond abstract ideas. No, the claim(s) (both individually and as an ordered combinations) does/do not transform the nature of the claim(s) into a patent-eligible application of the abstract idea (i.e., significantly more than the abstract idea implemented using generic computer components). The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements to perform the processing steps amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Therefore, claims are not patent eligible.
Examiner’s Note – Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 37-45, 48-56, 59-66 and 68-70 overcome the prior art. Claims 48-56 and 59-61 are allowable. Claims 41-44 and 64-65 are objected to as allowable and would otherwise be allowable if incorporated into the base claim along with any intervening claims. Claims 37 and 62 would be allowable if made to overcome the rejections under 35 USC 101. Claims 38-41, 45, 63, and 66-70 would otherwise be allowable if incorporated into the base claim along with any intervening claims as well as made to overcome the rejections under 35 USC 101.
Various prior art teaches aspects of the claimed invention. Rey, (“Federated Learning for Malware Detection in Iot Devices”, 2021, already on the IDS) Fig. 1 teaches a distributed framework for receiving training updates in a malware detection autoencoder system, but does not teach an outlier exposure based autoencoder. Similarly, Anghel (US 2019/0188065 A1) teaches an autoencoder malware detection system that does not teach an outlier exposure based autoencoder. Hendrycks (“Deep Anomaly Detection with Outlier Exposure”, 2019, already on the IDS) teaches an outlier exposure autoencoder, but this is not used in network-based attacks for anomaly detection. Hence, while various prior art tangentially teaches the claim limitations. None of the prior art individually, or in reasonable combination teaches the instant claims.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to STEPHEN T GUNDRY whose telephone number is (571)270-0507. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:30AM-5PM (EST).
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/STEPHEN T GUNDRY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2435