DETAILED ACTION
This Final Office Action is in response to amendment filed on 04/07/2026. Claims 1 and 4-5 have been amended. Claims 2 and 6 are or previously canceled. Claims 1, 3-5 and 7-9 remain pending in the application.
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 .
Drawings
The drawings filed on 12/07/2023 are accepted.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s Remarks in the applicant’s remarks filed on 04/07/206 and discussions during the interview on 03/13/2026, pertaining to the currently added claim amendments, are considered moot in light of the newly found prior art Numao (US 6377688 B1), which discloses the currently added claim amendments. Please see detailed rejection below.
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 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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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 nonobviousness.
Claim 1, 4-5 and 7-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pauker et. al. (US 7266847 B2), hereinafter Pauker in view of Numao et. al. (US 6377688 B1), hereinafter Numao.
Regarding Claim 1 (Currently Amended), Pauker teaches a communication system (Pauker e.g. Figure 1) comprising:
a user terminal that transmits and receives a message (Pauker Figure 1 sender recipient B 12, where senders and recipients are individuals exchanging messages, therefore an entity in Figure 1 12 can be a sender and a recipient when exchanging messages, Col. 5 line 26-31 “The present invention is sometimes described in connection with system environments in which the senders and recipients are individuals. In general, however, senders and recipients may be individuals, groups of individuals, organizations, parts of organizations, or any other suitable parties or entities that exchange messages”); and
a server device that manages a public key and a private key (Pauker Figure 1 Decryption Service and Private key service 22-26 Col. 6 line 52-56 “Various computing devices may be used in system 10. For example, computing equipment may be used to implement the functions of a server or other computer equipment at each IBE private key generator 16, at each PKE private key store 26, at decryption service 22, etc.”, where the computing device implementing the functions of Decryption Service and Private key service 22-26 corresponds to the server device), wherein the user terminal includes:
first processing circuitry configured to:
when transmitting the message to another user terminal, acquire a public key corresponding to identification information about a recipient of the message, and encrypt the message or a file attached to the message, using the acquired public key(Pauker Figure 2 32, using the PKE scheme, where the sender obtains the PKE public key of the recipient, where the public key is verified to belong to the intended recipient by use of a certificate, which identifies and authenticates that the public key is for the intended recipient, as disclosed in Col. 1 line 27-45 “One public-key cryptographic system that is in use is the RSA cryptographic system. Each user in this system has a unique public key and a unique private key…To ensure the authenticity of the public key and thereby defeat possible man-in-the-middle attacks, the public key may be provided to the sender with a certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority. The certificate may be used to verify that the public key belongs to the intended recipient of the sender's message. Public key encryption systems such as the RSA system that use this type of traditional approach are referred to herein as PKE cryptographic systems…The recipient can obtain the private key from a private key generator associated with the recipient.”, Col. 7 line 61-67 “Certificate authorities may create digital certificates that help to verify the identities of certain parties. Digital signatures (e.g., signatures from a certificate authority or other entity that use private keys and that can be verified using matching public keys) may be used to ensure that a message or other signed information is associated with a particular party.”, where the certificate authenticates the public key to be associated with a particular party and links it to the private key of the particular party, in a different implementation, i.e. IBE scheme in Figure 3 42, disclosed by Pauker, where a public key corresponding to identification information about a recipient is acquired, where the public key is acquired by using the identification information with other information/parameters to form a unique public key that is other that the identification information, as disclosed in Col. 12 line 41-50 “With this approach, security clearance level information may be concatenated or otherwise added to each user's email address when forming the public keys Q (i.e., Q=joe@navy.com|top_secret, etc.). These approaches are merely illustrative of the ways in which policy-based criteria may be added to a user identity such as a user email address when forming the IBE public key for each user (e.g., the Q for each user). Any suitable approach for forming IBE public keys based on user identity information and additional criteria may be used if desired.”, Col. 12 90-67 and Col. 13 line 1-14 “… a sender desiring to send an IBE-encrypted message may have information sufficient to construct the IBE public key Q of the intended message recipient. This information may include information on an individual recipient's identity (e.g., an email address), information on how to construct the IBE public key Q from suitable access policy information (e.g., validity period, security level, subscription level, content rating, geographic region, etc.), or any other suitable identity information and/or generally-applicable access policy information that specifies which parties are allowed to access the contents of the message and under what conditions such access is permitted. The sender may obtain the IBE public parameter information from a recipient, from a directory, from IBE private key generator 16, from an IBE public parameter host service, or from any other suitable entity in system 10.”);
transmit, to the another user terminal, [[a]] an encrypted message obtained by encrypting the message or the file attached to the message (Pauker Figure 2 34-36 or Figure 3 44-46);
when receiving another encrypted message from the another user terminal, request the server device to decrypt the another encrypted message or another file attached to the another encrypted message, and receive a decrypted message or file from the server device (Pauker Col. 2 line 25-35 “…recipients can upload the encrypted content to a remote decryption service over the Internet. The decryption service can decrypt the encrypted message content for the recipient and can provide the recipient with access to the decrypted message content over the Internet. The recipient can, for example, be provided with a web page in which the decrypted content is display or may be provided with a list of URLs that can be used to download the decrypted content to the recipient's equipment.”, further disclosed in Col. 10 line 18-25 “In an environment in which a message is decrypted remotely, a decryption engine 20 with IBE capabilities may obtain and use a recipient's IBE private key for use in decrypting the message at a remote decryption service 22. For example, the decryption service 22 may obtain the IBE private key for recipient B (who does not have the ability to run IBE decryption engine 20 locally) and may then use that IBE private key to decrypt content for recipient B.”, where B 12 can be senders when sending messages and recipients when receiving messages),
and the server device includes (Pauker Figure 1 Decryption Service 22):
second processing circuitry configured to:
generate a private key corresponding to the identification information about the recipient of the another message (Pauker Figure 1 22-26 Col. 6 line 14-21 “One or more services such as private key service 24 may be used to provide private keys. A private key service may include one or more IBE private key generators such as IBE private key generator 16 for generating IBE private keys. PKE private keys may be generated using one or more PKE private key generators. After private keys are generated, they may be stored in a PKE private key store such as PKE private key store 26 at key service 24.”, Col. 1 line 27-45 “One public-key cryptographic system that is in use is the RSA cryptographic system. Each user in this system has a unique public key and a unique private key…To ensure the authenticity of the public key and thereby defeat possible man-in-the-middle attacks, the public key may be provided to the sender with a certificate signed by a trusted certificate authority. The certificate may be used to verify that the public key belongs to the intended recipient of the sender's message. Public key encryption systems such as the RSA system that use this type of traditional approach are referred to herein as PKE cryptographic systems…The recipient can obtain the private key from a private key generator associated with the recipient.”, Col. 7 line 61-67 “Certificate authorities may create digital certificates that help to verify the identities of certain parties. Digital signatures (e.g., signatures from a certificate authority or other entity that use private keys and that can be verified using matching public keys) may be used to ensure that a message or other signed information is associated with a particular party.”, where the certificate authenticates the public key to be associated with a particular party and links it to the private key of the particular party, in a different implementation, i.e. IBE scheme, disclosed by Pauker, where a private key is generated based on the user’s identity, as disclosed in Col. 12 line 9-13 “ Each IBE private key generator generally has multiple associated users. An IBE private key generator may generate an IBE private key for each of its associated users based on the IBE public keys (the Q's) of each of these users (e.g., based on the users' identities).”); and
when receiving a request for decryption of the another message or the another file attached to the another message from the user terminal, decrypt the another message or the another file attached to the another message using the private key generated, and transmit a decrypted message or file to the user terminal that has made the request for decryption, the decrypted message corresponding to the another (Pauker Col. 2 line 25-35 “…recipients can upload the encrypted content to a remote decryption service over the Internet. The decryption service can decrypt the encrypted message content for the recipient and can provide the recipient with access to the decrypted message content over the Internet. The recipient can, for example, be provided with a web page in which the decrypted content is display or may be provided with a list of URLs that can be used to download the decrypted content to the recipient's equipment.”, further disclosed in Col. 10 line 18-25 “In an environment in which a message is decrypted remotely, a decryption engine 20 with IBE capabilities may obtain and use a recipient's IBE private key for use in decrypting the message at a remote decryption service 22. For example, the decryption service 22 may obtain the IBE private key for recipient B (who does not have the ability to run IBE decryption engine 20 locally) and may then use that IBE private key to decrypt content for recipient B.”).
Pauker does not disclose the below limitation where the encrypted message is perturbed/encrypted at the receiver/recipient before providing the message to the server.
Numao discloses perturb the another message or the another file attached to the another message prior to providing the another message or the another file attached to the another message to the server device; and receive a decrypted message or file from the server device, the received decrypted message or file remaining perturbed, the decrypted message remaining perturbed during decryption by the server (Numao illustrates in Figure 3:
the receiver/recipient 120 receives encrypted message M0 from the sender/transmitter 110 at 114,
then the receiver/recipient 120, prior to providing the message to server 130, applies perturbation to M0 by encrypting M0 using random number x, which results in message M1 at 124,
then the receiver/recipient 120 provide the message M1 to the server at 126,
then the server 130 decrypts M1 using the secret key, which results in M2 at 136, where M2 is the result of decrypting M1 while keeping the perturbation/encryption by the random number x,
then the server 130 provides back the decrypted while still perturbed message M2 to the receiver/recipient 120 at 130, which performs decryption to un-perturb M2 at 138, resulting in the original message M3=M
The above steps are disclosed in Col. 6 line 6-28).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Pauker to incorporate the teaching of Numao to utilize the above feature, with the motivation of ensuring that at no time there is a plain text message M being nonencrypted or unperturbed during the transmission process anywhere other than the receiver, as recognized by (Numao Col. 6 line 45-51).
Claims 4-5 recite similar limitations to claim 1, therefore rejected with the same rationale applied to claim 1.
Regarding Claim 2 (Canceled).
Regarding claim 7 (Previously Presented), Pauker in view of Numao teaches the communication system according to claim 1, wherein the identification information includes a mailing address of the recipient (Pauker Col. 12 90-67 and Col. 13 line 1-14 “… a sender desiring to send an IBE-encrypted message may have information sufficient to construct the IBE public key Q of the intended message recipient. This information may include information on an individual recipient's identity (e.g., an email address), information on how to construct the IBE public key Q from suitable access policy information (e.g., validity period, security level, subscription level, content rating, geographic region, etc.), or any other suitable identity information and/or generally-applicable access policy information that specifies which parties are allowed to access the contents of the message and under what conditions such access is permitted. The sender may obtain the IBE public parameter information from a recipient, from a directory, from IBE private key generator 16, from an IBE public parameter host service, or from any other suitable entity in system 10.”).
Claims 8-9 recite similar limitations to claim 7, therefore rejected with the same rationale applied to claim 7.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pauker et. al. (US 7266847 B2), hereinafter Pauker in view of Numao and in view of Gigov et. al. (US 20210374265 A1), hereinafter Gigov.
Regarding Claim 3 (Previously Presented), Pauker in view of Numao teaches the communication system according to claim 1.
Pauker in view of Numao does not explicitly disclose the policy information included in the message.
Gigov discloses wherein the first processing circuitry is further configured to encrypt the message or the file attached to the message, with policy information included in the message or the file, the policy information indicating a condition for allowing decryption (Gigov Abstract “…decrypting a file encryption key only when the attributes of the receiver access action satisfy the file access policy.”, Figure 5 illustrates policy 528 encrypted along with the file, [0150] “At 612, if the access policy 528 includes an expiry date 556 for the receiver's access to the file 126, a TEE decryption operation 560 of the receiver TEE 160 determines whether the expiry date has been reached. The receiver TEE 160 compares the current time and date according to a trusted clock 557 to the expiry date 556 included in the access policy 528.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Pauker to incorporate the teaching of Gigov to utilize the above feature, with the motivation of providing granular access control using attribute based encryption by enforcing policy, as recognized by (Gigov Abstract [0001, 0007]).
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.
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/BASSAM A NOAMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2497
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