DETAILED ACTION
1. Claims 1-20 are pending in this examination.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
2. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
3. 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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
4.1 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.
4.2. Claim 17 recites “…software on the end user device containing a processor and executable program instructions to verify a sender of the incoming communication by communicating with the communication server…”; it cannot be ascertained from the scope of the claim what the metes and bounds of the claim’s features and /or It is not clearly understood the links and/or relationship between the software, end user device, and a processor.
Clarification is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5.1. 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.
Independent claims 1, 17 and 19
5.2. Claims 1-6, 9-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Patent Application No. 20150271327 to Dow et al (“Dow”) in view of US Patent Application No. 20120066498 to Engert et al (“Engert”).
As per claim 1, Dow discloses method for verifying a message originator (abstract, during an active telephone call to a user received at a first call identifier, accessing registered user service providers to obtain contact details of a registered service provider purporting to be the origin of the active telephone call, and sending a query to the obtained contact details of the registered service provider. The query includes the first call identifier. The verifying also includes receiving a returned query result confirming or denying that the telephone call is from the registered service provider):
receiving an inbound communication on the end user device ([0024], a user (the callee) receives 203 a call at his telephone device 110, fig. 2 and associated texts);
sending a query from the end user device to a communication server in order to authenticate the message originator ([0227], application 120 may send 207 a query to a registered number or other registered contact details (for example, email) of the service provider, the query may include the telephone number of the callee on which the call has been received. The query may also include the telephone number from which the caller is calling which may be obtained from the caller information of the user's telephone device. The query may be in the form of a message or other communication. [0028] The service provider server may receive 208 the query); and
receiving a returned query result from the communication server to the end user device confirming that the message originator is from a registered business ([0028] The service provider server may receive 208 the query and may check 209 if there is an active call from a call center or other of the service providers registered third parties calling the user at the provided number at that moment. This may involve looking up a database of call logs of the service provider and other registered third parties. The database look up may use the caller's name, caller's phone number, caller's call center, start time, and purpose etc. [0029] The service provider server may return 210 a result in the form of a verification message to the user. The verification message may verify if this person is calling from or on behalf of a trusted party at that moment or not).
Dow does not explicitly disclose however in the same field of endeavor, Engert discloses verifying a message originator source and message contents of an incoming communication received by an end user device (Abstract, a server receives a verification request sent by a client associated with a recipient of an electronic message to verify authenticity of a sender of the electronic message, where the verification request comprises message data of the electronic message, also see fig. 5 and associated texts).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Dow with the teaching of Engert by including the feature of message contents, in order for Dow’s system to verifying the authenticity of a sender of an electronic message sent to a recipient using message salt. A server receives a verification request sent by a client associated with a recipient of an electronic message to verify authenticity of a sender of the electronic message, where the verification request comprises message data of the electronic message and a salt hash value. The server identifies a key for the sender for generating a salt hash value and generates the salt hash value using the salt key and the message data. The server determines whether the generated salt hash value matches the salt hash value received in the verification request and sends a result to the client based on the determination of whether the salt hash values match (Engert, abstract).
As per claim 2, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the message originator, the message contents, or both the message originator and the message contents contained in the query from the end user device is authenticated on the communication server by comparison to a group comprising one of: a previously registered message , a previously registered message originator, both the previously registered message and the previously registered message originator (Dow, [0020], a user may register 201, 202 details of his service providers and the service providers' legitimate contact details, for example, in the form of telephone numbers, email, or other details, with the security application 120).
As per claim 3, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 2 wherein the previously registered message originator includes biometric information of an authorized agent of the registered business (Dow, [0037], contract details).
As per claim 4, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the communication server additionally performs a validation of the incoming communication by comparison to a previously registered message contents, a hash of the previously registered message contents or a combination of the message contents and the hash of the message contents with a communication previously registered at the communication server (Engert, [0032]-[0033]), The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 1 is also applied to claim 4.
As per claim 5, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 4 wherein the inbound communication further includes a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (Engert, [0068],[0020]), The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 1 is also applied to claim 5.
As per claim 6, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the communication server performs a validation of the inbound communication by comparison to a list of valid message originators (Dow, [0020]).
As per claim 9, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the inbound communication comprises a voice call (Dow, [0024], [0027]).
As per claim 10, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the inbound communication comprises a chat session (Engert, [0015]-[0016], also see fig. 1 and associated text), The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 1 is also applied to claim 10.
As per claim 11, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 10 wherein the query to the communication server from the end user device occurs after the chat session has begun (Engert, [0015]-[0016], [0022]-[0023], also see fig. 1 and associated text). The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 1 is also applied to claim 11.
As per claim 12, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the inbound communication comprises a multimedia message (Engert, [0015]-[0016], also see fig. 1 and associated text), The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 1 is also applied to claim 12.
As per claim 13, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the inbound communication includes an email (Engert, [0015]-[0016], also see fig. 1 and associated text), The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 1 is also applied to claim 13.
As per claim 14, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the sending the query to the communication server is performed automatically (Dow, [0031]).
As per claim 15, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the sending the query to the communication server is performed by explicit request of an end user from the end user device (Dow, [0025]-[0027]).
As per claim 16, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising verifying the message contents of the incoming communication to the end user device in the returned query result (Dow, [0027]-[0029]).
5.3. Claims 7-8, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dow and Engert as applied to claim above, and in view of US Patent Application No. 20210044968 to Robert et al (“Robert”).
As per claim 7, the combination of Dow and Engert discloses the invention as described above. Dow and Engert do not explicitly disclose however, In the same field of endeavor, Robert discloses the method of claim 1 that further comprises indicating on the end user device that the incoming communication can be trusted with a message adjacent to the inbound communication (Robert, [0270], the sending device is determined to be trusted (at 720), then the internal marker is set to the version number (count) of the latest entry (at 722) and the message is displayed (at 724).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Dow and Engert with the teaching of Robert by including the feature of display, in order for Dow’s system to sending alert message on the computer display if the messages sending by the trusted sender. A computer-implemented method, in a communication framework in which each of a plurality of users has one or more devices associated therewith, and in which the users use at least some of their devices to communicate via a backend system. A first user has a first set of first one or more associated trusted devices, and a second user has a second set of second one or more trusted devices associated therewith. The first user forms a first trust relationship between a first device in the first set and a second device in the second set. Based on (i) the first trust relationship, and (ii) the second set associated with the second user, the first user forms a second trust relationship between each device in the first set and each device in the second set. A least one device in the first set communicates with one or more devices in the second set based on the second trust relationship (Robert, Abstract).
As per claim 8, the combination of Dow, Engert and Robert discloses the method of claim 1 that further comprises indicating on the end user device that the incoming communication can be trusted by appending or pre-pending the incoming communication with a message-trusted indicator (Robert, [0270], the sending device is determined to be trusted (at 720), then the internal marker is set to the version number (count) of the latest entry (at 722) and the message is displayed (at 724). The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 7 is also applied to claim 8.
5.4. Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Patent Application No. 20150271327 to Dow et al (“Dow”) and in view of US Patent Application No. 20150348151 to Francis et al (“Francis”).
As per claim 17, Dow discloses system for verifying call (abstract, during an active telephone call to a user received at a first call identifier, accessing registered user service providers to obtain contact details of a registered service provider purporting to be the origin of the active telephone call, and sending a query to the obtained contact details of the registered service provider. The query includes the first call identifier. The verifying also includes receiving a returned query result confirming or denying that the telephone call is from the registered service provider):
b. software on the end user device containing a processor and executable program instructions to verify a sender of the incoming communication by communicating with the communication server ([0227], application 120 may send 207 a query to a registered number or other registered contact details (for example, email) of the service provider, the query may include the telephone number of the callee on which the call has been received. The query may also include the telephone number from which the caller is calling which may be obtained from the caller information of the user's telephone device. The query may be in the form of a message or other communication. [0028] The service provider server may receive 208 the query); and
c. a second communication server which receives a message at a communication from the end user device and transmits an authenticity of the sender of the communication to the end user device ([0028] The service provider server may receive 208 the query and may check 209 if there is an active call from a call center or other of the service providers registered third parties calling the user at the provided number at that moment. This may involve looking up a database of call logs of the service provider and other registered third parties. The database look up may use the caller's name, caller's phone number, caller's call center, start time, and purpose etc. [0029] The service provider server may return 210 a result in the form of a verification message to the user. The verification message may verify if this person is calling from or on behalf of a trusted party at that moment or not).
Dow does not explicitly disclose however in the same field of endeavor, Francis discloses a. a communication server which registers an outbound communication from a business ([0052], One or more business entities (“clients”) that desire to use the service typically register and access the service through an on-line (e.g., web-based) portal. In one representative use scenario, the managed service provider entity provides outbound telemarketing services on behalf of participating clients).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Dow with the teaching of Francis by including the feature of communication server, in order for Dow’s system to interaction between the first and second transaction entities is established without disclosing personal identification information of the first and second transactions entities. A system and method for connecting first and second transaction entities includes displaying a transaction associated with the first transaction entity where the transaction may be associated with a category of transactions. An option is also displayed to request interaction with the first transaction entity. A processor receives selection of the option and transmits a command to establish the interaction between the first transaction entity and the second transaction entity. The interaction is recorded and stored in a data storage device. The processor analyzes the recorded interaction and, according to one embodiment, detects one or more keywords in the recording. A notification may be transmitted in response to the detected one or more keywords. In another embodiment, the processor may detect a trend from analysis of the recording and may make a modification relating to future transactions associated with the category of transactions based on the detected trend (Francis, Abstract).
5.5. Claim 18 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dow and Francis as applied to claim above, and in view of US Patent Application No. 20210044968 to Robert et al (“Robert”).
As per claim 7, the combination of Dow and Francis discloses the invention as described above. Dow and Francis do not explicitly disclose however, In the same field of endeavor, Robert discloses the system of claim 17 wherein the communication server and the second communication server are co-located (Robert, [0137]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Dow and Francis with the teaching of Robert by including the feature of co-lactation, in order for Dow’s system to sending alert message on the computer display if the messages sending by the trusted sender. A computer-implemented method, in a communication framework in which each of a plurality of users has one or more devices associated therewith, and in which the users use at least some of their devices to communicate via a backend system. A first user has a first set of first one or more associated trusted devices, and a second user has a second set of second one or more trusted devices associated therewith. The first user forms a first trust relationship between a first device in the first set and a second device in the second set. Based on (i) the first trust relationship, and (ii) the second set associated with the second user, the first user forms a second trust relationship between each device in the first set and each device in the second set. A least one device in the first set communicates with one or more devices in the second set based on the second trust relationship (Robert, Abstract).
5.6. Claims 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Patent Application No. 20150271327 to Dow et al (“Dow”) and in view of US Patent Application No. 20210044968 to Robert et al (“Robert”).
As per claim 19, Dow discloses system a non-transitory computer-readable medium which contains program instructions, that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform:
a. receiving a message by an end user device ([0024], a user (the callee) receives 203 a call at his telephone device 110, fig. 2 and associated texts);
b. sending a query from the end user device to a communication server to verify an authenticity of a message originator ([0227], application 120 may send 207 a query to a registered number or other registered contact details (for example, email) of the service provider, the query may include the telephone number of the callee on which the call has been received. The query may also include the telephone number from which the caller is calling which may be obtained from the caller information of the user's telephone device. The query may be in the form of a message or other communication. [0028] The service provider server may receive 208 the query); and
c. receiving by the end user device, a query result confirming or denying the authenticity of the message originator ([0028] The service provider server may receive 208 the query and may check 209 if there is an active call from a call center or other of the service providers registered third parties calling the user at the provided number at that moment. This may involve looking up a database of call logs of the service provider and other registered third parties. The database look up may use the caller's name, caller's phone number, caller's call center, start time, and purpose etc. [0029] The service provider server may return 210 a result in the form of a verification message to the user. The verification message may verify if this person is calling from or on behalf of a trusted party at that moment or not); and
Dow does not explicitly disclose however in the same field of endeavor, Robert discloses d. displaying the authenticity of the message originator at the end user device (Robert, [0270]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Dow with the teaching of Robert by including the feature of display, in order for Dow’s system to sending alert message on the computer display if the messages sending by the trusted sender. A computer-implemented method, in a communication framework in which each of a plurality of users has one or more devices associated therewith, and in which the users use at least some of their devices to communicate via a backend system. A first user has a first set of first one or more associated trusted devices, and a second user has a second set of second one or more trusted devices associated therewith. The first user forms a first trust relationship between a first device in the first set and a second device in the second set. Based on (i) the first trust relationship, and (ii) the second set associated with the second user, the first user forms a second trust relationship between each device in the first set and each device in the second set. A least one device in the first set communicates with one or more devices in the second set based on the second trust relationship (Robert, Abstract).
As per claim 20, the combination of Dow and Robert discloses the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 19 further comprising program instructions for displaying the authenticity of message contents to an end user (Robert, [0270]). The motivation regarding the obviousness of claim 19 is also applied to claim 20.
6.1. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure as the prior art discloses many of the claim features (See PTO-form 892).
6.2. a). US Patent Application No. 20140074746 to Wang et al., discloses verification of a source of a package is facilitated. A data terminal certified by an authority obtains location data from a location detection component. The location data indicates a source location from which the package is to be shipped, and is detected by the location detection component at the source location. Secure package shipment information, including the location data, is provided with the package to securely convey the detected source location to facilitate verifying the source of the package. The data terminal can be a portable data terminal certified by the authority and have a tamper-proof boundary behind which resides the location detection component and one or more keys for securing the package shipment information. Upon tampering with the tamper-resistant boundary, the certification of the portable data terminal can be nullified.
b). US Patent Application No. 7095855 to Collins et al., discloses a method for securely encoding and transmitting a message by an originating device to one of a plurality of recipient devices, said message being associated with a particular one of a plurality of application running on the originating device. Transmission is generated by using a device identifier, an application identifier and an application value, of a message value; combining the message value with one or more first secret values, said secret values being known substantially only to the originating device and one or more intended recipient device of the message, to establish a secret message value; applying the secret message value and the message to an encoding process to form a secure message block, and combining an address with a device identifier, the application identifier, the application value and the secure message block, to form a secure message for transmission which is decodable by the one or more of said intended recipient devices which thereby recover the message, the address, the device identifier, the application identifier and the application value.
Conclusion
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HARUNUR . RASHID
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2497
/HARUNUR RASHID/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2497