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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the communication filed on 04/18/2024.
Claims 1-21 are under examination.
The Information Disclosure Statements filed on 08/20/2024, 06/30/2025, 08/27/2025 and 10/30/2025 have been entered and considered.
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.
Claims 1-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter because the claim(s) 1-21 as a whole, considering all claim elements both individually and in combination, do not amount to significantly more than an abstract idea. The claim(s) 1-21 is/are directed to the abstract idea of the management of usage data of services. 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 than the judicial exception itself. Claims 1-21 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1:
Regarding Step 1 of the Subject Matter Eligibility Test for Products and Processes (from the January 2019 §101 Examination Guidelines), claims 1-10 are directed to a method, claims 11-20 are directed to a system, and claim 21 is directed to a non- transitory computer readable storage medium and therefore the claims recite a series of steps and, therefore the claims are viewed as falling in statutory categories
Step 2A Prong 1:
The claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) a human activities/business process. Specifically, the independent claims 1,11, and 20 recite the limitation of providing service, receiving usage data, providing usage data to first entity, removing identification information form usage data and providing the usage data without identification information to second entity. Under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the human activities/business relations (collecting information and removing some information) but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting a processor, nothing in the claim precludes the providing, receiving, removing steps from practically being performed in the basic human activities/business relations. Therefore, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A Prong 2:
Independent claims 1, 11 and 21 recite the following additional elements: “cloud environment”, “service”, “system”, “computer”, “microprocessors” and “non-transitory computer readable medium”. The additional elements are recited as plurality of generic computer components. Therefore, these claims are directed to an abstract idea and the judicial exception does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Dependent claims 8-9 and 18-19 recite the additional element “operator subscription manager”, dependent claims 10 and 20 recite “end user subscription manager”. The addition elements implemented as a generic computer performing functions of transmitting, processing and receiving data.
The dependent claims recite elements that narrow the metes and bounds of the abstract idea but do not provide “something more”. The dependent claims do not remedy these deficiencies.
Therefore, based on the above analysis as conducted based on the Guidance from the United States Patent and Trademark Office the claims are viewed as a court recognized abstract idea, are viewed as a judicial exception, does not integrate the claims into a practical application, and does not provide an inventive concept, therefore the claims are ineligible.
Furthermore, claims 1-10 recite a method. However, these claims do not recite a machine to execute the said method. Therefore, claim(s) 1-10 are determined to be directed to an abstract idea.
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1, 4-7, 11, 14-17 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1).
Regarding claim 1, Kumar et al. discloses A method, comprising: providing, within a cloud environment, a plurality of services deployed within one or more realms of the cloud environment [col. 2, line 57-col. 3, line 2, “Cross-service usage control system 110 and/or services 140 may be implemented as part of public and/or private clouds, such as a public provider network discussed below with regard to FIG. 2 implemented across one or multiple regions, or as part of a private cloud system in order to enforce usage across privately implemented services. Cross-service usage control system 110 and services 140 may be implementing using multiple different computing devices (e.g., computing nodes), such as computing system 1000 discussed below with regard to FIG. 9. Services 140 may implement various types of compute, processing, storage, or resources or operations on behalf of clients in multi-tenant fashion”, also see col. 5, lines 17-48 for the cloud services regions]; providing, within a first realm, a multi-tiered reporting service operable to monitor usage of the services within the first realm; receiving, by the multi-tiered reporting service, usage data that records usage, by user entities within the first realm, of the plurality of services [col. 10, lines 49-55, “tenant usage information and enforcement actions taken against a tenant 450 may be provided to monitoring service 240. Monitoring service 240 may provide tenants access to tenant usage information specific to the tenant via the various monitoring, display, or other observability features of monitoring service 240”], said usage data comprising usage of the services within the first realm [col. 10, lines 30-34, “usage measurements may be tracked (or obtained from other service request handling node components) that describe usage of a tenant for an interface. Tenant usage measurements 442 may be provided to data plane 230”].
Kumar et al. does not explicitly disclose said usage data comprising an identification data associating the user entities with their usage of the services; providing the usage data as a first set of data to a first entity associated with control of the first realm; generating, by the multi-tiered reporting service, a second set of data by processing the usage data to remove or convert the identification data; and providing the second set of data to a second entity associated with control of the cloud environment.
However Curcic et al. teaches said usage data comprising an identification data associating the user entities with their usage of the services [col. 3, lines 56-60, “the usage assessment system generates cloud usage analytics including… identities of users using each of the identified cloud service providers”]; providing the usage data as a first set of data to a first entity associated with control of the first realm [col. 7, line 48-col. 8, line 14, display unmasked cloud usage data with the specific identifying information to administrator of enterprise/tenant]; generating, by the multi-tiered reporting service, a second set of data by processing the usage data to remove or convert the identification data [col. 5, lines 12-17, “the event data anonymizer engine 34 anonymizes or tokenizes identifying information about the enterprise and its users. In one embodiment, the identifying particulars in the network event data are removed and replaced by randomly generated alphanumeric character strings”]; and providing the second set of data to a second entity associated with control of the cloud environment [col. 5, lines 34-41, “The event data anonymizer 34 generates filtered tokenized network event data which is then provided to an event data compression engine 36. Event data compression engine 36 applies one or more compression algorithm to compress the event data. The compressed event data is provided to a data delivery engine 38 which packages the compressed and filtered network event data for transmission to the cloud services usage analysis system 25 over the data network 20”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Curcic et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. with the motivation to ensure privacy of the enterprise's data as taught by Curcic et al. [Curcic et al.: col. 5, lines 10-12].
Regarding claim 4, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kumar et al. further discloses providing, within a second realm, a second multi-tiered reporting service operable to monitor usage of the services within the second realm, wherein the first entity is associated with control of the second realm; receiving, by the second multi-tiered reporting service operating within the second realm, a usage data that records usage, by user entities within the second realm, of the plurality of services [col. 10, lines 49-55, “tenant usage information and enforcement actions taken against a tenant 450 may be provided to monitoring service 240. Monitoring service 240 may provide tenants access to tenant usage information specific to the tenant via the various monitoring, display, or other observability features of monitoring service 240”], said usage data comprising usage of the services within the second realm [col. 10, lines 30-34, “usage measurements may be tracked (or obtained from other service request handling node components) that describe usage of a tenant for an interface. Tenant usage measurements 442 may be provided to data plane 230”]; combining modified sets of usage data received from both the first and second realms, describing usage by the user entities within the first and second realms, to generate an aggregated usage data; and providing the aggregated usage data to the second entity associated with the cloud environment [col. 2, line 57-col. 3, line 2, “Cross-service usage control system 110 and/or services 140 may be implemented as part of public and/or private clouds, such as a public provider network discussed below with regard to FIG. 2 implemented across one or multiple regions, or as part of a private cloud system in order to enforce usage across privately implemented services. Cross-service usage control system 110 and services 140 may be implementing using multiple different computing devices (e.g., computing nodes), such as computing system 1000 discussed below with regard to FIG. 9. Services 140 may implement various types of compute, processing, storage, or resources or operations on behalf of clients in multi-tenant fashion”].
Curcic et al. further teaches said usage data comprising an identification data associating the user entities with their usage of the services [col. 3, lines 56-60, “the usage assessment system generates cloud usage analytics including… identities of users using each of the identified cloud service providers”]; generating, by the second multi-tiered reporting service operating within the second realm, a modified set of usage data, by processing the usage data to remove or convert the identification data [col. 5, lines 12-17, “the event data anonymizer engine 34 anonymizes or tokenizes identifying information about the enterprise and its users. In one embodiment, the identifying particulars in the network event data are removed and replaced by randomly generated alphanumeric character strings”]; combining modified sets of usage data received from both the first and second realms, describing usage by the user entities within the first and second realms, to generate an aggregated usage data; and providing the aggregated usage data to the second entity associated with the cloud environment [col. 5, lines 34-41, “The event data anonymizer 34 generates filtered tokenized network event data which is then provided to an event data compression engine 36. Event data compression engine 36 applies one or more compression algorithm to compress the event data. The compressed event data is provided to a data delivery engine 38 which packages the compressed and filtered network event data for transmission to the cloud services usage analysis system 25 over the data network 20”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Curcic et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. with the motivation to ensure privacy of the enterprise's data as taught by Curcic et al. [Curcic et al.: col. 5, lines 10-12].
Regarding claim 5, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kumar et al. further disclose communicating, from the second entity associated with control of the cloud environment, to the first entity associated with control of the first realm, one or more rules or policies that are stored within the first realm and modify an operation of the multi-tiered reporting service in monitoring the usage of the services within the first realm [col. 6, lines 50-64, “Control plane 220 may handle management requests (e.g., from services 250) as well as other management operations (e.g., dynamic updates) for enforcing usage quotas across services in different provider network regions, as discussed below with regard to FIG. 3. As illustrated in FIG. 2, control plane 220 may implement usage rule distribution 222, in some embodiments. Usage rule distribution 222 may receive a quota request, generate one (or multiple) rules for enforcing the quota, store a copy of the generated rules in rule store 224, and then send the rule(s) to the appropriate rule enforcement component 252 of the service 250. In various embodiments, control plane 220 may implement service deployment 226 to deploy, identify, or otherwise establish communication with rule enforcement 252 at services 250”].
Regarding claim 6, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Curcic et al. further teaches the first entity is a realm operator [col. 7, line 48-col. 8, line 14, display unmasked cloud usage data with the specific identifying information to administrator of enterprise/tenant], and the second entity is a cloud infrastructure provider [col. 5, lines 34-41, “The compressed event data is provided to a data delivery engine 38 which packages the compressed and filtered network event data for transmission to the cloud services usage analysis system 25 over the data network 20” (within cloud infrastructure provider)].
Regarding claim 7, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kumar et al. further teaches the multi-tiered reporting service is configured to: receive first entity consumption information from the plurality of services, the first entity consumption information being based on the usage data that is representative of the usage by the user entities within the first realm of the plurality of services [col. 10, lines 30-34, “usage measurements may be tracked (or obtained from other service request handling node components) that describe usage of a tenant for an interface. Tenant usage measurements 442 may be provided to data plane 230”]; receive second entity consumption information from the plurality of services, the second entity consumption information being representative of use by the second entity of the plurality of services [col. 10, lines 30-34, “usage measurements may be tracked (or obtained from other service request handling node components) that describe usage of a tenant for an interface. Tenant usage measurements 442 may be provided to data plane 230”]; sum the first entity consumption information with the second entity consumption information as summed cloud environment consumption information; and deliver the summed cloud environment consumption information to the second entity associated with control of the cloud environment [col. 2, lines 36-52, “Instead of (or in addition to) each service building individual resource protection logic which leads to duplicate work across services and inconsistent resource consumption experiences for tenants across services, a centralized usage enforcement system that can compute resource usage across multiple services and enforce fair resource usage across the multiple services may be implemented, providing a consistent experience for client applications that may experience usage enforcement and for the services protected by usage enforcement. Moreover, the dependencies or interactions between services may be discovered or considered for making enforcement decisions. In various embodiments, the cross-service usage control may dynamically adapt to usage information across services to modify the rules or other controls that enforce usage quotas and may reduce or eliminate the work to build or maintain usage controls at individual services”].
Regarding claim 11, it recites limitations like claim 1. The reason for the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 14, it recites limitations like claim 4. The reason for the rejection of claim 4 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 15, it recites limitations like claim 5. The reason for the rejection of claim 5 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 16, it recites limitations like claim 6. The reason for the rejection of claim 6 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 17, it recites limitations like claim 7. The reason for the rejection of claim 7 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 21, it recites limitations like claim 1. The reason for the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated herein.
Claims 2-3 and 12-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) as applied to claims 1, 4-7, 11, 14-17 and 21 above, and further in view of Agarwal et al. (US 2023/0328003 A1).
Regarding claim 2, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Curcic et al. teaches remove or convert the identification data.
They do not explicitly disclose the generating the second set of data comprises replacing references in the usage data to the user entities with references to the first entity.
However, Agarwal et al. teaches the generating the second set of data comprises replacing references in the usage data to the user entities with references to the first entity [par. 0022, “The interface requirements may further include the types of usage information that are required to support the billing and sale of the services, formatting information for the usage information, customer identifier information associated with the customer organization”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Agarwal et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) with the motivation to support the billing and sale of the services as taught by Agarwal et al. [Agarwal et al.: par. 0022].
Regarding claim 3, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Curcic et al. teaches remove or convert the identification data.
They do not explicitly disclose the generating the second set of data compromise reformatting the usage data that records the usage by the user entities of the plurality of services to conform with a record of usage by the second entity of the plurality of services.
However, Agarwal et al. teaches the generating the second set of data compromise reformatting the usage data that records the usage by the user entities of the plurality of services to conform with a record of usage by the second entity of the plurality of services [par. 0022, “The interface requirements may further include the types of usage information that are required to support the billing and sale of the services, formatting information for the usage information”, par. 0024, “the resource usage associated with the services can be stored in a first format by cloud management service”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Agarwal et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) with the motivation to support the billing and sale of the services as taught by Agarwal et al. [Agarwal et al.: par. 0022].
Regarding claim 12, it recites limitations like claim 2. The reason for the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 13, it recites limitations like claim 3. The reason for the rejection of claim 3 is incorporated herein.
Claims 8-10 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) as applied to claims 1, 4-7, 11, 14-17 and 21 above, and further in view of Johnson et al. (US 2016/0253722 A1).
Regarding claim 8, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kumar et al. discloses providing, within a cloud environment, a plurality of services deployed within the cloud environment.
They do not explicitly disclose providing an operator subscription manager (OSM) for managing subscriptions of the first entity to the plurality of services, the OSM being configured to: transmit a request to the second entity associated with control of the cloud environment to order one or more of the plurality of services; and receive the one or more services into the first realm as the plurality of services for selectively providing by the first entity to the user entities as vendor cloud services.
However, Johnson et al. teaches providing an operator subscription manager (OSM) for managing subscriptions of the first entity to the plurality of services, the OSM being configured to: transmit a request to the second entity associated with control of the cloud environment to order one or more of the plurality of services [par. 0020, “an aggregated catalog may allow multi-tenancy, which may refer to a characteristic of the aggregated catalog to allow multiple users to subscribe to and interact with a single instance of the aggregated catalog. In this example, each tenant may subscribe to and interact with their instance of the aggregated catalog without interacting with other tenants' information. Access to the aggregated catalog may be controlled using a central identity management service”]; and receive the one or more services into the first realm as the plurality of services for selectively providing by the first entity to the user entities as vendor cloud services [par. 0034, “vendors and service providers may generate a catalog to present cloud services or any other offering that may be presented for ordering and fulfillment through the catalog”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Johnson et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) with the motivation to present a number of cloud service related resources such as subscription management, pricing information, subscription requests, and approvals among other cloud service management resources as taught by Johnson et al. [Johnson et al.: par. 0011].
Regarding claim 9, the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated.
Johnson et al. further teaches the OSM is configured to fulfill the order by creating a first entity subscription in the OSM, the first entity subscription comprising first entity subscription pricing attributes representative of pricing to the first entity for use of one or more of the plurality of services [par. 0020, “each tenant may subscribe to and interact with their instance of the aggregated catalog without interacting with other tenants' information. Access to the aggregated catalog may be controlled using a central identity management service. The central identity management service may enable role-based access control and federated identity across the multiple aggregated catalogs. As will be described below, the aggregated catalog may also allow for management of offerings in the aggregated catalog. For example, the options, prices and other details related to an offering may be managed via the aggregated catalog”], and user entity subscription pricing attributes representative of pricing to the user entities for use by the user entities of one or more of the plurality of services [par. 0020, “The interface may also facilitate management of the catalog information. For example, via the interface a user may submit a subscription request, receive a request approval, view pricing”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Johnson et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) with the motivation to present a number of cloud service related resources such as subscription management, pricing information, subscription requests, and approvals among other cloud service management resources as taught by Johnson et al. [Johnson et al.: par. 0011].
Regarding claim 10, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Kumar et al. discloses providing, within a cloud environment, a plurality of services deployed within the cloud environment.
They do not explicitly disclose providing an end user subscription manager (EUSM) for managing subscriptions of the user entities to the plurality of services, the EUSM being configured to: receive from a first user entity a first request to order a first set of the plurality of services; receive from a second user entity a second request to order a second set of the plurality of services; fulfill the order of the first request by creating a first user entity subscription in the EUSM, the first user entity subscription providing access by the first user entity to the first set of cloud services; and fulfill the order of the second request by creating a second user entity subscription in the EUSM, the second user entity subscription providing access by the second user entity to the second set of cloud services.
However, Johnson et al. teaches providing an end user subscription manager (EUSM) for managing subscriptions of the user entities to the plurality of services, the EUSM being configured to: receive from a first user entity a first request to order a first set of the plurality of services [par. 0033, “The catalog may also include information that may allow a user to subscribe to an offering, request a subscription to an offering, and receive an approval of a subscription”]; receive from a second user entity a second request to order a second set of the plurality of services [par. 0050, “Via this API, different users may access the aggregated catalog (319). For example, users, via a self service portal (314) may access the aggregated catalog (319) to subscribe to a service, search offerings, and manage a subscription, among other cloud service and catalog management-related activities”]; fulfill the order of the first request by creating a first user entity subscription in the EUSM, the first user entity subscription providing access by the first user entity to the first set of cloud services [par. 0050, “When a service is subscribed to via the aggregated catalog (319), the subscription request may be delegated to a remote catalog for fulfillment, and the information relative to the service offering's fulfillment may be aggregated back to the aggregated catalog (319)”]; and fulfill the order of the second request by creating a second user entity subscription in the EUSM, the second user entity subscription providing access by the second user entity to the second set of cloud services [par. 0040, “a user may search a list of offerings, subscribe to an offering, receive approval for a subscription request…”, par. 0056, “Fulfillment of an offering may include deployment and management of the offering or delivery of items from the catalog. Fulfillment may also include realization of a service design. A central server (318) that includes an aggregated catalog (319) as described in connection with FIG. 3 may be beneficial in that it provides a simplification and unification of a user experience as well as providing an extensive and customizable platform to develop applications and services”].
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of Johnson et al. into the teaching of Kumar et al. (US 11,943,385 B1) and Curcic et al. (US 9,571,516 B1) with the motivation to present a number of cloud service related resources such as subscription management, pricing information, subscription requests, and approvals among other cloud service management resources as taught by Johnson et al. [Johnson et al.: par. 0011].
Regarding claim 18, it recites limitations like claim 8. The reason for the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 19, it recites limitations like claim 9. The reason for the rejection of claim 9 is incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 20, it recites limitations like claim 10. The reason for the rejection of claim 10 is incorporated herein.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicant’s disclosure:
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JASON CHIANG whose telephone number is (571)270-3393. The examiner can normally be reached on 9 AM to 6 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lynn Feild can be reached on (571) 272-2092. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JASON CHIANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2431