DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the Applicants' communication filed on April 24, 2026. Claims 1, 3-7, 9-10, 12-13, 15-19, 21-22 and 24 are currently pending and have been examined.
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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on April 24, 2026 have been fully considered.
Applicant argues in its Argument that cited arts fail to teach limitations of the amended independent Claim 1, specifically:
“transmitting the ciphertext and an indication of a padding method used for the padding to a wireless telecommunications network"
Examiner replies: In response to applicant’s argument that there is no teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness may be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988), In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007).
During patent examination, the pending claims must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification. See MPEP § 2111. Further, although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). See also MPEP § 2145(VI).
Regarding amended limitations the Claim 1 of the instant case, Mattsson teaches par. 53-54, 57, a delimiter or a set of delimiter are used to separate the rest of the padding from the rest of the plaintext; and the set can be standardized or dynamically decided/negotiated; par. 56, padding length is included in the plaintext to be encrypted or par. 58, unencrypted in the SUSI; par. 61-64, padding can include padding instructions be used to add pad info elements that may comprises padding length, indication of which info elements are padded; contents of padding and etc.; par. 62, “Furthermore, padding methods can be combined to get more complex padding methods.”, which implies that an indicator or indicators are necessary to enable the receiving device to be decrypted correctly; par. 77, padding techniques maybe pre-configured, be previsioned at a later point in time; “The configuration can either be that the HN chooses from a list of pre-configured padding techniques or that the HN configures a script that calculates the padding length based on a set of input parameters. Example of input parameters are information about user's subscription, user's preferences, and operator's policy.”
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Mattsson as modified teaches all limitations as claimed.
Conclusion: Examiner has shown the rejections set forth in the Office Action of February 26, 2026 are proper. In light of amended Claims, new grounds of rejection are set forth below. Since the new grounds of rejection are necessitated by Applicant's amendments to the claims, the present action is made final.
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, 3-7, 9-10, 12-13, 15-19, 21-22 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20220408243 A1 (Mattsson), in view of JP 2004317764 A (Hoshino).
Regarding Claims 1, 13:
1 A method performed by a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) the method comprising: padding a subscription identifier comprising a number of characters with a random number of padding characters, wherein the random number depends on the number of characters of the subscription identifier, to obtain a padded subscription identifier; encrypting the padded subscription identifier to obtain a ciphertext; and transmitting the ciphertext and an indication of a padding method used for the padding to a wireless telecommunications network (Mattsson: Figs. 1, 7-9, par. 102-108. Generating a padded ID by inserting a padding bitstring, e.g., SUCI construct par. 52-56, 61-63, where the padding may be randomized or pseudo-randomized; padded ID is encrypted and encrypted ID is transmitted; Hoshino: Figs. 4a-d and par. 35-42, provide an example of using a random number padding an identifier; par. 53-54, 57, a delimiter or a set of delimiter are used to separate the rest of the padding from the rest of the plaintext; and the set can be standardized or dynamically decided/negotiated; par. 56, padding length is included in the plaintext to be encrypted or par. 58, unencrypted in the SUSI; par. 61-64, padding can include padding instructions be used to add pad info elements that may comprises padding length, indication of which info elements are padded; contents of padding and etc.; par. 62, “Furthermore, padding methods can be combined to get more complex padding methods.”, which implies that an indicator or indicators are necessary to enable the receiving device to be decrypted correctly; par. 77, padding techniques maybe pre-configured, be previsioned at a later point in time; “The configuration can either be that the HN chooses from a list of pre-configured padding techniques or that the HN configures a script that calculates the padding length based on a set of input parameters. Example of input parameters are information about user's subscription, user's preferences, and operator's policy.”).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Mattsson with a processing of padding a random into an identifier as further taught by Hoshino. The advantage of doing so is to provide a mechanism so when transmitting an identifier given to another device, Information on the identifier can be kept secret from a third party (Hoshino: par. 24).
Regarding Claims 3 and 15, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, comprising transmitting, with the ciphertext, information indicating the number of padding characters (Mattsson: e.g., par. 56-77).
Regarding Claims 4 and 16, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 3, wherein the information indicating the number of padding characters is included in the ciphertext (Mattsson: e.g., par. 56-77).
Regarding Claims 5 and 17, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the padding characters belong to a set of characters disjunct from a set of characters allowed for the subscription identifier (Mattsson: e.g., par. 63-64, padding characters can be specified or be randomized; par. 74, a character is not contained in any username).
Regarding Claims 6 and 18, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 5, wherein the set of characters allowed for the subscription identifier is defined in RFC 3269 (It is noted that RFC 3269 is an industrial standardization process/doc, where to compliant with industrial standard is common practice in the field).
Regarding Claims 7 and 19, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein padding comprises using at least one padding method among: appending, prepending and intermixing (Mattsson: e.g., par. 56-77).
Regarding Claims 9 and 21, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the indication is included in the ciphertext (Mattsson: e.g., par..60, 149, separated paddings for MSIN, routing indicators, and public key, and Fig. 7, padded field is encrypted; par. 56, padding length is included in the plaintext to be encrypted or par. 58, unencrypted in the SUSI).
Regarding Claims 10 and 22, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the subscription identifier is a username part of a network access identifier (Mattsson: e.g., par..60, 149, separated paddings for MSIN, routing indicators, and public key, and Fig. 7, padded field is encrypted).
Regarding Claims 12 and 24, Mattsson as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the ciphertext is transmitted in a subscription concealed identifier (Mattsson: Figs. 1. 7-9).
Conclusion
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 mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHITONG CHEN whose telephone number is (571)270-1936. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:30am - 5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Yuwen Pan can be reached on 571-272-7855. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ZHITONG CHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649
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