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 office action is in response to the application filed on or reply to the remarks of 11/14/2025. The instant application has claims 1-5, and 7 pending. The system for monitoring access to an computer file based on user entered pattern There a total of 6 claims.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 11/14/2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
The applicant arguments relating to 35 USC 101 rejection is persuasive, thus it is withdrawn.
The applicant arguments relating to 35 USC 103 is not persuasive. The applicant argues that Jayaweera does not disclose “a dynamically changeable non-heterogeneous collection in the computer memory containing patterns with wildcards mixed with patterns without wildcards load balanced across a first hash table and a second hash table”
The examiner disagrees. Jayaweera discloses the hash index table, i.e. it includes an database tables-two or more tables that is load balanced, the table is reference to get the retrieval of file see 3.4 Hash Index table. And this table contains key, path and status which used to locate the file and further the sub-index is also used to facilitate retrieval of file see 3..6 Path Builder & 3.3 Partial Indexer.
Election/Restrictions
Newly submitted claims 10-14 are directed to an invention that is independent or distinct from the invention originally claimed for the following reasons: these claims are patentably distinct inventions. Claim 10 recites the complementary version of the invention where the table is being built, as opposed to the table being used as in previous claim presentation, i.e. claims 1-5, 7-9. And furthermore, the dependent claims also do not share parallelism, e.g. building of forward table and reverse table found in claims 11-14 is not found in previous claim presentation. see MPEP §§ 806.05(a) and 806.05(c) - 806.05(j).
Since 4 is not found in applicant has received an action on the merits for the originally presented invention, this invention has been constructively elected by original presentation for prosecution on the merits. Accordingly, claims 10-14 withdrawn from consideration as being directed to a non-elected invention. See 37 CFR 1.142(b) and MPEP § 821.03.
To preserve a right to petition, the reply to this action must distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement. Otherwise, the election shall be treated as a final election without traverse. Traversal must be timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are subsequently added, applicant must indicate which of the subsequently added claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
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, 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 for establishing a background for determining obviousness under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) 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.
Claims 1-5, 7, 15-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over TagIt: An Integrated Indexing and Search Service for File Systems to Sim in view of Automatic File Indexing Framework An Effective Approach to Resolve Dangling File Pointers to Jayaweera and further in view of US Patent Pub 2012/0036133 to Chen.
Regarding claim 1, 15, Sim discloses A system for monitoring access to a computer file, comprising: a computer memory; a target device comprising a first processor, wherein the computer memory configured to contain non- transitory instructions, that when executed by the processor, case the processor to perform the steps of: monitoring user activity on the target device to detect a user entered pattern comprising a wildcard character(Page 2 Active Operators, the targeted data is sought using variable like temperature & Page 5 Active Operators & Page 5 Active operator the user type commands, i.e. ‘tagit-execute/proj1-name=*nc.exec=ncdump, similar to pattern from Spec. Page 16 Table 1 to retrieve the information); with a hash function, calculating an index for the selected hash table based on the user entered pattern(3.5 Query Interface & Fig. 6 item File exists & Hash Index Table lookup & Update Hash index)
Sim does not disclose the hash tables for indexing.
In the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, Jayaweera discloses a dynamically changeable non-heterogeneous collection in the computer memory containing patterns with wildcards mixed with patterns without wildcards load balanced across a first hash table and a second hash table(Fig. 1 Hash Table & Index lookup & Fig. 6 item Hash index lookup & 3.4 Hash Index Table, the files are associated with hash version for lookup); determining a position of the wildcard character within the user entered pattern(3.5 Query Interface & 3.1 File System Monitor, looks for target file and notifications being sent); based upon the user entered pattern and the position of the wildcard character within the user entered pattern, selecting a selected hash table consisting of one of the first hash table and the second hash table(Fig. 6 item Hash index Lookup); and accessing the selected hash table with the index to receive a stored pattern, wherein the first hash table comprises a direct hash table and the second hash (Fig. 1 Hash Table & Index lookup & Fig. 6 item Hash index lookup & 3.4 Hash Index Table, the files are associated with hash version for lookup & 3.6 path Builder , for path for file is resolved using hash index table and sub-index ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to modify Sim invention to incorporate the hash tables for indexing for the advantage of providing an secure query interface for locating paths and files as taught in Jayaweera see Abstract.
Sim nor Jayaweera disclose the first hash table stores pattern left to right such that the first character in the pattern is hashed first and second table hashing reverse order right to left such that the last character in the pattern is hashed first.
In the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, Chen discloses the first hash table stores pattern left to right such that the first character in the pattern is hashed filed and second table hashing reverse order right to left such that the last character in the pattern is hashed first(Par. 0025-0027 & Par. 0022 & Par. 0029 & Par. 0019, the first hash table and second table & Fig. 2B item S111, S119, S121, the reverse order searching and forward order searching)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to modify Sim invention to incorporate first table with right to left hashing and second table from left to right hashing for the advantage of easier search of large character string as taught in Chen see Fig. 2A item S105, S109 & Par. 0030.
Regarding claim 2. The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses the system of claim 1, wherein the monitoring step is performed by an agent installed in the target device as an operating system (OS) daemon(Page 2TagIt Overview & Contributions, OS based application).
Regarding claim 3. The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses the system of claim 1, further configured to perform the steps of:if the pattern matches an entry in the collection, generating an alert to a system administrator of the target device(Fig. 6 item Request File & File Exists & Prompt a message, check for entered pattern).
Regarding claim 4. The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses the system of claim 1, wherein the collection comprises a list of target computer file pathnames and the pattern comprises at least a partial file pathname(Fig. 1 item Path Builder & 3. Automatic File Indexing Framework, the file is located using pathname).
Regarding claim 5. The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses the system of claim 4, wherein if the file access data matches a file in the list of target computer file pathnames, further comprising a step of generating an alert to a system administrator of the target device(3.6 Path Builder & Fig. 6 item Path Builder & Prompt a message & Fig. 1 item Register a root for notification & File Change notifications) .
Regarding claim 7, The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Chen discloses the system of claim 1, wherein accessing the selected hash table comprises an incremental search(Fig. 2B item S113, S117 & Fig. 2A item S107, S109 & Par. 0030-0031, the searching is based on data path and searching parameters) .
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to modify Sim invention to incorporate first table with right to left hashing and second table from left to right hashing and incremental search for the advantage of easier search of large character string as taught in Chen see Fig. 2A item S105, S109 & Par. 0030.
Regarding claim 8. . The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses The system of claim 1, wherein each of a plurality of hash table entries contains a head pointer to a list of entries that has a same index but different pattern values(3.6 Path Builder & Fig. 6 item Path Builder & Prompt a message & Fig. 1 item Register a root for notification & File Change notifications) .
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Regarding claim 9. The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses The system of claim 8, wherein the entries in each list of entries are sorted by pattern length from longest to shortest, to ensure that, in a case of collision on lookup, the index is used to locate the bucket and the most detailed matching pattern in the bucket is located first3.6 Path Builder & Fig. 6 item Path Builder & Prompt a message & Fig. 1 item Register a root for notification & File Change notifications) .
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Regarding claim 16 The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Jayaweera discloses The method of claim 15, wherein at least one of the patterns in the dynamically changeable non-heterogeneous collection represents a pathname that corresponds to a particular one of a plurality of files in the computer memory, the method further comprising:
changing the pattern in the computer memory at run time in response to a user action at the target device(Fig. 6 item Request File & Retrieve Status & Hash index lookup, the file is located based on hash index lookup and status)
Regarding claim 17. The combined system of Sim, Jayaweera and Chen, Sim discloses The method of claim 15, wherein the monitoring of the user activity on the target device comprises:
receiving an operating system notification at the computer-based agent that the user has entered a command to find or access a file in the computer memory (3.5 Query Interface & Fig. 6 item File exists & Hash Index Table lookup & Update Hash index, the command for file);
extracting a string that contains a wildcard from the command, with the computer-based agent n(3.5 Query Interface & Fig. 6 item File exists & Hash Index Table lookup & Update Hash index, the string is extracted); and
using the pattern to access a database containing filenames of sensitive files with the computer-based agent (3.5 Query Interface & Fig. 6 item File exists & Hash Index Table lookup & Update Hash index, pattern is used for filenames).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Venkat Perungavoor whose telephone number is (571)272-7213. The examiner can normally be reached 9-5.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rupal Dharia can be reached on 571-272-3880. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/VENKAT PERUNGAVOOR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2492 Email: venkatanarayan.perungavoor@uspto.gov