DETAILED ACTION
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 .
1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF REFERENCES CITED BY APPLICANT
Information Disclosure Statement
As required by M.P.E.P. ' 609 (C), the applicant's submission of the Information Disclosure Statement(s), dated 6/11/24 and 7/7/26, is acknowledged by the examiner and the cited references have been considered in the examination of the claims now pending. As required by M.P.E.P. ' 609 C(2), a copy of the PTOL-1449 initialed and dated by the examiner is attached to the instant office action.
2. REJECTIONS BASED ON PRIOR ART
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 ' 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Biegala (US 20150256526).
With respect to claim 1, the Biegala reference teaches a method for assigning permissions for a set of computers, the method comprising:
at a first computer comprising a processor (e.g. paragraph 50, where the term "processor" as used herein refers to a computer microprocessor and/or a software program (e.g., a software module or separate program) that is designed to be executed by one or more microprocessors running on one or more computer systems):
for each computer of a set of computers, determining the organizational unit and sub-organizational unit of the computer; and for each computer of the set of computers assigning the computer to a security group, based on the organizational unit and sub-organizational unit of the computer; (paragraph 10, where computer resources and security principals are often organized and classified under hierarchies, sometimes representing the organization's structure. For example, network shared files may be classified in a folder hierarchy and domain users in a user group hierarchy that reflect the groups and subgroups of a company or other organization; and paragraph 63, where the main view of the security management system allows an administrator to manage the security rights and permissions of principals (e.g., groups and users) over resource containers (e.g., folders, directories, categories, etc.) on the system that is available to the administrator's authenticated access level for each computer system, network or environment that the content management system is connected to) and
wherein for each computer, the security group the computer is assigned to is associated with permissions enforced for each computer in the group. (paragraph 10, where effective permissions for a principal over a resource consist of two types of permissions: explicit permissions and inherited permissions. Explicit permissions are those that are set by default when the resource is created, or by an administrator action. Inherited permissions are those that are propagated to a resource from a parent resource. Therefore, the effective permissions existing between a principal and a computer resource are made of merged inherited permissions that have been previously established for the principal antecedents and the computer resource, or the resource's antecedents, and explicitly set permissions)
With respect to claim 2, the Biegala reference teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the permissions entitle a computer to file system resources. (paragraph 4, where setting up security for a single computer system is done on an individual basis: each user or user group ("security principal") is granted rights to a computer resource (e.g., workstations, computer drives, folders, files, printers, programs, processes, apps, database tables, database views, etc.) one at a time)
With respect to claim 3, the Biegala reference teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the sub-organizational unit corresponds to a hardware type, and each organizational unit and sub-organizational unit combination corresponds to one security group. (paragraph 4, where setting up security for a single computer system is done on an individual basis: each user or user group ("security principal") is granted rights to a computer resource (e.g., workstations, computer drives, folders, files, printers, programs, processes, apps, database tables, database views, etc.) one at a time; and paragraph 10, where computer resources and security principals are often organized and classified under hierarchies, sometimes representing the organization's structure. For example, network shared files may be classified in a folder hierarchy and domain users in a user group hierarchy that reflect the groups and subgroups of a company or other organization) and
With respect to claim 4, the Biegala reference teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the security group is an Active Directory security group. (paragraph 18, where there is provided a graphical user interface for computer resource security and user permissions management that would be applicable to a wide range of software packages (e.g., SaaS software, database software, email software, enterprise software applications, such as IBM Cognos, SAP Business Objects, Oracle DB, Microsoft Sharepoint, Microsoft Active Directory, etc.))
With respect to claim 5, the Biegala reference teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the process of assigning the computer to a security group is performed by a process written in a scripting language. (paragraph 50, where the methods described herein may be executed by one or more computer systems, and may be software implemented (e.g., one or more software programs executed by one or more computer systems or processors), hardware implemented (e.g., a series of instructions stored in one or more solid state devices), or a combination of both. Software components of the system is preferably written in a high level computer language such as any of the Microsoft .NET languages, JAVA, C/C++, PHP, or the like, but one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that the software may be written in low level programming languages such as machine language or assembly language)
With respect to claim 6, the Biegala reference teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the permissions entitle a computer to shared resources. (paragraph 4, where setting up security for a single computer system is done on an individual basis: each user or user group ("security principal") is granted rights to a computer resource (e.g., workstations, computer drives, folders, files, printers, programs, processes, apps, database tables, database views, etc.) one at a time; and paragraph 10, where computer resources and security principals are often organized and classified under hierarchies, sometimes representing the organization's structure. For example, network shared files may be classified in a folder hierarchy and domain users in a user group hierarchy that reflect the groups and subgroups of a company or other organization)
Claims 7-12 are another method implementation of claims 1-6, and rejected under a similar rationale. The Examiner notes claims 7-12 recite a ‘second computer’ being assigned to a security group, which would be a subset of the ‘each computer of a set of computers’ as similarly recited in claims 1-6.
Claims 13-18 are a system implementation of claims 1-6, and rejected under a similar rationale. The Examiner notes the Biegala reference teaches “a first computer comprising a memory and a processor, wherein the processor is configured to” as shown in paragraph 50.
3. RELEVANT ART CITED BY THE EXAMINER
The following prior art made of record and not relied upon is cited to establish the level of skill in the applicant's art and those arts considered reasonably pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See MPEP 707.05(c).
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. These references include:
Deepak R (US 20200356534), which teaches methods and systems for file locking are described herein. An on-premise file share may store files that are accessible to both a local on-premise client and a remote off-premise client. The off-premise file share may request to check-out one of the files. In response, one of multiple nodes may obtain for the file a file handle with exclusive write access. File locking information may be stored at the file share that indicates the node that holds the file handle and that indicates the file is in a locked state whereby other remote off-premise clients or local on-premise clients are prevented from editing the file;
Faitelson (US 20150199536), which teaches methods and systems are provided for decentralizing user data access rights control activities in networked organizations having diverse access control models and file server protocols. A folder management application enables end users of the file system to make requests for access to storage elements, either individually, or by becoming members of a user group having group access privileges. Responsibility for dealing with such requests is distributed to respective group owners and data owners, who may delegate responsibility to authorizers. The application may also consider automatically generated proposals for changes to access privileges. An automatic system continually monitors and analyzes access behavior by users who have been pre-classified into groups having common data access privileges. As the organizational structure changes, these groups are adaptively changed both in composition and in data access rights; and
Holland (US 7886048), which teaches a use case-based management system enable non-technical users to manage complex integrated systems based on familiar languages and workflows, and thus reduce the costs of installing and managing these integrated systems. The dynamic use cases respond to the users' input as well as the continuous feedback of system status and health. Based on these input and feedback, the use case-based management system then subscribes to and authorizes services, manages services and resources, and configures and provisions services, resources, and devices.
4. CLOSING COMMENTS
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PRASITH THAMMAVONG whose telephone number is (571) 270-1040. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 12-8 PM EST.
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/PRASITH THAMMAVONG/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2137
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