DETAILED ACTION
The non-final office action is responsive to the filing of U.S. Patent Application on 06/21/2024. Claims 1-33 are pending; claims 1-33 are rejected.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed 06/21/2024 fails to comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98 and MPEP § 609 because Non-Patent Literature Document Cite No. 1 and 2 do not have publication date. It has been placed in the application file, but the information referred to therein has not been considered as to the merits. Applicant is advised that the date of any re-submission of any item of information contained in this information disclosure statement or the submission of any missing element(s) will be the date of submission for purposes of determining compliance with the requirements based on the time of filing the statement, including all certification requirements for statements under 37 CFR 1.97(e). See MPEP § 609.05(a).
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/21/2024 was filed before the mailing date of the non-final office action. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 except the Non-Patent Literature documents identified above. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to abstract idea without significantly more. The claims 1 and 2 recite “dividing at least one IPv4 unicast address among a plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses into a network portion and a host portion;” “grouping the plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses into groups based on the network portion;” “summarizing the host portion of each group among the groups into a set of IPv4 unicast addresses;” “encoding the groups in binary format, thereby resulting in a compression of the plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses into compressed IPv4 unicast addresses;” and “transmitting the compressed IPv4 unicast addresses across a network.” It seems that the concept of the various steps in claims 1 and 2 can be done with paper and pencil or with email to explain how to represent IP addresses in a subnetwork and how to suppress consecutive zeros in the IP addresses for compressed addresses (Note: the same reasoning applies mutatis mutandis to the corresponding method claims 10-12 and 22-33 and system claims 13-21). This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the computer in claim 13 is generic so it does not help.
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.
Claims 1-33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication 2006/0080444 A1 to Peddemors et al. (hereinafter Peddemors) in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0282889 A1 to Ishaya et al. (hereinafter Ishaya).
As to claim 1, Peddemors teaches a method for compressing IPv4 unicast addresses (A method and system that identifies connection attempts to a resource through the IP address used in the connection and compares the IP address against one or more of single or multiple lists of IP addresses simultaneously to affect the connection process, Peddemors, Abstract. Note: IP address used in the connection attempt, therefore unicast IP address is disclosed.), comprising:
dividing at least one IPv4 unicast address among a plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses into a network portion (Note that generally the level 1 and level 2 octets specify networks which are assigned to larger organizations and that the two octets at level 3 may be assigned to smaller networks or to subnetworks (subnets). A subnet may exist within the context of a single company, organization or service, Peddemors, [0057]-[0060])
grouping the plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses into groups based on the network portion (Note that generally the level 1 and level 2 octets specify networks which are assigned to larger organizations and that the two octets at level 3 may be assigned to smaller networks or to subnetworks (subnets). A subnet may exist within the context of a single company, organization or service, Peddemors, [0057]-[0060]. Note grouping is based on level 1 and level octets);
encoding the groups in binary format (In one embodiment the transitional data structure is a binary file having a bitfield representation of every ip address in the address space (ipv4 or ipv6 or any other address space). A bitfield value of "1" indicates that the corresponding address is listed while a bitfield of "0" indicates that it is not listed, Peddemors, [0051]-[0054]), thereby resulting in a compression of the plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses into compressed IPv4 unicast addresses (Due to the binary format and the inevitable large number of bits set to "0" the file will compress well and may be stored in a compressed format in step 208 thus saving disk space, Peddemors, [0051]-[0054], [0077]-[0080]).
Peddemors does not explicitly dividing at least one address into a host portion;
summarizing the host portion of each group among the groups into a set of IPv4 unicast addresses.
Ishaya discloses
dividing at least one address into a host portion (each rule in a security group must specify the source of packets to be allowed. This can be specified using CIDR notation (such as 10.22.0.0/16, representing a private subnet in the 10.22 IP space, or 0.0.0.0/0 representing the entire Internet) or another security group. The creation of rules with other security groups specified as sources helps deal with the elastic nature of cloud computing; instances are impermanent and IP addresses frequently change. In this embodiment, security groups can be maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses, Ishaya, [0105]. Note: 10.22.0.0/16 of CIDR notation indicate that “10.22” is network portion and “0.0” is host portion);
summarizing the host portion of each group among groups into a set of IPv4 unicast addresses (each rule in a security group must specify the source of packets to be allowed. This can be specified using CIDR notation (such as 10.22.0.0/16, representing a private subnet in the 10.22 IP space, or 0.0.0.0/0 representing the entire Internet) or another security group. The creation of rules with other security groups specified as sources helps deal with the elastic nature of cloud computing; instances are impermanent and IP addresses frequently change. In this embodiment, security groups can be maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses, Ishaya, [0105]. Note: 10.22.0.0/16 of CIDR notation indicate that a block or group of host address (total of 65,536 or 216 addresses) can be assigned to host devices).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use CIDR notation as taught by Ishaya to modify the method of Peddemors in order to maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses.
As to claim 2, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 1 further comprising transmitting the compressed IPv4 unicast addresses across a network (At step 210 the list is disseminated to various master list servers 106 and/or network resources 108 as required. The ip address of a user, attempting to connect to a network resource is looked up in the master list copy and accordingly allowed or denied access based on the value of the bit corresponding to their address, Peddemors, [0051]-[0054]).
As to claim 3, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 2 further comprising decompressing the compressed IPv4 unicast addresses at a receiving end of the network (the binary nature of the file allows very good compression. Using bzip2 utility a file built in the above format was compressed by a ratio of 25:1, Peddemors, [0077]-[0080]. Note: bzip2 is a free and open-source data compression program. One may use command bzip2 to compress a file and use command bunzip2 to decompress a compressed file).
As to claim 4, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the set of IPv4 unicast addresses comprises at least one of: a blacklist, a whitelist, or a host file (It should be noted, that inclusion of one of the lists may equally well be representing whitelisting, rather than blacklisting, Peddemors, [0077]-[0080], [0039]-[0054]).
As to claim 5, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 1 wherein the groups are encoded in the binary format using an end-of-string delimiter to indicate the end of each host address (the transitional data structure is a binary file having a bitfield representation (e.g. claimed “delimiter”) of every ip address in the address space (ipv4 or ipv6 or any other address space). A bitfield value of "1" indicates that the corresponding address is listed while a bitfield of "0" indicates that it is not listed, Peddemors, [0039]-[0054]).
As to claim 6, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 5 wherein the groups are further encoded with additional data after the each host address (The first 1024 bytes of the cbf file consist of 256 4-byte pointers (e.g. claimed “additional data”). These pointers represent the first octet of an ip address or level 1 as indicated in FIG. 3, Peddemors, [0039]-[0054]. Note: “bitfield” also reads on claimed “additional data”).
As to claim 7, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the network portion of the at least one IPv4 unicast address is used as a key to group the plurality of IPv4 unicast addresses (Peddemors, [0057]-[0060]).
As to claim 8, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the host portion of the at least one IPv4 unicast address is used as a value within the group (each rule in a security group must specify the source of packets to be allowed. This can be specified using CIDR notation (such as 10.22.0.0/16, representing a private subnet in the 10.22 IP space, or 0.0.0.0/0 representing the entire Internet) or another security group. The creation of rules with other security groups specified as sources helps deal with the elastic nature of cloud computing; instances are impermanent and IP addresses frequently change. In this embodiment, security groups can be maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses, Ishaya, [0105]. Note: 10.22.0.0/16 of CIDR notation indicate that a block or group of host address (total of 65,536 or 216 addresses) can be assigned to host devices). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use CIDR notation as taught by Ishaya to modify the method of Peddemors-Ishaya in order to maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses.
As to claim 9, Peddemors-Ishaya discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the size of a network mask of the network is specified in a preamble to accommodate an IP list size each rule in a security group must specify the source of packets to be allowed. This can be specified using CIDR notation (such as 10.22.0.0/16, representing a private subnet in the 10.22 IP space, or 0.0.0.0/0 representing the entire Internet) or another security group. The creation of rules with other security groups specified as sources helps deal with the elastic nature of cloud computing; instances are impermanent and IP addresses frequently change. In this embodiment, security groups can be maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses, Ishaya, [0105]. Note: 10.22.0.0/16 of CIDR notation indicate that a block or group of host address (total of 65,536 or 216 addresses) can be assigned to host devices). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use CIDR notation as taught by Ishaya to modify the method of Peddemors-Ishaya in order to maintained dynamically without having to adjust actual IP addresses.
As to claims 10-33, the same reasoning applies mutatis mutandis to the corresponding method claims 10-12 and 22-33 and system claims 13-21. Accordingly, claims 12-14 and claim 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Peddemors in view of Ishaya.
Conclusion
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/RUOLEI ZONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2441 11/25/2025