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 is the initial office action that has been issued in response to patent application, 18/755,116, filed on 06/26/2024. Claims 1-20, as originally filed, are currently pending and have been considered below. Claims 1, 7, and 13 are independent claims.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 06/26/2024 are accepted by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 2, 8, and 14 are objected to because of the following informalities: “adjusts a user identify” should be corrected to “adjusts a user identity”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 13-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the enablement requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and/or use the invention. The limitation “a firmware resiliency management operation,” as recited by claim 13, is not described in the specifications.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-2, 7-8, 14, and 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1-2, 7 recites the limitation "the context aware persona enumeration operation.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claims 8 and 14 recites the limitation "the context-aware persona enumeration operation.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claims 16-18 recites the limitation "the intelligent interrupt management operation.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as failing to set forth the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 13 recites “performing a firmware resiliency operation” which is not supported by spec filed on 06/26/2024. Examiner does not understand how to examine the claim and thus the claim is incomprehensible and indefinite.
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, 7, 13, and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bulygin et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2020/0074086 A1, hereinafter, Bulygin) in view of Grocutt (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2022/0366037 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, Bulygin discloses: A computer-implementable method for performing a firmware management operation, comprising:
providing an information handling system with a distributed BIOS (Bulygin, ¶[0022], “The physical level of the host device 200 may also include physical processing components 218.”);
identifying context aware resource data associated with the information handling system (Bulygin, ¶[0029], “As indicated at 308, receiving the information from the host device platform may include receiving host device firmware data, runtime system state information, and/or hardware configuration information.”);
performing a context aware persona operation using the context aware resource data associated with the information handling system (Bulygin, ¶[0039] “… the method may optionally include performing remediation for any determined potential implant, as indicated at 320. For example, any affected systems may be isolated via hardware-based mechanisms to avoid contaminating other devices in an organization. In some examples, the bus may notify other devices on the bus if a blacklisted USB device is plugged into the computer.”); and,
Bulygin does not explicitly teach the following limitation that Grocutt teaches:
performing an intelligent interrupt management operation based upon the context aware persona enumeration operation (Grocutt, US 20220366037 A1, ¶[0028], “Interrupts directed to such devices may be handled by exception handler code which is provided by a third party, different to the party providing the operating system which manages general operation of the processing system.”).
Bulygin in view of Grocutt analogous art because the references are from the “same field of endeavor” and are from the same “problem solving area.” Namely, they pertain to the field of “embedded systems device management.” It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Bulygin with Grocutt by
“performing an intelligent interrupt management operation based upon the context aware persona enumeration operation,”
because the operating system provider may not trust the code provided by the other party and so may wish that the untrusted exception handler code for controlling such untrusted devices should not have the full privileges associated with the handler mode (Grocutt, ¶[0028]).
Regarding Claim 7, Bulygin discloses: A system comprising: a processor; a data bus coupled to the processor; and a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus, the computer program code interacting with a plurality of computer operations and comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured for:
providing an information handling system with a distributed BIOS (Bulygin, ¶[0022], “The physical level of the host device 200 may also include physical processing components 218.”);
identifying context aware resource data associated with the information handling system (Bulygin, ¶[0029], “As indicated at 308, receiving the information from the host device platform may include receiving host device firmware data, runtime system state information, and/or hardware configuration information.”);
performing a context aware persona operation using the context aware resource data associated with the information handling system (Bulygin, ¶[0039] “… the method may optionally include performing remediation for any determined potential implant, as indicated at 320. For example, any affected systems may be isolated via hardware-based mechanisms to avoid contaminating other devices in an organization. In some examples, the bus may notify other devices on the bus if a blacklisted USB device is plugged into the computer.”); and,
Bulygin does not explicitly teach the following limitation that Grocutt teaches:
performing an intelligent interrupt management operation based upon the context aware persona enumeration operation (Grocutt, US 20220366037 A1, ¶[0028], “Interrupts directed to such devices may be handled by exception handler code which is provided by a third party, different to the party providing the operating system which manages general operation of the processing system.”).
Bulygin in view of Grocutt analogous art because the references are from the “same field of endeavor” and are from the same “problem solving area.” Namely, they pertain to the field of “embedded systems device management.” It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Bulygin with Grocutt by
“performing an intelligent interrupt management operation based upon the context aware persona enumeration operation,”
because the operating system provider may not trust the code provided by the other party and so may wish that the untrusted exception handler code for controlling such untrusted devices should not have the full privileges associated with the handler mode (Grocutt, ¶[0028]).
Regarding Claim 13,
Bulygin discloses: A non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium embodying computer program code, the computer program code comprising computer executable instructions configured for:
providing an information handling system with a distributed BIOS (Bulygin, ¶[0022], “The physical level of the host device 200 may also include physical processing components 218.”);
identifying a processor environment installed on an information handling system from a plurality of processor environments (Examiner’s note: Claim 13 is rejected under USC 112. A best-effort assumption was made that an amended and corrected claim 13 may mirror independent claims 1 and 7. Claim 13 is rejected with the same references as claims 1 and 7. Bulygin, ¶[0029], “As indicated at 308, receiving the information from the host device platform may include receiving host device firmware data, runtime system state information, and/or hardware configuration information.”);
performing a firmware resiliency management operation (Examiner’s note: Claim 13 is rejected under USC 112. A best-effort assumption was made that an amended and corrected claim 13 may mirror independent claims 1 and 7. Claim 13 is rejected with the same references as claims 1 and 7. Bulygin, ¶[0039] “… the method may optionally include performing remediation for any determined potential implant, as indicated at 320. For example, any affected systems may be isolated via hardware-based mechanisms to avoid contaminating other devices in an organization. In some examples, the bus may notify other devices on the bus if a blacklisted USB device is plugged into the computer.”),
Bulygin does not explicitly teach the following limitation that Grocutt teaches:
the firmware resiliency management operation resiliently maintaining integrity of firmware code associated with the processor environment installed on the information handling system, the firmware code including the distributed BIOS (Examiner’s note: Claim 13 is rejected under USC 112. A best-effort assumption was made that an amended and corrected claim 13 may mirror independent claims 1 and 7. Claim 13 is rejected with the same references as claims 1 and 7. Grocutt, US 20220366037 A1, ¶[0028], “Interrupts directed to such devices may be handled by exception handler code which is provided by a third party, different to the party providing the operating system which manages general operation of the processing system.”).
Bulygin in view of Grocutt analogous art because the references are from the “same field of endeavor” and are from the same “problem solving area.” Namely, they pertain to the field of “embedded systems device management.” It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Bulygin with Grocutt by
“the firmware resiliency management operation resiliently maintaining integrity of firmware code associated with the processor environment installed on the information handling system, the firmware code including the distributed BIOS”
because the operating system provider may not trust the code provided by the other party and so may wish that the untrusted exception handler code for controlling such untrusted devices should not have the full privileges associated with the handler mode (Grocutt, ¶[0028]).
Regarding Claim 19, Bulygin in view of Grocutt teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the computer executable instructions are deployable to a client system from a server system at a remote location (Bulygin, ¶[0005], “In this way, the client system (also referred to herein as a host device) may collect firmware and/or hardware information that may be used by the remote device to detect security threats. Thus, this disclosure provides a two-pronged system which includes a local agent on a monitored host (e.g., monitored hardware element of a host device) and a centralized server for analysis and reporting. A web-based interface may also be employed to enable interaction with the system and to allow users to take action to mitigate any detected threats.”).
Regarding Claim 20, Bulygin in view of Grocutt teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the computer executable instructions are provided by a service provider to a user on an on-demand basis (Bulygin, ¶[0026], “The configuration of the scanning by the local security agent may be modified by an administrator or other user (e.g., to change a frequency or timing of scans), and the administrator or other user may request an on-demand scan of the host device.”).
Claims 2, 8, and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bulygin et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2020/0074086 A1, hereinafter, Bulygin) in view of Grocutt (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2022/0366037 A1) and further in view of Friedman (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2005/0138617 A1).
Regarding Claim 2, Bulygin in view of Grocutt teaches: The method of claim 1, wherein:
Bulygin in view of Grocutt does not explicitly teach the following limitation that Friedman teaches:
the context-aware persona enumeration operation dynamically adjusts a user identify based upon contextual information (Friedman, ¶[0054], “The dynamic manner of operation permits system resources such as interrupt number, address range, and device identity, to be re-assigned without requiring a reboot.” ¶[0056], “D&C system 307 may utilize data in SRT 312 for various purposes, such as for creating labels for enumerating a list of devices.” Bulygin also teaches a “context aware persona operation.”).
Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Friedman is analogous art because the references are from the “same field of endeavor” and are from the same “problem solving area.” Namely, they pertain to the field of “embedded systems device management.” It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Bulygin in view of Grocutt with Friedman, wherein
“the context-aware persona enumeration operation dynamically adjusts a user identify based upon contextual information,”
Because a method is disclosed for discovering and configuring an audio input device that is coupled to any one of several externally-accessible input ports of a PC (Friedman, Abstract).
Regarding Claim 8, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Friedman teaches: The system of claim 7, wherein: the context-aware persona enumeration operation dynamically adjusts a user identify based upon contextual information (Friedman, ¶[0054], “The dynamic manner of operation permits system resources such as interrupt number, address range, and device identity, to be re-assigned without requiring a reboot.” ¶[0056], “D&C system 307 may utilize data in SRT 312 for various purposes, such as for creating labels for enumerating a list of devices.” Bulygin also teaches a “context aware persona operation.”).
Regarding Claim 14, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Friedman teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein:
the context-aware persona enumeration operation dynamically adjusts a user identify based upon contextual information (Friedman, ¶[0054], “The dynamic manner of operation permits system resources such as interrupt number, address range, and device identity, to be re-assigned without requiring a reboot.” ¶[0056], “D&C system 307 may utilize data in SRT 312 for various purposes, such as for creating labels for enumerating a list of devices.” Bulygin also teaches a “context aware persona operation.”).
Claims 3-6, 9-12, and 15-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bulygin et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2020/0074086 A1, hereinafter, Bulygin) in view of Grocutt (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2022/0366037 A1) and further in view of Kaler et al. (US Patent Application Publication No. US 2021/0157760 A1, hereinafter, Kaler).
Regarding Claim 3, Bulygin in view of Grocutt teaches: The method of claim 1, wherein:
Bulygin in view of Grocutt does not explicitly teach the following limitation that Kaler teaches:
the information handling system includes an embedded controller, the embedded controller being implemented to provide a root of trust (Kaler, ¶[0036], “the baseboard management controller 170 may, initiate a system management interrupt (SMI), and an SMI handler may then, in a system management mode (SMM) of the computer system 100, cause the TPM 160 to generate the key encrypting key for the drive 122, store the key in the secure memory 161 of the TPM 160 and provide the key to the baseboard management controller 170 via a secure channel.”).
Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler is analogous art because the references are from the “same field of endeavor” and are from the same “problem solving area.” Namely, they pertain to the field of “embedded systems device management.” It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Bulygin in view of Grocutt with Kaler, wherein
“the information handling system includes an embedded controller, the embedded controller being implemented to provide a root of trust,”
Because a technique is disclosed where a baseboard management controller performs a security operation corresponding to a device based on communication with the device using a channel (Kaler, Abstract).
Regarding Claim 4, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The method of claim 3, wherein: the root of trust is used when performing the intelligent interrupt management operation (Kaler, ¶[0035], “the baseboard management controller 170 may respond to an interrupt that the peripheral interface controller 130 generates in response to the peripheral interface controller's detecting of the hot plug event.”).
Regarding Claim 5, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The method of claim 1, wherein: the intelligent interrupt management operation manages an interrupt generated by a peripheral device when a user is interacting with the information handling system (Kaler, ¶[0035], “the baseboard management controller 170 may respond to an interrupt that the peripheral interface controller 130 generates in response to the peripheral interface controller's detecting of the hot plug event.”).
Regarding Claim 6, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The method of claim 5, wherein: the intelligent interrupt management operation generates a user persona detection vulnerability reporting and workload characterization based upon the interrupt generated by the peripheral device (Bulygin, ¶[0034], “By collecting a history of device data (including firmware measurements, configuration, timing, interrupts, execution counters, and related statistics), a hardware profile may be established that indicates the expected attributes of a given host device. This profile, in addition to its utility for integrity measurement as discussed previously, enables queries for affected devices when vulnerabilities or other issues are discovered.”).
Regarding Claim 9, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The system of claim 7, wherein: the information handling system includes an embedded controller, the embedded controller being implemented to provide a root of trust (Kaler, ¶[0036], “the baseboard management controller 170 may, initiate a system management interrupt (SMI), and an SMI handler may then, in a system management mode (SMM) of the computer system 100, cause the TPM 160 to generate the key encrypting key for the drive 122, store the key in the secure memory 161 of the TPM 160 and provide the key to the baseboard management controller 170 via a secure channel.”).
Regarding Claim 10, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The system of claim 9, wherein: the root of trust is used when performing the intelligent interrupt management operation (Kaler, ¶[0035], “the baseboard management controller 170 may respond to an interrupt that the peripheral interface controller 130 generates in response to the peripheral interface controller's detecting of the hot plug event.”).
Regarding Claim 11, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The system of claim 7, wherein: the intelligent interrupt management operation manages an interrupt generated by a peripheral device when a user is interacting with the information handling system (Kaler, ¶[0035], “the baseboard management controller 170 may respond to an interrupt that the peripheral interface controller 130 generates in response to the peripheral interface controller's detecting of the hot plug event.”).
Regarding Claim 12, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The system of claim 11, wherein: the intelligent interrupt management operation generates a user persona detection vulnerability reporting and workload characterization based upon the interrupt generated by the peripheral device (Bulygin, ¶[0034], “By collecting a history of device data (including firmware measurements, configuration, timing, interrupts, execution counters, and related statistics), a hardware profile may be established that indicates the expected attributes of a given host device. This profile, in addition to its utility for integrity measurement as discussed previously, enables queries for affected devices when vulnerabilities or other issues are discovered.”).
Regarding Claim 15, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13:
the information handling system includes an embedded controller, the embedded controller being implemented to provide a root of trust (Kaler, ¶[0036], “the baseboard management controller 170 may, initiate a system management interrupt (SMI), and an SMI handler may then, in a system management mode (SMM) of the computer system 100, cause the TPM 160 to generate the key encrypting key for the drive 122, store the key in the secure memory 161 of the TPM 160 and provide the key to the baseboard management controller 170 via a secure channel.”).
Regarding Claim 16, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein: the root of trust is used when performing the intelligent interrupt management operation (Kaler, ¶[0035], “the baseboard management controller 170 may respond to an interrupt that the peripheral interface controller 130 generates in response to the peripheral interface controller's detecting of the hot plug event.”).
Regarding Claim 17, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein: the intelligent interrupt management operation manages an interrupt generated by a peripheral device when a user is interacting with the information handling system (Kaler, ¶[0035], “the baseboard management controller 170 may respond to an interrupt that the peripheral interface controller 130 generates in response to the peripheral interface controller's detecting of the hot plug event.”).
Regarding Claim 18, Bulygin in view of Grocutt and further in view of Kaler teaches: The non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein: the intelligent interrupt management operation generates a user persona detection vulnerability reporting and workload characterization based upon the interrupt generated by the peripheral device (Bulygin, ¶[0034], “By collecting a history of device data (including firmware measurements, configuration, timing, interrupts, execution counters, and related statistics), a hardware profile may be established that indicates the expected attributes of a given host device. This profile, in addition to its utility for integrity measurement as discussed previously, enables queries for affected devices when vulnerabilities or other issues are discovered.”).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDGAR W XIE whose telephone number is (703)756-4777. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm.
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/EDGAR W XIE/Examiner, Art Unit 2433 /WASIKA NIPA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2433