Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
Response to Arguments
After further consideration and search, the examiner agrees that claims 1-8 are allowable. In regards to claims 8-20, Applicant’s remarks fled 6/15/26 include statements that independent claims 8 and 15 feature similar features described for claim 1. However, claims 8 and 15 have not been amended to include the features described for claim 1. Accordingly, the rejection for claims 8 and 15 (and their dependents) are maintained. However, they will be considered allowable if amended to be similar to claims 1-7.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 8-10, 12-17 and 19-20 is/are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over “Stop OpenDNS From Redirecting Invalid URLs to their Search Pages” by Amitt Argawal August 4, 2008, from labnol.org (Agarwal) in view of “Exploitable Redirects on the Web: Identification, Prevalence, and Defense” by Shue et al. (Shue).
With respect to claim 8, Argawal teaches an apparatus, comprising: a processor that executes instructions stored in a memory to configure the processor to: blocking an attempt to transmit a request as a browser-modified search request to avoid a redirect of the request (Pages 1-2 – in normal behavior, a browser request with typos or invalid urls may be redirected, for example to a “ad-filled search page” (e.g. landing page). Argawal teaches reconfiguring network settings to block this redirect attempt).
Argawal does not explicitly disclose the element of “based on a comparison of a pattern of a dialog from a web browser application to a stored predetermined pattern of information”. Shue teaches methods for preventing undesired redirects (see Abstract and Introduction - identify redirects that can be exploited – protect clients from being misled by manipulated redirects such as typo-squatted variants of legitimate domains). This includes preventing redirects based on a comparison of a pattern of a dialog from a web browser application to a stored predetermined pattern of information (Section 2.1 – establishing predetermined patterns based on query strings from a browser – section 5.2 – comparison of browser query strings for URL patterns indicative of potential unwanted redirect and refusing the redirect if determined)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to have the blocking of the redirect in Argawal be based on a comparison of a pattern as in Shue. One would be motivated to have this as Argawal already indicates a desire for preventing redirects, including in a more convenient manner (Argawal – Page 1 – indicating redirects as “annoying”, last paragraph “wish this was the default setting”). Additionally, Shue’s method provides the further advantage of protecting the client from misleading, malicious, and/or inappropriate content (Shue Abstract and Introduction).
With respect to claim 9, Argawal as modified teaches the apparatus of claim 8, comprising receiving a request including a uniform resource locator (URL) at the web browser application, wherein the request is received as input to an address bar portion of the web browser application. (Argawal Page 1 – a person may enter a URL in a web browser such as gmail.coms)
With respect to claim 10, Argawal as modified teaches the apparatus of claim 8, comprising receiving a response that a URL is an invalid that cannot be resolved to a corresponding webpage. (Page 1 gmail.coms is invalid vs gmail.com – a response is either landing on a splash page or receiving error)
With respect to claim 12, Argawal as modified teaches the apparatus of claim 8, wherein the browser-modified search request comprises modifications to the request. (Argawal Page 1 an invalid URL will normally result in landing on OpenDNS search page with search suggestions)
With respect to claim 13, Argawal as modified teaches the apparatus of claim 8, wherein the browser-modified search request comprises at least part of the request. (Argawal Page 1 an invalid URL will normally result in landing on OpenDNS search page with search suggestions)
With respect to claim 14, Argawal as modified teaches the apparatus of claim 8, wherein the request is received as input to a search box portion of a search-enabled web page. (Argawal Page 1 –OpenDNS search page with resulting search suggestions)
Claims 15-17 and 19-20 are similar in scope to claims 8-10 and 12-14 and are therefore rejected based on the same rationale.
Claims 11 and 18 rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Argawal and Shue as applied above, and further in view of “DNS Knowledge What is NXDOMAIN (Non-Existent Domain)” August 17, 2009, by dnsknowledge.com (DNS).
With respect to Claim 11, Argawal as modified teaches the apparatus of claim 10, but does not explicitly disclose wherein receiving a response that the URL is an invalid URL comprises receiving a NXDOMAIN HTTP parameter.
However, as shown by DNS, NXDOMAIN is a known term used for conveying a domain name is unable to be resolved.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to use the NXDOMAIN parameter of DNS in the invalid URL response of Argawal. One would be motivated to have this as it is a well known and commonly used parameter for indicating an invalid URL .
Claims 18 is similar in scope to claim 11 and are rejected based on the same rationale as claim 11.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-7 are allowed.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID R LAZARO whose telephone number is (571)272-3986. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-4:30.
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/DAVID R LAZARO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2455
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