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
1. This Office Action is in response to the amendment filed on 12/09/2025.
Claims 1, 17 and 19 have been amended.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
2. The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 02/17/2026 and 01/07/2026 comply with the provisions of M.P.E.P. 609. The examiner has considered it.
Response to Arguments
3. Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1-2, 4-15 and 17-20 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Examiner’s Note
4. Data lineage (According to Google): “Data lineage is the process of tracking, mapping, and visualizing the entire lifecycle of data, from its origin, through all transformations (ETL/ELT processes), to its final destination and consumption. It provides a detailed record of data dependencies, enabling users to verify accuracy, audit compliance, troubleshoot errors, and understand the impact of changes.”
Data asset (According to Google): “A data asset is a managed collection of structured or unstructured data—such as databases, files, or reports—that holds measurable economic or operational value for an organization. These digital resources are used to drive decision-making, improve processes, and provide competitive insights. They can include customer records, sensor data, or intellectual property.”
Gatchell et al, US 10,521,442, [Gatchell: Abstract and column 1, lines 29-46 (“provides integrated technical metadata and business metadata for each of a plurality of the data assets of the enterprise”, i.e., ‘shared data asset’ and ‘shared data asset object’)] [Gatchell: Column 2, lines 34-37 and Figure 6 (“FIG. 6 shows an example of an integrated workflow generated utilizing a value-based governance architecture”, i.e., ‘shared data asset’ and ‘shared data asset object’)] [Gatchell: Column 12, lines 11-17 (“Metadata Integration. Integration combines technical and business metadata as well as data lineage”, i.e., ‘data lineage’ and ‘shared data asset’)] [Gatchell: Column 2, lines 1-12 (“Governance issues relating to data assets from multiple distinct data sources”, i.e., distributed data system)] [Gatchell: Column 12, lines 31-44 (“this figure illustrates an end-to-end integrated workflow from request to review to approval and provisioning across multiple teams from including business and IT teams”, i.e., data approval)].
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Claims 1-2, 4, 6-8, 10-14 and 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chu et al (US 20230007074), in view of Gatchell et al (US 10,521,442).
Claim 1:
Chu suggests a computer-implemented method for providing sharing of electronic data
assets, the computer-implemented method comprising, by one or more hardware processors
executing program instructions: receiving, from a first user, a request to access a shared data
asset, wherein the shared data asset is associated with a shared data asset object [Chu: Title and
paragraphs 29, 40, 42 and 63 ("global data sharing" and "The private data exchange may
provide a centralized, managed hub for an entity to list internally or externally-shared data
assets, inspire data collaboration, and also to maintain data governance and to audit access")].
Chu suggests in response to receiving the request from the first user, generating a data access
request object including at least an identification of the first user and an identification of the
shared data asset object [Chu: Paragraphs 40, 45-47 and 49-50 ("The access controls 206 may specify a class of users (members of a particular group or organization) that are allowed to access the data and/or see the listing. The access controls 206 may specify that a "point-to-point" share ")]. Chu suggests obtaining an approval of the request [Chu: Paragraphs 46 and 129 ("The access controls 206 may specify that a "point-to-point" share (see discussion of FIG. 4) in which users may request access but are only allowed access upon approval of the provider" and "The data provider may approve or deny the request at 822. If approved, the private data exchange may grant access to the listing at 823. The user may then begin consuming the data as discussed above ")]. Chu suggests in response to obtaining the approval of the request, granting the first user access to the shared data asset associated with the shared data asset object [Chu: Paragraphs 46 and 129 ("The access controls 206 may specify that a "point-to-point" share (see discussion of FIG. 4) in which users may request access but are only allowed access upon approval of the provider" and "The data provider may approve or deny the request at 822. If approved, the private data exchange may grant access to the listing at 823. The user may then begin consuming the data as discussed above")]. Chu suggests wherein the shared data asset is a
derived data asset comprising a combination of at least two shared source data assets, and
wherein the shared data asset object identifies the shared data asset as derived [Chu: Paragraphs 30 and 108 ("In addition, a data provider may combine its own data with other data sets from, e.g., a public data exchange, and create new listings using the combined data"). Paragraph 67
("manages the integration of shared data referenced by consumed shares"). Paragraph 131
("serve to combine the benefits of crowdsourced content")].
Gatchell suggests indicating lineage data identifying the at least two source data assets based on which the data asset is derived [Gatchell: Abstract and column 1, lines 29-46 (“provides integrated technical metadata and business metadata for each of a plurality of the data assets of the enterprise”, i.e., ‘shared data asset’ and ‘shared data asset object’)] [Gatchell: Column 2, lines 34-37 and Figure 6 (“FIG. 6 shows an example of an integrated workflow generated utilizing a value-based governance architecture”, i.e., ‘shared data asset’ and ‘shared data asset object’)] [Gatchell: Column 12, lines 11-17 (“Metadata Integration. Integration combines technical and business metadata as well as data lineage”, i.e., ‘data lineage’ and ‘shared data asset’)] [Gatchell: Column 2, lines 1-12 (“Governance issues relating to data assets from multiple distinct data sources”, i.e., distributed data system)] [Gatchell: Column 12, lines 31-44 (“this figure illustrates an end-to-end integrated workflow from request to review to approval and provisioning across multiple teams from including business and IT teams”, i.e., data approval)].
Both references (Chu and Gatchell) taught features that were directed to analogous art and they were directed to the same field of endeavor, such as data processing and data integration. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made, having the teachings of Chu and Gatchell before him/her, to modify the system of Chu with the teaching of Gatchell in order to provide data integration and data collaboration or sharing [Gatchell: Column 2, lines 34-37 and Figure 6].
Claim 2:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest wherein the shared data asset object identifies at least a second user authorized to approve sharing of the shared data asset, and wherein obtaining the approval of the request comprises: providing an indication of the data access request object to the second user associated with the shared data asset object; and receiving, from the second user, the approval of the request [Chu: Paragraphs 40, 45-46 and 129 ("The access controls 206 may specify that a "point- to-point" share (see discussion of FIG. 4) in which users may request access but are only allowed access upon approval of the provider" and "The data provider may approve or deny the request at 822. If approved, the private data exchange may grant access to the listing at 823. The user may then begin consuming the data as discussed above ")].
Claim 4:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest further comprising, by the one or more hardware processors executing program instructions: further in response to receiving the approval of the request from the second user: updating the data access request object to include at least an indication of the approval of the request [Chu: Paragraphs 3, 41 and 50 ( "Databases may include one or more tables that include or reference data that can be read, modified, or deleted using queries" and "choose to expand the filters 208 to permit access to excluded users or classes of excluded users ")].
Claim 6:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest receiving one or more user inputs to share a data asset; and in response to receiving the one or more user inputs, generating the shared data asset object [Chu: Paragraphs 40, 45-47 and 49-50 ("The access controls 206 may specify a class of users (members of a particular group or organization) that are allowed to access the data and/or see the listing. The access controls 206 may specify that a "point-to-point" share ")].
Claim 7:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest wherein the shared data asset object comprises metadata including at least one of: schema, update frequencies, owner, tag, approver, column identifier, column description, derivation, or filtering [Chu: Paragraph 27 ("owner of data")].
Claim 8:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest wherein the data access request object comprises metadata including at least one of: forms, conversations, updates, approvals, re-approvals, statuses, or versions [Chu: Paragraphs 46 and 129 ("The access controls 206 may specify that a "point-to-point" share (see discussion of FIG. 4) in which users may request access but are only allowed access upon approval of the provider" and "The data provider may approve or deny the request at 822. If approved, the private data exchange may grant access to the listing at 823. The user may then begin consuming the data as discussed above ")].
Claim 10:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest receiving one or more user inputs to share a data asset; and in response to receiving the one or more user inputs, generating the shared data asset object, wherein the shared data asset is based on the data asset [Chu: Paragraphs 46 and 129 ("The access controls 206 may specify that a "point-to-point" share (see discussion of FIG. 4) in which users may request access but are only allowed access upon approval of the provider" and "The data provider may approve or deny the request at 822. If approved, the private data exchange may grant access to the listing at 823. The user may then begin consuming the data as discussed above ")].
Claim 11:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest wherein the shared data asset is scoped or filtered from the data asset, and wherein the shared data asset object includes information on the scoping or filtering of the data asset [Chu: Paragraph 50 "filtering ")].
Claim 12:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest requesting, from the first user, a justification with the request to access a shared data asset; and updating the data access request object with the justification [Chu: Paragraphs 3, 41 and 50 ("Databases may include one or more tables that include or reference data that can be read, modified, or deleted using queries" and "choose to expand the filters 208 to permit access to excluded users or classes of excluded users")].
Claim 13:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest wherein the shared data asset is updated, and wherein the updates are propagated [Chu: Paragraphs 3, 41 and 50 ("Databases may include one or more tables that include or reference data that can be read, modified, or deleted using queries" and "choose to expand the filters 208 to permit access to excluded users or classes of excluded users'')].
Claim 14:
The combined teachings of Chu and Gatchell suggest wherein the data access request object is versioned [Chu: Paragraphs 56 and 76 ("update version ")].
Claim 17:
Claim 17 is essentially the same as claim 1 except that it sets forth the claimed invention as a system rather than a method and rejected under the same reasons as applied above.
Claim 18:
Claim 18 is essentially the same as claim 2 except that it sets forth the claimed invention as a system rather than a method and rejected under the same reasons as applied above.
Claim 19:
Claim 19 is essentially the same as claim 1 except that it sets forth the claimed invention as a program product rather than a method and rejected under the same reasons as applied above.
Claim 20:
Claim 20 is essentially the same as claim 2 except that it sets forth the claimed invention
as a program product rather than a method and rejected under the same reasons as applied above.
8. Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chu et al (US 20230007074), in view of Gatchell et al (US 10,521,442), and further in view of Samuel et al (US 20230078109).
Claim 5:
The combined teachings of Chu, Gatchell and Samuel suggest comprising, by the one or
more hardware processors executing program instructions: receiving, from the second user, a
second request to stop sharing the shared data asset with the first user; and in response to
receiving the second request from the second user, limiting access to the shared data asset,
[Samuel: Claim 18 ("after providing the popularity metric for display to the data owner, a
request from the data owner to stop sharing their associated data via the one or more sharing
services; and prevent the data associated with the data owner from being shared via the one or
more sharing services ')].
Three references (Chu, Gatchell and Samuel) taught features that were directed to analogous art and they were directed to the same field of endeavor, such as data integration. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made, having the teachings of Chu, Gatchell and Samuel before him/her, to modify the system of Chu and Gatchell with the teaching of Samuel in order to allow a user to stop sharing data [Samuel: Claim 18].
9. Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chu et al (US 20230007074), in view of Gatchell et al (US 10,521,442), and further in view of Brown et al (US 20200204436).
Claim 9:
The combined teachings of Chu, Gatchell and Brown suggest wherein the shared data asset is included in a shared data asset library [Brown: Paragraph 73 "a software application's
reference to a particular asset into a format that is used to refer to that asset in a shared asset
library"). Paragraph 80 ("The assets may also include content such as shared code
libraries")].
Three references (Chu, Gatchell and Brown) taught features that were directed to analogous art and they were directed to the same field of endeavor, such as data sharing. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made, having the teachings of Chu, Gatchell and Brown before him/her, to modify the system of Chu and Gatchell with the teaching of Brown in order to store shared data in a data library [Brown: Paragraph 73].
10. Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chu et al (US 20230007074), in view of Gatchell et al (US 10,521,442), and further in view of Blount et al (US 20110099200).
Claim 15:
The combined teachings of Chu, Gatchell and Blount suggest wherein the shared data asset is associated with at least one namespace or workspace, and wherein granting the first user access to the shared data asset includes updating a namespace or workspace associated with the shared data asset [Blount: Paragraph 58 ("Each device may independently add and remove objects locally and update their local namespace accordingly. Since the namespace is generated from the content of each data object (rather than based on arbitrary file names or the like), no
coordination between machines/devices is required to maintain, namespace integrity during
these add and remove processes. This is because given the same data objects, each of the
participating device uses an identical or similarly operating fingerprint generator mechanism to
process data objects to generate the same fingerprints or file names to create a similar
namespace to reference the shared (or network-accessible) data objects ")].
Three references (Chu, Gatchell and Blount) taught features that were directed to analogous art and they were directed to the same field of endeavor, such as data sharing. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made, having the teachings of Chu, Gatchell and Blount before him/her, to modify the system of Chu and Gatchell with the teaching of Blount in order to update or modify namespace or workspace associated with data [Blount: Paragraph 58].
Allowable Subject Matter
11. Claims 3 and 16 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
12. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to [Hung D. Le], whose telephone number is [571-270-1404]. The examiner can normally be communicated on [Monday to Friday: 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.].
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Apu Mofiz can be reached on [571-272-4080]. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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Hung Le
02/18/2026
/HUNG D LE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2161