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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/23/2025 was filed after the mailing date of the non-Final Office Action on 10/02/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Status of the Claims
Claims 1 – 19 were presented and rejection on Claims 1 – 19 have been maintained.
Claims 7, 8 and 18 are objected and would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims and overcoming all categories of the 35 USC 112 rejections.
Examiner reached out to the Attorney on record, Mr. Thomas J. Frame (Registration number 47,232) to help improve the independent claims towards advancing this Application with an Examiner’s amendment for an Allowance, the Examiner was directed to provide an office action. Examiner adds helpful suggestions, in this office action, from the instant Specification, to capture the Applicant’s Invention in its entirety.
Response to Amendment
The remarks filed on 12/29/2025 by the Attorney on record, have been fully considered and addressed the Specification objections, claim amendments, Double Patenting rejections, 35 USC 112 rejections and the prior art rejections, in this office action.
Double Patenting
In view of the Terminal Disclaimers filed on 1/20/2026, the Double Patenting rejection has been withdrawn.
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities, and is maintained as the Applicant has not provided an amended copy of the Specification, clarifying the issues presented in the non-Final Office Action:
Instant Specification (not published) para [0033] is missing a period after “scalability and reliability”, line 4 and before “By”.
In para [0047], the repeated numeral (3) must be modified to (4) (emphasis added). The following list is with correction shown, for easy reference:
periodically fetching…
configure Linux networking…
periodically reporting…
proxying remote end-user…. [here the correction
Appropriate correction is required. Examiner reminds that no new matter should be introduced in the replacement sections of the instant Specification, and an extensive review from the Applicant with the instant Specification is beneficial/needed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
With respect to claims 1 - 19, the remarks “Applicant has made a small amendment to address the Examiner’s concern” are not persuasive, and the specific amendment to all the independent claims, “wherein the tunnel setup is affected by a policy that is shared between the end-user device and the firewall connection, and wherein the policy includes a privacy level and a low-latency parameter” did not address nor it overcame the rejection for “changing, by the firewall connector, the unique source IP address or the destination IP address of the data packet” does not bring any clarity within the limitation” or “configuring, by the firewall connector, Linux networking according to the configuration; proxying remote end-user DNS queries to a local name server”.
Examiner directs the Applicant’s attention to the instant Specification Summary of the claimed invention and para [0099 - 0102], where the support for the subject matter that is clearly disclosed the invention in its entirety.
Examiner suggests amending the independent claims 1, 12 and 20 with the subject matter that is claimed in the Claims 4, 5, 15 and 16 and by incorporating the disclosed subject matter from the paragraphs [0099 – 0102 and 0119 - 0120]. Examiner also suggests amending the dependent claims 9 and 19, from the disclosed subject matter in the Specification paragraph [0047] (as detailed below).
Additionally, the amendment to the independent claims are subject to 35 USC 112(b) rejection under the “Failure to particularly point out & distinctly claim the invention, due to lack of antecedent basis in the claims” (See below).
Examiner offered to provide guidance to overcoming all the pending issues via Examiner’s amendment to expedite the prosecution of this Application, the Attorney informed the Examiner to send out an action detailing the exiting & new issues. Examiner respectfully maintains the 35 USC 112 rejection as detailed below along with providing solutions for each of the pending issues.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
Applicant primarily argues that the cited prior art Mitin fails to discuss the newly introduced limitation “wherein the tunnel setup is affected by a policy that is shared between the end-user device and the firewall connection, and wherein the policy includes a privacy level and a low-latency parameter” and Applicant reviewed the cited references and found nothing that would be relevant to these teachings. Examiner respectfully disagrees and directs specific paragraphs from the Mitin reference that discloses traffic tunneling that includes adding policies for firewall rules through the created WireGuard and GRE interfaces, along with measured time intervals, time thresholds that are based on predetermined schedules (Background & Summary; paragraphs [194 – 195]). Additionally, various approaches of tunneling is disclosed in para [0013 - 0019] and corresponding prior art US Patents and US Publications.
Examiner respectfully maintains the 35 USC 102 rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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 – 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential structural cooperative relationships of elements, such omission amounting to a gap between the necessary structural connections. See MPEP § 2172.01. The omitted structural cooperative relationships are:
As per claims 1, 12 and 20, “changing, by the firewall connector, the unique source IP address or the destination IP address of the data packet” does not bring any clarity within the limitation. Considering the dependent claims 4, 5, 15 and 16, it is noted that the structure and function of the firewall connector is well defined, with respect to changing the unique source IP address or the destination address.
Examiner suggests amending the independent claims 1 and 12 with the subject matter that is claimed in the Claims 4, 5, 15 and 16. Claims 2-3, 6-14 and 17-19 are rejected by their virtue of dependency on the above rejected claims.
As per claims 9 and 19, “configuring, by the firewall connector, Linux networking according to the configuration; proxying remote end-user DNS queries to a local name server”, do not bring any clarity within the limitation.
Examiner suggests bringing the structural cooperative relationships from the instant Specification paragraph [0047] for properly claiming the subject matter and to establish “the firewall connector configuring Linux networking according to the configuration fetched from the central management platform and command center” and “proxying remote end-user DNS queries to a local name server by the central management platform and command center” (emphasis added).
Claims 1-20 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, 12 and 20 recites the limitation "wherein the tunnel setup" in the newly introduced limitation, “wherein the tunnel setup is affected by a policy that is shared between the end-user device and the firewall connection, and wherein the policy includes a privacy level and a low-latency parameter”.
There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claims. Examiner suggests amending this limitation with “wherein the secure network tunnel setup is affected by a policy that is shared between the end-user device and the firewall connection, and wherein the policy includes a privacy level and a low-latency parameter” (Emphasis added).
Dependent Claims 2-11 and 13-19 are rejected by their virtue of dependency on the above rejected claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Claims 1 - 20 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 written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Amended claims 1, 12 and 20 recite “wherein the tunnel setup is affected by a policy that is shared between the end-user device and the firewall connection, and wherein the policy includes a privacy level and a low-latency parameter”, however the instant Specification is silent on what constitutes “a low-latency parameter”. There is no support or disclosure for any kind of parameter(s) in the specification. The amendment to these claims have not provided any additional significance in claiming the Applicant’s claimed invention and as such under a broad reasonable interpretation (with no support in the instant specification), the limitation will be considered for the prior art discussion as, “the policy includes a privacy level”.
Dependent Claims 2-11 and 13-19 are rejected by their virtue of dependency on the above rejected claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1 – 6, 9 – 17, 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 (a)(2) as being anticipated by Mitin (US Publication number 2023/0388275).
As per claims 1, 12 and 20, Mitin discloses “setting up, by the firewall connector, a secure network tunnel between the end-user device and an access tier in a lowest-latency location closest to a location of the end-user device (Summary; para [0038, 0041]);
assigning, by a centralized management platform, a unique source IP address to the end-user device; receiving a data packet from the access tier at the firewall connector, wherein the access tier receives the data packet from the end-user device for the private network (para [0038]);
changing, by the firewall connector, the unique source IP address or a unique destination IP address of the data packet (para [0041 and 0048]); and
forwarding, by the firewall connector, the data packet to a correct location on the private network, wherein the tunnel setup is affected by a policy that is shared between the end-user device and the firewall connector, and wherein the policy includes a privacy level and a low-latency parameter” (para [0041, 0048 and 0194 – 0195).
As per claims 2 and 13, Mitin further discloses “further comprising evaluating the data packet based on rules related to network traffic at a transport level” (para [0023 and 0041]).
As per claims 3 and 14, Mitin further discloses “wherein the secure network tunnel uses WireGuard peering” (para [0045]).
As per claims 4 and 15, Mitin further discloses “wherein the changing the unique destination IP address is performed by destination network address translation (DNAT) such that no two firewall connectors that are destinations have overlapping network address spaces in a virtual IP address space even if some of the firewall connectors do have overlapping addresses” (para [0195 and 0200]).
As per claims 5 and 63, Mitin further discloses “wherein the changing the unique source IP address is performed by source network address translation (SNAT) such that the unique source IP address is changed to an IP address of the firewall connector on the private network” (para [0195 and 0200]).
As per claims 6 and 17, Mitin further discloses “further comprising logically disabling source network address translation (SNAT) at the access tier and at the firewall connector” (para [0006 and 0195]).
As per claims 9 and 19, Mitin further discloses “periodically fetching, by the firewall connector, a configuration from the centralized management platform; configuring, by the firewall connector, Linux networking according to the configuration (para [0058]);
periodically, by the firewall connector, reporting a firewall connector status to the centralized management platform; and proxying remote end-user DNS queries to a local name server” (para 0190 and 0191]).
As per claim 10, Mitin further discloses “using an executable to proxy DNS requests from the end-user device, wherein the executable allowed for features including transparent retries and cycling through different name sever IPs if one fails” (para [0041 - 0048]).
As per claim 11, J Mitin further discloses “using iptables to create a DNAT rule to give the firewall connector an ability to forward DNS queries directly to an IP address of a local name server” (para [0041 - 0048]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7 and 18 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, along with amendments to the independent claims 1 and 12 (as suggested above) and to overcome all categories of 35 USC 112(b) rejections.
Claim 8, by the virtue of its dependency on the indicated allowable subject matter in Claim 7, is allowable.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Mitin teaches the limitations of parent claims 1, 6, 12 and 17, as detailed and rejected in this office action, however, when the instant invention taken together with all the intervening claims, Mitin does not explicitly disclose “logically disabling the SNAT is achieved by applying SNAT to a source IP address of the end-user device to a unique range of IP addresses for each access tier and translating back to the source IP address at the firewall connector”.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PRAMILA PARTHASARATHY whose telephone number is (571)272-3866. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri: 7AM - 2PM EST.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Hadi Armouche can be reached at (571)270-3618. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PRAMILA PARTHASARATHY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2409
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