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 .
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.
DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to applicant’s original submittal made on 07/31/2024. Claims 1-16 are pending.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the claims at issue are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claims 1, 8 and 14 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 1 of U.S. Patent No. 11,455,377 and 377’ hereinafter. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because both sets of claims are drawn to the following:
(18/790790) an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors; a database including one or more sets of authorized licenses, each set of authorized licenses associated with a respective vendor software; a license manager in communication with the IoT device and the database, the license manager comprising: a processor; a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions executable by the processor to: receive, via the IoT device, a request to reserve a license of a first set of one or more authorized licenses associated with a first vendor software; determine, via the database, an availability of the license associated with the first vendor software; register, via the database, a unique identifier of the IoT device responsive to determining that the license is available, wherein by registration the unique identifier is associated with the license; and grant the license to the IoT device; maps to (377’). A system comprising: an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors; a database including one or more sets of authorized licenses, each set of authorized licenses associated with a respective vendor software; a license manager in communication with the IoT device and the database, the license manager comprising: a processor; a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions executable by the processor to: receive, via the IoT device, a request to reserve a license of a first set of one or more authorized licenses associated with a first vendor software; determine, via the database, an availability of the license associated with the first vendor software; register, via the database, a unique identifier of the IoT device responsive to determining that the license is available, wherein by registration the unique identifier is associated with the license; revoking the license from another IoT device with a lower priority level of license availability than a priority level of license availability for the IoT device; and grant the license to the IoT device; determine, via an IoT device vendor, whether one of the IoT device or the first vendor software is supported by the IoT device vendor, and deny the license to the IoT device responsive to determining that the IoT device or the vendor software is not supported by the IoT device vendor.
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.
Claim 14 recites the limitation "the IoT device " in lines 3 and 5. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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.
Claim(s) 1-4, 6-12 and 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Marnell et al. (US Patent No. 9,672,334 and Marnell hereinafter) in view of Smith et al. (US Patent Publication No. 2016/0364553 and Smith hereinafter).
As to claims 1, 8 and 14, Marnell teaches a system comprising:
a database including one or more sets of authorized licenses (i.e., …teaches in col. 6 lines 10-20 the following: “he entitlement reservoir 212 is configured to store records associated with license entitlements managed by the license provision system 200. The entitlement reservoir 212 can include attribute/value pairs associated with each license entitlement, including available quantity, license metrics and/or product use rights associated with each license entitlement.”),
each set of authorized licenses associated with a respective vendor software (i.e., …teaches in col. 3 lines 1-5 the following: “a license provision system (e.g., a software publisher or an application service platform)”);
the license manager comprising: a processor; a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions executable by the processor to (i.e., …illustrates in figure 2 a license manager):
a request to reserve a license of a first set of one or more authorized licenses associated with a first vendor software (i.e., …teaches in col. 7 lines 45-55 the following: “the license provision system attempts to match one or more available license entitlements (e.g., with positive available quantity) in its entitlement reservoir (e.g., the entitlement reservoir 212) to the consumption demand request.”);
determine, via the database, an availability of the license associated with the first vendor software (i.e., …teaches in col. 7 lines 45-55 the following: “the license provision system attempts to match one or more available license entitlements (e.g., with positive available quantity) in its entitlement reservoir (e.g., the entitlement reservoir 212) to the consumption demand request.”);
register, via the database, a unique identifier of the
wherein by registration the unique identifier is associated with the license (i.e., …teaches in col. 8 lines 1-15 the following: “In response to determining a single match between one of the available license entitlements and the consumption demand request, at step 308, the license provision system can assign the matched license entitlement to the requesting account and/or the requesting device”. …teaches in col. 3 lines 5-15 the following: “A resource control system can assign a license entitlement to a consumer object (e.g., an object that triggered a consumption demand request).”),
and grant the license to the
Marnell does not expressly teach:
an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors;
receive, via the IoT device,
a license manager in communication with the IoT device and the database.
In this instance the examiner notes the teachings of prior art reference Smith.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors”, teaches in par. 0003 the following: “IoT devices with content display capabilities”.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “receive, via the IoT device”, teaches in par. 0027 the following: “IoT devices 140 may be introduced to the domain to which IKM 120 is the domain controller by sending a request”.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “a license manager in communication with the IoT device and the database”, illustrates in figure 1… IoT devices in communication with a database structure.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention was made to implement the teachings of Marnell with the teachings of Smith by having their system comprise an enhanced application of small devices. One would have been motivated to do so to provide a simple and effective means to provide robust device coverage, wherein the enhanced application of small devices will help to facilitate more usage in networks and makes it easier to configure smaller devices.
As to claims 2 and 9, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 1 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to:
determine a service level agreement to be applied to the
and determine, based on the service level agreement, a priority level of license availability of the license for the first vendor software (i.e., …teaches in col. 10 lines 15-25 the following: “priority to be assigned to the single license entitlement that can satisfy the usage requirement”).
Marnell does not expressly teach: an internet of things (IoT) device.
In this instance the examiner notes the teachings of prior art reference Smith.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors”, teaches in par. 0003 the following: “IoT devices with content display capabilities”.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention was made to implement the teachings of Marnell with the teachings of Smith by having their system comprise an enhanced application of small devices. One would have been motivated to do so to provide a simple and effective means to provide robust device coverage, wherein the enhanced application of small devices will help to facilitate more usage in networks and makes it easier to configure smaller devices.
As to claims 3 and 10, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 1 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a system of claim 2, wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to: reserve, at the database, one or more of the first set of licenses based, at least in part, on the priority level of license availability (i.e., …teaches in col. 10 lines 35-40 the following: “the license provision system prioritizes assignment of these license”).
As to claims 4 and 12, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 1 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to: create a restriction condition on the use of the license (i.e., …teaches in col. 6 lines 15-20 the following: “entitlement reservoir 212 can include attribute/value pairs associated with each license entitlement, including available quantity, license metrics and/or product use rights associated with each license entitlement.” …teaches in col. 9 lines 5-20 the following: “The generated table can include at least one record per potential number of processors, up to the maximum number of processors found in the operating environment. If different license entitlements in the target set of different limitation on the number of virtual machines allowed, the generated table can also include another column specifying a limit on the number of virtual machines allowed per license entitlement.”).
and revoke the license upon an occurrence of the restriction condition (i.e., …teaches in col. 15 lines 35-50 the following: “If there are not enough Type One LEs to cover all physical installations of the Type A OS edition, the resource control system configures the remaining hosts to each consume a Type One LE and marks the license record as in breach.”).
As to claims 6 and 11, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 1 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to: acquire, from a first software vendor associated with the first vendor software, one or more additional licenses in response to determining that the license is not available (i.e., …teaches in col. 11 lines 35-50 the following: “in response to determining that the next ranked license entitlement does not have enough available quantity to cover the remaining consumption demand requests to the next ORT, the license provision system can calculate (e.g., using the License Metric and Product Use Rights of the next ranked license entitlement) the number of consumption demand requests that the remaining quantity of the remaining total license entitlements can cover, from the bottom of the ordered list of consumption demand requests and up (e.g., consumption demand requests with lowest OR values and up). In this step, the license provision system can use the least amount of higher ranked licenses possible.”);
and grant, responsive to the request, a second license of the one or more additional licenses to the
Marnell does not expressly teach: an internet of things (IoT) device.
In this instance the examiner notes the teachings of prior art reference Smith.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors”, teaches in par. 0003 the following: “IoT devices with content display capabilities”.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention was made to implement the teachings of Marnell with the teachings of Smith by having their system comprise an enhanced application of small devices. One would have been motivated to do so to provide a simple and effective means to provide robust device coverage, wherein the enhanced application of small devices will help to facilitate more usage in networks and makes it easier to configure smaller devices.
As to claim 7, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 1 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a system of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to: reduce, based at least in part on a usage statistic for the first vendor software, a total number of licenses in the first set of one or more authorized licenses associated with the first vendor software (i.e. …teaches in col. 2 lines 60-67 the following: “… limits how many times the license entitlement can be consumed. An organization can acquire a license entitlement a number of times from a license provision system (e.g., a software publisher or an application service platform) and reduce the available quantity of the license entitlement by that number of times.”),
wherein the usage statistic includes at least one of a current use, average concurrent use, or a peak usage of the first vendor software (i.e. …teaches in col. 1 lines 20-30 the following: “The license entitlement can be “consumed” by per usage, per account, per device, per time period, or any combination thereof.”).
As to claim 15, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 14 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a method of claim 14, further comprising:
acquiring, via the license manager, one or more additional licenses in response to determining that the license is not available (i.e., …teaches in col. 11 lines 35-50 the following: “in response to determining that the next ranked license entitlement does not have enough available quantity to cover the remaining consumption demand requests to the next ORT, the license provision system can calculate (e.g., using the License Metric and Product Use Rights of the next ranked license entitlement) the number of consumption demand requests that the remaining quantity of the remaining total license entitlements can cover, from the bottom of the ordered list of consumption demand requests and up (e.g., consumption demand requests with lowest OR values and up). In this step, the license provision system can use the least amount of higher ranked licenses possible.”);
and granting, via the license manager, a second license of the one or more additional licenses to the
and reducing, via the license manager, based at least in part on a usage statistic for the first vendor software, a total number of licenses in the first set of one or more authorized licenses associated with the first vendor software (i.e. …teaches in col. 2 lines 60-67 the following: “… limits how many times the license entitlement can be consumed. An organization can acquire a license entitlement a number of times from a license provision system (e.g., a software publisher or an application service platform) and reduce the available quantity of the license entitlement by that number of times.”),
wherein the usage statistic includes at least one of a current use, average concurrent use, or a peak usage of the first vendor software (i.e. …teaches in col. 1 lines 20-30 the following: “The license entitlement can be “consumed” by per usage, per account, per device, per time period, or any combination thereof.”).
Marnell does not expressly teach: an internet of things (IoT) device.
In this instance the examiner notes the teachings of prior art reference Smith.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “an internet of things (IoT) device in communication with one or more sensors”, teaches in par. 0003 the following: “IoT devices with content display capabilities”.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention was made to implement the teachings of Marnell with the teachings of Smith by having their system comprise an enhanced application of small devices. One would have been motivated to do so to provide a simple and effective means to provide robust device coverage, wherein the enhanced application of small devices will help to facilitate more usage in networks and makes it easier to configure smaller devices.
As to claim 16, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 15 above teaches license management, specifically Marnell teaches a method of claim 15, further comprising: creating, via the license manager, a restriction condition on the use of the license (i.e., …teaches in col. 6 lines 15-20 the following: “entitlement reservoir 212 can include attribute/value pairs associated with each license entitlement, including available quantity, license metrics and/or product use rights associated with each license entitlement.” …teaches in col. 9 lines 5-20 the following: “The generated table can include at least one record per potential number of processors, up to the maximum number of processors found in the operating environment. If different license entitlements in the target set of different limitation on the number of virtual machines allowed, the generated table can also include another column specifying a limit on the number of virtual machines allowed per license entitlement.”.);
and revoking, via the license manager, the license upon an occurrence of the restriction condition (i.e., …teaches in col. 15 lines 35-50 the following: “If there are not enough Type One LEs to cover all physical installations of the Type A OS edition, the resource control system configures the remaining hosts to each consume a Type One LE and marks the license record as in breach.”).
Claim(s) 5 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Marnell in view of Smith as applied to claims 4 and 12 above and further in view of Haeuser et al. (US Patent Publication No. 2007/0260604 and Haeuser hereinafter).
As to claims 5 and 13, the system of Marnell and Smith as applied to claim 4 above teaches license management, specifically neither Marnell nor Smith teaches a system of claim 4, wherein one or more sensors includes a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver, wherein the restriction condition is one of a geographic or temporal restriction, wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to: determine, via the IoT device, at least one of a location or local time of the IoT device based on data received from the GNSS receiver; and deny, based at least in part on the at least one of the location or local time of the IoT device, granting the license to the IoT device.
In this instance the examiner notes the teachings of prior art reference Haeuser.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “wherein one or more sensors includes a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver”, …teaches in par. 0014 the following: “a satellite”.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “wherein the restriction condition is one of a geographic or temporal restriction”, teaches in par. 0033 the following: “In one example, the subscription information is subscription records associated with a fixed geographical location. For example, the subscription records may be subscription records associated with a subscription to media content at a house. The example subscription records may be associated with a subscription to a premium content channel (e.g., the HBO channel). In another example, the subscription records may be associated with both a geographically fixed location and the mobile device.”.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “wherein the instructions are further executable by the processor to: determine, via the IoT device, at least one of a location or local time of the IoT device based on data received from the GNSS receiver”, …teaches in par. 0014 the following: “a satellite”. Further teaches in par. 0034 the following: “the billing interface 124 compares the requested media content to subscription information associated with a fixed geographical location (e.g., a home or a business) to determine if the requesting device is authorized to access the requested media content (block 212). If the consumer and/or the device are not authorized to access the media content, the billing interface 124 transmits a notification (e.g., an access denied error message) to the mobile device via the client interface 118 and the NTU 112 or the wireless communication network (106 (block 218). If the consumer and/or device are authorized to access the media content because of their geographical based subscription (e.g., a subscription associated with a fixed geographical location)…”.
With regards to applicant’s claim limitation element of, “and deny, based at least in part on the at least one of the location or local time of the IoT device, granting the license to the IoT device”, teaches in par. 0034 the following: “the billing interface 124 compares the requested media content to subscription information associated with a fixed geographical location (e.g., a home or a business) to determine if the requesting device is authorized to access the requested media content (block 212). If the consumer and/or the device are not authorized to access the media content, the billing interface 124 transmits a notification (e.g., an access denied error message) to the mobile device via the client interface 118 and the NTU 112 or the wireless communication network (106 (block 218).”.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention was made to implement the teachings of Marnell and Smith with the teachings of Haeuser by having their system comprise an enhanced license distribution process. One would have been motivated to do so to provide a simple and effective means to manage license related data, wherein the enhanced license distribution process helps facilitate proper access control of content within the network and makes it easier to secure content.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRYAN F WRIGHT whose telephone number is (571)270-3826.
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/BRYAN F WRIGHT/ Examiner, Art Unit 2497