DETAILED ACTION
Notice of 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 .
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed 2025-12-10 has been entered and fully considered.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Invention XII (claims 13 and 17) in the reply filed on 2025-12-10 is acknowledged.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of papers submitted under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d), which papers have been placed of record in the file.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 2024-12-03 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 13 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Berntsen et al. (US Pre-Grant Publication No. 20140006692-A1, hereinafter “Berntsen”).
With respect to independent claim 13, Berntsen discloses a data protection method of a data protection system comprising:
transmitting an execution instruction to a determination device {paras. 0034 and 0091: “memory protection logic is preferably configured to monitor all accesses to the memory (e.g. all read, write and instruction-fetch operations)”}.
the determination device determining whether the execution instruction is corresponding to a protected data area or a non-protected data area of a first storage unit {paras. 0037-0041 and 0091-0093: “memory protection unit can then be configured to determine whether the read request is for an address in the protected region of the memory”, and the same process can be performed for “write requests for addresses in a protected region of the volatile memory”}.
the determination device permitting or denying an access of a data adjustment operation to crucial data in a second storage unit according to whether the execution instruction corresponds to the protected data area or the non-protected data area of the first storage unit {paras. 0040-0044, 0092, and 0097: “memory protection logic may by [sic] configured to deny read and/or write requests for addresses in the user region received from a debugging interface if the read protection flag for the user region is set”}.
With respect to dependent claim 17, Berntsen discloses triggering a locking mechanism by blowing a fuse and/or writing to a register to render a program code in the protected data area unalterable after the data protection system has been manufactured and leaves a factory {para. 0090: “On power up, relevant data stored in the memory protection configuration area of flash 13 is copied to memory protection configuration registers accessible to the memory protection logic 9. These registers are writeable only from a hardware state machine that executes only during power on of the microcontroller 1”}.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Kevin Bechtel whose telephone number is 571-270-5436. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 09:00 - 17:00 ET.
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/Kevin Bechtel/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2491