DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
This is a first office action on the merits in response to the application filed on 9 August 2024.
Claims 1-22 are currently pending and have been considered by the examiner.
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 statements (IDS) submitted on 7 November 2024 and 23 May 2026 were considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
In the instant case, claims 1-22 are directed towards a method. Therefore, these claims fall within the four statutory categories of invention.
Claim 10 recites the following:
A method for producing an encrypted valid signal for a validated encrypted poll response, the method comprising:
performing, by a processing device, a mathematical operation on the validated encrypted poll response to produce an encrypted valid signal being one of an encrypted first result and an encrypted second result, wherein the mathematical operation applied to the validated encrypted poll response corresponds to an operation that, when applied to plaintext of the validated encrypted poll response, produces the first result as first-result plaintext when the validated encrypted poll response is valid, and produces the second result as second-result plaintext when the validated encrypted poll response is invalid.
Regarding Step 2A Prong One, the claims recite the abstract idea of performing a mathematical operation. Specifically, the claims recite the limitations underlined above which recite the process of performing mathematical calculations which is grouped within the Mathematical Concepts grouping of abstract ideas in prong one of step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP § 2106.04) because the claims involve the process of performing mathematical operations/calculations. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea (See pages 7, 10, Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, et al., US Supreme Court, No. 13-298, June 19, 2014; 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50, 53-54 (January 7, 2019)).
Regarding Step 2A Prong Two, the recited abstract idea is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP § 2106.04(d)), the additional element(s) of the claim(s) such as a “processing device” merely use(s) a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea. Specifically, the “processing device” perform(s) the steps or functions underlined above. The use of a processor/computer as a tool to implement the abstract idea does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it requires no more than a computer performing functions that correspond to acts required to carry out the abstract idea. The additional elements do not involve improvements to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field (MPEP 2106.05(a)), the claims do not apply or use the abstract idea to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition (Vanda Memo), the claims do not apply the abstract idea with, or by use of, a particular machine (MPEP 2106.05(b)), the claims do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing (MPEP 2106.05(c)), and the claims do not apply or use the abstract idea in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception (MPEP 2106.05(e) and Vanda Memo). Therefore, the claims do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of a computer. Nor do they effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. Accordingly, the additional elements do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea, and the claims are directed to an abstract idea.
The claim(s) do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, when analyzed under step 2B of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP § 2106.05), the additional element(s) of a “processing device” amounts to no more than using a computer or processor to automate and/or implement the abstract idea. As discussed above, taking the claim elements separately, the “processing device” perform(s) the steps or functions underlined above. These functions correspond to the actions required to perform the abstract idea. Viewed as a whole, the combination of elements recited in the claims merely recite the abstract idea. Therefore, the use of these additional elements does no more than employ the computer as a tool to automate and/or implement the abstract idea. The use of a computer or processor to merely automate and/or implement the abstract idea cannot provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f) & (h)). Therefore, the claim is not patent eligible.
Dependent claims 2-9, 11-14, and 16-22 further describe the recited abstract idea. The dependent claims do not include additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or that provide significantly more than the abstract idea. Specifically:
Claims 2-3, 14, and 17-18 recite additional limitations which are also directed towards the recited abstract idea.
Claims 4-8, 11-13, 16 and 21-22 merely further describe the specific mathematical operations being performed.
Claims 9 and 19-20 merely further describes the data being used as input for the recited mathematical operations.
Therefore, as the dependent claims do not include additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application nor provide significantly more than the abstract idea, the dependent claims are also not patent eligible.
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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 5, 7-10, 12-13, and 15-22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Tang et al. (US 20200402073 A1).
Regarding Claims 1, 10, and 15, Tang discloses:
A method for producing an encrypted valid signal for a validated encrypted poll response (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “to generate a vector consisting of random numbers; the ciphertext bit accumulation component is configured to perform bitwise homomorphic accumulation and randomized homomorphic accumulation operations on the ballot ciphertext; after completing the pre-processing stage of the ballot ciphertext, sending processed intermediate data to the verification server B”), the method comprising:
performing, by a processing device, a mathematical operation on the validated encrypted poll response to produce an encrypted valid signal being one of an encrypted first result and an encrypted second result (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “to generate a vector consisting of random numbers; the ciphertext bit accumulation component is configured to perform bitwise homomorphic accumulation and randomized homomorphic accumulation operations on the ballot ciphertext; after completing the pre-processing stage of the ballot ciphertext, sending processed intermediate data to the verification server B”; See Tang: Para. [0031] – “the ciphertext bit accumulation component is configured to perform bitwise homomorphic accumulation and randomized homomorphic accumulation operations on the ballot ciphertext”), wherein the mathematical operation applied to the validated encrypted poll response corresponds to an operation that, when applied to plaintext of the validated encrypted poll response, produces the first result as first-result plaintext when the validated encrypted poll response is valid, and produces the second result as second-result plaintext when the validated encrypted poll response is invalid (See Tang: Para. [0039] – “select and generate common parameters: select LWE encryption system parameters n,l,q,α, and homomorphic vote counting upper limit VHom.sub.max, where n is a security parameter of the LWE encryption system; l is the length of the ballot plaintext string, representing the number of candidates; q represents a modulus, since the homomorphic operation is an operation in a finite field, which performs the modulo q operation on calculated results; a is a parameter used in Gaussian sampling, which is related to the squared difference of samples; VHom.sub.max represents the maximum number of times the VSA can perform homomorphic addition for each partially homomorphic vote counting … according to the parameters generated by the system, the verification server A performs a homomorphic addition operation on a set of the valid ballots with a fixed number, sends the generated partially homomorphic vote counting ciphertext to the vote counting server for decryption, and simultaneously sends the same to the bulletin board for publicity;).
Regarding Claims 2 and 17, Tang discloses:
performing the first-mentioned mathematical operation on additional encrypted poll responses to produce additional encrypted results (See Tang: Para. [0039] – “according to the security requirements of the voting, perform multiple rounds of verification for each group of votes, that is, repeatedly perform steps S81-S85”);
performing a second mathematical operation on the encrypted result and the additional encrypted results to obtain an encrypted tally, wherein the second mathematical operation applied to the encrypted result and the additional encrypted results corresponds to an operation that, when applied to plaintext of the encrypted result and the additional encrypted results, sums the plaintext of the encrypted result and the plaintext of each of the additional encrypted results (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “the homomorphic vote counting module is used to operate a homomorphic addition on a set of the valid ballots with a fixed number, and send results of the operation to the bulletin board for display.”).
Regarding Claim 3, Tang discloses:
further comprising decrypting the encrypted tally (See Tang: Para. [0018] – “The validity verification module B comprises a decryption component for decrypting data sent by the validity verification module A”).
Regarding Claim 5, Tang discloses:
wherein the change nullifies the poll response (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “in addition, after obtaining final verification results returned by the verification server B, the validity verification module A will pass the verified ballot to the homomorphic vote counting module, and the ballot that has not passed the verification will be discarded, and the identity ID signature corresponding to the ballot will be recorded in a blacklist”).
Regarding Claim 7, Tang discloses:
wherein the plaintext poll response comprises an integer vector (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “the module comprises two components: a random vector generation component and a ciphertext bit accumulation component; wherein the random vector generation component is configured to generate a vector consisting of random numbers”).
Regarding Claim 8, Tang discloses:
wherein: the change nullifies the poll response, and nullifying the plaintext poll result sets the integer vector to zeros (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “in addition, after obtaining final verification results returned by the verification server B, the validity verification module A will pass the verified ballot to the homomorphic vote counting module, and the ballot that has not passed the verification will be discarded, and the identity ID signature corresponding to the ballot will be recorded in a blacklist”).
Regarding Claims 9 and 13, Tang discloses:
wherein each encrypted poll response has an associated plaintext parameter having one of a plurality of possible parameter values, and wherein: the second mathematical operation is performed on the encrypted result of an encrypted poll response when the plaintext parameter associated with the encrypted poll response equals a selected parameter value of the plurality of possible parameter values (See Tang: Para. [0020] – “S1. system initialization step, which is specifically as follows: S11. select and generate public parameters; S12. generate a public-private key pair and a system public-private key pair used for the signature according to the public parameters … according to the parameters generated by the system, the verification server A performs a homomorphic addition operation on a set of the valid ballots”).
Regarding Claim 12, Tang discloses:
wherein the encrypted second result is an additive identity (See Tang: Para. [0023] – “the verification server A performs homomorphic addition on the VHom.sub.max valid ballots according to the public parameters generated by the system, and generates: PartialHomC.sub.i=HomAdd(VHom.sub.max valid ballots) where HomAdd indicates that adding two ciphertexts by bit;”).
Regarding, Claim 16, Tang discloses:
wherein the mathematical operation corresponds to an operation that, when applied to the plaintext of the first and second encrypted poll responses, produces a vector having a size corresponding to the size of a set of response combinations, with an indicative value in a position in the vector, wherein the position in the vector corresponds to one of the set of response combinations (See Tang: Para. [0022] – Tang outlines the mathematical procedure for generating a vector corresponding to the size of the response combinations).
Regarding, Claim 18, Tang discloses:
The method of claim 16, further comprising analyzing additional sets of poll responses to produce additional encrypted results, performing a second mathematical operation on the encrypted result and the additional encrypted results to obtain an encrypted tally (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “the homomorphic vote counting module is used to operate a homomorphic addition on a set of the valid ballots with a fixed number, and send results of the operation to the bulletin board for display.”), wherein the second mathematical operation applied to the encrypted result and the additional encrypted results corresponds to an operation that, when applied to plaintext of the encrypted result and the additional encrypted results, adds the vectors (See Tang: Para. [0023] – “the verification server A performs homomorphic addition on the VHom.sub.max valid ballots according to the public parameters generated by the system, and generates: PartialHomC.sub.i=HomAdd(VHom.sub.max valid ballots) where HomAdd indicates that adding two ciphertexts by bit;”).
Regarding Claim 19, Tang discloses:
wherein the vector comprises arrays comprised of the indicative value (See Tang: Para. [0021] – “the ballot plaintext is in the form of a 01 string of length l, and each bit in the string corresponds to a candidate; one and only one bit of the ballot strings is 1 and the remaining bits are 0; the one with a value of 1 is the candidate selected by the user, and the ballot plaintext is marked as vote;”).
Regarding Claim 20, Tang discloses:
wherein the indicative value is one (See Tang: Para. [0021] – “the ballot plaintext is in the form of a 01 string of length l, and each bit in the string corresponds to a candidate; one and only one bit of the ballot strings is 1 and the remaining bits are 0; the one with a value of 1 is the candidate selected by the user, and the ballot plaintext is marked as vote;”).
Regarding Claim 21, Tang discloses:
wherein the mathematical operation corresponds to an operation that, when applied to the plaintext of the first and second encrypted poll responses, identifies a nullified response combination when at least one of the first and second encrypted poll responses is nullified (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “in addition, after obtaining final verification results returned by the verification server B, the validity verification module A will pass the verified ballot to the homomorphic vote counting module, and the ballot that has not passed the verification will be discarded, and the identity ID signature corresponding to the ballot will be recorded in a blacklist”).
Regarding Claim 22, Tang discloses:
wherein the mathematical operation corresponds to an operation that, when applied to the plaintext of the first and second encrypted poll responses, produces a vector having a plurality of positions, the size of the vector corresponding to the size of a set of response combinations, wherein each position in the vector corresponds to one of the set of response combinations, with a null value in each position in the vector when at least one of the first and second encrypted poll responses is nullified (See Tang: Para. [0016] – “in addition, after obtaining final verification results returned by the verification server B, the validity verification module A will pass the verified ballot to the homomorphic vote counting module, and the ballot that has not passed the verification will be discarded, and the identity ID signature corresponding to the ballot will be recorded in a blacklist”).
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) 4 and 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tang in view of Badrinarayanan et al. (US 20220131698 A1) hereinafter simply referred to as Badri.
Regarding Claim 4, Tang discloses the method of claim 1 but fails to explicitly disclose:
wherein the mathematical operation corresponds to an operation that, when applied to the plaintext of the encrypted poll response, normalizes the plaintext of the encrypted poll response.
However, in a similar field of endeavor Badri discloses:
wherein the mathematical operation corresponds to an operation that, when applied to the plaintext of the encrypted poll response, normalizes the plaintext of the encrypted poll response (See Badri: Para. [0137] – “As described above, the user device may generate a proof-of-knowledge indicating that the plaintext biometric template is normalized (e.g., a vector with a total lengthy, such as 1). The proof can be sent over with the encrypted biometric template and the public key. A verifier device (also called a service provider) can confirm the plaintext biometric template is normalized via a cryptographic process. The verifier device can then provide a digital signature, e.g., of the encrypted biometric template. The verifier device can be a trusted authority (e.g., trusted by the access device). In this manner, the user device does not need to spend the extra computational effort at the time of authentication to generate the proof. The verification can protect against active attacks by an attacker who has stolen the user's device and created a false biometric template.”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the plaintext response of Tang to produce a normalized plaintext response using the method of Badri yieldling the predictable result of an increase in the security strength of the invention by layering additional security features.
Regarding Claim 6, the combination discloses:
wherein the change normalizes the poll response (See Badri: Para. [0137] – “As described above, the user device may generate a proof-of-knowledge indicating that the plaintext biometric template is normalized (e.g., a vector with a total lengthy, such as 1). The proof can be sent over with the encrypted biometric template and the public key. A verifier device (also called a service provider) can confirm the plaintext biometric template is normalized via a cryptographic process. The verifier device can then provide a digital signature, e.g., of the encrypted biometric template. The verifier device can be a trusted authority (e.g., trusted by the access device). In this manner, the user device does not need to spend the extra computational effort at the time of authentication to generate the proof. The verification can protect against active attacks by an attacker who has stolen the user's device and created a false biometric template.”).
Claim(s) 11 and 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tang in view of Wade et al. (US 20220200799 A1).
Regarding Claim 11, Tang discloses the method of claim 10 but fails to explicitly disclose:
wherein the encrypted first result is a multiplicative identity.
However, in a similar field of endeavor, Wade discloses:
wherein the encrypted first result is a multiplicative identity (See Wade: Para. [0038] – “Referring now to FIG. 4, an operational flowchart 400 illustrating the steps carried out by a program that encrypts binary files is depicted. FIG. 4 may be described with the aid of FIGS. 1-3. As previously described, the Binary File Encryption Program 116 (FIG. 1) may quickly and effectively encrypt and decrypt images using public and private isokeys generated based on using a multiplicative identity other than one.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the encryption method used by Tang to produce a multiplicative identity result using the method of Wade yieldling the predictable result of an increase in the security strength of the invention by layering additional security features.
Regarding Claim 14, the combination discloses:
further comprising: producing additional encrypted valid signals for additional valid encrypted parameter vectors; selecting additional encrypted parameter vectors corresponding to additional associated plaintext parameters (See Tang: Para. [0039] – “select and generate common parameters: select LWE encryption system parameters n,l,q,α, and homomorphic vote counting upper limit VHom.sub.max, where n is a security parameter of the LWE encryption system; l is the length of the ballot plaintext string, representing the number of candidates; q represents a modulus, since the homomorphic operation is an operation in a finite field, which performs the modulo q operation on calculated results; a is a parameter used in Gaussian sampling, which is related to the squared difference of samples; VHom.sub.max represents the maximum number of times the VSA can perform homomorphic addition for each partially homomorphic vote counting … according to the parameters generated by the system, the verification server A performs a homomorphic addition operation on a set of the valid ballots with a fixed number, sends the generated partially homomorphic vote counting ciphertext to the vote counting server for decryption, and simultaneously sends the same to the bulletin board for publicity;); multiplying the additional encrypted valid signals by the respective additional selected encrypted parameter vectors to produce additional valid encrypted parameter vectors; and performing a second mathematical operation on the valid encrypted parameter vector and the additional valid encrypted parameter vectors to obtain an encrypted tally, wherein the second mathematical operation applied to the valid encrypted parameter vector and the additional valid encrypted parameter vectors corresponds to an operation that, when applied to plaintext of the valid encrypted parameter vector and the additional valid encrypted parameter vectors, sums the parameter vector with the additional parameter vectors (See Wade: Para. [0038] – “Referring now to FIG. 4, an operational flowchart 400 illustrating the steps carried out by a program that encrypts binary files is depicted. FIG. 4 may be described with the aid of FIGS. 1-3. As previously described, the Binary File Encryption Program 116 (FIG. 1) may quickly and effectively encrypt and decrypt images using public and private isokeys generated based on using a multiplicative identity other than one.”).
Conclusion
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/NICHOLAS K PHAN/Examiner, Art Unit 3699
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