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.
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.
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-27 are pending in this office action.
Priority
Priority claimed to PRO 63/427,723, filed 11/23/2022.
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 obviousness-type double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims 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 Omum, 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 conflicting 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.
Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign a terminal disclaimer. A terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b).
Claims 1-27 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over various claims of application# 18/227,818, now Patent No. 12,105,828 (referred to as ‘828 hereinafter), and over various claims of application# 18/228,546, now Patent No. 12,124,602 (referred to as ‘602 hereinafter). With regards to ‘828, claims 1-21 of ‘828 claim all the limitations set forth in the instant claims. Particularly, the instant independent claims 1, 10 and 19 are covered by the subject matter of the narrower independent claims 1, 8 and 15 respectively of ‘828. Similarly, the instant claims 2-4 are covered by claims 2-4 respectively of ‘828; the instant claims 5-6 are covered by claim 1 of ‘818; the instant claims 7-9 are covered by claims 5-7 resp. of ‘828’. The instant system claims 10-18 and the instant media claims 19-27 are similar to the instant claims 1-9, and can be mapped to claims 8-14 and 15-21 of ‘828 in a similar way.
As to ‘602, the instant independent claims 1, 10 and 19 are covered by the subject matter of the narrower independent claims 1, 11 and 21 respectively of ‘602, wherein the aspect of secure schema in ‘602 is comparable to container as claimed at least in the independent claims of the instant application, and wherein the schema definition in ‘602 corresponds to existence of container in the instant claim, in addition to other similarly mapped dependent claims of ‘602. As various limitations in the above claims of ‘828 and ‘602 cover the limitations of the instant claims, the instant claims are not patentably distinct from the specified claims of ‘828 and ‘602 as discussed above.
Further, the system and computer program product (computer-readable medium) claims carry out method steps in a computing environment of the system. Therefore, it would be obvious to be able to carry out steps of a method, using a system or device or by computer executable computer program product code stored in a statutory computer readable medium executed by a processor.
This is a non-provisional obviousness type double patenting rejection because the conflicting claims have been patented.
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.
Claims 1-4, 7-13, 16-22, 25-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lewis (US 7,865,959 B1), in view of Maim (US 2014/0143857 A1).
For claim 1, Lewis teaches a method comprising: generating an inherited grant that specifies a permission on a first type of object in a container and a grant of the permission to a role (col. 3 lines 31-37; col. 4 lines 17-26; col. 11 lines 39-47; col. 13 lines 19-63 - inherited permissions granted to roles with regards to access permissions for certain specific types of objects in a container);
attaching the inherited grant to the container, wherein the container includes a set of objects of the first type (col. 11 lines 35-47; col. 13 lines 43-47; col. 16 lines 61-65 - container underneath context indicative of granted privileges attached or associated with the container and the container comprising security type objects);
in response to a first object of the set of objects being referenced via the role, creating, by a processing device, a virtual implied grant based on the inherited grant (col. 16 lines 61-65; col. 19 lines 34-63 - inherited privileges, and granted access based on inherited and implied role and associated privileges that are temporary, are created); and
authorizing utilization of the permission on the first object using the virtual implied grant, wherein the virtual implied grant is transient and exists in-memory (col. 1 lines 59-64; col. 3 lines 7-16; col. 16 lines 61-65; col. 19 lines 34-63 - a user having temporary access to another user’s objects, and having temporary privileges; inherited privileges, and granted access based on inherited and indirectly or virtually implied role and associated privileges that are temporary or transient, roles/privileges stored in the directory in memory).
Lewis does not explicitly teach, whereas Maim teaches wherein the virtual implied grant is only for the purpose of authorizing the utilization of the permission on the first object (para 0077-0078 - constraint metadata pertaining to permissions to be authorized only for the first object to be modified). Based on Lewis in view of Maim, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention, to utilize teachings of Maim in the system of Lewis, in order to selectively operate upon certain objects thereby defining boundaries for exercising object access thereby improving the system security.
For claim 2, Lewis in view of Maim discloses the claimed subject matter as discussed above. Lewis further teaches further comprising: in response to attaching the inherited grant to the container, materializing the inherited grant in a metadata store associated with the container by persisting a grant record corresponding to the inherited grant in the metadata store, wherein the grant record is the only grant record corresponding to the inherited grant (col. 8 lines 49-64; col. 9 lines 51-67; Fig. 4; col. 12 lines 50-53 - stored attributes or metadata corresponding to inherited grant via roles).
For claim 3, Lewis in view of Maim discloses the claimed subject matter as discussed above. Lewis further teaches wherein at the time the inherited grant is attached to the container, authorizing utilization of the permission on any of the set of objects is performed using a corresponding virtual implied grant that is created based on the inherited grant (col. 11 lines 35-47; col. 13 lines 7-16 and 43-47; col. 16 lines 61-65; col. 19 lines 34-63 - container underneath context indicative of granted privileges attached or associated with the container and the container comprising security type objects, inherited privileges, and authorized granted access based on inherited and implied role and associated privileges).
For claim 4, Lewis in view of Maim discloses the claimed subject matter as discussed above. Lewis further teaches further comprising: removing the inherited grant from the container, wherein at the time the inherited grant is removed from the container, authorizing utilization of the permission on any of the set of objects is no longer performed using a corresponding virtual implied grant that is created based on the inherited grant (col. 16 line 61 - col. 17 line 4; col. 19 lines 34-63 - inherited privileges, and granted access based on inherited and indirectly or virtually implied role and associated privileges - implying that unless revoked the granted inherited privileges permit the user to access the object).
For claim 7, Lewis in view of Maim discloses the claimed subject matter as discussed above. Lewis further teaches wherein the container is a schema or a database (col. 8 line 38 - col. 9 line 19 - container object with database or schema).
For claim 8, Lewis in view of Maim discloses the claimed subject matter as discussed above. Lewis further teaches wherein the first type of object is one of: a table, a view, a function, or a native application (col. 8 lines 4-18; col. 19 lines 34-50 - object that is database, table, or application etc.).
For claim 9, Lewis in view of Maim discloses the claimed subject matter as discussed above. Lewis further teaches wherein the permission is one of: a select privilege, an insert privilege, or a modify privilege (col. 9 lines 20-50; col. 13 lines 37-47 - create, modify or delete privileges/access control).
As to claim 10, the claim limitations are similar to those of claim 1, except claim 10 is drawn to a system comprising: a memory; and a processing device operatively coupled to the memory (Lewis - Fig. 1, 17; col. 32 lines 4-34), the processing device to perform the method of claim 1. Therefore claim 10 is rejected according to claim 1.
As to claims 11-13 and 16-18, the claim limitations are similar to those of claims 2-4 and 7-9 respectively. Therefore claims 11-13 and 16-18 are rejected according to claims 2-4 and 7-9 respectively.
As to claim 19, the claim limitations are similar to those of claim 1, except claim 19 is drawn to a non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon (Lewis - Fig. 1, 17; col. 32 lines 4-34) which, when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform the method of claim 1.
As to claims 20-22 and 25-27, the claim limitations are similar to those of claims 2-4 and 7-9 respectively. Therefore claims 20-22 and 25-27 are rejected according to claims 2-4 and 7-9 respectively.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-6, 14-15 and 23-24 are objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claims, but would be allowable if incorporated in their respective base claims 1, 10 and 19 including all of the limitations of the base claims and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JAYESH JHAVERI whose telephone number is (571)270-7584. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri 9 AM to 5 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jeffrey Pwu can be reached on (571)272-6798. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JAYESH M JHAVERI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2433