DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to the communication filed on 03/09/2026.
Claim 8 has been canceled. Claims 1-7 and 9-10 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's Remarks filed on 03/09/2026 have been fully considered.
The rejection of claims 1-10 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite as presented in the previous Office action has been withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendment of the claims.
The rejection of claims 1-7, and 9-10 under 35 U.S.C. 101 as presented in the previous Office action has been withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendment of the claims.
In response to Applicant’s argument on pages 6-7 of Remarks that cited reference Kohima does not teach the newly added limitation wherein the task management data includes an employee ID, a work area, a work process, and an authentication time of the first server as recited in amended claims 1 and 10, this argument is moot in view of the new grounds of rejection presented below and in view of newly found prior art. In addition, in response to Applicant's argument that the remaining dependent claims are patentable because they depend from allowable independent claims, Examiner respectfully disagrees since the base claims from which they depend are not in condition for allowance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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 1-4, 6-7 and 9-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kohima (US 2017/0076294) in view of Ehrlich (US 2022/0309851) further in view of Okumura (US 2024/0152590).
Claim 1, Kohima teaches:
An authentication system that authenticates a usage authority of a plurality of terminal devices provided in an office and configured to access a management system, the authentication system comprising: (e.g., figs. 1, 5, [0026], “As shown in FIG. 1, a financial processing system 1 includes biometric information readers 20-1 to 20-3, devices 30-1 to 30-3, and a device management apparatus 40…As shown in FIG. 1, the device management apparatus 40…may be installed in the same building B. Each device 30 may be separate” [0055]-[0056], “device operation authority for each operator is further managed in a centralized manner…an operator is identified in biometric authentication…only if this operator has operation authority of the device, this device is controlled so as to be operable”)
a biometric information input device provided in each of the plurality of terminal devices; (e.g., fig. 1, [0027]-[0028], “The devices 30…that are operated by an operator for performing various financial processes at a financial institution or the like. As shown in FIG. 1, for each of the devices 30 there is provided a biometric information reader 20 which is capable of reading biometric information”)
a first server configured to authenticate, based on biometric information input to each of the plurality of terminal devices from the biometric information input device, an employee of the office; and (e.g., figs. 5, 7, [0037], “When an operator starts using the device 30, or is in a similar situation, the biometric information acquisition unit 102 acquires biometric information of the operator read by the biometric information reader 20, along with the identifier of the device 30, from the device 30 via the communication unit 101” [0038], “The biometric authentication unit 103 checks the biometric information acquired by the biometric information acquisition unit 102 against the biometric information memorized in the biometric information table TBL1 of the memory unit 106, to thereby identify a matched operator” [0056], “FIG. 5 is a configuration example of a device security management apparatus 10A…includes an authority information registration unit 107 in addition to the respective functional units of the device security management apparatus 10 of the first embodiment”)
a second server configured to authenticate, based on a device identifier of the biometric information input device, the usage authority of the plurality of terminal devices when the first server authenticates the employee; and (e.g., figs. 5, 7, [0057]-[0058], “In the case where the biometric authentication unit 103 identifies an operator, the device control unit 104, based on the authority information table TBL2 of the memory unit 106, reads operation authority that corresponds to the identifier of this operator, and the device identifier acquired by the biometric information acquisition unit 102, and determines whether or not to allow this operator to operate this device 30” [0061], “Upon receiving the operator identifier and the device identifier from the biometric authentication unit 103, the device control unit 104 determines, based on the authority information table TBL2 of the memory unit 106, whether or not operation authority is given for the device 30 that corresponds to the identifier of this operator and the identifier of this device 30 (Step S6)” [0064], “authority information registration unit 107 may further memorize operation ranking while associating it with operator identifiers and device identifiers. Here, the term "operation ranking" refers to the level of operation authority of an operator for a device 30”)
the second server creates task management data the employee based on the usage authority of the plurality of terminal devices being authenticated based on the device identifier, and transmits the created task management data to the management system. (e.g., figs. 5, 7, [0062], “If operation is determined as being allowed in the above determination (YES in Step S6), the device control unit 104 transmits to the device 30 corresponding to this device identifier, control information that includes the operator identifier and an operation enabling signal, which brings this device into the operable state (Step S4)” [0063], “Upon receiving the control information that includes the operator identifier and the operation enabling signal from the device control unit 104, the device 30 switches this device to the operable state, and starts recording log information of operations performed by the operator indicated by the operator identifier” [0065], “In this case, in Step S4 of FIG. 7, for example, the device control unit 104 transmits to the device 30 that has been determined as being operable by the operator, control information that includes the identifier of this operator, the operation enabling signal, and the operation ranking. If the operation ranking of the device 30 is registered as “no operation ranking”, control information that includes the identifier of this operator, and an operation enabling signal is transmitted. Upon receiving the operator identifier, the operation enabling signal, and the operation ranking from the device control unit 104, the device 30 is brought into the state where operations are allowed within the function range according to the received operation ranking, and the device 30 starts recording log information of operations performed by the operator indicated by the operator identifier”)
Kohima teaches the first server authenticates the employee in the office by the biometric authentication (see above) and does not appear to explicitly teach but Ehrlich teaches:
an entry and exit management device by biometric authentication, wherein when a first server authenticates an employee in an office by the biometric authentication, the first server unlocks an electric lock provided in the entry and exit management device. (e.g., [0037], “the input device 106 may comprise one or more biometric sensors configured to receive biometric identification information from the person 110. The one or more biometric sensors may comprise at least one of an iris scanner, a heartbeat scanner, and a gait sensor…the access control system 100 may identify the person 110 based at least on one or more of the biometric sensor data. One or more of the biometric sensors may receive biometric identification information from the person 110 without physical interaction with the person 110. That is, the access control system 100 may be configured to provide such identification procedures if or when the access control system 100 is configured in the frictionless mode” [0065], “The frictionless mode may configure the access control system 100 to obtain the identification information of the person 110 only via frictionless and/or touchless interactions between the person 110 and the access control system 100. That is, the frictionless mode may enable frictionless procedures to obtain the identification information, and may disable procedures to obtain the identification information that require physical interactions (e.g., touching). The frictionless procedures of obtaining the identification information may include, but not be limited to, voice scans, gesture scans, NFC card scans, RFID tag scans, iris scans, heartbeat scans, gait analysis, and/or presenting identification information (e.g., password, QR code, MAC address, biometric data, and the like) via the user device 114 of the person 110” [0083], “the identifying component 240 may determine whether the person 110 should be granted entry/exit based at least on a determination that the identification information identifies the person 110 and that the person 110 is permitted to be granted entry/exit…the identifying component 240 may cause the access control system 100 to grant access to the person 110 if or when the identifying component 240 has determined that the person 110 should be granted entry. For example, if or when the identifying component 240 has determined that the person 110 should be granted entry, the access control system 100 may unlock the locking mechanism of the checkpoint 102, may show on the display of the input device 106 a green light and/or an image of an open lock, and/or may generate, with the speaker of the input device 106, one or more sounds (e.g., a bell sound) indicating that the person 110 has been granted access”)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings described by Ehrlich into the invention of Kohima, and the motivation for such an implementation would be for the purpose of improving access control systems and reducing the risk of contagion (Ehrlich [0003], [0026]).
Kohima-Ehrlich teaches the task management data, the first server (see above) and does not appear to explicitly teach but Okumura teaches:
an employee ID, a work area, a work process, and an authentication time of a first server. (e.g., [0119], “The authentication unit 203 searches the attendance management database using the read employee ID as a key, and writes the authentication time in the clock-in time field of the entry relevant to the employee ID. The authentication unit 203 sets the work state of the employee relevant to the employee ID to "working". Further, the authentication unit 203 specifies the clock-in location of the employee from the terminal ID included in the authentication request, and writes the specified clock-in location in the clock-in location field”)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings described by Kohima-Ehrlich into the invention of Okumura, and the motivation for such an implementation would be for the purpose of achieving various ways of working of employees and the like (Okumura [0011], [0018]).
Claim 2, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches:
wherein the second server stores data indicating a correspondence between an employee identifier of the employee in the office and the device identifier of the biometric information input device provided in each of the plurality of terminal devices used in a work the employee is in charge of, and authenticates the usage authority of the plurality of terminal devices with reference to the data. (e.g., Kohima figs. 6, 8, [0057], [0064])
Claim 3, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches:
wherein the second server stores data indicating a correspondence between a plurality of areas in the office, a plurality of works in the plurality of areas, and the device identifier of the biometric information input device provided in each of the plurality of terminal devices, and creates the task management data based on the data. (e.g., Kohima figs. 6, 8, [0026]-[0027], [0057], [0064])
Claim 4, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches:
wherein the task management data is a work place and an execution work of the authenticated employee. (e.g., Kohima [0058], [0062], [0064])
Claim 6, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches:
wherein the second server transmits the task management data to the management system, and the management system executes any one of work instruction creation processing, work schedule creation processing, work status report creation processing, and work result report creation processing using the received task management data. (e.g., Kohima [0062]-[0063], [0065])
Claim 7, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches
the biometric information input device is any one of a fingerprint information input device, a facial information input device, an iris information input device, a voice information input device, a finger vein information input device, and a palm vein information input device, depending on work clothes or a protector worn by the employee. (e.g., Kohima [0028]; Okumura [0064]-[0065]) Same motivation as presented in claim 1 would apply.
Claim 9, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches:
wherein the first server transmits an entry and exit status of the employee authenticated by the biometric authentication to the second server, and the second server transmits the entry and exit status of the employee authenticated by the biometric authentication to the management system. (e.g., Ehrlich [0083]) Same motivation as presented in claim 1 would apply.
Claim 10, this claim is directed to a method containing similar limitations as recited in claim 1 and is rejected using the same rationale to combine the references.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kohima (US 2017/0076294) in view of Ehrlich (US 2022/0309851) in view of Okumura (US 2024/0152590) further in view of Heath, Jr. (5,451,757).
Claim 5, Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura teaches the task management data, the second server authenticates, the usage authority (see above) and does not appear to explicitly teach but Heath teaches:
a date and time when a second server authenticates a usage authority. (e.g., col. 10 ll. 37-43)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings described by Heath into the invention of Kohima-Ehrlich-Okumura, and the motivation for such an implementation would be for the purpose of allowing maintaining of a database showing workload, and allowing detecting of unauthorized activities (Heath col. 10).
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 AMIE C LIN whose telephone number is (571)272-7752. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00AM -5:00PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, GELAGAY SHEWAYE can be reached at (571)272-4219. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/AMIE C. LIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2436
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