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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Invention I (claims 1-2, 8-9, and 15-16) in the reply filed on 2026-05-11 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 2024-12-10 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 § 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 8-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter; specifically, it is directed towards software, per se.
Claims 8-9 are directed towards software, per se. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is obliged to give claims their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification during proceedings before the USPTO. See In re ZIetz, 893 F.2d 319 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (during patent examination the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms reasonably allow). The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a processor typically covers forms of hardware, software per se, and combinations thereof in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of processor, particularly when the specification is silent. Furthermore, it is noted that the memory is not a positively recited element of the system and that, with respect to the instant Application, the interpretation of a processor as software, per se, is also consistent with the Specification, e.g. [0108]-[0109]. See MPEP 2111.01. When the broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim covers software per se, the claim must be rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as covering non-statutory subject matter, as software per se does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter recited in 35 U.S.C. 101 (process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter). Software is descriptive material that can be considered statutory ONLY if it is both functional and clearly embodied as structural, non-transitory matter; See MPEP § 2106.03(I). Even if the software of the claim(s) is functional, it is not clearly defined as being embodied as structural, non-transitory matter and is therefore not statutory.
The dependent claims included in the statement of rejection but not specifically addressed in the body of the rejection have inherited the deficiencies of their parent claim and have not resolved the deficiencies. Therefore, they are rejected based on the same rationale as applied to their parent claims above.
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 1-2, 8-9, and 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Brundage et al. (US Pre-Grant Publication No. 20130204981-A1, hereinafter “Brundage”).
With respect to independent claim 1, Brundage discloses a method comprising:
receiving, by a server from a web server, an indication of an incorrect request from a client device being received by web server {para. 0022: “web server first attempts to resolve the requested URL and, if it cannot do so, it passes the invalid URL to the rescue process 200”}.
establishing, by the server, a second web page based at least on a web page selected from the web server {paras. 0023-0030: “web server 115 may then return a page that includes the results” received from the “rescue process”}.
providing, by the server, content of the second web page based at least on one or more parameters of the uniform resource location (URL) of the incorrect request {para. 0032: “rescue process can notify the web server 115 of the rescue results, such as a repaired URL, alternate URL, or search term(s), or search result(s”}.
providing, by the server, the second web page to the web server to cause the web server to provide the second web page in response to the incorrect request to the client device instead of an error code {para. 0032: “web server can then return a webpage or content, for example, an image, a video, an audio file or the like, corresponding to the repaired or related URL”}.
With respect to dependent claim 2, Brundage discloses receiving, by the server, the incorrect request redirected to the server by the web server, responsive to the web server determining the URL of the incorrect request identifies an unfound web page {para. 0022: “web server first attempts to resolve the requested URL and, if it cannot do so, it passes the invalid URL to the rescue process 200”}.
With respect to claims 8-9, a corresponding reasoning as given earlier in this section with respect to claims 1-2 applies, mutatis mutandis, to the subject matter of claims 8-9; therefore, claims 8-9 are rejected, for similar reasons, under the grounds as set forth for claims 1-2.
With respect to claims 15-16, a corresponding reasoning as given earlier in this section with respect to claims 1-2 applies, mutatis mutandis, to the subject matter of claims 15-16; therefore, claims 15-16 are rejected, for similar reasons, under the grounds as set forth for claims 1-2.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
The reference Harguindeguy et al. (US Pre-Grant Publication No. 20200220875-A1) discloses generating decoy APIs in response to requests for non-existent APIs.
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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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William (“Bill”) Korzuch can be reached at 571-272-7589. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Kevin Bechtel/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2491
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