DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-20 have been examined.
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 .
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
Priority
The current application claims priority from Provisional Application 63588287, filed 10/05/2023.
Claim Objections
Claims 3, 5, 9, 15, and 17 are objected to because of the following informalities: the claims have the abbreviation “ROH” without writing (within the claims) what the abbreviations stand for. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 4, 10, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The term “relatively faster” in claims 4, 10, and 16 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “relatively faster” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. Both of the terms “relatively” and “faster” are subjective terms and render claims 4, 10, and 16 unclear as to the degree in which the claimed “first source group” distinguishes itself from the claimed “second source group” in terms of speed. Appropriate correction is required.
A claim that requires the exercise of subjective judgment without restriction may render the claim indefinite. In re Musgrave, 431 F.2d 882, 893, 167 USPQ 280, 289 (CCPA 1970). Claim scope cannot depend solely on the unrestrained, subjective opinion of a particular individual purported to be practicing the invention. Datamize LLC v. Plumtree Software, Inc., 417 F.3d 1342, 1350, 75 USPQ2d 1801, 1807 (Fed. Cir. 2005)); see also Interval Licensing LLC v. AOL, Inc., 766 F.3d 1364, 1373, 112 USPQ2d 1188 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (holding the claim phrase "unobtrusive manner" indefinite because the specification did not "provide a reasonably clear and exclusive definition, leaving the facially subjective claim language without an objective boundary").
When a claim is amenable to two or more plausible claim constructions, the claim is indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter the Applicant considers to be the invention. Ex parte Miyazaki, 89 USPQ2d 1207, 1215 (BPAI 2008) (precedential).
Presently, some claims require speculation and conjecture by the Examiner and by one of ordinary skill in the art inasmuch as the claims under examination are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph. In light of the precedence set forth in In re Steele, 305 F.2d 859, 862 (CCPA 1962) and In re Wilson, 424 F.2d 1382, 1385 (CCPA 1970), the Examiner applies cited art in accordance with a position as best understood in the context of the claims and the invention as a whole to expedite compact prosecution. Any claim not objected or rejected in view of art does not ascribe allowable subject matter, but remains pending and rejected under their respective titles supra.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims recite “multiplying each hashed attribute by the random integer s”, “deriving, by the one or more processors, a blinding factor by multiplying a target group element from the master public key by the random integer s”, and the construction of “ciphertext”, which would pertain to the abstract idea grouping of “(a) Mathematical concepts – mathematical relationships or equations, mathematical calculations” as found within Section I of the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance published in the Federal Register (84 FR 50) on January 7, 2019. As stated within said “Guidance”, various court decisions have determined such mathematical concepts to be directed to abstract ideas: SAP America, Inc. v. InvestPic, LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1163, (Fed. Cir. 2018) (holding that claims to a “series of mathematical calculations based on selected information” are directed to abstract ideas) and Digitech Image Techs., LLC v. Elecs. for Imaging, Inc., 758 F.3d 1344, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (holding that claims to a “process of organizing information through mathematical correlations” are directed to an abstract idea).
Encryption relies upon and is rooted in mathematical relationships/formulas; encryption can be directed to organizing human activities.
Please refer to Digitech Image Techs., LLC v Electronics for Imaging, Inc., 758 F.3d 1344, 111 U.S.P.Q.2d 1717 (Fed. Cir. 2014) as it pertains to organizing information through mathematical correlations, which would encompass encryption.
Further, the claim limitations of “multiplying each hashed attribute by the random integer s”, “deriving, by the one or more processors, a blinding factor by multiplying a target group element from the master public key by the random integer s”, and the “outputting” of the “ciphertext” within claims 1, 7, and 13 encompasses mental processes, see Versata Dev. Grp., Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1335 (Fed. Circ. 2015) (“Courts have examined claims that required the use of a computer and still found that the underlying, patent-eligible invention could be performed via pen and paper or in a person’s mind.”) and also see CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1375, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (holding that the incidental use of “computer” or “computer readable medium” does not make a claim otherwise directed to a process that “can be performed in the human mind, or by a human using a pen and paper” patent eligible) and (“Moreover, as discussed above, even if some physical steps are required to obtain information from the database (e.g., entering a query via a keyboard, clicking a mouse), such data-gathering steps cannot alone confer patentability.”); with the “multiplying” and “outputting” being handled via, inter alia, writing the data on a piece of paper.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because it has been “held that simply implementing a mathematical principle on a physical machine, namely a computer, was not a patentable application of that principle”, see Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 175 U.S.P.Q. 673 (1972). The claimed “processors” and “memory” do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because – as per the “Guidance” – “performance of a claim limitation using generic computer components does not necessarily preclude the claim limitation from being in the mathematical concepts grouping”, see Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 175 U.S.P.Q. 673 (1972). Also, see Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307, 1318 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (“[W]ith the exception of generic computer-implemented steps, there is nothing in the claims themselves that foreclose them from being performed by a human, mentally or with pen and paper”). Thus, the claims are absent of “significantly more” than the judicial exception and are not patent eligible.
Further, the limitations would not make the claims patent eligible because they recite insignificant extra-solution activity (e.g., “outputting, by the one or more processors, the ciphertext” within claim 1, and “outputting the ciphertext” within claims 7 and 13). See CyberSource, 654 F.3d at 1372 (“Moreover, as discussed above, even if some physical steps are required to obtain information from the database (e.g., entering a query via a keyboard, clicking a mouse), such data-gathering steps cannot alone confer patentability.”); Apple, Inc. v. Ameranth, Inc., 842 F.3d 1229, 1242 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (agreeing with the Board that printing and downloading generated menus are insignificant post-solution activities).
Allowable Subject Matter
The claims distinguish themselves over the prior art but remain rejected in view of the 35 U.S.C. 101 and 112(b) rejections given above.
As per independent claims 1, 7, and 13, generally, the prior art of record, United States Patent Application Publication No. US 20210091952 A1 to Wentz which shows a secure computing hardware apparatus and methods of manufacturing a secure computing hardware apparatus; United States Patent Application Publication No. US 20200351098 A1 to Wentz which shows methods and systems for utilizing hardware-secured receptable devices; United States Patent Application Publication No. US 20150088754 A1 to a Kirsch which shows a method and system for fully encrypted repository; United States Patent No. US 8862879 B2 to Lerner which shows a method and apparatus for efficient and secure creating, transferring, and revealing of messages over a network; United States Patent Application Publication No. US 20140258736 A1 to Merchan et al. which shows systems and methods for maintaining integrity and secrecy in untrusted computing platforms; and United States Patent Application Publication No. US 20140201520 A1 to Yacobi which shows an attribute-based access-controlled data-storage system, fails to teach alone, or in combination, other than via hindsight, at the time of the filing of the claimed invention, the claim elements (i.e., claim 1: “(i) hashing each attribute in the set of attributes to an element of the first source group G1, and (ii) multiplying each hashed attribute by the random integer s;(d) deriving, by the one or more processors, a blinding factor by multiplying a target group element from the master public key by the random integer s;(e) generating, by the one or more processors, a masked message by combining the plaintext message with the blinding factor; (f) constructing, by the one or more processors, a ciphertext comprising:(i) the masked message,(ii) the set of attributes, (iii) the set of attribute encodings, and (iv) an encoding of the random integer s in the second source group G2”; claim 7: “(a) hashing each attribute in the set of attributes to an element of the first source G1;and (b) multiplying each hashed attribute by the random integer s; (iv) deriving a blinding factor by multiplying a target group element from the master public key by the random integer s; (v) generating a masked message by combining the plaintext message with the blinding factor;(vi) constructing a ciphertext comprising:(a) the masked message, (b) the set of attributes, (c) the set of attribute encodings, and (d) an encoding of the random integer a in the second source group G2”; claim 13: “(i) hashing each attribute in the set of attributes to an element of the first source group G1, and (ii) multiplying each hashed attribute by the random integer s;(d) deriving a blinding factor by multiplying a target group element from the master public key by the random integer s;(e) generating a masked message by combining the plaintext message with the blinding factor; (f) constructing a ciphertext comprising: (i) the masked message, (ii) the set of attributes,(iii) the set of attribute encodings, and (iv) an encoding of the random integer a in the second source group G2”); serving to patently distinguish the invention from said prior art.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The references cited on form PTO-892 are cited to further show the state of the art with respect to computing cryptographic functions to be performed on data to protect said data.
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/JEREMIAH L AVERY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2431