DETAILED ACTION
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 .
This is a Non-Final Office Action in response to the communication filed on November 13, 2024.
Claims 1-10 have been examined.
Drawings
The drawings filed on November 13, 2024 are acceptable for examination proceedings.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. 18/946749, filed on November 13, 2024.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on November 13, 2024, February 20, 2025, and October 7, 2025 were filed after the mailing date of the application 18/946749 on November 13, 2024. The submission 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 § 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 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Sze Yuen Wong (U.S. Patent Application Publication No.: US 2021/0334873 A1 / or “Wong” hereinafter [provided by the applicant]).
Regarding claim 1, Wong discloses “An information distribution control apparatus used in a system in which an information provider and an information user distribute target information via an international network between a first information communication network constructed by a first country and a second information communication network constructed by a second country, the information distribution control apparatus comprising” (Fig. 1: Computer Network 100, with Zone 1…Zone 3 i.e., different locations; and Para 0030: lines 5-9, when a vendor tries to access a controlled item work location and nationality of the receipt along with a controlled items location and the “…employee's base country and nationality”):
“a first processing unit configured to manage first attribute information including an attribute of the information provider and an attribute of the target information, in which a unique condition including a rule of a belonging country is reflected, and condition information indicating a provision condition of the target information” (Para 0030: lines 1-9, when a vendor tries to access a controlled item work location and nationality of the receipt along with a controlled items location and the “…employee's base country and nationality”);
“a second processing unit configured to acquire, from the information user, second attribute information including an attribute of the information user and an attribute of the target information desired to be used, in which the unique condition of the belonging country is reflected” (Para 0030: lines 1-9, when a vendor tries to access a controlled item work location and nationality of the receipt along with a controlled items location and the “…employee's base country and nationality”);
“a third processing unit configured to collate the acquired second attribute information with the first attribute information, based on the provision condition, and to determine whether or not to permit distribution of the target information, based on a result of the collation” (Para 30: lines 10-23; and Claim 1: lines 40-47, “... functionality to query an attribute for each of the plurality of controlled items to obtain the redacted technical data list wherein each of the plurality of controlled items listed on the redacted technical data list are subject to export restrictions, and discard any of the plurality of controlled items that are in the redacted technical data list to obtain the subset of the plurality of controlled items…”);
“and a fourth processing unit configured to output a determination result of whether or not to permit the distribution of the target information” (Para 0048: lines 16-26; and Claim 1, “…... discard any of the plurality of controlled items that are in the redacted technical data list to obtain the subset of the plurality of controlled items).
Regarding claim 2, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “wherein the target information includes exclusive information stored in an exclusive information area accessible only by the information provider, and shared information stored in a shared information area accessible by the information provider and another party, and the first processing unit manages an attribute of the shared information stored in the shared information area in the target information by including the attribute of the shared information in the first attribute information” (Claim 1: lines 1-4, “…non-deterministically encrypted export controlled items in a CryptoJSON record set system operated by an export team within a corporate asset infrastructure,…”).
Regarding claim 3, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “wherein the third processing unit refers to article data representing the rule of the belonging country defined in the attribute of the target information, and collates a security level defined in the attribute of the target information with a security determination condition defined in the article data, and permits the distribution of the target information if the security level satisfies the security determination condition” (Para 0107: “…The priority represents the importance of the vendor access to the computer network 100 in terms of access delay, geographically diverse backup, and disaster recovery. To attribute a priority to the vendor access, the export team is given a choice of priority levels for each vendor access”).
Regarding claim 4, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “wherein the first processing unit manages the condition information including a nationality of the information user that is a provision destination of the target information as the provision condition, and the third processing unit permits the distribution of the target information if the nationality of the information user included in the second attribute information coincides with the nationality of the information user serving as the provision destination included in the provision condition” (Para 0030: lines 1-9, when a vendor tries to access a controlled item work location and nationality of the receipt along with a controlled items location and the “…employee's base country and nationality”).
Regarding claim 5, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “wherein the first processing unit manages the condition information including a country of a place where the target information is available as the provision condition, and the third processing unit permits the distribution of the target information if a country of a location of presence of the information user included in the second attribute information coincides with the country of the place where the target information is available included in the condition information” (Para 0030: lines 1-9, when a vendor tries to access a controlled item work location and nationality of the receipt along with a controlled items location and the “…employee's base country and nationality”).
Regarding claim 6, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “wherein the first processing unit further manages authentication information relating to the target information, and the third processing unit restores the first attribute information of the target information, based on the authentication information, if the first attribute information of the target information is falsified, and determines whether or not to permit the distribution of the target information, based on the restored first attribute information” (Para 0031: lines 32-36, “…a processing device therefore always verifies the checksum of an export policy file to help ensure the version of the programmable export policy and the function contained therein are unaltered, or the function may not run if it cannot be verified by the checksum function”).
Regarding claim 7, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “further comprising a fifth processing unit configured to perform control for establishing a distribution path of the target information from the information provider to the information user, if the distribution of the target information is permitted based on the determination result output from the fourth processing unit” (Fig. 1C ;and Para 0041: a network for information distribution with redaction system 102 distributes via network 136).
Regarding claim 8, in view of claim 1, Wong discloses “wherein an authentication control apparatus included in the first information communication network and the second information communication network and an international network connection apparatus included in the international network execute the processes performed by the first processing unit to the fourth processing unit in cooperation with each other” (Para 0041: a network for information distribution with redaction system 102 distributes via network 136, where the network could be multiple different networks; and Fig. 1: Computer Network 100, with Zone 1…Zone 3 i.e., different locations).
Regarding claim 9, claim 9 is directed to a method corresponding to the apparatus recited in claim 1. Claim 9 is similar in scope to claim 1, and is therefore, rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 is directed to a computer-readable storage medium corresponding to the apparatus recited in claim 1. Claim 10 is similar in scope to claim 1, and is therefore, rejected under similar rationale.
Relevant Prior Arts
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Shanker et al. (US 20210218802 A1) discloses:
[0038] In some cases, the more regulated environment may be associated with regulations that may be enforced by a governmental agency, a different country, a different region, a different department, and so on. As such, while a first set of client devices 20 may access the hub client instance 302 in a less restrictive environment (e.g., at a first country or department) via a first communication network (e.g., a first client network 12), a second set of client devices 20 may access the spoke client instance 303 in a more restrictive environment (e.g., at a second country or department) via a second communication network (e.g., a second client network 12).
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ABDULLAH ALMAMUN whose telephone number is (571) 270-3392. The examiner can normally be reached on 8 AM - 5 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lynn Feild can be reached on (571) 272-2092. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ABDULLAH ALMAMUN/Examiner, Art Unit 2431
/LYNN D FEILD/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2431