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 .
Specification
The specification submitted on 11/17/2024 and the drawing submitted on 01/05/2005 has been considered.
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 1-20 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.
Claim 1 recites the limitation “the document” in line 5.
Claim 1 recites the limitation “the scope of each annotation” in line 6.
Claim 1 recites the limitation “the presence” in line 33.
Claim 3 recites the limitation “the sensitivity” in line 6.
Claim 3 recites the limitation “the extracted features” in line 6.
Claim 4 recites the limitation “the user’s” in line 5.
Claim 6 recites the limitation “the text” in line 6.
Claim 9 recites the limitation “the scope of each annotation” in line 3.
Claim 9 recites the limitation “the encrypted schemes” in line 4.
Claim 9 recites the limitation “the presence” in line 33.
Claim 12 recites the limitation “the use’s attribute set” in line 2.
Claim 16 recites the limitation “the document” in line 5.
Claim 16 recites the limitation “the scope of each annotation” in line 6.
Claim 16 recites the limitation “the presence” in line 33.
There are insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claims 1, 9 and 16 recite “their associated encryption credential”. Claims 6 and 14 recites ”their attribute credentials”. Claims 3, 11 and 18 recite “its classified sensitivity”. Use of the pronouns “their” and “its” are discouraged because they ambiguously establish improper antecedent basis. The antecedent bases should be referenced with “said” or “The” for clarity. Therefore, claims 1, 9 and 16 are rendered indefinite.
Claims 1, 9 and 16 recite “replacing original text content” without linking to the previously recited “original text content” failing to establish a proper antecedent basis. Therefore, claims 1, 9 and 16 rendered indefinite. Claims 1, 9 and 16 should recite “replacing the original text content”.
Claims 1, 9 and 16 recite “an attribute-based encryption scheme” without linking to the previously recited “attribute-based encryption scheme” failing to establish a proper antecedent basis. Therefore, claim 1 rendered indefinite. Claim 1 should recites “the attribute-based encryption scheme”.
Dependent claims 2-8 , 10-15 and 17-20 failed to remedy the above deficiencies of their respective independent claims and therefore they are rendered indefinite.
Therefore, claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
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 9-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claim 9 calls for a system for securing document content. However, limitations of claim 9 failed to recite a device or an apparatus for the system claim to be a machine category. A document security manager is not a process, a machine, a manufacture or a composition of matter for claim 9 to be an eligible statutory subject matter. Dependent claims 10-15 failed to remedy the deficiencies of the independent claim 9. Therefore, claims 9-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 are allowable. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: After consideration of the applicant’s correspondence filed on November 17, 2024 through examination of the application, claims, and conducted search, the pertinent prior arts of record, either taken alone or in combination neither anticipates nor renders obvious the claimed subject matter of the instant application when taken as a whole and therefore claims 1-20 having the following features have been found could be in condition for allowance, based on condition after resolving any outstanding objections or rejections provided in this Office Action Correspondence.
In claims 1, 9 and 14: processing an original text content of a document to identify text content portions by: parsing the document to locate in-line text annotations, analyzing proximate text to determine scope of each annotation, extracting text content within the determined scope, and determining encryption attributes for an attribute-based encryption scheme based on the in-line text annotations; detecting user-defined selections of image regions through a graphical interface, or employing a trained neural network to automatically identify and classify sensitive objects within the images; generating one or more encrypt content requests that includes the identified text portions with their associated encryption attributes, the identified image portions with corresponding bounding box coordinates, and metadata specifying the encryption schemes to be applied; receiving, from the cryptographic engine, encrypted text content for the text portions and encrypted image content for the image portions, applying an attribute-based encryption scheme to the text portions and image portions; and building a partially encrypted document by: replacing original text content with masking symbols, adjusting the masking symbol width to maintain document layout and formatting, applying visual obfuscation techniques to the original image content based on sensitivity levels, embedding the encrypted text and image content as metadata within the document structure, and updating document properties to indicate the presence of encrypted content.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Eldefrawy et al. (US 20220052835 A1) describes a system for selectively sharing of portion of unstructured data containers/documents based on security attributes or policies used to encrypt/decrypt data within the unstructured data containers using standard encryption schemes The system includes a key generation authority to generate encryption keys based on a selected cryptographic security scheme and one or more security attributes or security policies; an encryption service to selectively encrypt one or more data subgroups using the one or more public keys and based on one or more security attributes or security policies assigned to the one or more data subgroups with the unstructured data containers; and a decryption service to decrypt the one or more data subgroups within unstructured data containers using the one or more secret keys and the one or more public keys. However, the prior art Eldefrawy, does not disclose specific limitation features of claims 1, 9 and 14 described above.
De Gaspari (US 20190297063 A1) discusses an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and an IaaS node that encrypts content with first encryption using a first key and second encryption using a second key, to produce twice encrypted content. A producer encrypts the second key with attribute-based encryption and symmetric encryption using an IaaS key, to produce a twice encrypted second key. The producer provides to the user application the twice encrypted content, the twice encrypted second key, and key information configured to remove the first encryption from the twice encrypted content. The producer provides to the IaaS node the IaaS key to enable the IaaS node to remove the symmetric encryption from the twice encrypted second key, such that the user application and the IaaS node are constrained to exchange with each other key-related information and intermediate decryption results in order to recover the content. However, the prior art De Gaspari, does not disclose specific limitation features of claims 1, 9 and 14 described above.
Seaborn et al. (US 20240275584 A1) provides mechanisms for computing resource access security in which a credential of a user agent is authenticated to determine if the user agent is associated with an entity for which an attribute based encryption (ABE) key is to be generated. An ABE key is generated and provided which corresponds to a set of attributes of the entity. Token issuance logic receives a token request and the ABE key from a relying party computing device and executes a decryption operation on locking metadata associated with at least one attribute value based on the ABE key. The token issuance logic, in response to the decryption operation successfully decrypting the locking metadata, issues a generated token to the relying party computing device based on the at least one attribute value. The relying party computing device accesses the computing resources using the generated token. However, the prior art Seaborn et al., does not disclose specific limitation features of claims 1, 9 and 14 described above.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TECHANE GERGISO whose telephone number is (571)272-3784. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am to 6:30pm.
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/TECHANE GERGISO/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2408