DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the Amendment filed on July 02th, 2026.
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.
In the instant Amendment, claims 1, 9 & 17 have been amended; and claims 1, 9 & 17 are independent claims. Claims 1-20 have been examined and are pending. This Action is made FINAL.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS), submitted on 07/02/2026, 08/28/2026, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CRR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments in the instant Amendment, filed on 07/02/2026, with respect to the rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 101 are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. 101 is withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see page 6, filed 07/02/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made over in view of Csar.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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(s) 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ozkan et al. (Ozkan), U.S. Pub. Number 2021/0409267, in view of Csar et al. (Csar), U.S. Pub. Number 2023/0251909.
Regarding claim 1; Ozkan discloses a method comprising:
receiving, by a component of a first cloud environment and from a second cloud environment, a request for a cloud service (par. 0061; fig. 2; receives a request to subscribe to a cloud service.);
in response to receiving the request, performing, by the component, a set of operations associated with provisioning the cloud service, wherein at least one operation of the set of operations comprises designating resources associated with the cloud service as locked resources in the first cloud environment (pars. 0062-0063; fig. 2; subscription services 122 prompts the subscribing entity to create a new cloud account or link an existing cloud account; once a cloud account has been created or linked, self-service interface engine 126 generates a self-service UI to configure instances of the cloud service.).
Ozkan fails to explicitly disclose after performing the set of operations, provisioning, by the component, the cloud service, wherein provisioning the cloud service restricts access to locked resources from within the first cloud environment by blocking modification requests that originate within the firs cloud environment, while permitting validated modification requests that originate within the second cloud environment.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Csar discloses region seed establishment comprising after performing the set of operations, provisioning, by the component, the cloud service (Csar: par. 0139; fig. 6; the seed maker may provision the seed infrastructure using the seed instructions; in particular, the seed maker may utilize the seed instructions generated to provision the seed infrastructure in the data center within the region of the realm.), wherein provisioning the cloud service restricts access to locked resources from within the first cloud environment by blocking modification requests that originate within the firs cloud environment (Csar: par. 0175; the customer of the IaaS provider can apply filters to the data plane VCN 918; the customer can determine what the data plane VCN 918 can access, and the customer may restrict access to public Internet 954 from the data plane VCN 918; the IaaS provider may not be able to apply filters or otherwise control access of the data plane VCN 918 to any outside networks or databases.), while permitting validated modification requests that originate within the second cloud environment (Csar: par. 0175; applying filters and controls by the customer onto the data plane VCN 918, contained in the customer tenancy 921, can help isolate the data plane VCN 918 from other customers and from public Internet 954.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Csar into the cloud computing environments of Ozkan comprising after performing the set of operations, provisioning, by the component, the cloud service, wherein provisioning the cloud service restricts access to locked resources from within the first cloud environment by blocking modification requests that originate within the firs cloud environment, while permitting validated modification requests that originate within the second cloud environment to establish new regions and realms (Csar: abstract).
Regarding claim 2; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, Ozkan further discloses comprising: receiving, by the component and from the second cloud environment, a request to modify the locked resource; validating the request based at least in part on an identifier associated with the request, wherein validating the request comprises determining that the identifier is permitted to modify the locked resource; and after validating the request, modifying the locked resource based on the request (Ozkan: par. 0052; the configuration files may define CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations or any other types of configuration type instructions for allocating, deallocating, and modifying a configuration of cloud resources 112.).
Regarding claim 3; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, Ozkan further discloses comprising: receiving, by the component and from another component in the first cloud environment, a request to modify the locked resource; validating, by the component, the request based at least in part on an identifier associated with the request, wherein validating the request comprises determining that the identifier is not permitted to modify the locked resource; and after validating the request, generating a response message indicating that the locked resource cannot be modified (Ozkan: par. 0049; managing cloud service accounts for subscribing entities; for instance, account manager 124 may manage and validate authentication credentials, establish and enforce IAM policies, and present information about subscribed-to-cloud service instances; a cloud service account is provisioned for a subscribing entity before a subscribed-to-cloud service instance has been provisioned; the subscribing entity may subsequently initiate self-service configuration).
Regarding claim 4; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, wherein Ozkan further discloses provisioning the cloud service causes access to the locked resource of the locked resources to be restricted from within the first cloud environment comprises: generating parameters to lock one or more resource of the resources; generating a lock compartment comprising lock data; and restricting access to one or more resource of the resources based at least in part on the parameters and the lock compartment (Ozkan: par. 0050; generating and presenting self-service UIs through which subscribing entities may select and input configuration parameters; self-service interface engine 126 generates an interactive graphic user interface (GUI) for each new subscription; the GUI may be rendered in a subscribing entity’s client application such as a web browser or mobile app; the subscribing entity may be guided to input configuration parameters for the instance of the cloud service through a series of user interface elements.).
Regarding claim 5; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, wherein Ozkan further discloses designating the resources associated with the cloud service as the locked resources in the first cloud environment comprises: receiving, by the component and from the second cloud environment, a request to generate a lock on a resource associated with the cloud service; validating the request based at least in part on an identifier associated with the request, wherein validating the request comprises determining that the identifier is permitted to lock the resource; and after validating the request, updating data associated with the resource in a database with corresponding lock data indicating that the resource is locked, wherein the database includes a record of the resources provisioned in the first cloud environment and corresponding locks associated with those resources (Ozkan: par. 0049; managing cloud service accounts for subscribing entities; for instance, account manager 124 may manage and validate authentication credentials, establish and enforce IAM policies, and present information about subscribed-to-cloud service instances; a cloud service account is provisioned for a subscribing entity before a subscribed-to-cloud service instance has been provisioned; the subscribing entity may subsequently initiate self-service configuration.).
Regarding claim 6; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, wherein Ozkan further discloses designating the resources associated with the cloud service as the locked resources in the first cloud environment comprises: determining an identifier associated with the request; identifying, based at least in part on the identifier, a lock associated with the identifier; and designating, based at least in part on the identifier and the lock, the resources as locked resources (Ozkan: par. 0045; a subscribing entity may be prevented from accessing servers, storage appliances, database instances, software applications, and other computing resources within a cloud environment that have been provisioned for other tenants or that have not been provisioned for any cloud service instance.).
Regarding claim 7; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, Ozkan further discloses comprising: receiving, by the component and from the second cloud environment, an unlock request to unlock a lock associated with a locked resource of the locked resources; validating the request based at least in part on an identifier associated with the unlock request, wherein validating the unlock request comprises determining that the identifier is permitted to modify the lock; and after validating the request, unlocking the lock (Ozkan: par. 0041; if the tenant attempts to perform an unauthorized action and attempts to access an unauthorized resource, the request is denied; the policies may be defined to prevent a tenant from knowing what other tenants are accessing cloud targets within the multi-tenant cloud platform.).
Regarding claim 8; Ozkan and Csar disclose the method of claim 1, wherein Ozkan further discloses provisioning the cloud service causes access to the locked resource of the locked resources to be permitted from within the second cloud environment (Ozkan: par. 0135; permitted access to a particular network resource only if the tenant and the particular network resources are associated with a same tenant ID.).
Regarding claim 9; Claim 9 is directed to a system which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 9 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Regarding claims 10-16; Claims 10-16 are directed to the system of claim 9 which have similar scope as claims 2-8. Therefore, claims 10-16 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Regarding claim 17; Claim 17 is directed to one or more non-transitory computer-readable media which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 17 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Regarding claims 18-20; Claims 18-20 are directed to the one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 17 which have similar scope as claims 2-8. Therefore, claims 18-20 remain un-patentable for the same reasons.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 extension fee 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 KHOI V LE whose telephone number is (571)270-5087. The examiner can normally be reached on 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST.
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/KHOI V LE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2436
