DETAILED ACTION
This non-final office action is in response to applicant’s response to restriction filed June 01, 2026. Claims 9-13 have been unelected and withdrawn. Claims 1-8 and 14-20 are being examined and pending.
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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I to claims 1-8 and 14-20 in the reply filed on June 01, 2026 is acknowledged.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 12/05/2024 have been accepted.
Examiner’s Notes
(1) A “unit,” “component” are a generic placeholder, however, the terms “a central firewall unit,” “firewall component” are modified by known structural modifiers (i.e. firewall is either software or hardware). Therefore, these claim terms do not invoke 112 (f).
(2) Claim 1 recites “a plurality of firewall components embedded within respective plurality of network nodes of the mobile network.” Firewall components embedded within respective plurality of network nodes and network nodes are known hardware devices. Therefore, claim 1 is statutory under 35 USC § 101.
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 1-8 and 14-20 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 and 14 recite “optionally transmit/transmitting the logged checksums to the central firewall unit.” The term “optionally” rendering the scope of the claims unascertainable and also implies a condition is not always the case, therefore indefinite. See MPEP § 2173.05(d).
Claims 1 and 14 recite, “a payload that is received twice by respective network node.” It is unclear whether twice means received double the amount of payload or received payload two times sequentially. If the language of a claim, given its broadest reasonable interpretation, is such that a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art would read it with more than one reasonable interpretation, then a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph is appropriate. MPEP 2173.02 (I)
Dependent claims 2-8 and 15-20 do not cure the deficiencies.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or non-obviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a), the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned at the time any inventions covered therein were made absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and invention dates of each claim that was not commonly owned at the time a later invention was made in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(c) and potential pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(e), (f) or (g) prior art under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a).
Claims 1 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20190182213 (“Saavedra”) in view of US 20200374039 (“Rau”).
Regarding claim 1, (Original) Saavedra taught a distributed firewall system for a mobile network that uses hop-by-hop protocol, (Para. 0059. a distributed firewall implemented at both Site A and Site B. 0145. 0092: MPLS is protocol independent and can map IP addresses to MPLS labels. MPLS improves network performance by forwarding packets (e.g. IP packets) from one network node to the next based on short path labels, Para. 0359) comprising: a plurality of firewall components embedded within respective plurality of network nodes of the mobile network (Para.0008. The system has a plurality of firewalls corresponding to a plurality of client site network components, each firewall integrated with a client site network component…); and a central firewall unit communicatively coupled to each firewall component (Para. 0328. A centralized firewall. Para. 0138. [0138] A centralized firewall network controller 210 may be provided for unifying or centralizing the management of multiple and distributed firewalls 127a, 127b, 127c, 127d, 127f. Para. 0133. A centralized firewall network controller 210 may use the connections, whether bonded/aggregated or not, to publish one or more firewall templates and/or facilitate generation of one or more firewalls each associated with one or more CPE-CEs 124 or Sites 120.),
Saavedra did not but the analogous art Rau taught wherein each firewall component is configured to compute and log checksum of each payload received by the respective node, and optionally transmit the logged checksums to the central firewall unit (Para. 0002. a transmitter (i.e. firewall component) may calculate a checksum of the data and transmit the data together with the checksum. The receiver (i.e. Central firewall unit) may calculate the checksum of the received data with the same algorithm as the transmitter. If the received and calculated checksums don't match a transmission error has occurred.), and wherein the central firewall unit or each firewall component is configured to compare checksums of a payload that is received twice by respective network node, and determine whether the re-reception of the payload is a malicious response (Para. 0043. [0043] In step 430, the method may include transmitting the data packet from the network layer to the network controller with a notification that the checksum is in error. By marking the packet as bad, the network controller knows to remove the packet from an outbound transmission channel. The notification may trigger one or more traces and a replay of the data packet, and the one or more traces are automatically captured based on the replay of the data packet.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the applicant(s) invention was filed to modify the invention of Saavedra by including the idea of each firewall component is configured to compute and log checksum of each payload received by the respective node, and optionally transmit the logged checksums to the central firewall unit, and wherein the central firewall unit or each firewall component is configured to compare checksums of a payload that is received twice by respective network node, and determine whether the re-reception of the payload is a malicious response as taught by Rau so that The corruption in the packet can be detected through a checksum calculation (Rau, Para. 0017).
Claim 14 recites similar limitations to claim 1, mutatis mutandis, the subject matter of claim 14, which is therefore, also considered to be taught by Saavedra-Rau combination as above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-3, 5-8, 15-16, and 18-20 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Dependent claims 4 and 17 would also be allowable due to dependency.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20140297609 A1 (Larson et al.): [0060] The checksum embodiment involves 1) computing a checksum over the payload of each new record version and 2) adding the checksums to the log buffer of the transaction. Although checksums may also be computed and saved to the log buffer for rendered old record versions of the transaction, this is not required because the transaction only changed their timestamps, whereas the checksum is computed over the payload. Once this is completed for all new record versions, a checksum is computed over the contents of the log buffer. The checksum of the log buffer may then be saved as part of the log buffer.
US 8,752,175 B2 (Porter et al.): 10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium as set forth in claim 8, wherein the code to analyze the payload contents of the captured packets in the pre-processed first log and the pre-processed second log further comprises code to: compare at least one of the following properties of the payload contents of the sub-sequences of captured packets in the pre-processed first and second logs: a checksum, a hash, a length, and variations thereof.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHAWNCHOY RAHMAN whose telephone number is (571)270-7471. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:30A-5P ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Taghi T Arani can be reached at 5712723787. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Shawnchoy Rahman/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2438
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