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 07/02/2025 and 10/16/2025 are 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 § 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) 1-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Soriente (US20210377224) in view of Li (CN111030814A).
Regarding Claims 1,5 and 9 Soriente discloses by using a key that is pre-synchronized with a trusted execution environment (TEE) or a terminal device; (Paragraph [0034] Examiner Note (E.N.) A successful remote attention protocol results in a shared secret (synchronized key) that is used as a basic element for a secure channel between the client and the proxy. One of ordinary skill in the art can determine communications between the client and proxy result in the use of a pre-synchronized key during the secure communication.)
sending, by the client device, encrypted authentication data information to the TEE; (Paragraph [0038] E.N. Messages between the client and the proxy are encrypted and authenticated with the key K established during the remote attestation.)
receiving, by the client device, signature data sent from the TEE; (Paragraph [0037] E.N. The proxy enclave receives a response from the server and forwards it back to the client enclave which then returns the response to the client application running on the client via interface.)
Soriente does not, but in related art, Li discloses A signature authentication method, comprising: sending, by a client device, a signature authentication request to a server; (Paragraph [0010] E.N. An authentication request is sent to the server. The authentication request carries at least the client’s private key and client signature, encrypted using the server’s public key.)
receiving, by the client device, authentication data information sent from the server; (Paragraph [0010] E.N. The shared session key is then used to encrypt the message to be sent to the client and a response message is returned to the client. The response message carries at least the server’s private key and server signature)
encrypting, by the client device, the authentication data information (Paragraph [0053] E.N. Information sent/received is encrypted)
and sending, by the client device, the signature data to the server. (Paragraph [0045] E.N. The management device sends a response message to the server. The response message includes the status data of the electronic device and a second checksum)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have incorporated the teachings of Soriente to Li because Soriente does not explicitly disclose signature authentication requests and encrypting authentication data which is disclosed by Li. Incorporating the teachings of Li to Soriente allows for the use of the authentication of communication between a client and the TEE as well as the client and the server for a secure communication.
Regarding Claim 2,6 and 10 Soriente in view of Li discloses the method of claim 1, the apparatus according to claim 5 and the non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 9. Soriente further discloses wherein the method further comprises: during a process of server registration: generating, by the client device, the key during a process of initiating registration to the server; storing, by the client device, the key; and sending, by the client device, the key to the TEE to synchronize the key with the TEE. (Figure 1 and Paragraph [0032] E.N. An authentication channel is established between the user and the service provider server as well as a secure channel between the client and the proxy which supports TEEs. See [0022])
Regarding Claim 3, 7 and 11 Soriente in view of Li discloses the method of claim 2, the apparatus according to claim 6 and the non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 10. Soriente further discloses wherein the sending the key to the TEE comprises: sending, by the client device, the key to the TEE when sending a registration response data field to the TEE. (Paragraph [0022] E.N. Communications between the TEE running on the proxy and the TEE running on the client take place over a secure channel established by the attestation using a shared secret generated based on successful attestation.)
Regarding Claim 4, 8 and 12 Soriente in view of Li discloses the method of claim 2, the apparatus according to claim 6 and the non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 10. Soriente further discloses wherein the method further comprises: obtaining, by the client device, a key ID of the key when generating the key; synchronizing, by the client device, the key ID of the key to the TEE; and sending, by the client device, the key ID to the TEE. (Paragraph [0034] E.N. A successful remote attention protocol results in a shared secret that is used as a basic element for a secure channel between the client and the proxy. One of ordinary skill in the art can determine that the shared secret includes some form of a key that can be reference by both the TEE and client device)
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AAYUSH ARYAL whose telephone number is (571)272-2838. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m..
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/AAYUSH ARYAL/Examiner, Art Unit 2435
/AMIR MEHRMANESH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2491