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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 19 December 2024 and 21 April 2025 have been considered by the examiner.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 1-14 in the reply filed on 22 April 2026 is acknowledged.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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 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 1-14 and 21-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Mundra et al., USPN 2020/0127984.
With regard to claims 1, 9, and 21, Mundra discloses a method including generating one or more stream ciphers for encrypting one or more data units (0044, 0086, 0096), encrypting a data unit of the one or more data units using a stream cipher of the one or more stream ciphers to generate an encrypted data unit (0096, 0101), generating a new media access control (MAC) address to add to the data unit based on the one or more stream ciphers (0085, 0114, Table 16), and wirelessly transmitting the encrypted data unit with the new MAC address (0063, 0077, 0115).
With regard to claims 2, 10, and 22, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses using a portion of the stream cipher as the new MAC address (“Master Key or Pre-computed inner digest for HMAC Hash“ table 16).
With regard to claims 3, 11, and 23, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses generating the new MAC address includes performing an exclusive-or operation with a portion of the stream cipher and a previous MAC address of a transmitter device associated with the data unit to generate the new MAC address (“Master Key or Pre-computed inner digest for HMAC Hash“ table 16).
With regard to claims 4, 12, and 24, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses generating the new MAC address includes performing an exclusive-or operation with a portion of one of the stream cipher and a predetermined tag to generate the new MAC address (“Master Key or Pre-computed inner digest for HMAC Hash“ table 16).
With regard to claims 5, 13, and 25, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses generating the new MAC address includes adding a padding to the data unit, encrypting the padding using the stream cipher of the one or more stream ciphers to generate an encrypted padding for the data unit, storing the encrypted padding for the data unit in a data store; performing a lookup in the data store to identify a previous encrypted padding associated with a previous data unit, and using the previous encrypted padding for the previous data unit as the new MAC address for the data unit (0167, Table 16).
With regard to claim 6, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses receiving, at a receiver device, the encrypted data unit with the previous encrypted padding associated with the previous data unit as the new MAC address; performing a lookup in a second data store using the previous encrypted padding associated with the previous data unit to identify a device that transmitted the data unit and a key used to generate the stream cipher; and decrypting the data unit using the key (0094, 0115, 0159, 0188, Table 16).
With regard to claims 7, 14, and 26, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses the data unit is a MAC protocol data unit (0085, 0093) and wirelessly transmitting comprises wirelessly transmitting the encrypted data unit with the new MAC address according to an IEEE 802.11 wireless networking protocol (0273, Table 1, 0022).
With regard to claim 8, Mundra discloses the method of claim 1, as outlined above, and further discloses the method is performed by a client device or an access point (0032-0034, 0092).
References Cited
Jung et al., USPN 2016/0029215, discloses pairing encryption keys to MAC addresses (0086-0089), but not that the addresses are generated using the key.
Le Guillou et al., USPN 2024/0305630 discloses using a key to generate a MAC address (0119, 0113).
Vegas et al., USPN 2023/0262464, discloses MAC address rotation (0017) by using keys in generating addresses (0094).
Ansley, USPN 2024/0291797, discloses MAC address rotation (0017) by using keys in generating addresses (0017, claim 3).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JACOB LIPMAN whose telephone number is (571)272-3837. The examiner can normally be reached 5:30AM-6:00PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ali Shayanfar can be reached at 571-270-1050. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JACOB LIPMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2434
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