DETAILED ACTION
This Non Final Office Action is in response to Application filed on 01/02/2025.
Claims 1-20 filed on 01/02/2025 are being considered on the merits.
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 .
Drawings
The drawings filed on 01/02/2025 are accepted.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 03/31/2026 have been considered. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly an initialed and dated copy of Applicant's IDS form 1449 filed 03/31/2026 are attached to the instant Office action.
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 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.
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 35 U.S.C. 103 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 nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 9 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MOUSSA (US 20220060316 A1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Taylor (US 10602202 B1).
Regarding claim 1, MOUSSA teaches a method (MOUSSA Abstract “Systems and methods of protecting data in a message”), comprising:
accessing a source [image] DATA (MOUSSA [0028] “[0028] FIG. 2 is a component diagram depicting an arrangement of sender 202 and receiver 204 entities for the communication of a message 200”, i.e. accessing a source message 200);
generating a source [image] DATA hash from the source [image] (MOUSSA Figure 4 304);
executing a first algorithm to segment the source [image] DATA into a plurality of [image] DATA blocks (MOUSSA Figure 4 206 [0034] “FIG. 3 includes a splitter component 322 as a hardware, software (i.e. first algorithm), firmware or combination component adapted to split the message 200 into message blocks 206”);
executing a second algorithm to shuffle the plurality of [image] DATA blocks into a shuffled plurality of [image] DATA blocks; executing a hashing algorithm to generate a shuffled image hash from the shuffled plurality of [image] DATA blocks (MOUSSA [0042] Figure 4 illustrates shuffling the data blocks in 442 using the shuffler and reorder 326 (second algorithm) and further establishing shuffled hashed data blocks 456 based on the hashing algorithm);
generating an algorithm identification code from a source identifier associated with at least one of the first algorithm, the second algorithm, and the hashing algorithm (MOUSSA illustrates in Figure 3 306 [0035] “determining the proper order p.sub.1 . . . p.sub.i as depicted in FIG. 3 as proper order 306.”, [0037] “p.sub.n=H(h.sub.n∥S)⊕EI.sub.n”);
merging the…shuffled [image] DATA hash, and the algorithm identification code into a merged hash (MOUSSA Figure 4 410 illustrates shuffled hash xored/merged with the P in [0036-0037] represented by the encoded indications 208 EI.sub.n); and
providing the merged hash with the source [image] DATA (MOUSSA Figure 4 providing EI.sub.n along with data blocks illustrated in 410).
MOUSSA does not explicitly disclose the below limitation. Emphasis in italic.
BRILIAUSKAS discloses merging the source [image] hash, the shuffled [image] hash, and the algorithm identification code into a merged hash and providing the merged hash (BRILIAUSKAS [0053] “…the alteration of each file's 108 binary structure may include the use of an alteration tracking table. The alteration tracking table may include predefined alteration operations, predefined alteration rules and/or predefined alteration methods, for example described in sequential manner, to alter a binary file to reproduce a different but functionally equivalent file. In some embodiments, an alteration tracking table may include the hash of the original binary file as a first value, identifier of an alteration operation, rule, or method as subsequent values, and a hash of the altered file as a last value. In some embodiments, the alteration tracking table may be versioned and saved.”, where altering the file includes [0021] “…enabling the received file's binary structure to be altered by adjusting the assembly code”, [0043] “The sections of the source code can then be swapped between themselves (e.g. first section of the source code with the last section, second section with the second to last section, in random order, etc…reducing the size of one or more sections”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA to incorporate the teaching of BRILIAUSKAS to utilize the above feature, with the motivation to distinguish between binary files containing malicious content and binary files not containing malicious content, and data augmentation is a strategy that enables practitioners to significantly increase the diversity of data available for training models, as recognized by (BRILIAUSKAS Abstract, [0016]).
MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS disclose the above limitations, shuffling/swapping of different blocks/sections of the data/file, applying hash on the source data/file and shuffled/altered data/file, and merging the different parts of the data/files source and/or hash. While the data/file can be of any type of data/file, e.g. text, image, etc., however, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS does not explicitly disclose the data/file is an image type data/file.
Taylor discloses source image, hash of source image, altered source image, altered hash of an altered source image (Taylor Col. 6 line 24-62 “As described with respect to FIG. 1, blockchain platform 133 may be configured to store messages from subscriber system 120, subscriber devices 101-103, and/or the digital data lineage verification system 140, the messages may include one or more hash values related to the media file. For example, the one or more hash values may be included in the messages maintained in the blockchain of the blockchain platform 133. Examples of the one or more hash values include an original media file hash value, a media file hash value, an altered data hash value, an intra-frame hash value, a frame hash value, a resulting hash value, a metadata hash value, a delta-frame hash value, a video hash value or a previous block's hash value… an original media file hash value may be a hash value generated by a hash function applied to the entire original media file, parts of the media file including an intra-frame, a frame, a delta-frame, or the metadata, or to any combination of the intra-frame, the frame, the delta-frame, or the metadata of the media file. A video hash value may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to a media file that is a video that has been provided for authentication and source verification. Similarly, a media file hash value may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to a media file, which may be a video, a still image, a series of still images or the like, that has been presented or provided for authentication and source verification. An altered data hash value may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to a media file that includes modified content or modified metadata that has been presented or provided for authentication and source verification”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS to incorporate the teaching of Taylor to utilize the above feature, with the motivation of authenticating data lineage/verification and authentication, as recognized by (Taylor Col. 1 line 34-38, Col. 6 line 60-63).
Regarding claim 18, claim 18 recites similar limitations to claim 1, therefore rejected with the same rationale and motivation applied to claim 1.
Regarding claim 9, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor the method of claim 1, wherein generating the algorithm identification code from at least one of a first identifier of the first algorithm, a second identifier of the second algorithm, and a third identifier of the hashing algorithm, comprises.
MOUSSA does not explicitly disclose the below limitations.
BRILIAUSKAS generating the algorithm identification code to comprise an application version identifier and a publisher's unique identifier for at least one of the first algorithm, the second algorithm, and the hashing algorithm (BRILIAUSKAS discloses in [0053] the file tracking table may be versioned and saved, which uniquely identifies the saved file, it’s alteration and version).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA to incorporate the teaching of BRILIAUSKAS to utilize the above feature, with the motivation to distinguish between binary files containing malicious content and binary files not containing malicious content, and data augmentation is a strategy that enables practitioners to significantly increase the diversity of data available for training models, as recognized by (BRILIAUSKAS Abstract, [0016]).
Claims 2-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MOUSSA (US 20220060316 A1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Taylor (US 10602202 B1) and Noguchi (US 20080174790 A1).
Regarding claim 2, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor the method of claim 1.
BRILIAUSKAS discloses hash values of original data file and altered data file, and further discloses data augmentation by using a graph as disclosed in [0016]. However, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor does not explicitly disclose using a graphical representation, e.g. QR, to represent hash values.
Noguchi discloses further comprising generating a graphical representation of the merged hash (Noguchi [0129] “…an instruction to draw the electronic document data of the pages and a QR code corresponding to Hash values calculated as the page IDs based on the electronic document data of the pages.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor to incorporate the teaching of Noguchi to utilize the above feature, with the motivation of taking advantage of recognizable (machine-readable) image and compression of information represented by hashing.
Regarding claim 3, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor and Noguchi the method of claim 2.
BRILIAUSKAS discloses hash values of original data file and altered data file, and further discloses data augmentation by using a graph as disclosed in [0016]. However, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor does not explicitly disclose using a graphical representation, e.g. QR, to represent hash values.
Noguchi discloses wherein the graphical representation of the merged hash comprises a quick response (QR) code (Noguchi [0129] “…an instruction to draw the electronic document data of the pages and a QR code corresponding to Hash values calculated as the page IDs based on the electronic document data of the pages.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor to incorporate the teaching of Noguchi to utilize the above feature, with the motivation of taking advantage of recognizable (machine-readable) image and compression of information represented by hashing.
Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MOUSSA (US 20220060316 A1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Taylor (US 10602202 B1) and Noguchi (US 20080174790 A1) and Burnett (US 20230224037 A1).
Regarding claim 4, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor and Noguchi the method of claim 2.
BRILIAUSKAS discloses hash values of original data file and altered data file, and further discloses data augmentation by using a graph as disclosed in [0016], Noguchi discloses QR of hash values. However, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor and Noguchi does not explicitly disclose using multicolor QR. Emphasis in italic.
Burnett discloses wherein the graphical representation of the merged hash comprises a multicolor quick response (QR) code (Burnett [0013] “Generally, optically-represented datagrams (e.g., QR codes, although other types and formats are contemplated, including matrix bar codes of one or greater dimension and multicolor codes such as the High Capacity Colored 2-Dimensional (HCC2D) Code and the Just Another Barcode (JAB) code, etc.) are useful to transfer data between a pair of proximally-located electronic devices (for transfer of, e.g., contacts, business cards, URL web searches, etc.).”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor and Noguchi to incorporate the teaching of Burnett to utilize the above feature, with the advantage of its aesthetic Appeal.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MOUSSA (US 20220060316 A1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Taylor (US 10602202 B1) and Rowley (US 8782077 B1).
Regarding claim 5, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor the method of claim 1.
MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor does not disclose the below limitation.
Rowley discloses further comprising preprocessing the source image prior to generating the source image hash, wherein preprocessing the image comprises at least one of de-rotating, color correction, brightness correction, and border removal (Rowley Col. 1 line 55-58 “The method includes removing a uniform color border of the query image before computing the hash value of the query image.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor to incorporate the teaching of Rowley to utilize similarity subsystems identifying images that are near duplicates, as recognized by (Rowley Col. 5 line 52-60).
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MOUSSA (US 20220060316 A1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Taylor (US 10602202 B1) and Bathen (US 20240171393 A1).
Regarding claim 7, MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor the method of claim 1, wherein generating the source image hash from the source image further comprises.
MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor does not explicitly disclose the below limitations.
Bathen discloses generating an intermediate source image hash from the source image and re-hashing the intermediate source image hash with a salt to generate the source image hash (Bathen [0089] “digital asset ownership validation program 301 generates a liveness hash based on the image and nonce, such as liveness hash=sha256(sha256(image)∥ nonce).”)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor to incorporate the teaching of Bathen to validate ownership and authentication of a digital asset, as recognized in (Bathen Abstract).
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Taylor (US 10602202 B1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1).
Regarding claim 10, Taylor teaches a method (Taylor Abstract “Systems and methods of protecting data in a message”), comprising:
accessing a source image (Taylor Col. 16 line 6-17 “FIG. 4 illustrates an example of a social media usage verification of an original media file. In the example, an original media file 410 may have content such audio, image or video content. The metadata of the original media file may include information related to where and when the content was used may be recorded in a media repository of a digital data lineage verification system with additional information, such as an original media file hash value stored in a blockchain platform. In the example, a copy of original media file may be used in social media, such as social media use 441. In the example, the blockchain may be updated with a transaction associated with the original media file. ”);
accessing a merged hash associated with the source image; [separating the merged hash] into a provided source image hash, a provided shuffled image hash, and a provided algorithm identification code; generating a generated source image hash from the source image using a hashing algorithm; and validating the source image comprising determining the generated source image hash matches the provided source image hash (Taylor Col. 10 line 12-23 “ After altering the content or metadata, a hash function may be applied to the altered media file to generate an altered data hash value. The altered data hash value may be based on the altered data of the media file, and, in some examples, the retrieved hash value may be used in the generation of the altered data hash value. The altered data hash value may be added to a message that is uploaded to the blockchain platform as the subsequent transaction. For example, the message may be uploaded as a subsequent transaction to the media file address in the blockchain platform (235). The message may include an indication of altered data within the media file.”, Col. 6 line 58-62 “An altered data hash value may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to a media file that includes modified content or modified metadata that has been presented or provided for authentication and source verification”, Col. 14 line 43-67 “…the media file presented for authentication has the hash function applied to the same portions as the original video. The resulting hash value may be compared to the original media file hash value retrieved from the blockchain platform. If the resulting hash value matches or is within a predetermined range of the original media file hash, the presented video may be authenticated as matching. However, if the resulting hash value does not match and is not within a predetermined range of the original media file hash, the presented video is not authenticated as matching.…the original media file hash may include a number of hashes, such as a metadata hash value, a delta-frame hash value, or a video hash value, that are hash values that are appended to one another and stored in a message uploaded to the blockchain platform. Each hash value may be a specific hash value particular to a single element of the media file. For example, the metadata hash value may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to the metadata of the media file, the delta-frame hash value may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to specific delta-frames of the video of the media file, and the video hash may be a hash value generated by applying a hash function to specific intra-frames and/or delta-frames of the video of the media file. Of course, the hash function may be applied to other data within the media file.”, where the altered/modified content is hashed, as disclosed in Col. 10 line 5-23, for future verification as disclosed in Col. 15 line 60-67, Col. 16 line 1-5, Col. 17 line 38-55, identifier is identified as disclosed in Col. 10 line 48-57 “In the foregoing examples, combinations of the intra-frame hash value, the delta-frame hash value, and/or the retrieved hash value may be used when generating the altered data hash value. Alternatively, the altered data hash value may be generated by application of the hash function to only an intra-frame, only a delta-frame, a combination of both, or may be generated using other identifiers or cryptographic key information related to the subscriber requesting confirmation or the owner of the retrieved media file, or the like.”, Further in Col. 16 38-60 and Col. 17 line 38-55 disclose verifying the modified image with respect to the obtained and saved original image, where the process is performed by identifying modified hash image from original image).
Taylor does not explicitly disclose the below limitations.
BRILIAUSKAS discloses separating the merged hash (BRILIAUSKAS [0053] “…the alteration of each file's 108 binary structure may include the use of an alteration tracking table. The alteration tracking table may include predefined alteration operations, predefined alteration rules and/or predefined alteration methods, for example described in sequential manner, to alter a binary file to reproduce a different but functionally equivalent file. In some embodiments, an alteration tracking table may include the hash of the original binary file as a first value, identifier of an alteration operation, rule, or method as subsequent values, and a hash of the altered file as a last value. In some embodiments, the alteration tracking table may be versioned and saved. The alteration tracking table of the present principles can be used for training a binary file modification model of the present principles.”, where the different values are identified, where altering the file includes [0021] “…enabling the received file's binary structure to be altered by adjusting the assembly code”, [0043] “The sections of the source code can then be swapped between themselves (e.g. first section of the source code with the last section, second section with the second to last section, in random order, etc…reducing the size of one or more sections”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA to incorporate the teaching of BRILIAUSKAS to utilize the above feature, with the motivation to distinguish between binary files containing malicious content and binary files not containing malicious content, as recognized by (BRILIAUSKAS Abstract).
Claims 13 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Taylor (US 10602202 B1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Rowley (US 8782077 B1).
Regarding claim 13, Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS teaches the method of claim 10.
Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS does not disclose the below limitation.
Rowley discloses further comprising preprocessing the source image prior to generating the generated source image hash, wherein preprocessing the source image comprises at least one of de-rotating, color correction, brightness correction, and border removal (Rowley Col. 1 line 55-58 “The method includes removing a uniform color border of the query image before computing the hash value of the query image.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS to incorporate the teaching of Rowley to utilize similarity subsystems identifying images that are near duplicates, as recognized by (Rowley Col. 5 line 52-60).
Regarding claim 13, Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS teaches the method of claim 10.
Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS does not disclose the below limitation.
Rowley discloses further comprising preprocessing the source image, prior to generating the generated source image hash from the source image using the hashing algorithm, comprising at least one of de-rotating, color correction, brightness correction, and border removal (Rowley Col. 1 line 55-58 “The method includes removing a uniform color border of the query image before computing the hash value of the query image.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS to incorporate the teaching of Rowley to utilize similarity subsystems identifying images that are near duplicates, as recognized by (Rowley Col. 5 line 52-60).
Claims 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Taylor (US 10602202 B1) in view of BRILIAUSKAS (US 20230342466 A1) and Noguchi (US 20080174790 A1) and Burnett (US 20230224037 A1).
Regarding claim 14, Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS teaches the method of claim 10.
Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS does not disclose the below limitation.
Noguchi discloses wherein accessing the merged hash comprises accessing a [multicolor] quick response (QR) code having the merged hash encoded therein (Noguchi [0129] “…an instruction to draw the electronic document data of the pages and a QR code corresponding to Hash values calculated as the page IDs based on the electronic document data of the pages.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS to incorporate the teaching of Noguchi to utilize the above feature, with the motivation of taking advantage of recognizable (machine-readable) image and compression of information represented by hashing.
Taylor in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Noguchi do not disclose multicolor QR.
Burnett discloses multicolor QR (Burnett [0013] “Generally, optically-represented datagrams (e.g., QR codes, although other types and formats are contemplated, including matrix bar codes of one or greater dimension and multicolor codes such as the High Capacity Colored 2-Dimensional (HCC2D) Code and the Just Another Barcode (JAB) code, etc.) are useful to transfer data between a pair of proximally-located electronic devices (for transfer of, e.g., contacts, business cards, URL web searches, etc.).”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified MOUSSA in view of BRILIAUSKAS and Taylor and Noguchi to incorporate the teaching of Burnett to utilize the above feature, with the advantage of its aesthetic Appeal.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6, 8, 11-12, 15-16, 19-20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims and overcoming any pending or may arise rejections/objections.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Farrell (US 20180309578 A1) discloses authenticity of a program executed by a processor is determined by a security element that computes a hash code over re-ordered segments of a known-to-be-authentic copy of a program executed by the processor.
Code (US 20170134162 A1) discloses an alteration to a frame, an omission of frames, or a reordering of frames. If the hashed match, the media file is approved. Otherwise, its authenticity may be denied.
Finlow-Bates (US 20160134601 A1) discloses shuffle (or encode) data segments of a digital file based on a hash output of a filename associated with the digital file.
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/BASSAM A NOAMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2497
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