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 .
Status of Claims
2. This Office Action is issued in response to the claims filed on 01/22/2025.
Claims 1-20 are pending in this Office Action.
Information Disclosure Statement
3. The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 06/18/2026 has been considered by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
4. 35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
5. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because they are directed to abstract ideas without significantly more.
Regarding claim 1,
Step 2A, Prong 1:
Claim 1 recites: “…receiving a set of instructions …; detecting a new layer …; inserting … a guardian layer …; and building the container image based on the set of instructions.” These limitations, as drafted, under their broadest reasonable interpretations cover performance of the limitations in the mind or on paper. For example, the limitation “receiving a set of instructions” under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind or on paper. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind or on paper, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites abstract ideas.
Step 2A, Prong 2:
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claim does not recite any practical application of the limitations besides abstract ideas. Therefore, the claim is directed to abstract ideas.
Step 2B:
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because besides the abstract ideas, additional elements ‘a processing device’ is recited at a high level of generality with no more than mere instruction to apply the exception using generic computer component. Therefore, claim 1 is not patent eligible.
Claims 2-10 depend on claim 1 and they do not limit independent claim 1 or themselves to a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception; therefore, claims 2-10 are also not patent eligible.
Similarly, claims 11-20 are directed to abstract ideas without significantly more and not patent eligible.
Allowable Subject Matter
6. Claims 1- 20 are allowable over prior art and would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejections under 35 USC § 101 set forth in this Office action.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
Regarding independent claims 1, 11, and 20:
a. Kumar-Mayernik et al. (US 20200183766 A1) discloses a system and computer-implemented method for container provenance tracking uses a build instruction file of a container image to output a new provenance document associated with the container image for distribution. For each file system layer of the container image specified in the build instruction file, an existing provenance document for the file system layer is inserted into the new provenance document. If there is no existing provenance document, information about each software component included in the file system layer is retrieved and inserted into the new provenance document (Fig.5 with associated text).
b. Gupta et al. (US 20240427901 A1) discloses methods and systems for container management include scanning layers of a first container image of a set of container images to generate scan metadata for the layers. Relationship information is generated that identifies relationships between a first set of layers of the first container image and layers of additional container images of the plurality of container images. The additional container images are scanned, omitting any layers in the additional container images that match a layer of the first set of layers based on the relationship information (Figs. 2, 4, and 5 with associated text).
c. Nowak et al. (US 20250220037 A1) discloses a method of managing a container image in a computing system is described. The method includes adding, by first software executing on a host, metadata associated with a user to the container image, the metadata related to a set of software in the container image; receiving, by the first software or second software, the container image; scanning, by the first software or the second software, the container image to identify a software vulnerability; generating, by the first software or the second software, a mapping between the metadata and the software vulnerability; and assigning a remediation action to remediate the container image based on the mapping (Figs.5 and 6 with associated text).
The prior arts of record fail to either disclose or sufficiently suggest the combination features as claimed and arranged by applicant. Although the above references teach similar aspects of the independent claims 1, 11, and 20, none of these references individually or in reasonable combination discloses all the limitations as claimed in the independent claims and each of these independent claims as a whole is not obvious over these prior arts. Therefore, independent claims 1, 11, and 20 are allowable over the prior arts of record and dependent claims are allowable by virtue of their dependence on the independent claims.
Prior Art of Record
7. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure: see attached PTO-892 Notice of References Cited.
Conclusion
8. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THANH T. LE whose telephone number is (571)270-0279. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 8:00 am - 4:30 pm EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Farid Homayounmehr can be reached on 571-272-3739. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/THANH T LE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2495
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