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 . The present office action is responsive to communication received 2/4/2025. Claims 1-20 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 3/17/2025, 5/8/2025, and 4/29/2026 was filed after the mailing date of the application no. 19/045,350 on 2/04/2025. The submission is 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.
Claims 1, 4, 8, 11, 15, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over by Rhoads et al. (US 20040153649) in view of Rockwood et al. (US 20030204729).
Regarding claim 1,
Rhoads teaches a method for processing digital content, applied to a computing device, the method comprising:
obtaining the digital content;
[receives the digital image 940 (Rhoads et al., paragraph 203, please refer to Fig. 4)]
performing feature extraction on the digital content to obtain a digital content feature;
generating an intermediate key based on at least the digital content feature and secret information of a user;
[The watermark detection and/or payload reading of one or more watermarks in the image may be based on user provided key information, such as a password, which may be combined with an image hash or other information on the object to provide a watermark detection key (e.g., a pseudorandom pattern) or a watermark payload descrambling or decoding key. (Rhoads et al., paragraph 96) meaning: the key used for decoding is the same as the embedded key (paragraph 72, 92), generated from user information and image feature].
Although Rhoads discloses encrypting various keys used to encode the watermark (paragraph 43) and embedding a watermark of the digital content into the digital content (paragraph 70), Rhoads does not explicitly teach binding at least the intermediate key to obtain an encryption key; embedding a watermark of the digital content into the digital content based on the encryption key.
In an analogous art of generating watermarks, Rockwood discloses:
binding at least the intermediate key to obtain an encryption key [The distribution entity generates a public and private key pair (known as the watermark pair), and the private key of the watermark pair is used by the distribution entity to encrypt the nonce, wherein the encrypted nonce is known as a watermark key. The media content is then watermarked using the watermark key. (Rockwood et al., paragraph 21) meaning the nonce is interpreted as the equivalent of the intermediate key, encrypted by the private key to obtain a watermark key i.e the claimed encryption key];
embedding a watermark of the digital content into the digital content based on the encryption key [cast[s] or embed[s] the watermark in the media content 110 using the watermark key, which results in the digital data 128 containing a watermarked copy of the media content 110. (paragraph 49)].
Rhoads and Rockwood are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encryption. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the instant application effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Rhoads to incorporate the teachings of Rockwood et al. to include binding at least the intermediate key to obtain an encryption key in order to add a layer of protection, and embedding a watermark of the digital content into the digital content based on the encryption key, in order to add protection to the media content to prevent piracy of the content. (Rockwood et al., paragraph 26)]
Regarding claim 8,
Rhoads teaches a computing device for processing digital content, comprising a memory and a processor, wherein the memory stores executable code, and the processor executes the executable code to cause the computing device to implement operations including:
[he methods and processes described above may be implemented in programs executed from a system's memory (a computer readable medium, such as an electronic, optical or magnetic storage device). (Rhoads et al., paragraph 285)]
The claim recites substantially the same content as claim 1 and is rejected with the rationales set forth for claim 1.
Regarding claim 15,
Rhoads teaches a system comprising: an interaction manager, operating on a processor; and memory comprising instructions, which when executed by the processor,
[The methods and processes described above may be implemented in programs executed from a system's memory (a computer readable medium, such as an electronic, optical or magnetic storage device). (Rhoads et al., paragraph 285)]
The claim recites substantially the same content as claim 1 and is rejected with the rationales set forth for claim 1.
Regarding claims 4, 11, and 18,
Rhoads in view of Rockwood discloses the method according to claim 1, the computing device according to claim 8, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 15, further comprising:
binding the digital content embedded with the watermark to an evidence watermark, wherein the evidence watermark comprises copyright information.
[the present invention introduces a sequence of steps or functions that provides for non-repudiation of watermarked media content 110. This is useful when the source of the media content 110 needs to be known or proved. One such example is when media content 110 and presentations of that media content 110 must be accounted for, such as with copyrighted media content 110 (Rockwood et al., paragraph 40)]
Rhoads, Rockwood are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encryption. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the instant application effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Rhoads to incorporate the teachings of Rockwood et al. to include binding the digital content embedded with the watermark to an evidence watermark, wherein the evidence watermark comprises copyright information, in order to add protection to the media content to prevent piracy of the content. (Rockwood et al., paragraph 26)]
Claims 5, 7, 12, 14, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over by Rhoads et al. (US 20040153649) in view of Rockwood et al. (US 20030204729) and in further view of Liu et al. (US 20210110009).
Regarding claims 5, 12, and 19,
Rhoads in view of Rockwood discloses the method according to claim 4, the computing device according to claim 11, the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium according to claim 18, but fails to explicitly disclose wherein the binding the digital content embedded with the watermark to an the evidence watermark comprises: performing digest calculation on the digital content embedded with the watermark to determine a first digest; and signing the first digest and the copyright information based on a private key of the user to determine a first signature.
However in an analogous art Liu discloses wherein the binding the digital content embedded with the watermark to the evidence watermark comprises: performing digest calculation on the digital content embedded with the watermark to determine a first digest; and signing the first digest and the copyright information based on a private key of the user to determine a first signature.
[extract a watermark from the input and obtain a hash for the watermark (paragraph 29)];
In an embodiment, digitally signing the watermark by the security unit 275 of DP accelerator 105 includes computing a hash or digest of the watermark and including the hash or digest with the digitally signed watermark. (Liu et al., paragraph 68)]
Rhoads, Rockwood and Liu are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encryption. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the instant application effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Rhoads, Rockwood to incorporate the teachings of Liu et al. to include wherein the binding the digital content embedded with the watermark to the evidence watermark comprises: performing digest calculation on the digital content embedded with the watermark to determine a first digest; and signing the first digest and the copyright information based on a private key of the user to determine a first signature, in order to validate the received digitally signed output data. (Liu et al., paragraph 104)]
Regarding claims 7 and 14,
Rhoads in view of Rockwood discloses the method according to claim 4, the computing device according to claim 11, but fails to explicitly disclose wherein the first digest is a hash value of the digital content embedded with the watermark.
However in an analogous art Liu discloses wherein the first digest is a hash value of the digital content embedded with the watermark.
[In an embodiment, digitally signing the watermark by the security unit 275 of DP accelerator 105 includes computing a hash or digest of the watermark and including the hash or digest with the digitally signed watermark. (Liu et al., paragraph 68)]
Rhoads, Rockwood and Liu are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of encryption. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the instant application effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teachings of Rhoads, Rockwood to incorporate the teachings of Liu et al. to include wherein the first digest is a hash value of the digital content embedded with the watermark, in order to validate the received digitally signed output data. (Liu et al., paragraph 104)]
Allowable subject matter
Claims 2-3, 6, 9-10, 13, 16-17, and 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The independent claims 1, 8 and 15 are being rejected using Rhoads in view of Rockwood.
Additionally:
Regarding claims 2, 9, and 16, the closest prior arts of the record are:
Patel et al. (US 20210367770) discloses obtaining a second intermediate key and binding at least the second intermediate key to obtain a second encryption key
[In step 354, a second encryption key is generated using the second intermediate key and the object identifier associated with the data. The data processor may generate the second encryption key using the second intermediate key obtained from the key manager, the object identifier associated with the data, and an encryption key generation algorithm. (Patel et al., paragraph 120)]
Durst et al. (US 20050063027) discloses and wherein the embedding the watermark of the digital content into the digital content based on the encryption key comprises: determining an embedding location for the watermark in the digital content based on the first encryption key, and embedding the encrypted watermark into the embedding location in the digital content.
[in one implementation a key provides a pseudo-random sequence that is used to embed the watermark. In another example, key specifies locations for watermark embedding, “ (Durst et al., paragraph 137)]
Levy et al. (US 20040059933) also discloses and wherein the embedding the watermark of the digital content into the digital content based on the encryption key comprises: determining an embedding location for the watermark in the digital content based on the first encryption key, and embedding the encrypted watermark into the embedding location in the digital content.
[The key is preferably a pseudo-random sequence that is used to embed the watermark, but it need not be. For example, the key can specify locations for watermark embedding (Levy et al., paragraph 20, 61)]
Rhoads in view of Rockwood in combination with the above references, fail to explicitly disclose:
“wherein the digital content feature comprises a first digital content feature and a second digital content feature, and the secret information of the user comprises first secret information and second secret information; wherein the generating an the intermediate key based on at least the digital content feature and the secret information of the user comprises: obtaining a first intermediate key based on the first digital content feature and the first secret information, and obtaining a second intermediate key based on the second digital content feature and the second secret information; wherein the binding at least the intermediate key to obtain an the encryption key comprises: binding at least the first intermediate key to obtain a first encryption key, and binding at least the second intermediate key to obtain a second encryption key; and wherein the embedding the watermark of the digital content into the digital content based on the encryption key comprises: determining an embedding location for the watermark in the digital content based on the first encryption key, encrypting the watermark based on the second encryption key, and embedding the encrypted watermark into the embedding location in the digital content”, as recited substantially in dependent claims 2, 9, and 16.
Claims 2, 9 and 16 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.
Claims 3, 10, and 17 depend on claims 2, 9, and 16 respectively, and are therefore objected to as well.
Regarding claims 6, 13, and 20
Claims 5, 12 and 19, from which claims 6, 13 and 20 depend on respectively are rejected under Rhoads in view of Rockwood and in further view of Liu.
Rhoads in view of Rockwood and in further view of Liu fails to explicitly disclose wherein the evidence watermark further comprises the first signature, a second signature, and a timestamp; the second signature is obtained by signing, by a copyright registration authority, the first signature, the copyright information, and the timestamp after signature verification on the first signature succeeds; and the timestamp comprises information about a time at which the copyright registration authority completes the second signature.
Claims 6, 13 and 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Dodov et al. (US 20230044309) discloses a watermark embedding process generates a data encryption key and uses the public key to encrypt the data encryption key. The platform portal server then stores the pair of the public key and the private key and the encrypted data encryption key.
Rucklidge et al. (US 8189863) discloses A watermark is embedded in a document having a plurality of pages. The pages of the document are analyzed to produce watermark information, which indicates whether the page is suitable for use with one or more of a plurality of watermarking schemes.
Jun et al. (US 20230112622) discloses generating a voice image based on the collected voice information of the speaker, causes a deep neural network (DNN) model to learn the voice image, and extract a feature vector for the voice image, a watermark server configured to generate a watermark based on the feature vector and embed the watermark and individual information into the voice image or voice conversion data, and an authentication server configured to generate a private key based on the feature vector and determine whether to extract the watermark and the individual information based on an authentication result.
Bhupathiraju et al. (US 20170244692) disclose using a nonce directly, or a using a derivation on the nonce to generate an encryption key (paragraph 55)].
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DANIEL ELAHIAN whose telephone number is (703) 756-1284. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday – Friday from 7:30am to 5pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Catherine Thiaw can be reached at telephone number 571-270-1138. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/D.E./DANIEL ELAHIAN, Examiner, Art Unit 2407
/Catherine Thiaw/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2407 6/26/2026
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