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 .
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-r20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2022/0263886 (Rose) in view of US 2022/0124090 (Slensker) and US 2025/0024264 (Opedal).
With regard to claim 1, Rose discloses a computing system for provisioning a logical storage area, the computing system comprising: a network interface; a processor in communication with the network interface; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing processor-executable instructions which, when executed, cause the processor to (Rose: Paragraph [0131]):
receive, via the network interface and from a remote computing device, an instruction to provision a logical storage area, the instruction including identification data (Rose: Figures 6-7 and Paragraph [0419]);
provision the logical storage area with an unlocked first software feature and a locked second software feature (Rose: Figures 6-7 and Paragraph [0419]. New customer accounts (logical storage area) may be created, where the account may be initially locked. Figure 6 corresponds to a functionality to deposit, where in the method, no check is made to see if the account allows for deposits, where this would correspond to an unlocked feature. Meanwhile, Figure 7 corresponds to a functionality to withdraw, where step 704 provides a check to see if a withdrawal is permitted, which, in the case of a frozen account, would not be, and thus the withdrawals correspond to a locked feature.).
Rose fails to disclose, but Slensker teaches perform a first identity authentication based on a received representation of an identification credential and biometric data captured at the remote computing device, the first identity authentication confirming that: the biometric data captured at the remote computing device corresponds to biometric data represented by the identification credential; and the identification credential corresponds to the identification data; and in response to successfully performing the first identity authentication, provision the logical storage area (Slensker: Paragraph [0008] and Figure 4. A centralized biometric database may be provided, where when opening a new account, the user’s biometric data can be compared with entries in the central database, where when a user exists in the database, a mismatch of biometric data would result in a failure to authenticate, while a match would allow the account creation to proceed.).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to utilize biometric data to validate a user when creating an account to prevent an imposter from opening an account in the user’s name (Slensker: Paragraph [0004]).
Rose fails to teach, but Opedal teaches after provisioning the logical storage area: determine that a second identity authentication has been successfully performed, the second identity authentication using a different authentication technique than the first identity authentication; and in response to determining that the second identity authentication has been successfully performed, unlock the second software feature to grant access to additional software functionality in association with the logical storage area (Opedal: Paragraph [0036]. Opedal shows that it was known to require additional personal data (beyond that which was already provided) to unfreeze an account in-person, where Rose provides that a new account may be frozen, requiring approval by an owner, but does not provide the details of how such approval is acquired (Rose: Paragraph [0419]).).
According, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to require additional information to authenticate the user to unfreeze an account to ensure that the user is who they claim to be, including requiring an in-person interaction, thus preventing fraudulent users who manage to circumvent remote validation measures from benefiting from the account via withdrawals.
With regard to claim 2, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the first identity authentication provides for remote identity verification and wherein the second identity authentication requires local identity verification which requires physical verification at a physical premises (Opedal: Paragraph [0036]).
With regard to claim 3, Rose fails to teach, but knowledge possessed by one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing teaches wherein physical verification at the physical premises is provided using a physical token (More specifically, Opedal provides for the use of secondary identification in person, where Official Notice is taken that scannable cards were a well-known form of identification for a person.). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to utilize a scannable card for secondary identification to enable the efficient verification of a user, including automatically reading information from such a scannable identification, using well-known identification methods.
With regard to claim 4, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the physical token is associated with the identification credential (Opedal: Paragraph [0036]).
With regard to claim 5, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the second identity authentication is performed by scanning the physical token at a scanner situated at the physical premises (Opedal: Paragraph [0036]. As addressed in claim 3, scannable identification cards were well-known in the art.).
With regard to claim 6, Rose fails to teach, but knowledge possessed by one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing teaches wherein the instructions further configure the processor to: determine that a location of the remote computing device satisfies defined criteria, and wherein the first identity authentication is performed in response to determining that the location of the remote computing device satisfies the defined criteria (More specifically, Official Notice is taken that the enabling of remote personal computers to create accounts, where geofencing is utilized to either restrict account creation from certain regions (e.g. regions/countries known to have a high number of fraudulent activity or regions/countries where the accounts do not comply with local laws) or restrict account creation to only certain regions/countries (e.g. a region/countries that the business is allowed to operate).). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to provide geofencing to ensure that the account creation complies with security and/or legal requirements, thus ensuring that the business is in compliance with local laws or reducing the risk of fraudulent activity.
With regard to claim 7, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the defined criteria are configured to be satisfied when the remote computing device is outside a geofence but that it is not satisfied when the remote computing device is inside the geofence (As addressed in claim 6, above, the use of geofencing to restrict account creation from specific regions was known.).
With regard to claim 8, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the geofence is defined based on a jurisdictional boundary (As addressed in claim 6, above, the regions could correspond to countries).
With regard to claim 9, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the first identity authentication uses one or both of computer vision techniques and machine learning to confirm that the biometric data captured at the remote computing device corresponds to the biometric data represented by the identification credential (Slensker: Paragraph [0021]).
With regard to claim 10, Rose fails to teach, but Slensker teaches wherein the identification credential is an officially-issued identification credential (Slensker: Paragraph [0041]). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to have the identification be an officially-issued identification credential to utilize well-known types of identification for a user that conform to at least some known baseline standard.
With regard to claim 11, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the first software feature enables performance of a computing operation of a first type and wherein the second software feature enables performance of a computing operation of a second type (Rose: Figures 6-7).
With regard to claim 12, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein unlocking the first software feature enables accepting incoming electronic messages in association with the logical storage area and wherein unlocking the second software feature enables sending outgoing electronic messages in association with the logical storage area (Rose: Figures 6-7).
With regard to claim 13, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein unlocking the first software feature enables performing of a first computing operation based on a received incoming electronic message in association with the logical storage area and wherein unlocking the second software feature enables sending outgoing electronic messages in association with the logical storage area to affect a second computing operation (Rose: Figures 6-7).
With regard to claim 14, Rose in view of Slensker and Opedal teaches wherein the instructions further configure the processor to: store one or both of the received representation of an identification credential and the biometric data captured at the remote computing device, and wherein the second identity authentication is performed based on one or both of the received representation of an identification credential and the biometric data captured at the remote computing device (Slensker: Paragraph [0043]).
With regard to claim 15, Rose fails to teach, but knowledge possessed by one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing teaches wherein the instructions further configure the processor to: determine that one or both of a location associated with the remote computing device and a parameter received from the remote computing device satisfy defined criteria for augmenting a native user interface into a non-native user interface; in response to determining that one or both of the remote computing device and the parameter satisfy the defined criteria: determine that the non-native user interface is to be provided to the remote computing device; generate the non-native user interface by passing one or more components of a native user interface to a machine learning system with an instruction to generate the non-native interface; and provide the non-native user interface to the remote computing device, and wherein the instruction is received via the non-native interface (More specifically, Official Notice is taken that for an interface, such as a website for the account, it was well-known to one of ordinary skill in the art to provide some parameter to indicate a language of a user, and to provide machine-learning powered translations to translate the page into the language of the user.).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to perform machine-learning translations of the user interface (e.g. website) to a language of the user (such as provided by a setting of the user) to allow the user to utilize the interface in a language understood by the user without requiring the manual translation of the interface into each and every individual language for different users.
With regard to claim 16, Rose fails to disclose expressly, but Rose does teach wherein the instructions further cause the processor to: trigger a notification at the remote computing device, the notification facilitating the second identity authentication (Rose: Paragraph [0282] and [0263]. Various notifications, including notifications that there is an issue with regard to the account, may be performed, where some such notifications provide that additional actions may need to be taken, thus providing a suggestion that if there is an issue due to the account being frozen, some information would be provided to notify the user of such state and how to remedy the issue (e.g. perform in-person validation in accordance with Opedal). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to provide a notification to facilitate the second identity authentication (such as provide instructions for the user) to ensure that the user has knowledge of how the issue and how to remedy such issue, without which the user may find it difficult to understand why the transaction failed and how to correct the issue.
With regard to claims 17-20, the instant claims are similar to claims 1-4, and are rejected for similar reasons.
Conclusion
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SCOTT B. CHRISTENSEN
Examiner
Art Unit 2444
/SCOTT B CHRISTENSEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2444
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